The Lime Twig (7 page)

“All summer long?” asked Margaret.

“Some years, she does. I encourage it.” And Margaret saw the wheels flattening the heads and feet.

A signal flashed. A yellow light then red, and levers, long prongs, pig-iron fingers worked in rust out there. The train swayed and stale water splashed in the decanters. The train smelled like the inside of an old man’s hat—smelled of darkness, hair, tobacco—and the steam was up and she saw a car with its tiny lamps like match heads off in the blackness at a crossing. Were they merely waiting in the car? Or had the hand brake been set and were they kissing? Margaret felt the soot sifting into her bosom, she was breathing it down her nostrils. She wanted a wash.

“How old are they? Your sister’s, I mean … her little children.”

“Oh, young,” said the woman, and Margaret looked at her. “But not so young they won’t remember when they’ve grown. …” There were smells coming off the woman too, smells that lived on her despite the odor of coke and burning rails. Smells of shoe black and rotting lace, smells that were never killed by cleaning nor destroyed by the rain. The woman’s strong body, her clothing, her hatpins and hair—all were greased with the smells of age.

“Monica’s in the middle. Seven. She paints her nails.”

“It’s a nice name,” said Margaret, and looking up,
saw the woman’s eyes like a female warden’s eyes, black, almost beside each other, set into tiny spectacles with tweezers.

There were coffins in the baggage car and all through the night she smelled the cushions with their faint odor of skin tonic and old people’s basketry and felt the woman watching her—wide-awake—and it was dark and stifling, a journey that made her muscles sore. The light began to swing on its cord.

The train had stopped. The door handle went down suddenly—after how long, she thought. Then the door opened and she saw the figure of a man who was standing on some country station ramp with the steam round his legs and a wet face. Margaret saw the night behind the man, heard the far-off ring of spanners or hammer heads against the locomotive’s high black dripping wheels at the front of the train. The man was big, heavy as a horse cart of stone; there was not a wrinkle in his trenchcoat over the shoulders, his chest was that of a boxer. He blocked the door, held it, and his head came through. Hatless, dark hair, large straight nose. In one hand was a cigarette and he flicked the ash quickly into the skirts of his coat, as if he had no business smoking on the job. He swayed, leaned, his neck was red. He looked at the woman, and then at her; there was a movement in the dark eyes.

“All right now, Little Dora?” Nerve ends crossed in his gray cheek, it was a low conservative voice for kindness or bad weather.

“Right enough,” said the woman without moving her hands. Her chin was squared. Then: “But I could do with a smoke,” she added, and turned her spectacles toward Margaret.

“You don’t mind if Little Dora takes one, do you, Miss?” He looked at Margaret, spoke to her from the empty ramp. His tie was loose and he was an impassive escort who, by chance, could touch a woman’s breast in public easily, with propriety, offending no one. “You don’t mind, Miss?” And there was nothing hushed in the voice, no laughter in the eyes, only the man’s voice itself and his rainswept cheek and the cliff of his head with the old razor nicks, to startle her.

“It’s all right, Larry, don’t push it. I can wait,” said the woman. “Seen this item, have you?” She tapped her newspaper, watched him. A short cough of the whistle swept back over them like smoke.

He leaned forward, holding the door, gripping the jamb, and the shoes were blackened, everything neat about the socks, the gray gloves were softly buttoned about the wrists and the hair was smooth. Only the hint of the tie was disreputable; it was red silk and loosened round the neck.

“I don’t mind smoking,” said Margaret quietly.

She followed them, and the man put up his collar against the wind and coldness of the night’s storm. Down the wet planking, down the train’s whole length of iron, walking and through her tears now looking at the heads asleep behind the train’s dim and dripping windows. The rain had stopped, but there was a good wind.
Despite it she thought she heard laughter and, farther on, the sounds of an infant crying and sucking too. In a brace on the wall of the station master’s hut was a rusty ax; directly over the top of the engine she saw a few stars. But she was cold, so dreadfully cold.

