The Lime Twig (8 page)

But this was not Sparrow’s worst. Nor was it Daphne’s Row or escaping in the manure wagon or trying to fix the needle behind the newspapers that time on the rocking train that had caused Larry himself to sweat and think of summoning the doctor who was bald and unlicensed and the best in the business for a man who had
been stabbed or shot in the groin. None of these, but the time in the hock and antique shop—when the black cars passed up and down in front of the cluttered window and Sparrow had collapsed on a scabrous tiger skin, pulling a tea set with him and falling with his mouth jammed into the heel of a brass boot and he, Larry, had tried to squat beside and reach for him through a pile of bone and silken fans. His knee had crushed an old bellows and dust fell all about them, while paper weights rolled against the tiger’s head. He had crouched there over Sparrow and had torn the tin packet. And a parrot in the back of the shop kept screaming, “Piss in his eye, piss in his eye!” from a great fortress-shaped wire cage. And while the cars hunted them up and down the street, while the parrot shrieked, he had freed Sparrow’s arm from the cloth and had been too hasty, then, withdrawing the point, so that the needle broke, and the skin immediately turned blue. But even that day he had managed, watched Sparrow’s cheekbones recede under a little color, helped him to crawl through the tunnel of Spanish shawls and so to escape, and had killed the parrot by stuffing his handkerchief into its shocked and gloomy face. Dragging Sparrow away he had heard the cage still swinging.

“That will do, I imagine,” he said, and straightened. But no one else moved. First one, then by twos and threes the playing cards blew off the table and swished to the floor or landed on edge with tiny clacking noises, all face down except the queen. Thick wet his lips; Little Dora lifted back her veil; Cowles was biting his nails.
Monica blinked her green and fearful eyes and Sparrow from the bed was sighing.

“Better now, Sparrow? Come along then. …”

“Wait!” said Little Dora. “You don’t mean you’re going without me, Larry! You wouldn’t leave Little Dora behind! Not another day in the Roost. And I thought I’d be out today and have a throw and a lunch at the Pavilion. Ain’t I going to get a finger in the Golden Bowl at least? Or at least a look at the Bumpy Girl? What the hell, I’m no matron. …”

But Larry opened the door a crack. “She wants watching, Dora.” And, bracing Sparrow, raising his head slightly: “Use the ropes if you need to. Thick.”

The door closed and Margaret remained kneeling at the empty bed. Little Dora tore off her gloves. Thick began to laugh.

There was a railing and Michael Banks took hold of it, then stared down into the darkness of five broad swinging doors. He was quite alone when he pushed through one of them. Underneath the grandstand and at the bottom of the steps he found ahead of him the empty reaches of the public lavatory—low ceiling, fifty feet wide and of concrete painted black and tiny brick cubes washed with a light-green color. There were a few bulbs in cages waist high between the urinals and toilet bowls. It was the rank darkness of the empty Tube; a man could hide even at the base of one of those toilets if he crouched low enough, made himself small.

He started to whistle softly and the sound coming from his own lips—he was not often a whistler, a smiler—made the words “barrels of fun” go round in his head. Slowly he unbuttoned his coat and listened. He was standing, he noticed, near a toilet that had no seat, one badly defaced in the row of urinals. Once he had seen a man die on a toilet—from fear—then had found a notice of the death in the papers. “Why are you always reading obituaries?” He remembered that ugly voice. “Who do you expect to find on the lists?” He couldn’t say.

Now he peered ahead at a row of pipes with great brass valves—he had never been able to turn taps beneath a sink, could not bring himself to touch the copper ball, slime-covered, gently breathing, that lay in the bottom of a toilet tank—thinking that it wouldn’t do at all to walk down there.

Then he heard the footsteps. They were none he knew, not those of Lovely, Cowles, or the jockey, who had a light and bitter tread. These were the sounds of a measured step, the left foot heavier than the right, the dragging of shoe nails against the stones. And Banks saw a movement, a mere breaking of shadow, at the end of the tunnel by which he himself had entered. He turned, starting toward the opposite end where the pipes loomed, but there too he saw the flickering of a white hand, fragments of darkness about to become the shape of a man. So he wheeled close against the nearest urinal and clutched at his clothing.

