The Lime Twig

1

It is Wednesday dawn. Margaret’s day, once every fortnight, for shopping and looking in the windows. She is off already with mints in her pocket and a great empty crocheted bag on her arm, jacket pulled down nicely on her hips and a fresh tape on her injured finger. She smells of rose water and the dust that is always gathering in the four rooms. In one of the shops she will hold a plain dress against the length of her body, then return it to the racks; at a stand near the bridge she will buy him — Michael Banks — a tin of fifty, and for Hencher she will buy three cigars. She will ride the double-decker, look at dolls behind a glass, have a sandwich. And come home at last with a packet of cold fish in the bag.

Most Wednesdays — let her stay, let her walk out— Michael does not care, does not hold his breath, never listens for the soft voice that calls good-by. But this is no usual Wednesday dawn and he slips from room to room until she is finally gone. In front of the glass fixes his coat and hat, and smiles. For he intends not to be home when she returns.

Now he is standing next to their bed — the bed of ordinary down and ticking and body scent, with the course of dreams mapped on the coverlet — and not beside the door and not in the hall. Ready for street, departure, for some prearranged activity, he nonetheless is immobile this moment and stares at the bed. His gold tooth is warm in the sun, his rotting tooth begins to pain. From out the window the darting of a black tiny bird makes him wish for its sound. He would like to hear it or would like to hear sounds of a wireless through the open door or sounds of tugs and double-deckers and boys crying the news. Perhaps the smashing of a piece of furniture. Anything. Because he too has his day to discover and it is more than pretty dresses and gandering at a shiny steam iron and taking a quick cup of tea.

He can tell the world.

But in the silence of the flat’s close and ordinary little bedroom he hears again all the soft timid sounds she made before setting off to market: the fall of the slippery soap bar into the empty tub, the limpid sound of her running bath, the slough of three fingers in the cream pot, the cry of bristles against her teeth, the fuzzy sound of straps drawing up on the skin of her shoulders; poor sounds of her counting out the change, click of the pocket-book. Then sounds of a safety pin closing beneath the lifted skirt and of the comb setting up last-minute static in the single wave of her hair.

He pulls at the clothes-closet door. He steps inside and embraces two hanging and scratchy dresses and her winter coat pinned over with bits of tissue. Something on a hook knocks his hat awry. Behind him, in the room, the sunlight has burned past the chimes in St. George’s belfry and is now more than a searching shaft in that room: it comes diffused and hot through the window glass, it lights the dry putty-colored walls and ceiling, draws a steam from the damp lath behind the plaster, warms the small unpainted tin clock which she always leaves secreted and ticking under the pillow on her side of the bed. A good early-morning sun, good for the cat or for the humming housewife. But the cat is in the other room and his wife is out.

Inside the closet he is rummaging overhead to a shelf — reaching and pushing among the dresses now, invading anew and for himself this hiding place which he expects to keep from her. He stands on tiptoe, an arm is angular at the crook, his unused hand is dragging one of the dresses off its hanger by the shoulder; but the other set of high fingers is pushing, working a way through the dusty folds toward what he knows is resting behind the duster and pail near the wall. His hipbone strikes the thin paneling of the door so that it squeaks and swings outward, casting a perfect black shadow across the foot of the bed. And after a moment he steps out into the room, turns sideways, uncorks the bottle, tilts it up, and puts the hot mouth of the bottle to his lips. He drinks— until the queer mechanism of his throat can pass no more and his lips stop sucking and a little of it spills down his chin. Upstairs a breakfast kettle begins to shriek. He takes a step, holds the bottle against his breast, suddenly turns his face straight to the sun.

She’ll wonder about me. She’ll wonder where her hubby’s at, rightly enough.

He left the flat door open. Throughout the day, whenever anyone moved inside the building, slammed a window or shouted a few words down the unlighted stair— “Why don’t you leave off it? Why don’t you just leave off it, you with your bloody kissing round the gas works”—the open door swung a hand’s length to and fro, drifted its desolate and careless small arc in a house of shadow and brief argument. But no one took notice of the door, no one entered the four empty rooms beyond it, and only the abandoned cat followed with its turning head each swing of the door. Until at the end of the day Margaret came in smiling, walked the length of the hall with a felt hat over one ear, feet hot, market sack pulling from the straps in her hand and, stopping short, discovered the waiting animal in the door’s crack. Stopped, backed off, went for help from a second-floor neighbor who had a heart large with comfort and all the cheer in the world, went for help as he knew she would.

