Alfy went on: “He’s a cold guy. I bet nothing would move that guy.”
George said, “He’s been here an awful long time, ain’t he?”
Alfy looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. “Four hours,” he said, then, as if to give himself courage, he added: “He said it would take a while.”
“He said that, did he?” George wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Ain’t nothin’ gone wrong, do you think?”
Unconsciously he put into words what Alfy had been thinking for the past half-hour. It didn’t do Alfy much good. He said, “For God’s sake, must you take that line?”
George got off the table and wandered across to the window. He leant against the wall, holding back the curtain to look into the street. “The moon’s still up,” he said unevenly; “high as hell that moon is.”
Alfy said: “We’d planned not to have kids, George. Somethin’ must’ve gone wrong. Margie wanted a kid, but I said no. You can’t have a kid an’ a boat. Not these days, you can’t. Margie was nobody’s dope. She’d got her mind fixed for a kid, George. You know how women are, but I watched it. How the hell it went wrong I don’t know.”
George stood very still and silent by the window. He didn’t say anything.
Very faintly, from somewhere upstairs, someone screamed.
George beat Alfy to the door. They stood in the passage listening. The only sound they could hear was the faint roar of the overhead trains.