Gallions Reach (7 page)

The talker glanced furtively at Jimmy beside him, who was gazing in evident abstraction at a glass globe in its haze of tobacco smoke. The man had no collar, and he eased his thick moist neck from a constricting shirt-band with a finger, and grimaced in impatient discomfort. “I'd 'ad enough of the bitch. Too much of it. But that stopped her jaw. An' there you are, Bill. I shan't turn up in the mornin'.”

The other fellow removed his pipe. “Police know?” he asked.

Jimmy moved instantly at that word to look at them. The tough felt his movement, and swung sharply upon him with his great hands clenched on the greasy knees of his trousers. He contemplated Jimmy with lowering insolence in silence, head thrust forward, for some seconds.

“'Ere, you—you with the whiskers. You listening to us? Know anything? By cripes, you shift your ear, or it'll get thick.”

Jimmy felt a change of thought. It went over him with a glow of pleasure. He smiled kindly at the tough. Good, good, that fellow was a weight.

“Don't be alarmed,” he said. “I don't know what you are talking about.”

“Alarmed!” The big fellow inclined his head to his friend. “'Ear 'im, Bill? Arsts me if I'm alarmed.” His face came round with decision. “Don't you wait 'ere any longer than you must, whiskers. This pub is unhealthy. Understand what I mean? You got anything else to do, go and do it.”

The distraction grew still more pleasing, though Jimmy thought it might be better to go. Yet not too soon. He maintained his friendly smile, and took a drink.

“Plenty of other things to do, when I feel like it. Don't let me keep you from your interesting conversation with your friend.”

The man steadily took stock of Jimmy, hesitated, and turned away, to mumble to his companion. Jimmy presently rose, wished him good night, and left the tavern. He paused, when in the shades beyond, to watch the door. The two men came out, surveyed the traffic carefully, and walked towards him. This would never do. He kept close to the wall, and continued. He took a dark and handy by-way, and lost himself in it. Those two fellows did not appear to enter it. No use having more trouble. He had an unlucky fist.

Where was he? But it did not matter where he was. Any
circumstance would do now, for he had lost the old set. Lost it? Not so easily lost as that. Anyhow, he might as well walk off his feelings till morning, when he would have to own up.

Queer place, this. There was a wall beside him which was Cyclopean. A straight section of primordial night, like the beginning of the way down to Erebus. The just and predestined path for him. He would follow it to whatever was at the bottom of it. He did not know that it was, anciently, but the beginning of Ratcliffe Highway. The night was brooding and overcast. He could only guess that he was still going east. There were no stars. Why go east? Well, when the stars have fallen out of the sky, of course they are not there for use.

When he came to a street lamp he could see the wall was only dingy brickwork, but it looked like the palpable residue of old chaos, something which had never seen daylight. It ranged upwards beyond the glim in the street. No end to it, above. The glass of the lamp was broken, and its flame, shaken by a draught, caused irresolution in the revealed area of the wall, which contracted and expanded, as though immemorial night were resilient, but too vast to be moved by a little light except as a local jest.

He continued along by the wall, which was so vague that sometimes his hand knocked it. Then he remembered he had a body. Damn! He was still there. He was not a disembodied spirit yet walking in a chaste nightshirt down to Hades. But there was no need of a grave-cloth for him, to get the appropriate feeling. Was Apollyon anywhere about? It would be a pleasure to meet him. Give a fellow something to do. The trouble with Belial is that you can get no nearer to him than when in abstraction you bark your knuckles. Pretty lonely, that kind of conflict, in the valley of the shadow. The worst thing in Hell is that nobody else is there, no devil, no fire that has the merit of being everlasting, no
pal, no light, no way out, and the way in behind you gone like yesterday morning.

Were they houses, opposite? They might be houses. They were more like that than anything else. Some were the complement of the wall beside him, and the roofs of others came down almost to his level. The irregular penumbra opposite was sprinkled with lighted squares. The squares showed, surprisingly, that there might be others beside himself in this abiding-place of night; he could see into their lighted caves. Who and what were they? At times the shadow of a colossal and distorted head would appear on a window-blind, a protean shape which confused a newcomer with its grotesque mockery of order and shapeliness, reduced itself to a sudden knob, and faded off. The others here had that scope. They could take any shape they liked, and diminish to nothing suddenly while you watched. Occasionally there were wanderers like himself on the other side of the way, figures with no character, in no hurry. They only moved. Perhaps they were shapes which had come off the blinds for a change.

