While he was taking out his money, the street door opened and four or five men came in. They all gathered at the bar and started looking at her.
'Thank you,' said Churchill, not paying yet. 'Can I take you home after you finish here?'
The new arrivals grinned and nudged one another.
'Well, I've got a car coming for me.'
'What sort of car?'
'Well, it's a sort of taxi really, I suppose.'
'You could cancel it, then.'
'Yes, I suppose I could.'
'Right.' He handed over the money. 'Thank you.'
'Thank you, sir. Two and nine, one pound… Yes, sir?'
'You've got a moment to spare to get me something now, have you, love?' said the man she had addressed, grinning no longer. 'Or would you rather carry on chatting?'
'I beg your pardon, sir, I'll get whatever you ask for immediately, of course.'
'Oh. Well, uh, two gins and tonic and a pint of best bitter, one light ale, make those large gins…'
After staring at the speaker for some seconds, Churchill withdrew, a drink in each hand. When he came back for the other two drinks he told her he had to leave shortly but would be back later. Until he did leave she kept glancing over to the corner where he sat with his three companions, a pale man with a mustache, a man who looked like an Indian, an older man wearing a clerical collar. They talked animatedly now and then but kept falling silent. She missed their departure.
By closing-time Catharine was tired, but not too tired to be pleased with herself for not once having given wrong change. Through the open doorway she caught sight of Churchill waiting on the pavement. The unspoken questions she had thought she would never again put to herself about anybody formed in her mind. Is it now? Is it you?
When she came out he took her arm and walked her along to a small military car with a canvas roof but open sides.
'This was the best I could do at short notice,' he said. 'I'll get hold of something more suitable next time. Which way?'
She told him. There were cars backing and turning in the street ahead with a mixture of lights and shadows, and they had reached the last few houses of the village when he said,
'I've thought of you every day since I saw you.'
'I've thought of you too.' She knew now that she had, though until this evening she had not caught herself doing so.
'You looked frightened that first time. Were you?'
'Yes.' She explained about the cat and the bird.
'But why should that have frightened you?'
'It was something I didn't understand but looked as if it was going to turn violent and horrible, and those two things together tend to frighten me.'
'What, violent and horrible?'
'Well, more violent-and-horrible and I-don't-understand-it, really.'
'Have lots of things like that happened to you?'
'There were quite a few at one stage.' Catharine paused. 'Just before I went into the asylum. About six months ago.'
'Were they to do with Mr. Casement, the frightening things six months ago?'
'Yes. I'll tell you about them another time, but I will tell you.'
'I hated you being in that place.'
'So did I, but it was necessary, I suppose. Anyway, it must have done me some good, because here I am going about my own business like everybody else, not mad any more.'
'You'd probably have got better on your own.'
'Maybe. I doubt it, though. I wasn't in a good way at all. I couldn't carry on any more. I used to sit in my chair all the time because I was afraid I couldn't find my way back to it if I got up. It was like having something wrong with your eyes.'
She looked at the small farmhouse they were about to pass. It was solid, like a building brick, pegged down immovably into the ground, staying exactly the same real size as they approached it, drew level and left it behind. Since they were moving, the fence that ran alongside the house could not do otherwise than seem to swing towards them and away again. On either side of them now were acres of uncultivated land, rising to low wooded hills that swept round in a semicircle ahead. If she could see them, these would appear small, because they were quite distant. Everything was as it should be, and so the loneliness round about did not matter.
'But it's all right now,' she went on. 'Which is much more interesting. I used to think that being mad might be rather fun. Inconvenient, of course, and awful, but quite exciting, with visions and things, and thinking the Russians were after you, and doing marvelous paintings. But it isn't at all really, not my sort anyway. Nothing ever happens. And the other people are such bores. Those first… weeks I suppose they were, it was like being on