The man was beside him. A man smaller than Banks, humped over, with feet large as boxes and a slate
strapped across his chest. The name of a horse was on the slate:
Rock Castle
.

Banks kept his eyes forward, said nothing. But down the tunnel’s opposite length, climbing from behind the pipes themselves, the shape of the second man became complete. And at his side, in silent metamorphosis, appeared the third. The hanging slate of the first man banged against Banks’ hip, and that of the second—all these carried the little boards, buckles and leather, wood frames splintered, pieces of slate chalk-dusted—caught him on the opposite side under the ribs. And the second man’s nearest rubber, several sizes too large, smacked in the latrine water, moved again and lay beside his own wet shoe. Banks held tightly to his clothes, heard them shuffle, breathe, splash loudly. They were just the three to stand beside him in the Men’s—he knew it was inevitable with the first echo of the footsteps—just the sort to gang up on a lone man underground. But he also knew them for another kind: in the glare above, all along the track’s inner rail, great numbers of these were posted, swiftly chalking, communicating with the crowd. Dressed in rags, lean, fast as birds. These were the men who sat on the rails with knees drawn up and scraps of paper fastened to their lapels, soothsayers with craftiness and eyes that never stopped. Very methodical. For days he had seen them, the jaws unshaved, the looks of intelligence, the slates slung like accordions from the worn-out straps. They were a system—“eunuchs,” Cowles called them, “the mathematicians”—but while clacking within arm’s length of the hoof-cut turf, each one sat in
his astrological island, shabby, each figuring for himself with twitching cheek muscles and numbers scratched on the slate. “The bad-luck fellows,” Cowles said of them.

Now Banks knew it to be so. The weight of the hands on the urinal, the thickly rubbered foot, the hat in the band of which was a photograph of a nude woman, the slates—the name
Rock Castle
was scrawled also on the other two—all this said as much.

And he was helpless now.

The first to come was whispering. Banks glanced quickly and saw a scar hanging down from the eye like a hair, saw spectacles and a loose soft collar partly tom at the seam. He tried to look away, but the man went on with his whispering.

“I’ve got a word for you:
Sybilline’s in the Pavilion
. Do you understand?
Sybilline’s in the Pavilion
. …”

Down and back the length of the latrine it was a false and cheerful sound. And behind the spectacles the man had watering eyes, eyes nearly awash in the sockets, and he did not blink. On either side of his nose—bookish—were grains of blood and scratches. When he whispered, the saliva behind his lips, between his teeth, was tinted pink with blood constantly trickling into the throat. The water round the eyes was clear. And his limpid sight, the smile, his whispering, the signs of struggle, the poverty of the cloth, his pink and golden gleam, the slate—these suggested unnatural occupation, the change in character: a man good for certain kinds of hire.

“Don’t move now, Mr. Banks, not a move if you please.”

There was no smile, only the single flaw, the perversion, the staring eyes and all round him the rank gloom, the chill, the burning of the rusty lights.

“It’s three to one now, Banks. Don’t take it into your head to run off in a scare.”

This whisperer was on his right; the second to come stood patiently on his left; Polka-dots—there was a neckerchief round his throat—had moved up close behind him. It was the triangle of his dreams, the situation he dreaded at the sound of sirens. He wanted composure when the whisperer touched his arm, saying, “You won’t dart then. That’s sensible. Why look here, Banks,” smiling again, reaching into a pocket behind the slate, “What do you make of these?” And in his palm, suddenly, he held two small black balls, sovereign-sized in diameter and perfectly round. They appeared soft, made of tar perhaps, and left an oily dark stain on the skin as the man shifted them in his hand. “Ever seen one of these before? Pellet bombs. Quite a charge in them, Banks. Not enormous of course, but good enough to take a foot or a hand or eye without any question. Should you scare, Banks, and be so fancy as to skip on us, I’d throw one at you. And it would bring you to the flagging. But here,” guiding him by the arm, “we don’t need to risk a blasting. You won’t be likely to run if you’re sitting down. Now will you?”