“Bloody wild,” the man said softly into her ear.

He was on one side of her, the woman on the other. The man took hold of her arm as if to escort her firmly, safely, through a crowd of men; the woman caught her by the hand. She breathed, was filled with the smell of the fog, saw the woman dart her cigarette into the night. At the platform’s sudden edge, she saw a field sunk like iron under the stone fences, a shape that might have been a murdered horse or sheep, a brook run cold. The soot was acrid, it drove against her cheeks; the smell of oil was heavy in its packing and under it lay the faint odor of manure and wet hay and gorse.

“Feeling better?”

But she could not answer him. The wind had not disturbed his collar, he never blinked, eyelids insensitive to the rush of air.

“Larry,” the woman plucked at his sleeve, shouted, “What have you on for tomorrow?” She clutched her spectacles, the lace was torn at her throat.

“Not much,” putting his arm down upon her, round her, “sleep late … get Sparrow to do my boots … drive out to the Damps, perhaps. …”

“And come by the Roost?” she shouted.

“I’ll look in on you, Dora. …”

Then his loose red tie was caught by the wind. It came
out of the coat suddenly, and the red tip beat over the mist and thistles and wind off the end of the ramp. He waited a moment and carefully shut it away again.

“Had enough?” he asked.

They took her back down to the glass-and-iron door left open in the night, and she saw that it was the correct number on the door. With his hand still on her arm, and looking in as he had at first: “I expect you’ll be wanting to see Mr. Banks tomorrow, Miss? Look sharp for him, Miss. That’s my advice,” and the woman laughed. When he stepped away, cupped his cigarette from view, once more the train began to move and the man stood waiting for his own door to be pulled abreast of him.

It was a good crowd. Margaret and the woman climbed down together. Men pushed close to the standing train and reached up, while steam boiled round their trouser legs, to tap the windows with their canes. The coffins went by on their separate trucks. Women with their stockings crooked, men with their coats wrinkled— sounds of leather, wood, laughter, and a bell still tolling. There were beef posters, hack drivers displaying their licenses, a fellow drinking from a brown pint bottle. Suddenly she felt the woman taking hold of her hand.

“Where will Michael be?” asked Margaret then, surrounded by the searching crowd. A stray dog passed after the coffins. For a moment she saw the man in the trenchcoat and his broad belt. He made a sign to the woman and, with three others dressed like himself, went
under an arch to hire a car. On a wall was pasted an unillustrated poster:
You Can Win If You Want To
.

“Little Dora,” a young woman was calling to them, “Dora!” She had red hair, dark near the crown. Her restless fingers touched the shoulder of a child whose hair was fastened with an elastic.

“You here too?”

“For the weekend only,” the little girl’s mother said, and fluffed her hair up on one side, kissed the woman’s cheek. “But fancy you … such luck!”

“What’s footing it, Sybilline?”

“It’s the sunshine I want only,” she said, holding the small girl’s collar, “a rum, a toss, a look through a fellow’s binoculars. … Will you take her, Dora?”

And after the child had changed hands: “This is Monica,” she said to Margaret.

Margaret lost the far-off smell of grass when they went up the stairs. She had smelled it, wondered about it, sniffed it, the fresh clipped odor, the living exhalation of earth green and vast, a springtime of wet and color beyond the town’s steam baths and shops and gaming rooms and the petrol pumps wedged between shuttered houses and hotels. Out there, over the steeple, over the wires, the wash, was the great green of the racecourse: the Damps. The grass itself; several ponds; the enormous stands with flags; the oval of roses in which men were murdered and where there fluttered torn-up stubs and a handkerchief—Margaret had tasted the green and then it was gone. Now the door closed and she smelled
cheap marmalade and the rubber of pharmaceutical apparatus for home use. A small trunk stood by the door to the room. The woman, Dora, had a key in her hand.

“You seem to know the place, Little Dora.”

