‘Yes, she will. You don’t know women. Once the new has wore off it’ll be some bird that stayed at home and made money, or some lad that wore shiny leggings and never got nowheres so he could get hurt, like you and me.’
The porter came to hover over the sleeping man.
‘He ain’t got sick, has he?’ he whispered.
They told him no; and the Negro eased the position of the sleeping man’s head. ‘You gentlemen look after him and be sure to call me if he wants anything. He’s a sick man.’
Gilligan and Lowe, looking at the officer, agreed, and the porter lowered the shade. ‘You want some more ginger ale?’
‘Yes,’ said Gilligan, assuming the porter’s hushed tone, and the Negro withdrew. The two of them sat in silent comradeship, the comradeship of those whose lives had become pointless through the sheer equivocation of events, of the sorry jade, Circumstance. The porter brought ginger ale and they sat drinking while New York became Ohio.
Gilligan, that talkative unserious one, entered some dream within himself and Cadet Lowe, young and dreadfully disappointed, knew all the old sorrows of the Jasons of the world who see their vessels sink ere the harbour is left behind. . . . Beneath his scar the officer slept in all the travesty of his wings and leather and brass, and a terrible old woman paused, saying:
‘Was he wounded?’
Gilligan waked from his dream. ‘Look at his face,’ he said fretfully: ‘he fell off of a chair on to an old woman he was talking to and done that.’
‘What insolence,’ said the woman, glaring at Gilligan. ‘But can’t something be done for him? He looks sick to me.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Something can be done for him. What we are doing now — letting him alone.’
She and Gilligan stared at each other, then she looked at Cadet Lowe, young and belligerent and disappointed. She looked back to Gilligan. She said from the ruthless humanity of money:
‘I shall report you to the conductor. That man is sick and needs attention.’
‘All right, ma’am. But you tell the conductor that if he bothers him now, I’ll knock his goddam head off.’
The old woman glared at Gilligan from beneath a quiet, modish black hat and a girl’s voice said:
‘Let them alone, Mrs Henderson. They’ll take care of him all right.’
She was dark. Had Gilligan and Lowe ever seen an Aubrey Beardsley, they would have known that Beardsley would have sickened for her: he had drawn her so often dressed in peacock hues, white and slim and depraved among meretricious trees and impossible marble fountains. Gilligan rose.
‘That’s right, miss. He is all right sleeping here with us. The porter is looking after him—’ wondering why he should have to explain to her— ‘and we are taking him home. Just leave him be. And thank you for your interest.’
‘But something ought to be done about it,’ the old woman repeated futilely. The girl led her away and the train ran swaying in afternoon. (Sure, it was afternoon. Cadet Lowe’s wrist watch said so. It might be any state under the sun, but it was afternoon. Afternoon or evening or morning or night, far as the officer was concerned. He slept.)
Damned old bitch, Gilligan muttered, careful not to wake him.
‘Look how you’ve got his arm,’ the girl said, returning. She moved his withered hand from his thigh. (His hand, too, seeing the scrofulous indication of his bones beneath the blistered skin.) ‘Oh, his poor terrible face,’ she said, shifting the pillow under his head.
‘Be quiet, ma’am,’ Gilligan said.
She ignored him. Gilligan, expecting to see him wake, admitted defeat and she continued:
‘Is he going far?’
‘Lives in Georgia,’ Gilligan said. He and Cadet Lowe, seeing that she was not merely passing their section, rose. Lowe remarking her pallid distinction, her black hair, the red scar of her mouth, her slim dark dress, knew an adolescent envy of the sleeper. She ignored Lowe with a brief glance. How impersonal she was, how self-contained. Ignoring them.
‘He can’t get home alone,’ she stated with conviction. ‘Are you all going with him?’
‘Sure,’ Gilligan assured her. Lowe wished to say something, something that would leave him fixed in her mind: something to reveal himself to her. But she glanced at the glasses, the bottle that Lowe feeling a fool yet clasped.
‘You seem to be getting along pretty well, yourselves,’ she said.
‘Snake medicine, miss. But won’t you have some?’
Lowe, envying Gilligan’s boldness, his presence of mind, watched her mouth. She looked down the car.
‘I believe I will, if you have another glass.’
‘Why, sure. General, ring the bell.’ She sat down beside Mahon and Gilligan and Lowe sat again. She seemed . . . she was young; she probably liked dancing, yet at the same time she seemed not young — as if she knew everything. (She is married, and about twenty-five, thought Gilligan.) (She is about nineteen, and she is not in love, Lowe decided.) She looked at Lowe.