Knowing how much she feared his dreams: knowing that her own worst dream was one day to find him gone, overdue minute by minute some late afternoon until the inexplicable absence of him became a certainty; knowing that his own worst dream, and best, was of a horse which was itself the flesh of all violent dreams; knowing this dream, that the horse was in their sitting room — he had left the flat door open as if he meant to return in a moment or meant never to return — seeing the room empty except for moonlight bright as day and, in the middle of the floor, the tall upright shape of the horse draped from head to tail in an enormous sheet that falls over the eyes and hangs down stiffly from the silver jaw; knowing the horse on sight and listening while it raises one shadowed hoof on the end of a silver thread of foreleg and drives down the hoof to splinter in a single crash one plank of that empty Dreary Station floor; knowing his own impurity and Hencher’s guile; and knowing that Margaret’s hand has nothing in the palm but a short life span (finding one of her hairpins in his pocket that Wednesday dawn when he walked out into the sunlight with nothing cupped in the lip of his knowledge except thoughts of the night and pleasure he was about to find) — knowing all this, he heard in Hencher’s first question the sound of a dirty wind, a secret thought, the sudden crashing in of the plank and the crashing shut of that door.

“How’s the missus, Mr. Banks? Got off to her marketing all right?”

Then: “No offense. No offense,” said Hencher after Banks’ pause and answer.

The Artemis—a small excursion boat — shivered and rolled now and again ever so slightly though it was moored fast to the quay. Banks heard the cries of dock hands who were fixing a boom’s hook to a cargo net, the sound of a pump, and the sound, from the top deck, of a child shouting through cupped hands in the direction of the river’s distant traffic of puffing tugs and barges. And also overhead there were the quick uncontrollable running footfalls of smaller children and, on the gangway, hidden beyond the white bulkhead of the refreshment saloon, there was the steady tramp of still more boarding passengers.

A bar, a dance floor — everyone was dancing — a row of salt-sealed windows, a small skylight drawn over with the shadow of a fat gull: here was Hencher’s fun, and Banks could feel the crowd mounting the sides of the ship, feel the dance rhythm tingling through the greasy wood of the table top beneath his hand. For a moment and in a clear space past the open sea doors held back by small brass hooks, he saw hatless members of the crew dragging a mountain of battered life preservers forward in a great tar-stained shroud of canvas.

“No offense, eh, Mr. Banks? Too good a day for that. And tell me now, how’s this for a bit of a good trip?”

The lodger’s hand was putty round the bottom of the beer glass, the black-and-cream checkered cap was tight on the head — surely the fat man would sail away with the mothers and children and smart young girls when the whistle blew.

“No offense, Hencher. But you can leave off mentioning her, if you don’t mind.”

Perhaps he would sail away himself. That would be the laugh, he and Hencher, stowaways both, elbowing room at the ship’s rail between lovers and old ladies, looking out themselves — the two of them — for a glimpse of the water or a great furnace burning far-off at the river’s edge. Sail away out of the river’s mouth and into the afternoons of an excursion life. Hear the laughter, feel the ship’s beam wallow in the deep seas and lie down at night beneath a lifeboat’s white spongy prow still hot to the hand. No luggage, no destination, helmsman tying the wheel — on any course — to have a smoke with a girl. This would be the laugh, with only the pimply barkeep who had never been to sea before drawing beer the night long. But there was better than this in wait for him, something much better than this.

In the crowd at the foot of the gangplank an officer had asked for their tickets, and Hencher had spoken to the man: “My old woman’s on that boat, Captain, and me and my friend here will just see that she’s got a proper deck chair and a robe round her legs.”

And now the dawn was gone, the morning hours too were gone. He had found the crabbed address and come upon the doorway in which Hencher waited; had walked with him down all those streets until the squat ship, unseaworthy, just for pleasure, lay ahead of them in a berth between two tankers; had already seen the rigging, the smokestacks, the flesh-colored masts and rusty sirens and whistles in a blue sky above the rotting roof of the cargo sheds; had boarded the Artemis, which smelled of coke and rank canvas and sea animals and beer and boys looking for sport.