“It’s the first time for me.”

“How then …”

“It’s like all the rest.”

The room was on the second floor. White, large, it had a closet with a sink in it. There were two brass beds covered with sheets, a picture of a girl in a lake. It was clean, but a pair of braces had been forgotten near the window.

The cigarette burned in a saucer next to the brilliantine, and there was steam at the open lavatory door and sunlight at the raised window. Larry washed down to the muscles of his neck and arms, but the tips of his fingernails were black. He was whistling. Again he held the brushes in two hands, applied them simultaneously to the shine of his hair.

It was one o’clock, the racing crowd was at the Damps, and only the constable took a standing ale in the hotel’s taproom while the wireless reported the condition of the horses. The foam was high on his tankard.

Larry whistled again, opened the bottom drawer, and from between layers of tissue lifted a vest of linked steel, shiny, weighing about five pounds. It fit over the undervest like silk. He turned sideways to adjust the ties. Then he carried a moist towel to the bathroom, finished his tea—it was bitter after the mouthwash and paste, and cleaner—and sat in the horsehair rocker in the sun by the window. He raised his black shoes to a footstool mauve and fringed with tassels, the sun began to glow against
the steel beneath his shirt. He had changed the water in the flower vase first thing, so that was done; the pistol was loaded; he smelled fish frying in the kitchen next to the Tap. A small biplane was dragging a sign across the air in the direction of the spirited crowds:
Win with Wally
. He glanced at the yellow petals, a comer of his pillow, at Sparrow who was stretched on the bed. Then he nodded down at his black shoes, thick and perfect as parade boots.

“Put a little spit on them, Sparrow,” he said, and watched the other climb off the bed, kneel, begin to polish.

Sparrow caught up with Larry near the Booter’s. They walked by the steam baths—it had a marble front and, waist-high, two protruding and flaking iron pipes—walked by red petrol tanks, the beef posters, the hedgerow upon which the birds were hopping, a novelty shop with a rubber bride and groom in the window. On a low wooden door the single word
Jazz
was chalked and beside the door stood a pot of drying violets. Sparrow walked with the perspiration coming out on his chin; the sun flashed from his mother’s wedding band on his pinky. Larry whistled and there was hardly a movement of the pale lips.

All about them was the stillness of the village: this watering place of cocaine and scent, beer and feather mattresses and the transient rooms of menservants, all deserted by sports and gypsies and platinum girls. Deserted except for the constable, themselves, and the captive in the white building. The small bets now—on a kiss,
for show, for the cost of lunch, the small and foolish bets for fun—were being placed elsewhere along with the serious wagers for a sick wife, burial of an aged woman, relief from debt, a trip to the beach, and there were few risks in the village now except those taken by the telephone operator who made small business with anyone owning an instrument. The widow who had held Michael Banks’ face in her hands at breakfast was sleeping when Larry and Sparrow started their day; the constable’s lips were salty; the girl who had screamed was crying herself into dreams on the floor. But Larry and Sparrow were walking through the odor of old trees, through the village diaphanous and silent, walking now in search of Thick and Little Dora.

On the stair, carpeted with rubber held firm by tacks, smelling of varnish and the rubber, a dark stair yet safe, the two men stopped to light up thin cigarettes; then Larry went first and Sparrow followed. From the end of the second-floor hall came the sound of a flushing toilet, the sudden swift plash of water in pipes, and a moment later the tinkling of a key. Nothing more. The hall, tinted green, was without decoration, without furniture except for a steamer trunk with lid half-raised on ancient petticoats and a bottle of silver-coated pills.

When he pulled open the door the little girl darted past, but Sparrow snatched at her arm—she smelled of Paradise Shore, had her hair full of pins—and twisted her round to the room again. He could feel the sweet pith of her arm, the ordinary thinness of flesh without ruffles. Under his fingers was a vaccination still
bandaged and the spot was warm, a bit of radiance on the skin which, since her day in the clinic, she had attempted to hide under her short sleeve.

