Read The Lime Twig for Free Online

for me. Thinking of Reggie and the rest of them, can I help but smile?
    I can get along without you, Mother.

1
    SIDNEY SLYTER SAYS
    Happy Throngs Arrive at Aldington for Golden Bowl
…
    Mystery Horse to Run in Classic Race
…
    Rock Castle: Dark Horse or Foul Play?
    Gray toppers, gray gloves and polished walking sticks; elegant ladies and smart young girls; fellows in fedoras, and mothers, and wives—all your Cheapside crowd along with your own Sidney Slyter, naturally. Pure life is the only phrase that will do, life’s pure anticipation. … So you won’t want to show up here without a flower in your buttonhole, I can tell you that. … The horses are lovely. Sidney Slyter’s choice? Marlowe’s Pippet without a doubt—to win (I took a few pints last night with a young woman, a delightful Mrs. Sybilline Laval, who said that Candy Stripe looked very good. But you’ll agree with Slyter. He knows his horses, eh?) … A puzzling late entry is Rock Castle, owned by one Mr. Michael Banks. But more of this …
    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 tohear 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