“We’ll just have some drink and a little talk on this ship before she sails, Mr. Banks. …”

He leaned toward Hencher. His elbows were on the table and his wet glass was touching Hencher’s frothy glass in the center of the table. Someone had dropped a mustard pot and beneath his shoe he felt the fragments of smashed china, the shape of a wooden spoon, the slick of the mustard on the dirty spoon. A woman with lunch packed in a box pushed through the crowd and bumped against him, paused and rested the box upon their table. Protruding from the top of the box and sealed with a string and paper was a tall jar filled with black bottled tea. The woman carried her own folding chair.

“Bloody slow in putting to sea, mates,” she said, and laughed. She wore an old sweater, a man’s muffler was knotted round her throat. “I could do with a breath of that sea air right now, I could.”

Hencher lifted his glass. “Go on,” he said, “have a sip. Been on the Artemis before?”

“Not me.”

“I’ll tell you then. Find a place for yourself in the bows. You get the breeze there, you see everything best from there.”

She put her mouth to the foam, drank long, and when she took the glass away she was breathing quickly and a canker at the edge of her lip was wet. “Join me,” she said. “Why don’t you join me, mates?”

“We’ll see you in the bows,” said Hencher.

“Really?”

“Good as my word.”

It was all noise of people wanting a look at the world and a smell of the sea, and the woman was midships with her basket; soon in the shadow of the bow anchor she would be trying to find a safe spot for her folding chair. Hencher was winking. A boy in a black suit danced by their table, and in his arms was a girl of about fourteen. Banks watched the way she held him and watched her hands in the white gloves shrunk small and tight below the girl’s thin wrists. Music, laughter, smells of deck paint and tide and mustard, sight of the boy pulled along by the fierce white childish hands. And he himself was listening, touching his tongue to the beer, leaning close as he dared to Hencher, beginning to think of the black water widening between the sides of the holiday ship and the quay.

“What’s that, Hencher? What’s that you say?”

Hencher was looking him full in the face: “… to Rock Castle, here’s to Rock Castle, Mr. Banks!”

He heard his own voice beneath the whistles and plash of bilge coming out of a pipe, “To Rock Castle, then. …”

The glasses touched, were empty, and the girl’s leg was only the leg of a child and the woman would drink her black tea alone. He stood, moved his chair so that he sat not across from Hencher. but beside him.

“He’s old, Mr. Banks. Rock Castle has his age, he has. And what’s his age? Why, it’s the evolution of his bloody name, that’s what it is. Just the evolution of a name— Apprentice out of Lithograph by Cobbler, Emperor’s Hand by Apprentice out of Hand Maiden by Lord of the Land, Draftsman by Emperor’s Hand out of Shallow Draft by Amulet, Castle Churl by Draftsman out of Likely Castle by Cold Masonry, Rock Castle by Castle Churl out of Words on Rock by Plebeian — and what’s this name if not the very evolution of his life? You want to think of the life, Mr. Banks, think of the breeding. Consider the fiver bets, the cheers, the wreaths. Then forgotten, because he’s taken off the turf and turned out into the gorse, far from the paddock, the swirl of tom ticket stubs, the soothing nights after a good win, far from the serpentine eyes and bowler hats. Do you see it, Mr. Banks? Do you see how it was for Rock Castle?”

He could only nod, but once again — the Artemis was rolling — once again he saw the silver jaw, the enormous sheet, the upright body of the horse that was crashing in the floor of the Dreary Station flat. And he could only keep his eyes down, clasp his hands.

“… Back sways a little, you see, the color of the coat hardens and the legs grow stiff. Months, years, it’s only the blue sky for him, occasionally put to stud and then back he goes to his shelter under an old oak at the edge of a field. Useless, you see. Do you see it? Until tonight when he’s ours — yours — until tonight when we get our hands on him and tie him up in the van and drive him to stables I know of in Highland Green. Yours, you see, and he’s got no recollection of the wreaths or seconds of speed, no knowledge at all of the prime younger horses sprung from his blood. But he’ll run all right, on a long track he’ll run better than the young ones good for nothing except a sprint. Power, endurance, a forgotten name — do you see it, Mr. Banks? He’s ancient, Rock Castle is, an ancient horse and he’s bloody well run beyond memory itself. …”

Flimsy frocks, dancing children, a boy with the face of a man, a girl whose body was still awkward; they were all about him and taking their pleasure while the feet tramped and the whistle tooted. But Hencher was talking, holding him by the brown coat just beneath the ribs, then fumbling and cupping in front of his eyes a tiny photograph and saying, “Go on, go on, take a gander at this lovely horse.”