They stopped at the broken toilet and Banks sat on it as best he could. They were standing close to his knees, making wet sounds with their boots and rubbers beside
him, and it was worse than the crowds. Even the constable could help, he thought.

“Wait,” he was squatting, staring up, could hardly see their faces, “what do you want?”

And the whisperer: “We could bash your brains,” sucking sharply, feet trampling his own, huddling round him. “But,” more easily, “that’s not it for now. Later perhaps. Larry said to keep an eye on you all right. But Banks,” catching him by the throat, pressing down upon him and smiling, “just take my word for it:
Sybilline’s in the Pavilion
. She wants you to know, Mr. Banks, she thinks you’ll understand. …”

And these three dropped back with their hands ready, arms hooked out defensively, and like boys flashing in an empty courtyard turned suddenly and—far apart, shoes scraping and slates caught close—raced off swiftly and with terrible clatter in the direction of the swinging doors.

He sat bent over in the quietness he had been looking for. It was a green world and he heard no echoes; they did not toss back any of their pellet bombs after all. He remained there on the piece of battered lavatory equipment for an endless time, and his eyes were half-shut.

How many are going to St. Ives?

Lines of people filed among the tables in the Pavilion, long lines wound between the little metal folding chairs all taken. They were coming down from the stands, from the stable area, from amusement tents, tramping across the beds of flowers left crushed or covered with spittle. White faces, a hat or two, a hearing aid, all packed together, stranger against stranger, and making their voices shrill over winnings or poor luck. The weight of them tipped a table up now and then, and spoons, forks with pastry on the tips, glassware, slid and fell from the edge. Those seated at the tables tried to drink, eat, talk,
but everyone in the queues was laughing, stood staring down at the little round metal tops and puddles of lemonade and burned matches. There was a fat woman who carried her own sweets in a bag, and a cream puff had exploded against her cheek leaving bits of chocolate and egg white on her rosy skin. She was laughing from a deep stomach and dabbing with a fistful of handkerchief.

With the bottom of his trousers wet, brown hat on the back of his head, shirt crumpled and pinched lips smashed together, there was no happiness of the throng for Michael Banks, and he struck out at an elbow, at a shoulder blade, as hard as he dared. He saw the young woman immediately and gave a whistle. But it was drowned in the noise and upset of a waiter’s tray.

She had a table to herself and had saved him a seat. She was drinking pink water and gin out of a tall glass and there was a second pink glass for him on the scratched metal table edge before his chair. A giant pair of binoculars lay between her glass and his and the long strap was bound safely round her wrist. Her red hair was like the orange of an African bird, and when she sipped, the jockey-pink rose water sent a delicate color up to a row of tiny pearls which she had sunk into the deepness of the hair.

“I’m Sybilline,” she said.

He looked at the tip of her tongue and smelled the gin. Suddenly in the midst of weak eyes, puffy shirts, wallets stuffed with photographs of dead mothers and home, and on his person carrying still the clamminess, he found
himself thinking he could bear the crowds for this, and felt his feet dragging, his fingers pressing white against the sticky metal of the chair. Yet he was brief.

“You wanted a word with me?”

“Oh, come off it now,” she laughed. “Sit down and have a drink with Sybilline.”

He did not remove his hat. He kept his back straight and with both hands seized the frosted glass, drank heavily. Everyone else wanted fish and chips or onions, but the gin and pink water was enough for him. There were fine soft flaming hairs on the woman’s arms, freckles like little brown crystals out of the sea. The sun struck through the canvas and lighted her, here in the midst of a crowd which lifted his chair then allowed it again to settle. He hung on, swallowed, watched the way she breathed—there were holes cut in the tips of her brassière—and the way her fingers always curved round her windpipe when she brought her free hand to her throat. She was thin if anything and her skin was white as if it had taken all the skin’s pigmentation, flesh color, to tint the hair.