At times he heard voices, but they belonged to nobody. Nobody was there to speak. Once there was a single eldritch cry. Jimmy stopped. It came from a narrow opening in the dark on the other side, to which depth was given by a distant bracket lamp on a wall. He could see nothing but the lamp up there. Its light flattened and turned blue in a gust, and then flared again, as though it had got over that trouble. Maybe the lamp had shrieked in its loneliness. A figure, which reminded Jimmy of a man, leaned against a post at the bottom of the turning. It did not stir. It did not move to look at the lamp which had screamed. Perhaps it was used to the cries of loneliness in the dark.

Jimmy felt it was time to make out what the shapes were that haunted this region. He crossed over to see. But the figure did not look at him. Its head was on its breast, studying the road, perhaps trying to see daylight on a path
that was far below the reach of daylight. There came along three other forms which appeared to be two women and a man, and they shambled together past him, singing with drawling and doleful remorse. The yowling whine of the women was almost human in its discordance with the subjugating dark to which it was addressed.

Jimmy, nearing another lamp, was thoughtfully regarding a truncated monument which stood under it. What did that commemorate? The top of it moved, and turned a human face to him. It was a policeman. “Good night,” said the policeman, as Jimmy got within that brief circle of knowledge.

“Good evening,” said Jimmy, and stopped.

“Having a midnight prowl, sir?” asked the policeman.

“Yes,” said Jimmy. “This is a strange parish.”

“Oh, I dunno. Not to us. We're used to it. Not so bad as it's painted.”

“I thought it looked like a place where everything was hidden away.”

“Not it. Don't you believe it. No good for hiding in. Too many looking on. No good to come here, after a little upset like, thinking that you can get lost. Though some people do say so. I read a book the other day … funny things get into books. All about this place. But not like it is when you know it, same as I do.”

Jimmy turned over the keys in his pocket. There wasn't much to talk about, if you didn't want to say anything.

“I heard an unpleasant scream just now, at the turning above.”

“Yers; they're always nasty to hear. But there's nothing in it. Take no notice, that's the thing to do. No screams, guv'nor, take it from me, when some one's really getting it in the neck. They take good care of that. As a rule. Only amateurs let 'em scream.” The constable was amused. “If they began with a loud noise our job would be as easy as kiss
your hand. Go straight to it, couldn't we? But they don't oblige us. We have to find 'em afterwards.”

The officer seemed glad of some one to talk to. He eased his helmet.

“Take it from me, sir.” He jerked his left thumb over his shoulder. “Why, only last week a young feller up there, he tried it on. Came from another part of London. People always think they're safe when they dunno where they are, like. Reckoned, I suppose, that anything could happen here and nobody would notice it. God bless me, the fact that he was here gave him away. What was he doing here? Of course, everybody asked that. Wouldn't come here for pleasure, as you might say.” The constable chuckled again. “And there you are.”

“Where does this road lead to?”

“Same sort of thing all the way along. Comes out by Stepney Station. Go on far enough, and you'll have to walk back, this time o' night. Far to go?”

“I think I'll be getting along, then.”

“Well, speaking for myself, I'd sooner be indoors. But, of course, if it's the first time you've done it, it's an experience. I hope you'll enjoy it, sir.”

Jimmy hesitated, but then went his way. He strolled away from the light, but without knowing whether he was continuing in the same direction. He was not thinking of that. He took a side alley without knowing it, and continued to take whichever opening in the obscurity was the next one. No good trying to believe morning would ever come to that precinct. But he wanted the morning, he wanted it as soon as it could come.