Then the pause, the voice less friendly and the question, and the sound of his own voice answering: “I’m game, Hencher. Naturally, I’m still game. …”

“Ah, like me you are. Good as your word. Well, come then, let’s have a turn round the deck of this little tub. We’ve time yet for a turn at the rail.”

He stood, trying to scrape the shards of the smashed mustard pot from his shoe, followed Hencher toward the white sea doors. The back of Hencher’s neck was red, the checked cap was at an angle, they made their slow way together through the excursion crowd and the smells of soap and cotton underwear and scent behind the ears.

“We’re going to do a polka,” somebody called, “come dance with us. …”

“A bit of business first,” Hencher said, and grinned over the heads at the woman. “A little business first— then we’ll be the boys for you, never fear.”

A broken bench with the name Annie carved into it, a bucket half-filled with sand, something made of brass and swinging, a discarded man’s shirt snagged on the horn of a big cleat bolted to the deck and, overhead, high in a box on the wall of the pilot house, the running light flickering through the sea gloom. He felt the desertion, the wind, the coming of darkness as soon as he stepped from the saloon.

She’s home now, she’s thinking about her hubby now, she’s asking the cat where’s Michael off to, where’s my Michael gone to?

He spat sharply over the rail, turned his jacket collar up, breathed on the dry bones of his hands.

Together, heads averted, going round the deck, coming abreast of the saloon and once more sheltered by a flapping canvas: Hencher lit a cigar while he himself stood grinning in through the lighted window at the crowd. He watched them kicking, twirling, holding hands, fitting their legs and feet to the steps of the dance; he grinned at the back of the girl too young to have a girdle to pull down, grinned at the boy in the black suit. He smelled the hot tobacco smell and Hencher was with him, Hencher who was fat and blowing smoke on the glass.

“You say you have a van, Hencher, a horse van. …”

“That’s the ticket. Two streets over from this quay, parked in an alley by the ship-fitter’s, as good a van as you’d want and with a full tank. And it’s a van won’t be recognized, I can tell you that. A little oil and sand over the name, you see. Like they did in the war. And we drive it wherever we please — you see — and no one’s the wiser.”

He nodded and for a moment, across the raven-blue and gold of the water, he saw the spires and smokestacks and tiny bridges of the city black as a row of needles burned and tipped with red. The tide had risen to its high mark and the gangway was nearly vertical; going down he burned his palm on the tarred rope, twice lost his footing. The engines were loud now. Except for Hencher and himself, except for the officer posted at the foot of the gangway and a seaman standing by each of the hawsers fore and aft, the quay was deserted, and when the sudden blasting of the ship’s whistle commenced the timbers shook, the air was filled with steam, the noise of the whistle sounded through the quay’s dark cargo shed. Then it stopped, except for the echoes in the shed and out on the water, and the man gave his head a shake as if he could not rid it of the whistling. He held up an unlighted cigarette and Hencher handed him the cigar.

“Oh,” said the officer, “it’s you two again. Find the lady in question all right?”

“We found her, Captain. She’s comfy, thanks, good and comfy.”

“Well, according to schedule we tie up here tomorrow morning at twenty past eight.”

“My friend and me will come fetch her on the dot, Captain, good as my word. …”

Again the smothering whistle, again the sound of chain, and someone shouted through a megaphone and the gangway rose up on a cable; the seamen hoisted free the ropes, the bow of the Artemis began to swing, the officer stepped over the widening space between quay and ship and was gone.

“Come,” said Hencher, and took hold of his arm, “we can watch from the shed.”

They leaned against a crate under the low roof and there were rats and piles of dried shells and long dark empty spaces in the cargo shed. There were holes in the flooring: if he moved the toe of his shoe his foot would drop off into the water; if he moved his hand there would be the soft pinch of fur or the sudden burning of dirty teeth. Only Hencher and himself and the rats. Only scum, the greasy water and a punctured and sodden dory beneath them — filth for a man to fall into.

“There … she’s got the current now. …”

He stared with Hencher toward the lights, small gallery of decks and silhouetted stacks that was the Artemis a quarter mile off on the river.

“They’ll have their fun on that little ship tonight and with a moon, too, or I miss my guess. Another quarter hour,” Hencher was twisting, trying for a look at his watch in the dark, “and I’ll bring the lorry round.”

