The Lime Twig: Novel Read online

  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.

  “Shut up,” said the man in the chair, “he’s got more than that.”

  And over the heads of all those standing behind them, he saw the profile of Margaret’s face. When he jumped, took the first long stride, he kicked something under his foot and in a moment knew it to be the young woman’s powder case, without looking down, heard the tinkle and scrape of the contents scattering.

  “Here, don’t be rude…,” he heard the older woman say, and he was pushing, pushing away into the midst of them. And still there was the face and he gasped, slipped between two men in black, tried not to lose her, raised a hand. Here was surprise and familiarity, not out of fear, but fondness, and between them both perhaps three hundred others not moving, not caring what they lost in the sun.

  “My God, what have they done to Margaret!” Because, for the moment only he saw the whole of her and she was wearing clothes he had never seen before—an enormous flower hat and a taffy-colored gown with black-beaded tassels sewn about the waist and sewn also just above the bottom that was dragging. A dress from another age, too large, too old, Margaret clothed in an old tan garden gown and lost. “She’s not yet thirty,” he thought, shoving, using his elbow, “where’s their decency?” Then she was gone and he shouted.

  “Watch who you’re colliding with, young cock,” said a voice in his ear.

  He reached the spot where she had stood, but only a man, somebody’s butler, with a small child on his shoulders, moved in her place now, and the man refused to talk. The child looked down at Banks.

  So he turned, stumbled, and near the east corner of the stand saw the last of the taffy bade rushing like the ghost of a doe, and they were hustling her—another woman and a man. “Wait!” he was only thinking it, “wait!” Here was the first taste from the cup of panic, seeing the girl, his wife, pulled suddenly away from him by an arm. When he reached the spot he found that Margaret had been caught at the top of the stairs leading down to the five swinging doors of the Men’s, and he stopped, drew back, put his hand on the rail. A cigarette flung in anger, haste, was burning down there near one of the vaulted doors and he thought he could hear still the old public squeak of the hinge. He could not descend those stairs, and once more he was tasting lime. In the cool shadow he leaned, clutched the dusty iron, closed his eyes.

  “Mr. Banks.” It was Cowles, accompanied by Needles dressed in his silks. “Why, Mr. Banks, you’d better take care in the sun. Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”

  “I saw her…,” he managed to say.

  “Who’s that, Mr. Banks?”

  “I saw my wife. …”

  “Well, too bad for that, Mr. Banks, as the fellow says. Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”

  “They took her into the Men’s.”

  “Unlikely, I should say. You’d better watch the sun, Mr. Banks. Come now,” and he could hear the jockey shuffling his little boots, “come, you’d better join us at the Baths. They’re bracing, Mr. Banks, very bracing. …”

  “Fool,” shaking the white gown in his face, “you fool!”

  “But she pilfered the trunk, I tell you.”

  “I never let it happen … but you did. You fool!”

  “And what’s so smart about having a trunk full of clothes in the hall when you’re trying to keep her naked?”

  “Don’t say smart to me, smart as a naked girl, you are! And I can’t even take a slip to watch the Bumpy Girl without you letting her at a trunk full of clothes that would keep us all in style.”

  “You wasn’t supposed to be taking a slip. You was supposed to stay.”

  “Don’t throw it back at me, don’t give us that! Just wait ’til Larry hears how it was you who was lax, you wait. …”

  “Ah, Dora, I can’t keep awake all day.”

  5

  SIDNEY SLYTER SAYS

  Mystery Horse’s Odds Rise Suddenly …

  Rock Castle’s Trainer Suffers Gangman’s Death …

  Marlowe’s Pippet: The Youngster Can Scoot …

  … my great pleasure in announcing that I have sent five pounds, a
s promised, to one Mr. Harry Bailey, Poor Petitioners, Cock & Crown, East End. Mr. Bailey, carter by trade, suggests that, in his own words, “The horse will win. Ain’t it the obvious fact which the old woman and her old groom are hidin’? My poor lame sister dreamt it now three nights in a row, that the horse will win. And all respects, Mr. Slyter, I’m of the opinion she’s exactly right.” There’s a tip to make Sidney Slyter quake, there’s one for your pals! Dead, alive, uncertain of age, uncertain of origin, suspected ownership—victory these things say to our reader in East End! Perhaps you’ve put your finger on it, Mr. Bailey—the simple conviction of your phrasing chills my heart, Mr. Bailey, with the suffering which our ancients knew—but we must not blaspheme the outcome of the Golden Bowl with such ideas of certainty. What have the rest of you to say? Anyhow, congratulations to Mr. Bailey, cheers to Mr. Bailey’s sister. And five pounds to the next lucky person writing in. … But it’s Sidney Slyter here, and my assistant Eddie has been put on the job of checking our files. Eddie will be checking them now and, any moment now, will be calling me direct from Russell Square. Eddie’s just the boy for checking files. … And this is a new development: officials here have made it known that T. Cowles, of undesirable character and listed as trainer of Rock Castle, has been stabbed to death by members of a gang to which the victim Cowles himself belonged. And Sidney Slyter says queer company for Mr. Banks? Queer and dangerous? Fellow who operates the lift said Mrs. Laval was not available tonight; stepped out for dancing and bitters with a friend, he said. So Sidney can sit in the pub with the constable, or go throw dirty dice in the lane. But cheer up, cheer up, Eddie will be through to your Sidney Slyter soon. …