happened to him. And there was her performance that evening at the Boat Club dance.
“Oh, I don’t mean it’s actually my staple diet,” she said quickly. “I just meant it’s what I live on, it’s what pays the bills, you know. I ought to have told you, I’m Kitty Norris. If that means anything? No good reason why it should,” she hurried on reassuringly. “I’m just Norris’s Beers, that’s all I meant.” She said it in a resigned voice, as though she was explaining away some odd but not tragic native deformity to which she had long become accustomed, but which might disconcert a stranger.
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Dominic, at once relieved and mortified. What must she think of him for almost taking her literally? And he ought to have known. Katherine Norris the beer heiress was in and out of the local news headlines regularly, he must surely have seen her photograph occasionally. It couldn’t have done her justice, though, or he wouldn’t have failed to recognise her. Her name was prominent on about a third of the pub signs in the county, all those, in fact, which weren’t the monopoly of Armiger’s Ales. And hadn’t she been going to marry old Armiger’s son at one time? Dominic groped in his memory, but local society engagements and weddings did not figure among the events he was in the habit of filing, and he couldn’t remember what was supposed to have happened to break off the merger. It was enough to be grateful for the fact, no need to account for it. “I should have realised,” he said. “My name’s Dominic Felse.”
“Cheers, Dominic!” She drank to him in the acrid, sugary tea. “Did you know this used to be a bottle of stout once? I mean they used to give the victims stout to restore them afterwards. Old man Shelley told me so. I’m being done, Dominic, that’s what.”
“Norris’s stout?” asked Dominic, venturing timidly on a joke. It had a generous success; she threw back her head and laughed.
“Too true! I’m being done two ways,” she said indignantly as she swung her feet to the floor and shook down her sleeve over the already slipping bandage.
It was nearly at an end, he thought as he followed her out.
The transport had arrived and was disgorging its load of volunteers on the forecourt; the evening had closed in as it does in late September, with swiftly falling darkness and sudden clear cold. She would get into the Karmann- Ghia and wave her hand at him warmly but thoughtlessly, and drive away, and he would walk alone to the bus stop and go home. And who knew if he would ever see her again?
“Where can I take you?” she said cheerfully, sliding across from the driving-seat to open the other door.
He hesitated for a moment, worrying whether he ought to accept, whether he wasn’t being a nuisance to her, and longing to accept even if he was. “Thanks awfully,” he said with a gulp, “but I’m only going to the bus station, it’s just a step.”
“Straight?” said Kitty, poker-faced. “That where you spend your nights?”
“I mean I’ve only got to catch a bus from there.”
“Come on, get in,” said Kitty, “and tell me where you live, or I shall think you don’t like my car. Ever driven in one of these?”
He was inside, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, their sleeves brushing; the plastic hide upholstery might have been floating golden clouds under him, clouds of glory. The girl was bliss enough, the car was almost too much for him. Kitty started the engine and began to back towards the shrubberies to turn, for the transport had cramped her style a little. The bushes made a smoky dimness behind her, stirring against the gathering darkness. She switched on her reversing light to make sure how much room she had, and justified all Dominic’s heady pride and delight in her by bringing the car round in one, slithering expertly past the tail of the transport at an impetuous speed, and shooting the gateway like a racing ace. They passed everything along Howard Road, and slowed at the traffic lights.
“You still haven’t told me where I’m to take you,” said Kitty.
There was nothing left for him to do but capitulate and tell her where he lived, which he did in a daze of delight.
“Comerford, that’s hardly far enough to get going properly. Let’s go the long way round.” She signalled her intention of turning right, and positioned herself beautifully to let the following car pass her on the near side. The driver leaned out and shouted something as he passed, gesticulating towards the rear wheels of the Karmann-Ghia. Dominic, who hadn’t understood, bristled on Kitty’s behalf, but Kitty, who had, swore and grinned and waved a hand in hasty acknowledgment.
“Damn!” she said, switching off her reversing light. “I’m always doing that. Next time I’m going to get a self- cancelling one. Don’t you tell your father on me, will you? I do try to remember. It isn’t even that I’ve got such a bad memory, really, it’s just certain things about a car that trip me up every time. That damned reversing light, and then the petrol. I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I’ve run out of petrol inside a year.”
“You haven’t got a petrol gauge, have you?” he asked, searching the dashboard for it in vain.
“No, it’s a reserve tank. I thought it would be better, because when you have to switch over you know you’ve got exactly a gallon, and that’s fair warning.”
“And is it better?” asked Dominic curiously.
“Yes and no. It works on long journeys, because then I don’t know how far it will be between filling stations, so I make a point of stopping at the very first one after the switchover, and filling up. But when I’m just driving round town, shopping or something, I kick her over and think, oh, I’ve still got a gallon, I needn’t worry, plenty of time, pumps all round me. And then I clean forget about it, and run dry in the middle of the High Street, or halfway up the lane to the golf links. I never learn,” said Kitty ruefully. “But when I had a petrol gauge on the old car I never remembered to look at it in time, so what’s the use? It’s just me. Dizzy, that’s what.”
“You drive awfully well,” said Dominic, reaching for the nearest handful of comfort he could offer her. That self-derisive note in her voice, at once comic and sad, had already begun to fit itself into a hitherto undiscovered place in his heart like a key into a secret door.
“No, do you mean that? Honestly?”
“Yes, of course. You must know you drive well.”
“Ah!” said Kitty. “I still like to hear it said. Like the car, too?”
It was one subject at least on which he could be eloquent, doubly so because it was Kitty’s car. They talked knowledgeably about sports models all the way to Comerford, and when she pulled up at his own door in the village