Side by side, rigid against the packing crate, listening to the rats plop down, waiting, and all the while marking the disappearance of the excursion boat. Only the quay’s single boom creaking in the wind and a view of the river across the now empty berth was left to them, while ahead of the Artemis lay a peaceful sea worn smooth by night and flotillas of landing boats forever beached. With beer and music in her saloon she was off there making for the short sea cliffs, for the moonlit coast and desolate windy promontories into which the batteries had once been built. At 3 A.M. her navigator discovering the cliffs, fixing location by sighting a flat tin helmet nailed to a stump on the tallest cliff’s windy lip, and the Artemis would approach the shore, and all of them — boy, girl, lonely woman — would have a glimpse of ten miles of coast with an iron fleet half-sunk in the mud, a moonlit vision of windlasses, torpedo tubes, skein of rusted masts and the stripped hull of a destroyer rising stem first from that muddied coast under the cliffs. Beside the rail the lonely woman at least, and perhaps the rest of them, would see the ten white coastal miles, the wreckage safe from tides and storms and snowy nights, the destroyer’s superstructure rising respectable as a lighthouse keeper’s station. All won, all lost, all over, and for half a crown they could have it now, this seawreck and abandon and breeze of the ocean surrounding them. And the boy at least would hear the moist unjoyful voice of his girl while the Artemis remained off shore, would feel the claspknife in the pocket of her skirt and, down on the excursion boat’s hard deck, would know the comfort to be taken with a young girl worn to thinness and wiry and tough as the titlings above the cliffs.

Michael stood rigid against the packing crate, alone. He waited deep within the shed and watched, sniffed something that was not of rats or cargo at all. Then he saw it drifting along the edges of the quay, rising up through the rat holes round his shoes: fog, the inevitable white hair strands which every night looped out across the river as if once each night the river must grow old, clammy, and in its age and during these late hours only, produce the thick miles of old woman’s hair within whose heaps and strands it might then hide all bodies, tankers, or fat iron shapes nodding to themselves out there.

Fog of course and he should have expected it, should have carried a torch. Yet, whatever was to come his way would come, he knew, like this — slowly and out of a thick fog. Accidents, meetings unexpected, a figure emerging to put its arms about him: where to discover everything he dreamed of except in a fog. And, thinking of slippery corners, skin suddenly bruised, grappling hooks going blindly through the water: where to lose it all if not in the same white fog.

Alone he waited until the great wooden shed was filled with the fog that caused the rotting along the water’s edge. His shirt was flat, wet against his chest. The forked iron boom on the quay was gone, and as for the two tankers that marked the vacated berth of the excursion boat, he knew they were there only by the dead sounds they made. All about him was the visible texture and density of the expanding fog. He was listening for the lorry’s engine, with the back of a hand kept trying to wipe his cheek.

An engine was nearby suddenly, and despite the fog he knew that it was not Hencher’s lorry but was the river barge approaching on the lifting tide. And he was alone, shivering, helpless to give a signal. He had no torch, no packet of matches. No one trusted a man’s voice in a fog.

All the bells and whistles in mid-river were going at once, and hearing the tones change, the strokes change, listening to the metallic or compressed-air sounds of sloops or ocean-going vessels protesting their identities and their vague shifting locations on the whole of this treacherous and fog-bound river’s surface — a horrible noise, a confused warning, a frightening celebration — he knew that only his own barge, of all this night’s drifting or anchored traffic, would come without lights and making no sound except for the soft and faltering sound of the engine itself. This he heard — surely someone was tinkering with it, nursing it, trying to stop the loss of oil with a bare hand — and each moment he waited for even these illicit sounds to go dead. But in the fog the barge engine was turning over and, all at once, a man out there cleared his throat.

So he stood away from the packing crate and slowly went down to his hands and knees and discovered that he could see a little distance now, and began to crawl. He feared that the rats would get his hands; he ran his fingers round the crumbling edges of the holes; his creeping knee came down on fragments of a smashed bottle. There was an entire white sea-world Boating and swirling in that enormous open door, and he crawled out to it.

“You couldn’t do nothing about the bleeding fog!”

He had crossed the width of the quay, had got a grip on the iron joint of the boom and was trying to rise when the voice spoke up directly beneath him and he knew that if he fell it would not be into the greasy and squid-blackened water but onto the deck of the barge itself. He was unable to look down yet, but it was clear that the man who had spoken up at him had done so with a laugh, casually, without needing to cup his hands.

