Until the boom regained its spring and balance like a tree spared from a gale; until the drum, released, clattered and in its rusty mechanism grew still; until the four sharp hoofs touched wood of the quay. Cowles— first up the ladder and followed by Jimmy Needles the jockey and Lovely the stableboy — reached high and loosed the fluttering towel from round its eyes. The boy approached and snapped a lead-rope to the halter and the jockey, never glancing at the others or at the horse, stepped up behind him, whispering: “Got a fag for Needles, mister? Got a fag for Needles?” Not until this moment when he shouted, “Hencher, don’t leave me, Hencher …” and saw the fat naked arm draw back and the second lantern sail in an arc over the water, and in a distance also saw the white hindquarters on the van’s ramp and dark shapes running — not until this moment was he grateful for the little hard cleft of fingers round his arm and the touch of the bow-legged figure still begging for his fag but pulling and guiding him at last in the direction of the cab’s half-open door. Cowles had turned the petcocks and behind them the barge was sinking.
These five rode crowded together on the broad seat, five white faces behind a rattling windscreen. Five men with elbows gnawing at elbows, hands and pairs of boots confused, men breathing hard and remaining silent except for Hencher who complained he hadn’t room to drive. In labored first gear and with headlights off, they in the black van traveled the slow bumping distance down the length of the cargo shed, from plank to rotted plank moved slowly in the van burdened with their own weight and the weight of the horse until at the corner of the deserted building — straight ahead lay darkness that was water and all five, smelling sweat and river fumes and petrol, leaned forward together against the dim glass— they turned and drove through an old gate topped with a strand of barbed wire and felt at last hard rounded cobblestones beneath the tires.
“No one’s the wiser now, lads,” said Hencher, and laughed, shook the sweat from his eyes, took a hand off the wheel and slapped Cowles’ knee. “We’re just on a job if anyone wants to know,” smiling, both fat hands once more white on the wheel. “So we’ve only to sit tight until we make Highland Green … eh, Cowles … eh, Needles … eh, Mr. Banks?”
But Michael himself, beneath the jockey and pressed between Cowles’ thick flank and the unupholstered door, was tasting lime: smells of the men, smells of oil, lingering smells of the river and now, faint yet definite, seeping through the panel at his back, smells of the horse — all these mixed odors filled his mouth, his stomach, and some hard edge of heel or brake lever or metal that thrust down from the dash was cutting into his ankle, hurting the bone. Under his buttocks he felt the crooked shape of a spanner; from a shelf behind the thin cushions straw kept falling; already the motor was overheated and they were driving too fast in the darkness of empty shopping districts and areas of cheap lodgings with doorways and windows black except for one window, seven or eight streets ahead of them, in which a single light would be burning. And each time this unidentified black shabby van went round a corner he felt the horse — his horse — thump against one metal side or the other. Each time the faint sound and feel of the thumping made him sick.
“Hencher. I think you had better leave me off at the flat.”
Then trying to breathe, trying to explain, trying to argue with Hencher in the speeding overheated cab and twisting, seeing the fluted dark nostril at a little hole behind the driver’s head. Until Hencher smiled his broad worried smile and in a loud voice said: “Oh well, Mr. Banks is a married man,” speaking to Cowles, the jockey, the stableboy, nudging Cowles in the ribs. “And you must always make allowance for a married man. …”
Cowles yawned, and, as best he could, rubbed his great coatsleeves still wet from the spray. “Leave him off, Hencher, if he gives us a gander at the wife.”
The flat door is open and the cat sleeps. Just inside the door, posted on a straight chair, market bag at her feet and the cat at her feet, sitting with the coat wrapped round her shoulders and the felt hat still on her head: there she waits, waits up for him. The neighbor on the chair next to her is sleeping — like the cat — and the mouth is half-open with the breath hissing through, and the eyes are buried under curls. But her own eyes are level, the lids red, the face smooth and white and soft as soap. Waiting up for him.
Without moving, without taking her eyes from the door: “Where’s Michael off to? Where’s my Michael gone?” she asks the cat. Then down the outer hall, in the dark of the one lamp burning, she hears the click of the house key, the sound of the loose floor board, and she thinks to raise a hand and dry her cheek. With the same hand she touches her neighbor’s arm.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Stickley,” she whispers, “he’s home now.”
The engine is boiling over when the van reaches Highland Green. Water flows down the dented black hood, the grille, and a jet of steam bursting up from the radiator scalds the wings of the tiny silver figure of the man which, in attitude of pursuit, flies from the silver cap. Directly before the machine and in the light of the headlamps Hencher stands shielding his face from the steam. Then moves quickly, throws his belly against the hot grille, catches the winged figure in a rag and gives it a twist.
“Come along, cock, we haven’t got all the bleeding night,” says Cowles.
It is dark in Highland Green, dark in this public stable which lies so close to the tanks and towers of the gasworks that a man, if he wished, might call out to the old watchman there. Dark at 3 A.M. and quiet; no one tends the stables at night and only a few spiritless horses for hire are drowsing in a few of the endless stalls. Hardly used now, dead at night, with stray dogs and little starved birds making use of the stalls, and weeds choking the yard. Refuse fills the well, there is a dry petrol pump near a loft building intended for hay.
Hencher steps out of the headlamp’s beam, drops the radiator cap, throws the rag to the ground, soothes his hand with his lips. “You needn’t tell me to hurry, Cowles,” he says, and kicks the tiny winged man away from him into the dead potash and weeds.
Hencher hears the whistles then — two long, a short— and all at once straightens his cap, gives a last word to Cowles: “Leave the animal in the van until I return. And no noise now, mind you. …” From beneath the musty seat in the cab he takes a long torch and walks quickly across the rutted yard. Behind him the jockey is puffing on a fresh cigarette, the stableboy — thinking of a girl he once saw bare to the flesh — is resting his head against a side of the van, and Cowles in the dark is frowning and moving his stubby fingers across the watch chain that is a dull gold weight on his vest.
Once in the loft building Hencher lights the torch. Presses the switch with his thumb but keeps the torch down, is careful not to shine the beam toward the exact spot where he knows the man is standing. Rather lights himself with the torch and walks ahead into the dark. He is smiling though he feels sweat on his cheeks and in the folds of his neck. The loft building smells of creosote, the dead pollen of straw, and petrol. He cannot see it, but he knows that to his left there is a double door, closed, and beside it, hidden and waiting within the darkness, a passenger car stately with black lacquer and a radiator cap identical to that on the van. If he swings the torch, flashes it suddenly and recklessly to the left, he knows the light will be dashed back in his face from the car’s thick squares of polished window glass. But he keeps the beam at his heel, walks more and more slowly until at last he stops.