The cigarette burned in a saucer next to the brilliantine, and there was steam at the open lavatory door and sunlight at the raised window. Larry washed down to the muscles of his neck and arms, but the tips of his fingernails were black. He was whistling. Again he held the brushes in two hands, applied them simultaneously to the shine of his hair.
It was one o’clock, the racing crowd was at the Damps, and only the constable took a standing ale in the hotel’s taproom while the wireless reported the condition of the horses. The foam was high on his tankard.
Larry whistled again, opened the bottom drawer, and from between layers of tissue lifted a vest of linked steel, shiny, weighing about five pounds. It fit over the undervest like silk. He turned sideways to adjust the ties. Then he carried a moist towel to the bathroom, finished his tea — it was bitter after the mouthwash and paste, and cleaner — and sat in the horsehair rocker in the sun by the window. He raised his black shoes to a footstool mauve and fringed with tassels, the sun began to glow against the steel beneath his shirt. He had changed the water in the flower vase first thing, so that was done; the pistol was loaded; he smelled fish frying in the kitchen next to the Tap. A small biplane was dragging a sign across the air in the direction of the spirited crowds: Win with Wally. He glanced at the yellow petals, a comer of his pillow, at Sparrow who was stretched on the bed. Then he nodded down at his black shoes, thick and perfect as parade boots.
“Put a little spit on them, Sparrow,” he said, and watched the other climb off the bed, kneel, begin to polish.
Sparrow caught up with Larry near the Booter’s. They walked by the steam baths — it had a marble front and, waist-high, two protruding and flaking iron pipes — walked by red petrol tanks, the beef posters, the hedgerow upon which the birds were hopping, a novelty shop with a rubber bride and groom in the window. On a low wooden door the single word Jazz was chalked and beside the door stood a pot of drying violets. Sparrow walked with the perspiration coming out on his chin; the sun flashed from his mother’s wedding band on his pinky. Larry whistled and there was hardly a movement of the pale lips.
All about them was the stillness of the village: this watering place of cocaine and scent, beer and feather mattresses and the transient rooms of menservants, all deserted by sports and gypsies and platinum girls. Deserted except for the constable, themselves, and the captive in the white building. The small bets now — on a kiss, for show, for the cost of lunch, the small and foolish bets for fun — were being placed elsewhere along with the serious wagers for a sick wife, burial of an aged woman, relief from debt, a trip to the beach, and there were few risks in the village now except those taken by the telephone operator who made small business with anyone owning an instrument. The widow who had held Michael Banks’ face in her hands at breakfast was sleeping when Larry and Sparrow started their day; the constable’s lips were salty; the girl who had screamed was crying herself into dreams on the floor. But Larry and Sparrow were walking through the odor of old trees, through the village diaphanous and silent, walking now in search of Thick and Little Dora.
On the stair, carpeted with rubber held firm by tacks, smelling of varnish and the rubber, a dark stair yet safe, the two men stopped to light up thin cigarettes; then Larry went first and Sparrow followed. From the end of the second-floor hall came the sound of a flushing toilet, the sudden swift plash of water in pipes, and a moment later the tinkling of a key. Nothing more. The hall, tinted green, was without decoration, without furniture except for a steamer trunk with lid half-raised on ancient petticoats and a bottle of silver-coated pills.
When he pulled open the door the little girl darted past, but Sparrow snatched at her arm — she smelled of Paradise Shore, had her hair full of pins — and twisted her round to the room again. He could feel the sweet pith of her arm, the ordinary thinness of flesh without ruffles. Under his fingers was a vaccination still bandaged and the spot was warm, a bit of radiance on the skin which, since her day in the clinic, she had attempted to hide under her short sleeve.
“Where’s Sybilline?” asked the child, but Sparrow said nothing, letting his hand touch the hair that made him shiver just to feel it, to feel the pins which the girl had found and a few which Little Dora had stuck into it from a cardboard for her amusement. He put his hand in his pocket.
“Syb wouldn’t want you running off,” he murmured.
Everyone stared at Larry: Sparrow and the child now, and the two women. Little Dora with her shadow of mustache, steel spectacles, purple hat in place, and the captive Margaret whom they had dressed only in a white shapeless gown tied behind with cords. And two men. Thick with his ear close to a portable radio, listening to the sounds of sport — if not of horses then dogs or cars or motorcycles — and on the opposite side of the room from him, suit dusty and smelling of straw, the trainer Cowles, enormous and seated on an upended valise, shirt unfastened and his hair raised into a nasty crust. All of them stared, and there was no dirt on Larry’s collar. Now Larry was in the room, and even when drunk he could comport himself. But he was not drunk, was at the other extreme from the full bottle, cognac preferred, which it took to make him laugh. Stood straight as he did when predicting, Larry who was an angel if any angel ever had eyes like his or flesh like his.
“My God,” said Little Dora, “you’ve been bathing again.” Her chin twitched.
“Afternoon, Cowles,” said Larry over her head, “afternoon, Miss. Are you comfortable?” And he nodded to Thick, who turned off the radio. “Well,” after a moment, “there’s something sweet in the air. Wouldn’t you say so, Sparrow?”
But he was looking at Margaret, at the bare feet, the whiteness of the charity gown, the shoulders sloping in the big armchair. “Well, Miss, you haven’t answered my question.” He waited, and she was deprived of everything, stripped as for some dangerous surgery.
“I’m comfortable,” she said, and leaned forward in the chair.
“You’re not wanting then.”
“No. They tell me I can’t see Michael…”
“That’s true, Miss. You can’t see Mr. Banks. Right, Cowles?”
“He’s engaged,” said the trainer and laughed, face and neck still damp with a horse’s drinking water.
Margaret’s brown skirt, the shoes, the stockings had been burned and it was Thick who had returned with the playing cards and white gown. Little Dora had held it for her—“You won’t be going into public in this rig, it’s open behind!”—then fastened the ties. Once they had cut into her cousin’s abdomen and she recognized the gown: whenever Thick had the chance, he whispered how he had attended his mother in Guy’s Hospital in order to see the young women on the wards. Now she was herself attended and was ashamed to move. Thick had burned her things, identification card and all.
Suddenly she looked at Cowles: “Do what you want with me. But leave Michael alone. …”
“Don’t listen to him,” said the child Monica, and pushed the little table in front of Margaret, sat opposite and dealt the cards. “Just play with me,” she said, turning up a golden queen, “we’re friends.” She was wearing a bright-green dress, too short, and she drummed on one of her pointed knees while staring at the figure on the card. Monica had the redness of her mother’s hair at the back of her neck. “I bet I’ve got a jack under here.”
Sparrow’s own knees were aching. After being ground beneath the treads of an armored vehicle, the bones and ligaments of his legs had shrunk, in casts had become dry and grafted together. His knee caps were of silver and it was the metal itself, he claimed, that hurt. Now at either corner of his mouth the skin turned suddenly white and Larry took a step, held him up by the arm. Then under the shoulders, under the knees, Larry lifted him — Sparrow dropped the beret — and carried him to the bed where the small man lay whimpering.