Before the man had time to say it again—“You couldn’t do nothing about the bleeding fog, eh, Hencher? I wouldn’t ordinarily step out of the house on a night like this”—the quay had already shaken beneath the van’s tires and the headlamp had flicked on, suddenly, and hurt his eyes where he hung from the boom, one hand thrown out for balance and the other stuck like a dead man’s to the iron. Hencher, carrying two bright lanterns by wire loops, had come between himself and the lorry’s yellow headlamps—“Lively now, Mr. Banks,” he was saying without a smile — and had thrust one of the lanterns upon him in time to reach out his freed hand and catch the end of wet moving rope on the instant it came lashing up from the barge. So that the barge was docked, held safely by the rope turned twice round a piling, when he himself was finally able to look straight down and see it, the long and blunt-nosed barge riding high in a smooth bowl scooped out of the fog. Someone had shut off the engine.

“Take a smoke now, Cowles — just a drag, mind you— and we’ll get on with it.”

She ought to see her hubby now. She ought to see me now.

He had got his arm through the fork of the boom and was holding the lantern properly, away from his body and down, and the glare from its reflector lighted the figure of the man Cowles below him and in cold wet rivulets drifted sternward down the length of the barge. Midships were three hatches, two battened permanently shut, the third covered by a sagging canvas. Beside this last hatch and on a bale of hay sat a boy naked from the waist up and wearing twill riding britches. In the stem was a small cabin. On its roof, short booted legs dangling over the edge, a jockey in full racing dress sat with a cigarette now between his lips and hands clasped round one of his tiny knees.

“Cowles! I want off …I want off this bloody coop!” he shouted.

The cigarette popped into his mouth then. It was a trick he had. The lips were pursed round the hidden cigarette and the little man was staring up not at Cowles or Hencher but at himself, and even while Cowles was ordering the two of them, boy and jockey, to get a hop on and drag the tarpaulin off the hold, the jockey kept looking up at him, toe of one little boot twitching left and right but the large bright eyes remaining fixed on his own— until the cigarette popped out again and the dwarfed man allowed himself to be helped from his seat on the cabin roof by the stableboy whose arms, in the lantern light, were upraised and spattered with oil to the elbows.

“Get a hop on now, we want no coppers or watchman or dock inspectors catching us at this bit of game. …”

The fog was breaking, drifting away, once more sinking into the river. Long shreds of it were wrapped like rotted sails or remnants of a wet wash round the buttresses and hand-railings of the bridges, and humped outpourings of fog came rolling from within the cargo shed as if all the fuels of this cold fire were at last consumed. The wind had started up again, and now the moon was low, just overhead.

“Here, use my bleeding knife, why don’t you?”

The water was slimy with moonlight, the barge itself was slimy — all black and gold, dripping — and Cowles, having flung his own cigarette behind him and over the side, held the blade extended and moved down the slippery deck toward the boy and booted figure at the hatch with the slow embarrassed step of a man who at any moment expects to walk upon eel or starfish and trip, lose his footing, sprawl heavily on a deck as unknown to him as this.

“Here it is now, Mr. Banks!” He felt one of Hencher’s putty hands quick and soft and excited on his arm. “Now you’ll see what there is to see. …”

He looked down upon the naked back, the jockey’s nodding cap, the big man Cowles and the knife stabbing at the ropes, until Cowles grunted and the three of them pulled off the tarpaulin and he was staring down at all the barge carried in its hold: the black space, the echo of bilge and, without movement, snort, or pawing of hoof, the single white marble shape of the horse, whose neck (from where he leaned over, trembling, on the quay) was the fluted and tapering neck of some serpent, while the head was an elongated white skull with nostrils, eye sockets, uplifted gracefully in the barge’s hold — Draftsman by Emperor’s Hand out of Shallow Draft by Amulet, Castle Churl by Draftsman out of Likely Castle by Cold Masonry, Rock Castle by Castle Churl out of Words on Rock by Plebeian … until tonight when he’s ours, until tonight when he’s ours. …

“Didn’t I tell you, Mr. Banks? Didn’t I? Good as his word, that’s Hencher.”

The whistles died one by one on the river and it was not Wednesday at all, only a time slipped off its cycle with hours and darkness never to be accounted for. There was water viscous and warm that lapped the sides of the barge; a faint up and down motion of the barge which he could gauge against the purple rings of a piling; and below him the still crouched figures of the men and, in its moist alien pit, the silver horse with its ancient head, round which there buzzed a single fly as large as his own thumb and molded of shining blue wax.

