But, today, as every day: no bronze nails.
Oh well.
He caught the late afternoon opening of the Swing Bridge, which opened twice a day without toll charged of boats too high to pass under; for those willing to pay toll, the Captains — they were all officially Captains; the titles had been granted in lieu of a rise in pay — were willing to bend to their capstan as times a day as might be. But it did not open often for such spend thrift passage. Idly he looked about the small crowd which always gathered whenever the Swing Bridge swung, he noticed how the Black Baywomen tied their kerchiefs back at the nape of the neck, while the Black Arawack women folded theirs over the ears and fastened them (kerchiefs, not ears) beneath the chin — older women, that is: Young of either, no. No kerchiefs need apply; plastic curlers in public: yes; kerchiefs: no. He could not imagine Bathsheba in one, for instance, although at least the older of the two aunties she’d found it essential to be calling on right now almost surely would be wearing one. Bathsheba -
Someone very near at hand just then said to someone else, “Look me crosses! Look me troubles!”. this last brought tojack’s mind how, his first day in the country, tarrying a while in some shade in Lime Walk Town, seeing one after another the freight-and- passenger trucks booming down the Northern Highway with proud and lofty titles painted on their sides (for they had names, like stagecoaches and railroad trains): The Nation Builder, The Great Central American, Royal Oak, Pride of Hidalgo, and so on: there, lurching slowly and oh so painfully in their dust: a four-wheeled handcart with unmatched sides and wobbly wheels, laboriously pushed by hand (and arms, back, and legs): on its side in straggling letters its name, God Sees Me Sorrow. Bathsheba -
Finally, the Tropical Hardwood (Ltd.) tug and its line of logs- mahogany, these, chained with chains — had passed up river; the bridge captains had bent to their capstans, an act greeted with cries of caution and protest from the few, the one or two, high-masted vessels yet to pass. but this was mere ritual play; all boats were suffered to pass before the bridgemen set actually to work and the bridge swung slowly around once again, connected both shores, and made King Town one again. and the crowds from both sides began to pass across; their conversations uninterrupted:
“Gi’e me a borrow of free shillin, nah so, mon?”
“ Whattt? Me gi’e you nutting like dot, mon!”
“Well, juss you wait, mon. Every fot foewel have she w’own Sundav.”
“Dot woman? Tahk, tahk, tahk; me fink she eat pahrot head!”
“She w’own head w’only emp-ty, gyel. Like jumble bahlroom.”
Some of the talk was clear enough to Jack. Sooner or later the proudest poultry wound up “biled,” baked, fried or roasted. By every principle of sympathetic magic, eating a parrot’s head should make one talkative (Parrot: Wee Willy Wiggins: Jack shuddered). But what was a jumble ballroom and why a simile for emptiness? — At once: a hint:
“No tahk aboet jumble [jungle?]', eet mehk me blood crahl!”
“ Whatt, gyel? You t’ink you een bush?
Reaching the other side of the Swing Bridge, halting for a moment to consider which way he himself should now swing, it came to his mind that there had seemed today to have been a number of times when someone had wanted to talk, when someone else had demurred, with a No tahk aboet it! And, in each case, the implication that despite. whatever it was. one was safe enough here in King Town. - Town, from the days when it was the Colony’s only settlement, nowadays it was the Colony’s only city: and had its own Lord Mayor, same as London, although elected not by Liveried Companies but by the Municipal Counciclass="underline" did the local Lord Mayor, Limekiller wondered, give banquets of turtle soup, calipash and calipee, like his brother of London? Turtles enough there were, around here, for sure; he’d passed the Central Main Market earlier and seen a full half-dozen lying on their backs and languidly now and then waving their flippers: though, that Buy me was the signal’s intended meaning might be doubted. Up ahead: Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson; at once Limekiller turned aside.
There was to be sure nothing really malevolent about Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson: why then had he instamatically turned aside (and, as a result, found himself in Spyglass Alley, a thoroughfare — if that were not too broad a wrord — wherein he had seldom been and had no good present purpose for being)? Here’s why: Dr. Duckerson was a semi-retired chiropractor from some roaring North American metorpolis such as it might be Lincoln, Nebraska, or Medicine Hat, Manitoba. was Medicine Hat and its putative plumed war- bonnet in Manitoba? and, for that matter, was Lincoln in Nebraska? wouldn’t Illinois be a likelier -
“Too many torpical suns have beat upon your brain, Limekiller,” he told himself. “What is now requisite is something of a cooling nature;” at that moment… do you understand?. at that exact moment!.. a swinging door swung open, and a voice said, calmly, “Ah, Limekiller.” And the swinging door swung shut again.
Not, however, before J.L.L. had marked its location. Over the door hung a sign; w*as it a rebus? consisting of the single painted word THE, followed by a telescope (or, yes yes, a spyglass) aimed directly at an Object, despite the Object’s being so near at hand that, really, no optical instrument was needful to identify it as a “pint,” that is, a bottle: one which was not, presumably, intended to contain ketchup. Or Fanta. Limekiller applied the slightest of pressure and the doors flung open, disclosing, as First Disclosure, a most comely young woman; a „Panyar’ that is to say, a Spaniard; that is to say, w-ith a greater degree of genotypical accuracy, a Mestiza: “pure” Spaniards in British Hidalgo there were none: and for that matter, probably, none in Spain, either; “Ah, my dear,” he said, companionablv.
Her reply was somewhat less companionable: “Don’t you, 'Ah, my dear’ me," she said.
“But why not.”
“Bathsheba tear my eyes out, ‘why not.'
Her companion said, “You see, my dear Mr. John, you have already been as it were branded with your lovely lady’s brand;” and he laughed. And then he said, ‘Join us, do, sir.” He, evidently, was taking no occasion for either offense or defense from John’s simple — and it had been meant as no more than that — greeting. Neither was he, immediately, identifiable in what, after the glare of even the middle-late-afternoon sun, seemed to be what others have described as an Impenetrable Gloom. And as to why this should be so, when the comely young woman should at once have been obvious as a comely young woman, well, let us suppose that she had been sitting in a better light.
So Limekiller, having already resisted the temptation to pull his shirt high enough, and his trousers low enough, to disclose an absolutely unbranded hip. had had sense enough to resist a gesture which would have provoked only male laughter and female Oh Go Awav Closer screams in the Pelican Bar, where such disclosures were, if not common, at least not terribly uncommon: particularly on the part of members of the Right Royal Regiment: Limekiller said, “Thank you; I will, if I may.”