This place looked like the forgotten lumber-yard of creation. Objects that could not be published had been abandoned there. They held together because they had never been disturbed. The echoes of his footsteps might shake them down, so he made less noise. This was the very bottom of the
night, and he had sunk to it by his own weight. One by-way left him in a narrow passage, under a gas-jet, where he had to choose between right and left. He could see what used to be there. It used to be warehouses. He looked above, as if in appeal, for a suggestion of sky. There might have been one, but the ancient walls were close, and leaned towards each other, as if the weight of night with its density would bury that foundered corner. Jimmy felt that he was sunk profoundly from all communion with his fellows. The gas-jet made hardly any hollow in the gloom. It but selected for illumination a worn iron post, a scatter of chaff on cobblestones, horse droppings, and a few barrel-hoops. Then, almost melted into the dusk beyond the chaff on the cobbles, he saw a dog watching him. He saw its yellow eyes. It was a dog? Here, old fellow! When he moved that way it became only an ugly little noise, and was not there. An unseen hoop sprang from under his tread and bit him on the hand. But he did not cry out. Almost immediately he saw it was only a hoop.

As though it had only opened in the darkness since he came, he noticed before him a cleft in the wall. It could have been an outlet there. It was a lighter patch. While he wondered whether it was an outlet a green planet moved across it, midway, from side to side. The planet appeared suddenly, was bright for a few seconds, and then was eclipsed. As though that green light had caused it, he felt a cool draught blow steadily from across the way. What was there? Then a red star appeared midway, in the midst of a travelling cluster of white stars. Lord, a ship!

He listened rigidly. He could hear the plunging of a propeller. He made a guess. A red light? Then she was going east. She was bound outwards. He crossed over and walked down that slit in the dark till he felt only outer space was before him. There were remote points of light in a void. He stopped, and fumbled with his hand. Yes, this was the edge of his world.

He sat down on it. In a little while he could hear water talking quietly somewhere below him. It might have been near or far. It was invisible. Perhaps that was the tide running by the Southern Cross. That was a long sheer cold drop.

“Ahoy!” It was a clear but minute call from straight before him. “Aho-o-y!”

“I'm here,” said Jimmy to himself. “I'm coming.”

That caller would take some finding. How far to go? He sat looking at that idea till his plight, the monody of the waters, the far points of light, and a thin drizzle which began, all blurred into a stillness within which his waking mind became like one of the stars sunk deeply in the void. He was hardly there.

Had he been asleep? It had been raining. He was wet. When he stood on the edge, he heard, as if from across the river, a clock strike three. Three tiny ones. Not much longer to wait now. Better get moving. Nobody about yet.

The same old walls continued in a city that was dead. Funny name that, over a shop. Couldn't be right. Perhaps he was getting light-headed. Wu Fu Li. Better not see people about when they had such names. This ashy solitude was interminable, and morning never came to it.

He rambled up to the centre of a bridge which seemed to rise above the shadows, and saw beyond him the inky grotesques of chimneys and house ridges against a low pallor. He leaned over the parapet. So there it began, that day for him. Below the bridge was a stream, soundless and raven, which became outlined in the bottom of night even as he watched. Its banks were of mud. They were livid like the water, but they did not move. The water uncoiled slowly and so it could be seen. A careened barge was below, a lump melting into the sludge. It would take old Charon some time to shift that. But this was his river, all right. The old boy was probably waiting asleep under that gasometer.

A group of men passed him, going the same way. But
they were brisk. Their noisy footsteps meant purpose and direction. Something was ahead of them, and they were going to it. That was more like life. Where they could go, so could he. He followed them, more like life. People were about, glum but purposeful. This was an early world, where railway lines were mixed with the streets, factories with the homes, and an unborn ship stood immense in her skeleton womb above the tenements. The day was broad, when, surmounting grey fields and sheds with low roofs of iron, the scarlet funnel of a liner stood up like a noble beacon. Beyond her was a blue funnel with yellow bands. The vista of low buildings was overtopped by a long diminishing array of cranes and jibs, masts, and the vivid colours of smokestacks, one beyond the other. A broad new world this, but with some smells he knew. Where did this road end? Some lascars in blue muslin and red turbans were crouched under a railway station. A clock was suspended over the deserted platform. It proclaimed a quite impossible hour. Time, perhaps, had lost its way. Or there was no time here. He might have got beyond the range of the schedules. He looked up at the clock, and saw a sparrow's nest in its works. Time was stopped here to let the birds nest. At the other end of the platform was a name-board above the palings, its letters big and positive enough to announce that locality to a great distance,
Gallions
.