'Could he.'
'But he's gone--it's over--it's all right.'
She picked up a small, overnight grip of faded pink can vas, inscribed with the names of pop groups and punk stars.
'I'm off.'
'When do I see you again?'
'You don't.'
'Eltie!'
'I don't want to see you any more.' (It seemed a long sentence.)
Davies sat down miserably on the side of the double bed in which he and Ellie had slept--half slept the previous night.
'You don't love me at all, do you?'
'No.'
'Have you ever loved me?'
'No.'
'Did you love Matthew?'
'No.'
'Don't tell me you loved Mc Clure? Don't tell me you loved that prick?'
'About the only thing about him I did love.'
'Christ! You shouldn't say things like that.'
'Why ask, then?'
'Have you ever loved anybody?'
'Me mum, yeah.'
'Nobody else?'
'Me dad me real dad, I suppose. Can't remember.'
With a series of upward brushes she applied some black colouration to her eyelashes.
'Where d'you think you're going now?'
'Oxford.'
Davies sighed miserably, stood up, and reached inside his trouser-pocket for his car-keys.
'Come on, then.'
'I'm not going with you.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'I'11 hitch a lift.'
'You can't do that.'
'Course I bloody can. That's all they're lookin' for, most of these lecherous sods. All I gotta do--'
,, Ellie. t,, 'First car, like as not. You'll see.'
In fact, Ellie Smith's prediction was unduly optimistic, since the first car drove past her with little observable sign of interest, no detectable sign of deceleration. The second car did exactly the same. But not the third.
Chapter Twenty-nine
My predestinated lot in life, alas, has amounted to this: a mens not particularly sana in a corpore not particularly sano (VISCOUN MUMBLES; Reflections on My Life)
On the following day, Sunday, September 4, Ted Brooks was sitting up in bed, two pillows behind his back, reading the more salacious offerings in the News of the Wor M. It was exactly 1t:30 ^.m., he knew that, since he had been looking at his wristwatch every minute or so since 11:15.
Now, for some reason, he began to feel slightly less ag-itated as the minute-hand moved slowly up in the climb to-ward the twelve--the 'prick of noon,' as Shakespeare has it. His mind, similarly, was moving slowly; perhaps it had never moved all that quickly anyway, Whatever happened, though, he was going to make the most of his heart attack--his 'mild' heart attack, as they'd assured him in the Coronary Care Unit. Well, he hoped it was mild. He didn't want to die. Course he bloody didn't.
Paradoxically, however, he found himself wishing it wasn't all that mild. A heart attack--whatever its measurement on the Richter Scale--was still a heart attack; and the maxi-mum sympathy and attention should be extracted from such an affliction, so Brenda'd better bloody understand that.
He shouted downstairs for a cup of Bovril. But before the beverage could arrive, he heard the double-burred ring of the telephone: an unusual occurrence in the Brookses' household at any time; and virtually unprecedented on a Sunday.
He got out of bed, and stood listening beside the bed-room door as Brenda answered the call in the narrow entrance-hall at the bottom of the stairs.
