Limekiller!

Usually such intervals were, anyway, after the second time, followed by Togetherness in the form of a shower, follow'ed by a long interval of patient impatience or impatient patience on his own part, the whilst she applied various unguents and lotions and sprays and as he was disallowed. perhaps by some colonial Ordinance to him unknowe. from all the secrets of usually. ointment of rosewater, for all he knew to the contrary; after which they slowly- made their way, via the Pelican Bar — the one beside the yard — to any of two or three restaurants: not this time, kid, however.

Not being invariably at his keenest and sharpest at such moments, he did but repeat the all-purpose, „Eh?“

To which the lovely Bathsheba replied, “Because I say, is ‘Eh.’ I have some things to do, I have to see my auntie, and my other auntie, and my sister, the one who lives with,” he had given up either trying to figure out why, when she wished to, she could and would slip from Baytalk into Standard (if slightly, and beautifully, accented) English, or the numerifications of her enormous family: “So please, Jack, let me have $20, and I will meet you dowmstairs at the stroke of ten.”

He let her have $20.

He wished she would not have to go.

He realized and acknowdedged that she w-ould, anybody, everybody, w ould, sometimes, often, seldom, now and then, late or early, have to go.

And, anyway.

So.

That left six or seven hours.

First stop: the Pelican Bar. (Beside the yard.)

He was areeted bv a loudlv voice which he could have done without; “Pussy is like beer, you don’t buy it, you just rent it: right, Jack?”

“Pour Mr. Duncan his pleasure,” was Jack’s answer, perhaps a trifle evasive, perhaps not; in British Hidalgo there had evolved a more perfect union of fornication, freedom, and the old time religion than is usually encountered in English-speaking nations. “And let me have a double glass of the inwariable, me dear.”

“Ah, Limekiller,” said a voice out of the shadow7 corner. Professor Brolly, Jack knew the voice; no one knew what the real name was: a younger, chunky Neville Chamberlain in khaki shorts and an Albert Schweitzer set of moustaches. “Professor,” said Limekiller, politely, towards the shadow-. “Pray ask,” to the barkeep, “the Professor to allow7 me. ” By the sounds of things, things w7ere sounding up pretty soundly in the bar; and he would not be or have been the only one to be spending in a rush, or whatever — Dory Duncan: no one needed Dory Duncan, Jack didn’t, loudmouth and so forth: but no need to make him an enemy; was he worth it? — no.

“We were just discussing, Limekiller,” said the voice from the shadow corner, without even seeing him one would know the professor was leaning on his umbrella; “thought you might be interested, seeing you come in, just discussing —” A burst of noise from another part of the wood, or anyway, of the bar, interrupted — … jumble… ” Professor Brolly: hadn’t Professor Brollv just said that? Limekiller thought: What? was this some sort of Moebius strip? was this like one of those weed-trips when everything occurred again and again, time ceasing to have significance, when what one had just said one recognized as having been said before. before. again. again. Surely Professor Brolly had said, “jumble”., perhaps “jungle”?

But before he could turn and deal with this mystical business, the bartender had placed a glass on the bar; Jack hoisted it, tipped it to the wind’s, well, not twelve quarters, say three. say three? Fine. Three. The bartender had repeated, a double glass of the inwariable, with amusement, though not hilarity; he thought that John L. Limekiller was merely pretending to imitate a White Creole, whose inversions of the letters V and W were perennial, invariable, and infinite sources of amusement. To others. There. Down there. In the all-but-lost-little Colony of British Hidalgo, down here on the boggy barm of what someone — would anyone here ever forgive him for it? no: had once, and in print; called The Spanish Minor… it wasn’t even that funny — ah well.

And then, even as he turned, with intent to enter the shadow comer where Professor Brolly was, to pursue the matter of this odd sequence of syllables which had, seemingly, begun to pursue him (John Limekiller, not Professor Brolly), throughout this semi-immediate area and scene — just then a burst of noise louder even than usual even here, where the monastic virtue of silence was appreciated no more than that of celibacy, struck his eardrums, and swiveled him around to the other side of the bar; no, there was no face on the bar-room floor, there was —