I'll Never Be Young Again

1

When the sun had gone, I saw that the water was streaked with great patches of crimson and gold.They formed a ripple under the bridge that was part of the wake belonging to the barge. She was perhaps two cables’ length from me now, low in the water, deeply loaded with timber, the brown sail flapping uselessly against the mast.There was scarcely a suggestion of a breeze, and it was the ebb-tide that carried her downstream. I could see one man aboard her, his arm flung carelessly over the tiller, his legs crossed, and a cap on the back of his head.

His pipe must have gone out, for I saw him bend swiftly and fumble in his pocket, steadying the tiller with his knee, then he cupped the pipe in his hands, and threw away the match. I imagined myself in his place, glancing half-curiously in the wake of the barge, where the little match drifted with the tide.

The air to this man would be strong with the harsh smell of tobacco, and the peculiar sweet flavour of well-seasoned timber that clings to a barge. His hands and his clothes would be of it too, the sticky mixture of tar and cutch, and a burnt rope’s end dangling near an empty barrel.

While beyond all these things, so intimate a part of his life, there would come floating up to him, from nowhere in particular, the old unchanging smell of the river, borne from the mud flats beneath the wharves and the dingy warehouses; a smell of refuse left on these beaches to be carried away by the tide, a hint on those mysterious houses where no faces are ever seen and whose dark windows look out upon the Lower Pool, a whiff of oil upon the surface of the water cast by some passing tug-boat.

And strange and unbelievable, mingled with the smoke of London rising into the hazy orange sky of the spent day, a suggestion of some world farther than the tired City and the river, a world where there would be no stretch of buildings flattened in a half-light with the spire of St Paul’s companion to a warehouse chimney, but a grey sea not encompassed by the smallest ridge of land, cold and white-crested, under a grey sky.

Now the barge was no more than a black smudge amongst the traffic in the Pool, a tug-boat was frothing in her wake, smoke screaming from her stout funnel, her propeller churning the water as she went astern.

The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all the day.

Gripping hard with my hands I lifted myself on to the bar and gazed down steadily on the water passing under the bridge.

The flaming colours had gone with the sun, the little ripples still formed and bubbled, but they were brown now, dull, and shadowed by the archways of the bridge.

The sight of the barge had taken me away from myself, and because she had left me I fell back again into my first despondency, seeing nothing but my own black mood of bitterness, caring for nothing but that the night should come quickly and allow me to slip away unseen. I waited then, for time was something with which I had no more concern, except for the furthering of my purpose, and as I leant against the stanchion of the bridge I closed my eyes so that I need not look upon the faces of the men and women who passed me by.

In this way I could cling to some sort of security, and my plans would not be hindered by a momentary weakness thrusting itself into my view, a weakness coming to me from the strength and solidity of people.

My ears would not be deafened, though, and in spite of myself I listened to the safe and steady rumble of traffic over the bridge, the hard, grating wheels of lorries, the painful grind of a tram homeward bound, the jolt of a bus, the smooth wheels of cars, and the silly rattle of a stray taxi. I pretended that these things were meaningless in themselves, and could not drag me away from the river to be part of them, but even as I argued thus I heard the voices of women as they trudged along the pavement, brushing against me as they went, the shoulder of one just touching the back of my coat. And these women, whom I had never seen, seemed by this simple action to enter my life, becoming definite personalities of reality.

Coward-like, I would have turned to them and stretched out my hands, saying as I did so: ‘Perhaps you would stand here a little longer so that I may listen to your voices; nothing more than this.’ Maybe they would have understood. Stupidly, with the dumb knowledge that such a moment was impossible, I longed for them to linger a while, and consider the matter, and then accepting me as one of themselves suggest that I return with them. Gravely, kindly, they would watch my face, and with a quick, shy gesture, as though ashamed of their charity, they would say to me: ‘You can come back with us, you know, it isn’t much of a place. . . .’

I would walk then with them, somewhat apart, conscious of their superiority, and we would arrive at some drab tenement building, where iron-railed balconies stretched from window to window. There would be a canary swinging in a high cage, and a faded odd-patterned screen. These women would busy themselves, familiar with their surroundings, and the drip of a tap or the moving of cups and saucers would seem blessed tokens of friendship to me, humble in a quiet corner, blinking my eyes because of the sudden flare of a gas-jet. I would enter the moods of these people, share their troubles, love their friends, act in some way as a faithful servant if only they should not cast me away from them, leaving me to wander back to the bridge once more.