“Where’s Sybilline?” asked the child, but Sparrow said nothing, letting his hand touch the hair that made him shiver just to feel it, to feel the pins which the girl had found and a few which Little Dora had stuck into it from a cardboard for her amusement. He put his hand in his pocket.

“Syb wouldn’t want you running off,” he murmured.

Everyone stared at Larry: Sparrow and the child now, and the two women. Little Dora with her shadow of mustache, steel spectacles, purple hat in place, and the captive Margaret whom they had dressed only in a white shapeless gown tied behind with cords. And two men. Thick with his ear close to a portable radio, listening to the sounds of sport—if not of horses then dogs or cars or motorcycles—and on the opposite side of the room from him, suit dusty and smelling of straw, the trainer Cowles, enormous and seated on an upended valise, shirt unfastened and his hair raised into a nasty crust. All of them stared, and there was no dirt on Larry’s collar. Now Larry was in the room, and even when drunk he could comport himself. But he was not drunk, was at the other extreme from the full bottle, cognac preferred, which it took to make him laugh. Stood straight as he did when predicting, Larry who was an angel if any angel ever had eyes like his or flesh like his.

“My God,” said Little Dora, “you’ve been bathing again.” Her chin twitched.

“Afternoon, Cowles,” said Larry over her head, “afternoon, Miss. Are you comfortable?” And he nodded to Thick, who turned off the radio. “Well,” after a moment, “there’s something sweet in the air. Wouldn’t you say so, Sparrow?”

But he was looking at Margaret, at the bare feet, the whiteness of the charity gown, the shoulders sloping in the big armchair. “Well, Miss, you haven’t answered my question.” He waited, and she was deprived of everything, stripped as for some dangerous surgery.

“I’m comfortable,” she said, and leaned forward in the chair.

“You’re not wanting then.”

“No. They tell me I can’t see Michael…”

“That’s true, Miss. You can’t see Mr. Banks. Right, Cowles?”

“He’s engaged,” said the trainer and laughed, face and neck still damp with a horse’s drinking water.

Margaret’s brown skirt, the shoes, the stockings had been burned and it was Thick who had returned with the playing cards and white gown. Little Dora had held it for her—“You won’t be going into public in this rig, it’s open behind!”—then fastened the ties. Once they had cut into her cousin’s abdomen and she recognized the gown: whenever Thick had the chance, he whispered how he had attended his mother in Guy’s Hospital in order to see the young women on the wards. Now she was herself attended and was ashamed to move. Thick had burned her things, identification card and all.

Suddenly she looked at Cowles: “Do what you want with me. But leave Michael alone. …”

“Don’t listen to him,” said the child Monica, and pushed the little table in front of Margaret, sat opposite and dealt the cards. “Just play with me,” she said, turning up a golden queen, “we’re friends.” She was wearing a bright-green dress, too short, and she drummed on one of her pointed knees while staring at the figure on the card. Monica had the redness of her mother’s hair at the back of her neck. “I bet I’ve got a jack under here.”

Sparrow’s own knees were aching. After being ground beneath the treads of an armored vehicle, the bones and ligaments of his legs had shrunk, in casts had become dry and grafted together. His knee caps were of silver and it was the metal itself, he claimed, that hurt. Now at either corner of his mouth the skin turned suddenly white and Larry took a step, held him up by the arm. Then under the shoulders, under the knees, Larry lifted him—Sparrow dropped the beret—and carried him to the bed where the small man lay whimpering.

“Take off his shoes, Cowles. Carefully, if you please.”

Cowles did as he was told, the dark coat flapping down over his hands at the laces, while the others—the radio was on the floor, a chair scraped—moved all together toward the bed. Sparrow, at such moments, was in the habit of shutting his eyes, whether instantly crippled in a picture palace, the Majesty, or in the Men’s, whether caught in Daphne’s Row or in the room with tables and dirty silverware. He was closing the lids now. They
lowered, one or two lashes in each, slowly obliterating the eyes, which were white and without tears. A single lick of black hair lay on his forehead.

