They stepped into the light of the orange bulb, held hands, walked along the widow’s carpet to the start of the rail with grapes carved on the post. The hallway smelled of dust and nuptials; a rag was lying on the carpet. “We’ll go down together,” she said, and gave his arm a pinch. “We’ll let them see we’re untidy. But Michael,” holding him midway on the stairs, “all the girls will love you, Michael. You’re alluring! So don’t forget, Mike, come back for me.” And she kissed him, she whom he would never kiss in privacy again.
“I couldn’t lose you, Syb.”
She laughed for the two of them at the bottom of the stairs and her hair was redder than at any time that day. The lamplight shone upon it — lamps were lit all about the room, small bulbs and large, glass shades chiming and tinkling and strung with beads — and her eyes were brown and moist.
“There’s that lovely girl!” shouted the widow, “and our funny boy. And look what she’s done to him!”
Not only Jimmy Needles was playing the piano, but Larry as well, jockey and Larry having a duet together side by side and beating on the keys with nearly equal strength. On the bench before the upright, the little man in color and the large man in navy blue — hour by hour the wrinkles in the dampened suit were flattening — kept talking all the while they played and a bottle of rum stood on the seat between them. And Little Dora tried to listen. Sunk in a velvet armchair, wearing her lopsided matron’s hat with a bit of feather now, her upper lip of pale hair wet with gin, eyes surly and black behind the glasses, stretched and recumbent on cushions as near as possible to the piano bench, she watched them, listened, in a torporous and deadly mood.
Sparrow was there. He was drinking whisky out of the widow’s cup. The widow’s daughter was in the crowd — a big girl in a child’s dress pulled high who sat straight up and kept both hands on her knees, laughing and smiling out of a loose mouth and enormous eyes. And all the room was brown and filled with smoke and toy alligators and donkeys. Newspapers were strewn across the rug faded and worn with the footpaths of long-dead residents. A portrait of a Spanish nobleman hung above the mantel on which there burned a candelabra with smoky wicks and molten wax; and duplicates of Little Dora’s chair, soft mauve contrivances on wheels, made humps along the walls. In volume nearly as loud as the piano the black wireless was turned up and an orchestra played out of the tufted speaker.
Kissing, noise, and singing: a late hour in the widow’s parlor, and Banks saw Sparrow wave, watched Sybilline sit on the arm of Little Dora’s chair and swing her foot, and noticed that the widow was keeping her eye on him. Plump, wearing the tasseled shawl, she suddenly leaned over Syb and the slouching woman, and after a moment Dora jerked round her head and stared at him. Then all three were laughing — even his own dear girl — and he started toward them, took a place at the jockey’s side.
A barracks song was coming from the coffin box of the piano, old, fast-stepping. A golden mermaid stood holding a pitchfork on the ebony and she was bounded by wreaths, her fishtail curved over her head. Scars and finger-length burns marked the ebony, ivory was missing from the keys. Banks leaned against the trembling wood, and there was a pile of tattered sheet music ready to fall from the top and he had never heard such noise. Yet Larry went on talking — audibly enough, considering— and the jockey was nodding and beating upon the last key of the scale.
"… And I told the Inspector he was making a horrible botch of it. I said it would never do. Who’s pulling the strings I told him and he got huffy, huffy, mind you. I said the killing of the kids was no concern of mine but the hanging of Knifeblade was not acceptable, not in the least acceptable. You’d best not interfere, I said. There’s power in this world you never dreamed of, I told him. Why, you don’t stand a showing even with a little crowd at the seaside … and you’d better not bother with my business or my amusements. …”
“But didn’t he try to stick you none the same,” said the jockey.
“He did, but he failed. I knew him in Artillery, I knew his line. …”
Banks listened, looked at the white craven half of his face, the slicked black hair, the fingers hammering. He saw the man lift the bottle several times to his lips.
The jockey’s sleeves were puffing out, the small black boots were hanging limp, one hand snatched down the goggles and through isinglass he peered at the single key and at the two gray fingers he was striking it with— a rider who had a face shot full of holes and shoulders like the fragile forks of a wishbone on either side of the hump inside the silk. Banks put a sheet of the music on the rack and said, “Play us this piece, Needles. …” But the jockey did not reply.
There was a fire in the kitchen and it was Sybilline who told him to take the chair—“Don’t you know what eggs are good for, Michael?”—and stood near him with her smile and the flush creeping up her cheek. They formed a regular crew: his Syb, the widow, the other one who looked as if she wanted to fight. Syb’s throat was bare, the widow had plump hips and she was giggling. He could smell them: above the heat and moisture of the fire, the spice and flour odors of the laden shelves, the sweetness of old tarts and bread, he could smell the women strongest. And Sybilline kissed him immediately — leaning over, putting her face into his and her hand upon his neck — so that the other two could see. Still with mouths together, he found her breast for a moment and opened his eyes, saw the widow smiling — but it was a smile set and strained as if she could hardly keep from offering advice — and the other woman was smiling and Banks didn’t care.
“Get out of here, Sparrow,” the widow said all at once and looked down at him, became dimpled and rosycheeked again. Then Syb left him, stepped away with her compassionate mouth dissolving, becoming part of a pretty face again, and he could think of nothing except the stocking she had left upstairs — though they were roughing it in the parlor next to the kitchen and flinging about, dancing with the widow’s girl, intent, all of them, on a smashing.
“Now, Mike, you’ll have to eat,” she murmured, and put a hand to her escaping loop of hair.
“But you been cheating, Sybilline,” the widow said then, “you been going out of turn. The lady of the house has first prerogative and you been spoiling the order, Sybilline — if you please — you ain’t been allowing me my prerogative.” The little woman, youthfully plump except in the legs — she was standing on wiry, wellshaped legs — was preoccupied: it may have been she alone he smelled.
“Syb’s always been a cat,” said Little Dora, “first at the fellows, first in bed. She’s a sister of mine but she’s irresponsible, she is.” And Banks could tell that this one, a fighter with her violet shadows and loosened boots, was interested: but probably she’d want to kill him first. There were no smiles behind those thick corrective spectacles.
“Well, Syb can do the cooking then,” said the widow, and sat down beside him.
“I’ll cook, I’d do anything for Michael!” There was the light step, the grace, the cheer, as she tossed her head and reached for the pan and the bowl of pure-white oval eggs. She got the butter on her fingertips and licked them, her blouse was untucked again and he could see the skin; the eggs were pearls and she was cracking the white shells with her painted nails. The widow was lighting a cigarette. Though he was watching Syb, he found that he was stroking the little widow’s cheek and coming to like her in the kitchen with no one, except these three, to notice.