He stared down at the lantern-lit blue fly and at the animal whose two ears were delicate and unfeeling, as unlikely to twitch as two pointed fern leaves etched on glass, and whose silver coat gleamed with the colorless fluid of some ghostly libation and whose decorous drained head smelled of a violence that was his own.

Even when he dropped the lantern—“No harm done, no harm done,” Hencher said quickly — the horse did not shy or throw itself against the ribs of the barge, but remained immobile, fixed in the same standing posture of rigorous sleep that they had found it in at the moment the tarpaulin was first torn away. Though Cowles made his awkward lunge to the rail, saw what it was — lantern with cracked glass half sunk, still burning on the water, then abruptly turning dark and sinking from sight — and laughed through his nose, looked up at them: “Bleeding lot of help he is. …”

“No harm done,” said Hencher again, sweating and by light of the van’s dim headlamps swinging out the arm of the boom until the cable and hook were correctly positioned above the barge’s hold. “Just catch the hook, Cowles, guide it down.”

Without a word, hand that had gripped the lantern still trembling, he took his place with Hencher at the iron bar which, given the weight of Hencher and himself, would barely operate the cable drum. He got his fingers round the bar; he tried to think of himself straining at such a bar, but it was worse for Hencher, whose heart was sunk in fat. Yet Hencher too was ready — in tight shirtsleeves, his jacket removed and hanging from the tiny silver figure of a winged man that adorned the van’s radiator cap — so that he himself determined not to let go of the bar as he had dropped the lantern but, instead, to carry his share of the horse’s weight, to stay at the bar and drum until the horse could suffer this last transport. There was no talking on the barge. Only sounds of their working, plash of the boy’s feet in the bilge, the tinkle of buckles and strap ends as the webbed bands were slid round the animal’s belly and secured.

Hencher was whispering: “Ever see them lift the bombs out of the craters? Two or three lads with a tripod, some lengths of chain, a few red flags and a rope to keep the children away … then cranking up the unexploded bomb that would have bits of debris and dirt sticking peacefully as you please to that filthy big cylinder … something to see, men at a job like that and fishing up a live bomb big enough to blow a cathedral to the ground.” Then, feeling a quiver: “But here now, lay into it gently, Mr. Banks, that’s the ticket.”

He pushed — Hencher was pushing also — until after a moment the drum stopped and the cable that stretched from the tip of the boom’s arm down to the ring swiveling above the animal’s webbed harness was taut.

“O.K.” It was Cowles kneeling at the hold’s edge, speaking softly and clearly on the late night air, “O.K. now … up he goes.”

The barge, which could support ten tons of coal or gravel on the river’s oily and slop-sullied tide, was hardly lightened when the horse’s hoofs swung a few inches free of that planking hidden and awash. But drum, boom, cable and arms could lift not a pound more than this, and lifted this — the weight of the horse — only with strain and heat, pressure and rusted rigidity. Though his eyes were closed he knew when the boom swayed, could feel the horse beginning to sway off plumb. He heard the drum rasping round, heard the loops of rusted cable wrapping about the hot drum one after another, slowly.

“Steady now, steady … he’s bloody well high enough.”

Then, as Hencher with burned hands grasped the wheel that would turn the boom its quarter circle and position the horse over quay, not over barge, he felt a fresh wind on his cheek and tilted his head, opened his eyes, and saw his second vision of the horse: up near the very tip of the iron arm, rigid and captive in the sling of two webbed bands, legs stiff beneath it, tail blown out straight on the wind and head lifted — they had wrapped a towel round the eyes — so that high in the air it became the moonlit spectacle of some giant weather vane. And seeing one of the front legs begin to move, to lift, and the hoof — that destructive hoof — rising up and dipping beneath the slick shoulder, seeing this slow gesture of the horse preparing to paw suddenly at the empty air, and feeling the tremor through his fingers still lightly on the bar: “Let him down, Hencher, let him down!” he cried, and waved both hands at the blinded and hanging horse even as it began to descend.

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.

“You managed to get here, Hencher,” the man says.

“I thought I was on the dot, Larry … good as my word, you know.”

“Yes, always good as your word. But you’ve forgotten to take off your cap.”

Hencher takes it off, feels his whole head exposed and hot and ugly. At last he allows himself to look, and it is only the softest glow that his torch sheds on the man before him.

“We got the horse, right outside in the van … I told you, right outside.”

“But you stopped. You did not come here directly.”

