Limekiller!

Ah, said the Honourable (with a wave of the by now puffed-out pipe), ah, that was another story. “My uncle George became interested in the matter and he copied an account of it out of some annal or archive and I made a copy of his copy and I placed it in that book, the yellow one there on the shelf between the Bible and the Dictionary, which I lent to Major Deak with the intention that he should read it as a sort of preparation of the, well, ha ha, no, not for the Gospel; you know Eusebius, do you “Somerset!" “Mmm, yes, my dear; preparation for knowing the background of the — but I suppose he hasn’t read it, eh?”

“He hasn’t read it.” — Stickney Forster. Still brief.

“Mm. Well, I thought the book might anyway interest him, like most men I assume that if a book interests me, it must interest others, and — “

Jack knew exactly what the man meant, and, knowing that the man spent very long hours trying to prepare such arid items as A BILL to ascertain that the SEWERS and DRAINS of the Municipality of KING TOWN, as set forth in Sanitary Act 3317, Schedule B, Article 6C of the 18th April, 1959, be hereby AMENDED, as follows', so that the National Assembly might prevent being up to its nostrils in SLUDGE: whereas the Members of the Assembly would much, much rather have been adopting resolutions condemning the Repressive Regime of Zambazunga — or, better yet, voting to adjourn early to see the Middle Schools cricket game; Jack, knowing this, felt a burst of sympathy for the Honourable Minister for Government’s rambling away on other subjects. “What book is that, Sir?” he asked.

“It is a copy of the Planter’s Annual for 1810.”

It was absolutely astonishing how all at once Jack’s eyes and Felix’s eyes were locked into each other’s gaze; and in hers he read with alas all too absolute certainty the charge that by knowing that May was fascinated by that series of historical volumes he was somehow convicted of being privy to some passion between May and himself — a passion of which he knew himself utterly innocent. He had never given May any more than a cousinly kiss; May was sweet in her own dry, acerbic way; her face was a plate of pudding with just enough nose to hold her eye-glasses up, and her blouse concealed no more curves than would hospit a pair of doorknobs; all this was beside the point, the point being that (a) he had perhaps gat Felix with child when she would probably rather not be gat, and (b) at a time when he had a felonious intuition of May’s preferred taste in historical reading matter. Surely Queen Elizabeth, the High and Mighty Prince, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, “that vile monster,” as Who? had called him, would have sent any man to The Tower on just such a charge. And Felicia Ann Fox, the sole true love of John Lutwidge Limekiller’s life and perhaps the bearer of his baby beneath her beating heart was now staring at him with a blazing gaze which seemed to accuse him of every crime and conceivable offense from masturbation to simony: and defying him to have any expression upon his face or even to drop his eyes.

“If it weren’t for the breeze I couldn’t tolerate being out here,” said the Honourable Mrs.; “and I don’t much like the breeze.”

***

Now was heard from a different quarter a puffing and a huffing which was neither the offending breeze nor the Honourable’s pipe. Major Deak was slowly lifting his large tortoise’s body up the shallow steps from the sand-filled yard to the house, with nice Neville at one elbow. and horrid dreams,” the Major was saying, between gasps. “Thought I was choking or strangling. but doctor finds no sign of asthma or emphysema. can’t live here,” he sank into the chair which Jack vacated, “and can’t live elsewhere.” He paid no attention as Felix, who had taken the yellow book from its shelf, proceeded to drop it, fumbled picking it off the floor, quite twisting herself around, got it at last, replaced it. “For Christ’s sake pour me a drink, Stickney. ”

Limekiller, glad to be free of that freezing gaze, bent over the bottles. “Whiskey, Major?” he asked, solicitously. “Water? Soda?” There was no ice.

For the first time Deak gave him the benefit of his attention. “Whiskey?” he demanded. “ Whiskey? Before the sunset gun? Certainly not. Gin and tonic, Stickney.” Limekiller, fairly crushed, yielded his place at the bar.