“… Lie next to me, Mr. Banks,” and Cowles helped him up to the boards while the jockey climbed as best he could. Then the three of them were stretched out together and he felt that he himself was smiling. There was slime on the wood and steam was dripping down the braces, down the legs of soaking pine. By habit he started on his back and kept his hands at his sides, restraining his hands even when he felt the eyelids turning soft and his lips loosening, taking the seepage in. He heard the splashing of ice water but it was aisles away, and the steam was heaped up all about him, his lungs were hot. Then, later, he listened to Cowles succumbing, the flesh — a hand or foot — beating against the wood and growing still, the moans filled with resistance, helplessness, and finally relief as if confessing under the blows of a truncheon.
“… Makes you feel … like … you’ll never walk again … eh, Mr. Banks?” Now a whisper only and the head buried down under the fatty arms, one huge leg fallen over the edge, never to be retrieved.
Banks rolled over, making the effort to throw off the pinion and move despite the nervelessness of muscles, despite paralysis. “Excuse me, Needles,” he said, but the jockey had his own discomfort and did not reply.
He always saved the stomach. It was best on the stomach and he waited until just that moment before he might not be able to roll at all, then tried it, and the exertion, the slickness of wood passing beneath his skin, the trembling of the propped arm — when these were gone there came the pleasure of shoulders sagging, of being face down in the Baths. Now he opened his eyes a little and his lips parted around the tongue. He thought of water to drink. Or lemonade. Or gin. He knew the torpor now, the thirst, with all the fluids of his body come to the surface and the hair sticking closely to his skull.
And then — not able to raise his head, drifting back from numbness and feeling the rivulets sliding down his flesh — he heard the sounds, the voices, that had no business in the Baths: not the steam’s hissing nor the groans of bathers, but the swift hard sounds of voices just off the street.
“… Gander at that far comer, if you please, Sparrow. And you, Thick, shadow the walls.”
Moments later, back through the oppression: “Go down on your knees if you have to, Sparrow. …”
And the steam lay on the body of Jimmy Needles, and Cowles looked dead away. He thought he saw shadows through the puffs and billowing of the whiteness and he longed more than anything for a towel, a scrap of cloth to clutch to himself, to wipe against his eyes. In the anonymity of the Baths, amidst all those naked and asleep, he heard again the sounds and now he tried to rouse the trainer: “Cowles,” whispering, “Come awake now, Cowles.”
But then there was the ice blow of the water, and he heard the grunt of the child and pail’s ring even before the sharp splash covered him from head to foot. He froze that moment and the skin of his shoulders, legs, back and buttocks pained with the weight of the cold more shocking than a flame. When he bolted upright, finished wiping the water from his eyes, he found that Cowles was gone and in a glance saw nothing of Needles except a small hand losing hold of the flat boards as the jockey shimmied down and away.
So he followed and several times called out: “Cowles, Cowles!” But he got no answer. He crouched and crept down the length of one wall, made his way in blindness and with the floor slats cutting into his feet. He moved toward the center and was guided by the edges of the tables.
And then there were three separate holes in the steam clouds and in one he saw the stooping figure of the man with the beret; in another he saw Thick scratching his chin; and in the last, the nearest, the broad tall body of Larry fully dressed, and his dark-blue suit was a mass of porous serge wrinkled and wet as a blotter. The cloth hung down with steam. The shirt, at collar, cuffs, and across the chest, was transparent as a woman’s damp chemise and the chest was steel. He carried a useless handkerchief and the red was quickly fading from his tie, dripping down over the silken steel. Thick was wearing a little black hat that dripped from the brim, and Sparrow’s battle trousers were heavy with the water of the Baths.
Banks squatted suddenly, then spoke: “What are you after now? Three beggars, isn’t it?”
Without answering or looking down at him the men began to fade. Not gone suddenly behind the vapor’s thick intrusion, but merely becoming pale, more pale as shred by shred the whiteness accumulated in the holes where they stood. A sleeve, a hand, the tall man’s torso, a pair of wet shoes — these disappeared until nothing was left of the trio which, out of sight, continued then the business of hunting despite the steam.
“Go on,” he heard himself saying, “go on, you bloody beggars. …”
Slowly he crawled under the braces of the table and after them. The steam was heavy and his eyes began to smart. He tore his calf on a splinter. Once more, and for the last time in the Baths, he came upon the toe of Larry’s black boot, followed the trouser leg upwards to the lapel where a yellow flower was coming apart like tissue, saw the crumpled handkerchief thrust in his collar, the sheen of perspiration on the high cheeks, the drops of water collected around the eyes. But still there was the casual lean to the shoulders, one hand in one wet pocket as if he had nothing better to do than direct this stalking through a hundred and ten degrees and great dunes of steam. The boot moved, turned on the toe leather so that he saw the heel neatly strengthened by a bit of cobbler’s brass, and the man was gone again, saying: “… Found him, Thick? Have a go under the steam pipes then.”
And he himself was creeping off again, feeling his foot drag through a limpid pool, feeling the sediment on his skin. His hair was paste smeared across his scalp. He felt how naked he was, how helpless.
Then, still on all fours, he came to the comer. Under the wooden shelving, lying half-turned against a stretch of soapstone, bent nearly double at the angle of meeting walls, crowded into this position on the floor of the Baths was Cowles’ body with the throat cut. Banks crept up to him and stared and the trainer was a heap of glistening fat and on one puffy shoulder was a little black mole, growing still, Banks realized, though the man was dead. And though this Cowles — he had had his own kill once, kept dirty rooms in a tower in the college’s oldest quad, had done for the proctor with a fire iron and then, at 4 A.M., still wearing the gown darned like worn-out socks, had stolen the shallow punt half-filled with the river’s waters and, crouched heavily in the stem with the black skirts collected in his lap, had poled off under the weeping willow trees and away, lonely, at rest, listening to the fiends sighing in nearby ponds and marshes — though this Cowles now lay dead himself his blood still ran, hot and swift and black. His throat was womanly white and fiercely slit and the blood poured out. It was coming down over the collar bone, and above the wound the face was drained and slick with its covering of steam. One hand clutched the belly as if they had attacked him there and not in the neck at all.
Just as Banks caught the lime rising at the odor of Cowles’ blood he felt flesh striking against his flesh, felt a little rush of air, and Jimmy Needles lunged at him in passing and fled, hunting for the door. Before he himself could move he heard a sound from the wood above Cowles’ corpse, glanced up, and peered for several moments into the congealed blue-tinted face of the constable: an old man’s naked face reflecting cow and countryside, pint-froth and thatch in all the hard flat places of its shape.
“Here now, what’s this deviltry. …”