.. All shaken up, he’s chugging along! and pretty pleased!.. No shame!.. He’s laughing! His hands are bleeding! He stumbles! he picks himself up! The hell with the old gal behind him who’s running after us.. her with her gimpy leg!.. wah! wah!.. She’s squealing that we’re killing her!..But she’s tearing along, any way!.. We don’t go back through the same alleys.. We dash through Lambeth Highway. and slow up at Grave Lane.. Ruysdale.. then zigzags.. we’re covering our tracks!.. threading our way.. Cascade’s in the lead!.. The Doll hooks on to Boro.. She’s holding him by the sleeve.. Cascade won’t bother with her!
.. Doesn’t ever want to see her again!..
Every time she get to a sidewalk she howls!.. it hurts her wound. she jumps up screaming!.. Good thing the streets are all empty!.. The whole gang’s racing along!.. It’d be a fine sight in broad daylight!.. Prospero galloping too… I can’t see his mug!.. I hear him snuffling.. He’s in front of me. Nothing the matter with him!.. His joint had been pretty flimsy! Shit! A flame!.. Wood! mud! Jerry-built! That’s the truth.. All the same, Boro’s cracked.. He’s running with Joconde. He’s dragging her along.. she’s yelling at him!
.. “Not so fast! My God! Not so fast!”.. Another spurt!.. Moorgate Street! from end to end! Ass on fire, that’s the word for it!..
Right after the Square come the docks. I think we’ve lost Clodovitz… I yell after him.. while running… no answer.. His hospital’s there.. right near.. Aren’t we going to leave the old gal there?.. We pass right by it.. I ask.. I call out on the run! We’re tearing along! We keep going!..
.. One! two!.. One!.. two!.. obliquely left!.. Maryle-bone.. straight ahead!. then Mint Place.. So’s we’re going to Tackett’s?.. I didn’t know.. No one had said!.. Here we are!.. Stop!
And zip! We dash through the door! We all come tearing in!.. The whole cavalcade!.. Ah! surprise! He was in the midst of tidying up! Poof!. All his junk! ropes! scrap iron! his shed full of gewgaws! He throws himself against the door, he closes it. He’s pretty choked up!.. "Where are you all coming from?” he asks.. No one answers.. Everyone’s snorting, gasping. wheezing.. the whole mob’s sneezing wet! collapses on the heap! Boy! some fun!
Cascade’s the first to start talking.. got his wind back..
He points to Boro..
"Tackett, you want to see a murderer?”
And then he tells exactly what happened… he saw the grenade, too!..
"You don’t have another in your pants?”
Then we all rush for Boro! Ah! the big half-wit!.. the louse!.. the drunk… everyone jumps on his paunch!.. rummages through him, searches him all over!. maybe he’s still got another one?
"You big butcher! You big lunatic!”
They bawl him out something awful!
He takes it well.. That doesn’t worry him!.. He’s laughing!.. he giggles because they’re tickling him!
"Do you have another one?”
They rough-and-tumble him again, they’re really after him.. Tackett wants to kick him out.. He’s worried about his premises!.. his goods!.. his wood!.. Prospero was so down in the dumps he didn’t say a single word. He must have been worrying about his pub, his customers, mainly about his lease.. He was always talking about his lease.. 78 years more to run!.. He was proud of it!.. Shit, Matthew was right!
Boro was just a dirty grease-ball! a wild sneaky firebug!.. Ah! You could see that right off! I’d never have believed it!.. And the way he sent it flying! No doubt about it. I’m telling you!.. A wrecker!.. and insolent besides!.. not bothered a bit!. Now he was thirsty again!.. He wanted everyone to have a drink! "Always a thirst on!” he announces! Someone open a bottle for him! not in an hour! then and there! it was bad enough waiting around with his hand injured!
It’s true he was still bleeding, so was Joconde.. The two of them were comparing… It was a real ambulance… I didn’t feel thirsty, but somewhat cold..