They were all at the bed, Thick and Larry on either side of the pillow with Little Dora and Cowles—he was still holding the empty shoes—and their expressions were unchanged even by Sparrow’s moans. Margaret and the little girl came also, stood in the vicinity of Sparrow’s heart and lungs.

From his great height, drawing back his coat flaps and lapels so that the gun and the gun’s girdle—the holster, straps, strings—were visible, slowly putting his hands in his pockets, Larry spoke the name, Larry who had been the first to carry him the night he screamed, who had sipped tea out of a tin cup while watching them give preliminary treatment to the broken legs, and who had known immediately upon sight of the buttocks tiny and gnarled that the injured man was a rider: “Sparrow.” And Larry, who had greased his hair even in battle, was still compassionate. “Sparrow,” he said again and the moaning stopped, the perspiration appeared, the slit eyes began suddenly to tighten and grow shrewd.

“Dead and dying,” came Sparrow’s answering whisper at last, and the wrists twisted in the enormous cuffs.

“Now then, Thick,” said Larry, “roll up his sleeve.”

Sparrow grimaced and all the while kept the round vague outline of Margaret’s face in his filmy sight. Larry took the tin packet from inside his coat, from just beneath the armpit’s holster, and opened it. He fitted the needle to the syringe, broke the neck of the
ampule, drew back the plunger until the scale on the glass measured the centimeters correctly. The tip of the needle dribbled a bit. He had tended to Sparrow in alleys, bathhouses with crabs and starfish dead on the floors, in doorways, in the Majesty, and the back of horsedrawn wagons on stormy nights. He had jabbed Sparrow in the depths of a barroom and upright in the booth of a phone; once on rough water with the rain beating down, once in a railway coach with his ministrations hidden from the old ladies behind a paper. Once too in the dark of a prison night, and many times, on leave, with some strange fat girl wearing rolled stockings, or with a tall girl carrying her underclothes in a respirator bag, standing idly by and swinging the bag, pulling the rolled elastic, watching. As often as Sparrow fainted, Larry revived him. Whenever Sparrow could stand on his feet no longer, whenever he went down in the crooked swoon, helpless as when he had first screamed from his bloody blankets—he had won a fiver from the kid of the battalion only that sundown—Larry the angel, the shoulder man, who later drowned the operator of the half-track in a shell hole filled with stagnant water and urine of the troops, took him up in his arms as carefully and coolly as a woman of long service. And with the needle and morphic fluid calmed him, standing then in suspect shadow, smoking, until Sparrow should rise, muttering, “Shivers and shakes,” and proceed with his drugged and jittery step to a brief meal or to the job.

“This ought to do it,” he said, and leaned forward, pinched as much of the flesh on Sparrow’s arm as he
could into a chilly blister. Then he punctured it, slid the needle beneath Sparrow’s skin, gently pushed down the plunger. For a moment he could see the fluid lying like a pea just under the skin, then suddenly it dropped into a duct or into the mouth of a vein and was gone. He withdrew the needle and there was a tiny heart of blood on the tip of it. He watched, and in the middle of the tattoo—a headstone with “Flander’s Field” in scroll beneath it—his pinch marks and the nick of the needle were still visible. He was casting a long shadow across Sparrow’s torso, and the substance of his own head, the lines of his shoulders—constructed to catch a man’s love for master tailoring—these lay lightly on the man in his agony. Then he looked across to Thick, who was stooping also and hiding his mouth behind a hand, keeping an eye on the bare needle. Thick’s own forehead was trickling.

“He ain’t going to need a transfusion … is he now, Larry?”

“Cover him with a sheet, for God’s sake, and let’s go,” said Little Dora, and dug with mannish fingers into her stuffed side.

“Michael was sick once,” whispered Margaret, and she was kneeling.