“I did my best. I did my bloody best, but if he wants to knock it off, if he wants to stop at home and have a word with the wife, why that’s just unfortunate … but no fault of mine, is it, Larry?”

And then, listening in the direction of the car, waiting for a sound — scratch of the ignition key, oiled suck of gear-lever — he sees the hand extended in front of him and is forced to take hold of it. One boot moves, the other moves, the trenchcoat makes a harsh rubbing noise. And the hand lets go of his, the man fades out of the light and yet — Hencher wipes his face and listens— once in the darkness the footsteps ring back to him like those of an officer on parade.

He keeps his own feet quiet until he reaches the yard and sees the open night sky beginning to change and grow milky like chemicals in a vat, and until he sniffs a faint odor of dung and tobacco smoke. Then he trudges loudly as he can and suddenly, calling the name, shines the bright torch on Cowles.

“Pissed off, was he,” says Cowles, and does not blink.

But in the cab Hencher already braces the steering wheel against his belly; the driver’s open door swings to the movement of the van. Cowles and the jockey and stableboy walk in slow procession behind the van, which is not too wide for the overgrown passage between the row of stalls, the long dark space between the low stable buildings, but which is high so that now and again the roof of the van brushes then scrapes against the rotted eaves. The tires are wet from the dampness of tangled and prickly weeds. Once, the van stops and Hencher climbs down, drags a bale of molded hay from its path. Then they move — horse van, walking men — and exhaust fumes fill empty bins, water troughs, empty stalls. In darkness they pass a shovel in an iron wheelbarrow, a saddle pad covered with inert black flies, a whip leaning against a whited post. Round a corner they come upon a red lantern burning beside an open and freshly whitewashed box stall. The hay rack has been mended, clean hard silken straw covers the floor, a red horse blanket lies folded on a weathered cane chair near the lantern.

“Lovely will fetch him down for you, Hencher,” says Cowles.

“I will fetch him down myself, if you please.”

And Lovely the stableboy grins and walks into the stall; the jockey pushes the horse blanket off the chair, sits down heavily; Cowles takes one end of the chain while Hencher works with the other.

They pry up the ends of the chain, allow it to fall link upon ringing link into bright iron pools at their feet until the raised and padded ramp swings loose, opens wider and wider from the top of the van as Cowles and Hencher lower it slowly down. Two gray men who stand with hands on hips and look up into the interior of the van. It is dark in there, steam of the horse drifts out; it appears that between the impacted bright silver flesh of the horse and padded walls no space exists for a man.

Hencher puts the unlighted cigar between his teeth and steps onto the ramp. Silent and nearly broad as the horse he climbs up the ramp, gets his footing, squeezes himself against the white and silver flesh — the toe of one boot striking a hoof on edge, both hands attempting to hold off the weight of the horse — then glances down at Cowles, tries to speak, and slides suddenly into the dark of the van.

And Cowles shouts, doubles over then as powerless as Hencher in the van. The ramp bounces, shakes on its hinges, and though the brake holds and the wheels remain locked, the chassis, cab, and high black sides all sway forward once at the moment they absorb that first unnatural motion of horse lunging at trapped man. Shakes, rattles, and the first loud sound of the hoof striking its short solid blow to metal fades. But not the commotion, the blind forward swaying of the van. While Cowles is shouting for help and dodging, leaping away, he somehow keeps his eyes on the visible rear hoofs and sees that, long as it lasts — the noise, the directionless pitching of the van — those rear hoofs never cease their dancing. The horse strikes a moment longer, but there is no metallic ringing, no sharp sound, and only the ramp drags a little more and the long torch falls from the cab.

Then Cowles is vomiting into the tall grass — he is a fat man and a man as fat as himself lies inside the van — and the grass is sour, the longest blades tickle his lips. On his knees he sweats, continues to be sick, and with large distracted hands keeps trying to fold the grass down upon the whiteness collecting in the hollow of bare roots.

Hencher, with fat lifeless arms still raised to the head kicked in, huddles yet on the van’s narrow floor, though the horse is turning round and round in the whitewashed stall. The jockey has left his chair and, cigarette between his lips, dwarfed legs apart, stands holding the long torch in both his hands and aiming it — like a rifle aimed from the hip — at Cowles. While Lovely the stableboy is singing now in a young pure Irish voice to the horse.

“Give me a hand with the body, Cowles, and we’ll drag it into the stall,” the jockey says. “Can’t move it alone, cock, can’t move it alone.”