She frowned at him again. ‘What else? ’Scuse me asking.’
‘Roger,’ he told her, and thought it sounded rusty. It was some time since he heard it.
‘Roger Penderel.’ She was obviously turning it over in her mind. ‘Look here, don’t you know a boy called Ranger, Dick Ranger?’
‘Lord, yes. I know young Ranger. His elder brother, Tom, used to be a great pal of mine. He’s somewhere in the Sudan now, being done to a turn. Dick’s not been down long from Oxford and has developed into a tremendous West Ender. He knows all the places, stops out late, and is as cynical as a taxi driver. He quite frightens me, makes me feel old and simple.’
‘I know him too,’ she said. ‘He’s rather a nice boy really, bit young and silly of course. I asked because I’m sure I saw you with him once. I knew I’d seen you somewhere and I couldn’t think where, but now I remember. Weren’t you with him one night—three or four months ago—at the “Rats and Mice”?’
‘The “Rats and Mice”?’ Then he remembered the place, one of the smaller night clubs. ‘Yes, I did go there one night with Dick Ranger. It’s a little place, isn’t it, with everything and everybody jammed together. There was a band all squashed in a balcony, just like sardines in a half-opened tin. I remember the name of the place because I told Ranger it was like being inside a cheese. I hated it. The drinks were about the worst and the dearest I’ve ever known.’
‘Pretty rotten, yes, but not quite so bad if you’re in with the crowd who are running it. I go there a lot, though it’s not my favourite haunt.’
‘Haunt’s a good word, isn’t it?’ He grinned at her and she—perhaps mechanically, he didn’t know—wrinkled her nose in reply. ‘We have to go somewhere, haven’t we?’
‘That’s just it. That’s what I always say.’ She was quite eager about this. ‘You can have a dance or two and a drink with some of the girls and boys you know, and the band’s making a cheerful row and the lights are nice and bright, and so you turn in there night after night and hang on, not wanting to turn out and crawl home to your rotten digs.’
‘I know. Once down the steps and outside the door, it’s dark and raining probably and to-morrow’s begun. So you put it off.’