“What did you want of me then?” he asked, and the chair was inching about beneath him, man and chair pressed into motion by the crowd on the Ouija board of the Pavilion’s floor.

And quickly, brightening up: “I’m here for the weekend only and, fancy now, there’s you! I’ve had a look through these,” raising the strap of the binoculars, “and the fellow who owns them is gone. Aren’t you glad? Things just come to pass, for a girl. For you, too, if you can only manage a little cheer in your face! Here, you carry them.”

Slowly he put the strap over his shoulder. “But I haven’t heard of you before,” he said, and let the cold glass click against his teeth.

A small narrow man, appearing drunk and soldierly and wearing a red beret over an ear like a twist of leather, stumbled out of the queue and flung his arm round the woman’s shoulder, shoved his cheek against the woman’s cheek so that Banks saw the two heads together, the fair skin with its emulsion of cream and the scrap of the fellow’s jaw, the green eyes meant for a mirror and the other eyes good only for sighting at a game of darts, the little red beret crushed into the softness of her orange hair. The man’s breath stirred the pinkish curls and his short fingers were biting into the plain cloth above her breast. He was stooping, hugging her for balance, and Banks watched the two pairs of eyes, the twitching when movement came finally to the intruder’s lips:

“Catch her while you can, Tosh,” staring then, taking a breath too big for him, as if he himself had nobody in the world. “Stairways and stars, remember!” And Sybil-line laughed, and with a hand on the man’s thigh pushed him off so that he ducked quickly into the crowd.

Only her own eyes were left and Banks could not frown at them. “I’m a married man,” he said. But there was a waltz coming out of the speaker, and she was laughing, twisting a curl the color of nail polish round her finger.

When they stood up, binoculars falling now against his hip, the fat woman and three others began fighting for the chairs, and his glass, still half-filled with gin, toppled and splashed on anonymous shoes and socks dropped carelessly below the ankles. But already Sybil-line had him by the hand and Larry watched them going off through the crowd.

So Little Dora was left alone with Margaret. And Thick, driving the black van that had oil and sand smeared over the hand-painted name, was sent with Sparrow to the flat in the street at Dreary Station. Sparrow was agile now, climbed down from the cab and walked easily with the suitcase in his hand. Thick was grinning because he always liked a smashing. The sun lighted up the window boxes and the face of an old dog behind a fence; from far-off came the sounds of all the girls sewing in the factories.

“Gas johnnys,” Sparrow told Mrs. Stickley and went with Thick to the flat and bolted the door from the inside. They took out the tools of the trade and in half an hour shredded the plant that the cat had soiled, broke the china quietly in a towel, stripped linen from the bed and all clothing out of the cupboards and drawers and closets, drank from the bottle found with the duster and pail. They cut the stuffing in bulky sawdust layers away from the frames of the furniture, gutted the mattress.

The high bells were ringing and Sparrow and Thick were done sawing the wood of the furniture into handy lengths, in sheeted bundles had carried out to the van
the wood and the pieces of lingerie and puffy debris of their work. Bare walls, bare floors, four empty rooms containing no scrap of paper, no figured piece of jewelry or elastic garment, no handwriting specimen by which the identity of the former occupants could be known: it was a good job, a real smashing; and at dusk, on a heath just twenty miles from Aldington, they stopped and dumped the contents of the van into a quagmire round which the frogs were croaking. The two men smoked cigarettes in the gloom and then drove on.

Sybilline had let go of his hand and for a moment he did not lose her, stepping closely behind her figure, her red hair, quite certain she was lovely, even down to the open shoes and bare heels more red and wrinkled than he expected. But then the sound of a young woman’s flat voice made him think of home, of Margaret; somebody knocked him in the side; and when he turned round again and discovered that Sybilline was gone he did not care. He was thinking of his wife Margaret and for the next hours fought alone through the crowd, thinking of her and sweating and becoming hungry.