‘What’s your outfit, soldier?’
‘Flying Cadet,’ answered Lowe with slow patronage, ‘Air Service.’ She was a kid: she only looked old.
‘Oh. Then of course you are looking after him. He’s an aviator, too, isn’t he?’
‘Look at his wings,’ Lowe answered. ‘British. Royal Air Force. Pretty good boys.’
‘Hell,’ said Gilligan, ‘he ain’t no foreigner.’
‘You don’t have to be a foreigner to be with the British or French. Look at Lufbery. He was with the French until we come in.’
The girl looked at him, and Gilligan, who had never heard of Lufbery, said: ‘Whatever he is, he’s all right. With us, anyway. Let him be whatever he wants.’
The girl said: ‘I am sure he is.’
The porter appeared. ‘Cap’m’s all right?’ he whispered, remarking her without surprise as is the custom of his race.
‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘he’s all right.’
Cadet Lowe thought I bet she can dance and she added: ‘He couldn’t be in better hands than these gentlemen.’ How keen she is! thought Gilligan. She has known disappointment ‘I wonder if I could have a drink on your car?’
The porter examined her and then he said: ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll get some fresh ginger ale. You going to look after him?’
‘Yes, for a while.’
He leaned down to her. ‘I’m from Gawgia, too. Long time ago.’
‘You are? I’m from Alabama.’
‘That’s right. We got to look out for our own folks, ain’t we? I’ll get you a glass right away.’
The officer still slept and the porter returning hushed and anxious, they sat drinking and talking with muted voices. New York was Ohio, and Ohio became a series of identical cheap houses with the same man entering gate after gate, smoking and spitting. Here was Cincinnati and under the blanched flash of her hand he waked easily.
‘Are we in?’ he asked. On her hand was a plain gold band. No engagement ring. (Pawned it, maybe, thought Gilligan. But she did not look poor.)
‘General, get the Lootenant’s hat.’
Lowe climbed over Gilligan’s knees and Gilligan said:
‘Here’s an old friend of ours, Loot. Meet Mrs Powers.’
She took his hand, helping him to his feet, and the porter appeared.
‘Donald Mahon,’ he said, like a parrot. Cadet Lowe assisted by the porter returned with cap and stick and a trench coat and two kit bags. The porter help him into the coat.
‘I’ll get yours, ma’am,’ said Gilligan, but the porter circumvented him. Her coat was rough and heavy and light of colour. She wore it carelessly and Gilligan and Cadet Lowe gather up their ‘issued’ impedimenta. The porter handed the officer his cap and stick, then he vanished with the luggage belonging to them. She glanced again down the length of the car.
‘Where are my—’
‘Yessum,’ the porter called from the door, across the coated shoulders of passengers, ‘I got your things, ma’am.’
He had gotten them and his dark gentle hand lowered the officer carefully to the platform.
‘Help the lootenant there,’ said the conductor officiously, but he had already got the officer to the floor.
‘You’ll look after him, ma’am?’
‘Yes. I’ll look after him.’
They moved down the shed and Cadet Lowe looked back. But the Negro was efficient and skilful, busy with other passengers. He seemed to have forgotten them. And Cadet Lowe looked from the porter occupied with bags and the garnering of quarters and half dollars, to the officer in his coat and stick, remarking the set of his cap slanting backward bonelessly from his scarred brow, and he marvelled briefly upon his own kind.
But this was soon lost in the mellow death of evening in a street between stone buildings, among lights, and Gilligan in his awkward khaki and the girl in her rough coat, holding each an arm of Donald Mahon, silhouetted against it in the doorway.
3
Mrs Powers lay in her bed aware of her long body beneath strange sheets, hearing the hushed night sounds of a hotel — muffled footfalls along mute carpeted corridors, discreet opening and shutting of doors, somewhere a murmurous pulse of machinery — all with that strange propensity which sounds, anywhere else soothing, have, when heard in a hotel, for keeping you awake.
Her mind and body warming to the old familiarity of sleep became empty, then as she settled her body to the bed, shaping it for slumber, it filled with a remembered troubling sadness.
She thought of her husband youngly dead in France in a recurrence of fretful exasperation with having been tricked by a wanton Fate: a joke amusing to no one.
Just when she had calmly decided that they had taken advantage of a universal hysteria for the purpose of getting of each other a brief ecstasy, just when she had decided calmly that they were better quit of each
