“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.
3
SIDNEY SLYTER SAYS
Candy Stripe Looks Good …
Marlowe’s Pippet Still Picked to Win …
Owner Refuses Comment on Rock Castle …
… extremely popular several seasons back. Well, Slyter excused himself from Mrs. Laval last night and talked by telephone to Lady Harvey-Harrow’s groom. I couldn’t reach the Manor House hence requested the stables, and Crawley the groom — he’s as old as the dowager herself — Crawley said he had no recollection of the horse. That was his phrase exactly. (Heard stable rats nibbling corn in the background while Crawley tried to make it clear that his Lady, who might remember something helpful, had fallen off to sleep in the Manor House at sundown and could not be called.) Your Sidney Slyter will not take no. … Must drive to the estate. … Mrs. Laval just laughed — Oh Sybilline’s lovely laugh — and said I should forget about Rock Castle. But what do women know of such mysteries? Slyter’s got his public to consider. … This afternoon I confronted the enigmatic Mr. Banks coming out of the Men’s and offered him my hand, saying Slyter’s the name. But he was white as my carnation and trembling; said he had no words for the Press; claimed he had an engagement with a lady, and I laughed at that. No apologies. I told him my readers were betting on Marlowe’s Pippet to win, and let him pass. … I want to know what’s the matter with Mr. Banks. I want to know the truth about his horse. A case for the authorities without a doubt. And Sidney Slyter says: my prognostications are always right. …