“I shan’t be a moment,” she said, fishing out her little purse from her pocket. “I want to spend a penny.”
He understood then that these hints did mean something, but she had no intention of telling him.
He watched her walk across the room, jaunty and arrogant, to the door marked “Ladies".
12
It was a good film, and George gave it all his attention. The atmosphere of the cinema soothed him. The darkness, the bright screen, the drama which he could watch as an interested onlooker gave him a feeling that he had escaped into another, more pleasant world. He knew, at the hack of his mind, that outside in the hot sunshine his world waited impatiently for his return; but for the next two hours here was escape.
He had been disappointed that Cora had wished to see a movie. The whiskies had made him amorous, and as soon as they left the pub he began a clumsy manoeuvre to persuade Cora to return to the flat.
He was careful, of course, not to let her know what he had in mind, but his eyes, his flushed face and his incoherent speech gave him away. Not that she let on that she had spotted his little game; she didn’t. She said she felt like a movie, and although he had protested, and even said that it would be nicer if they went hack to the flat together, imploring her with his eyes, she remained adamant.
He was hurt and angry that she could be so hard. What was the sense in wasting the afternoon in a cinema, when they could have been together alone and undisturbed in the flat?
He had sulked, and was determined that when she asked him which of the three cinemas they should choose, he would pointedly show his indifference.
But she didn’t ask him. She walked down the street a step ahead of him, passed the first cinema and went straight to the box office of the second one, a few hundred yards farther down the road.