I'll Never Be Young Again Read Online Free Page A

as others have gone on, just that and no more. You’ll love and live, and the rest of it. But because of stupidity, or carelessness, or a belief in the lasting glamour of things, you’ll throw away what you wanted to throw away tonight. I guess you won’t notice any difference.You won’t know what you’re losing, and you won’t care.’
    He laughed softly, and laying his hand on my shoulder I knew that he understood me better than I did myself. And there was a shadow across his eyes which made me feel as if he were sorry about something.
    ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘you’ll be fine, and stronger than before. But if you listen you’ll hear the echo of a lost thing away in the air, like a bird with a song you can’t name, high up above you where you can’t reach.
    ‘“I’ll never be young again,” it says,“I’ll never be young again.”’
    Still he had not answered my question. And I did not want to be treated as a child. Nor did I understand. I spoke roughly, not choosing my words.
    ‘Oh! damn your sermons, let’s clear out of this place, it doesn’t matter where.’
    Away down the Pool I heard the siren of a ship, and the echoing siren of a tug.
    Lights winked in the darkness, and the still rotten smell of the river floated up to me, bringing a memory of the barge that had gone with the tide and the setting of the sun.
    Jake lifted his head, and he seemed to be listening to the siren and the hundred-odd sounds of the Pool. It may be there was a distant whistle and the scraping of feet on a deck, the rattle of a chain, the hoarse shout of a pilot. None of this could we see, only the flashes of light and the dim outline of moving things upon the water. I fell to wondering about the sea that lay beyond this river, and how the sight of it would meet our eyes at dawn like a strange shock of beauty after the mud reaches and the green plains. Somewhere there would be tall cliffs, white against the morning, and loose chalk and stone crumbling to a beach. I fancied there would be breakers upon the shore, a thin line of foam and a soft wind coming from the land. Little houses would stand on these cliffs, snugly asleep, the windows closed to the air. They would not matter to us as we passed, for we would have done with them. We would be away, and long after men would come from those houses and make for the fields, staring at the warm sky, calling to a dog over their shoulder, while the women bent low over their tubs, wringing their hands in the blue soapy water, harkening to the kitchen clock and aware of the good dinner smell. Staring towards the sea, shielding their eyes from the sun with their hand upraised, perhaps they would see a grey whisper of spent smoke upon the horizon to tell them we had passed. Or the square corner of a sail dipping below the line, the tip of a masthead smudged against the sky.
    Then I sighed, for these things had become real to me in a moment, and here we were only upon the bridge, and we must turn to the streets, and the noise of the traffic, and think of the necessity of eating, stand shoulder to shoulder with people on pleasure bent, mounting like beetles from the hot Underground, our eyes blinking at the glaring lights of a crowded cinema, and so to a drab lodging-house with the narrow beds and the grey cotton sheets.
    So once more I turned to Jake and repeated: ‘What shall we do?’ scarce caring for his reply, aware that despondency would come to me in any case. And his answer was one that showed me he had an intuition of my every mood, that he joined in with them as though he were part of myself, that even my thoughts were not hidden from him, that we were bound henceforth as comrades and I loved him and he understood.
    ‘We’ll get away in a ship together, you and I,’ he said.

3
    A fter I had eaten I felt strong, with no shade of weariness clinging to me. We sat at a little table in a dark corner, and the shabby waiter had flicked the last crumb off the