And now, directly in front of the stands and just out of its shadow—above him was the tower with the gilded face of the clock hung over with canvas and a scaffold’s few swinging timbers—standing in one of the crowd’s brief islands of space, he put a sandwich of hard salted bread and cheese to his teeth and chewed quickly. Others were sitting: a few women with their legs out straight on dirty towels or a folded sweater; a man
wearing a tall gray coachman’s hat with enormous red and green tickets sticking out of the band and now resting himself in an armchair, an overstuffed chair tonic-stained and running on makeshift wheels; a boy lying out on his back and asleep. But Banks, though breathing quickly and sweating, preferred to stand. He kept the cheese close to his mouth, bit into the bread. His long shadow was taking food.

“Buy a ticket,” mumbled the man from his chair. In weariness and the heat he sought Banks’ eyes but was too overcome to move. Banks turned a little and his shadow, like the arm of a sundial, pointed at someone else. He had found his air hole, a bit of room for his feet, and no one was at his elbow, nobody crowded. For once there was not a familiar face in sight, Margaret would wait. No longer did he care about the roses in the green behind him, but kept his eyes on the sandwich.

“He don’t need a ticket. Can’t you see?” One of the women, young, alone, with small carbon-black pock holes covering her face, sitting with her skirts out of place on the dirty incline of the clay spread before the stands, tore slowly into little pieces her own ticket, a dare that had failed, and glanced at the man in the chair. “He don’t need your kind of luck, our kind of luck. Can’t you see? God, what a thirst I’ve got!”

And ignoring her: “Buy a ticket,” the man said again, and the wheels squeaked for a moment.

“God,” the woman continued, and looked once at the sky, “they ought to shoot that Islam. Say,” talking not to the prostrate man but to Banks, “you didn’t bet on
Islam, did you, mister? You’d know better, you would. He’s broke my heart, that Islam. Say,” he could feel a quickening of thought, a change in her eyes, “you wouldn’t have a quid on you, mister?”

And quickly: “Watch out for her,” the man said with an angry spinning of the wheels.

But Banks didn’t care. He heard the voices of the man and girl—they were ringed round him and the bodies curtained out all except a far-off anonymous noise from the crowd—and he recognized the spent effort of the seller’s voice and the appeal of the girl’s. A little powder case was lying on its side next to her hip. But he had had enough of them and he was eating cheese.

“Here, I’ll give you a quid,” said a fat woman who was watching four or five chocolates melt in the palm of her hand.

The clay under his feet had grown hard with the spittle and rain, the sun, the endless weight of their bodies. It gave off an odor—of shoe leather, shredded tobacco, sweat. The sun was shining off their flesh. He moved his sundial’s shadow again and peered at his teeth marks in the cheese; it made a dry bulb in his mouth and only the girl’s remark about thirst had caught his attention. What if he showed her a pink lemonade and gin right now? She’d forget her Islam soon enough.

“Have one of my chocolates,” said the woman.

He would watch out for all of them, he thought. Suppose he swallowed and looked at them, then said one word simply and clearly. What if he said “Larry”? The fellow in the chair would jump, most likely. But he
buried the name, forgot it, thrust his face into the cheese which had no smell. He had never liked to stand while eating. Now he was grateful for the pause, the chance to stand apart though they were watching. Perhaps only the boy asleep was better off—no clock, no time, no witnesses for him. The face was bruised, bore the impression of knuckles beneath one eye. He would start, sit up, begin to cry if he heard the name of Larry, right enough.

Banks crumpled the sandwich paper and thrust it into his pocket.

“He’s not so lucky,” said the woman with chocolates, “he’s only a kid.” And she was looking at him squarely and he at her, and she had a man’s thick lips, an arm she might throw about anyone’s shoulder. “Tell us now,” she said. “Are you the lucky boy? Have you been winning?”

He tried to look away. Then calmly, feeling the sun’s pool hot in the top of his hat: “I’ve been picking them all correctly. But not for cash. …”

“You see,” she shouted, “he hasn’t got a quid!” And while laughing she licked the sweets, pulled a scrap of handkerchief from her skirt and began wiping the sticky palm. Her laughter awoke the boy and he groaned.

The girl laughed also, but less heartily, as if she might still hope to get what he did have.