Joconde, now that she was back in the bosom of her family, was getting snotty again.. They did up her bandages, patched up the whole works, her towels, her cotton.. Every thing was hanging between her legs. They laid her down on some bags. Cascade stretched out beside her… so she’d stay a bit quiet… so she’d finally shut her mouth..
There’s Clodovitz coming… He knocks… He bangs at the door. He barks out his name.. How did he find us?.. that rheumy-eyed chicken! He comes in… He blinks… He starts talking. Doesn’t know what he’s saying.. He thinks it didn’t explode!.. He’s jabbering away!.. He doesn’t remember a thing! He’s had a shock, he got knocked on the head, some skin’s been torn away.. he’s bleeding pretty bad, too.. and from his mouth also. Got to heat up some coffee for him.. He’s going to be sick.. He’d been running at full speed.. That gives him palpitations… We take advantage of bringing him around to get ourselves a grog too, two salad bowls!.. Tackett hasn’t finished!.. His guests are greedy!.. We all huddle together.. We roll in the bags! the piles!.. There’s not a bed in the house. Sheds and that’s all..
Boro’s beginning to feel better, he decides he’s going to leave.. He announces:
"I’m leeeaving!.. I’m leeeaving! ”
It must be around two o’clock..
"Get the hell out!.. We’ve seen enough of you! ”
That’s everyone’s opinion.
Prospero hasn’t let out a peep. He’s sitting on the bags.. he hasn’t even lain down.. Just there with his head in his hands..
"You get the hell out too! You hear me?”
That was Cascade who went and shook him, he didn’t want him staying around.. Still he hadn’t said anything! hadn’t opened his mouth! not a word out of him..
"Go on! get going! ”
Brutal!
I think he suspected that Prospero and Boro were going to fight it out at night, to settle about the grenade, that they were just waiting for us to sleep!
"Go murder yourselves!”
He kicked them out just like that!.. There was no comeback. Tackett was with him.. Tackett was some brute! he used a crowbar for his arguments.. His favorite weapon.. He’d let you have it in the legs.
So Prospero got thrown out and Boro with him.
The shed was ours now!.. We’d be able to sleep.. Boro had a place to sleep! I wasn’t worrying about him! I wasn’t anxious. He’d go to his pal, The Horror… he always went there…It was opposite, on the other side…after Cubitt Docks..
But now they were yelling from the street.. "You cock-suckers! ” they were calling us… it rang out in the darkness.. "Peegs!.. Peegs!”.. When the other one joined him he started cursing us too.. "Cocksawkers!.. Cocksawkers!.. They were both swearing at us.
We heard them far off… We heard their steps.. For a long time.. till the end. We fell asleep.
The moment the shadows come up, when soon well have to be going, we remember something of the frivolities of the stay.. Jokes, courteous chats, witty banter, kindly acts.. and all that no longer is, after so many trials and horrors, seems but heavy and freakish funeral trumpery. Drapings with leaden folds, wasted effort! the huge mantle of the rigors, arias, sermons, mournful virtues, the dead all crushed.. spruced up under pinewood, in empty crypt. Ah! how dazzling it would be if, at that very moment, as we were being nailed up, there should escape, gush from the coffin, the miraculous trill of a flute! so brisk, delightfully gay! What a surprise! what pride! Sighs in the dwelling place of the dead! Ah, what a lesson for families!.. Joyous crony of a corpse, phantom larker! Minstrel for all precipices, enchanted places, accursed paths! The first Mr. Kick-the-Bucket not having lived in vain, having finally surprised, understood, all the graces of springtime! the renewal of the fledgling! of the finch in the coppice, bearing everything off! Revolutionary of the Shades! Troubadour in the Sepulchers! Buffoon yodeling in the Caverns of the World!. I’d like to be that fellow! What an ambition! My only one! By Gosh! Blast it! A thousand graces the shrewd fellow!. Better the Eternals rigadoon than the human calamitous Empire, the mammoth scheming molehill… A heap of crumbling mirages!