would be next: a masked holdup, a smash, floods, a burst tyre, an electric storm with falling trees and meteorites, a diversion, a low-level attack by Communist aircraft, sheep, the driver stung by a hornet? He'd choose the last of these, if consulted. Hawking its gears, the bus crept on, while every few yards troupes of old men waited to make their quivering way aboard.
As the traffic thickened slightly towards the town, the driver added to his hypertrophied caution a psychopathic devotion to the interests of other road-users; the sight of anything between a removal-van and a junior bicycle halved his speed to four miles an hour and sent his hand, Dixon guessed, flapping in a slow-motion St Vitus' dance of beckonings and wavings-on. Learners practised reversing across his path; gossiping knots of loungers parted leisuredly at the touch of his reluctant bonnet; toddlers reeled to retrieve toys from under his just-revolving wheels. Dixon's head switched angrily to and fro in vain search for a clock; the inhabitants of this mental, moral, and physical backwater, devoting as they had done for years their few waking moments to the pursuit of offences against chastity, were too poor, and were also too mean… Dixon, seeing the hulk of the railway station thirty yards off, returned painfully to reality and rattled along the aisle to the stairs. Before the bus had reached the station stop he plunged down, out, across the road, and into the booking-hall. The clock over the ticket-office pointed to one forty-seven. At once the minute hand stepped one pace onward. Dixon flung himself at the barrier. A hard-faced man confronted him.
'Which platform for London, please?'
The man looked at him appraisingly, as if trying to gauge in advance his fitness to hear a more than usually improper joke. 'Bit early, aren't you?'
'Eh?'
'Next to London's eight-seventeen.'
'Eight-seventeen?'
'No restaurant car.'
'What about the one-fifty?'
'No one-fifty. Haven't got it mixed up with the one-forty, by any chance?'
Dixon swallowed. 'I think I must have done,' he said. 'Thanks.'
'Sorry, George.'
Nodding mechanically, Dixon turned away. Bill Atkinson must have made a mistake in taking down Christine's message. But it wasn't like Atkinson to make mistakes of that sort. Perhaps it had been Christine who'd made the mistake. It didn't really matter. He walked slowly to the entrance and stood looking out from the shadows at the little sunlit square. He still had his job. And it wouldn't be very difficult to get in touch with Christine. It was only that he felt it would be too late when he did. But, anyway, he'd met her and talked to her a few times. Thank God for that.
As he watched, wondering what to do next, he caught sight of a car with a damaged wing moving uncertainly round a Post Office van. Something about this car held Dixon's attention. It began to crawl towards him, roaring like a bull-dozer. The roar was cut off by a spine-tingling snort of cogs and the car froze in its tracks. A tallish blonde girl wearing a wine-coloured costume and carrying a mackintosh and a large suitcase got out and began hurrying towards the spot where Dixon stood.
Dixon skipped out of sight behind a pillar, as best he could under the impact of what must surely be a lesion of the diaphragm. How could he, of all people, have ignored the importance of Welch's car-driving habits?
XXV
ANOTHER frenzy of mechanical rage outside told him that Welch was still at the wheel. Good; perhaps he was under orders to return without delay. Dixon had no feelings or thoughts beyond the immediate situation. He heard Christine's steps approaching and tried to press himself back into the pillar. Her feet took a few paces on the boards of the entrance-hall; she came into view four or five feet away, turned her head, and saw him at once. Her face broke into a smile of what seemed to him pure affection. 'You got my message, then,' she said. She looked ridiculously pretty.
'Come here, Christine, quickly.' He drew her into the shelter of his pillar. 'Just a minute.'
She stared about her and then at him. 'But we ought to be running up on to the platform. My train's nearly due.'
'Your train's gone. You'll have to wait for the next. At least the next.'
'That clock says I've got one more minute. I can just…'
'No, it's gone, I tell you. It went at one-forty.'
'It couldn't have done.'
'It could and did. I asked the man.'
'But Mr Welch said it went at one-fifty.'
'Oh, he did, did he? That explains everything. He was wrong about that, you see.'
'Are you sure? Why are we hiding? Are we hiding?'
Ignoring her, his hand unnoticed on her arm, Dixon leant carefully past her. Welch was now broadside-on across the main exit from the square. 'Right, well we'll just give the bloody old fool time to get clear, and then we'll go and have a drink.' He would begin with an octuple whisky. 'You've had lunch, I suppose?'
'Yes, but I could hardly eat a thing.'
'Not like you, that. Well, I haven't had any, so we'll have some together. I know a hotel not far from here. I used to go there with Margaret in the old days.'
They left Christine's case in the luggage-office and walked out into the square. 'A good thing old Welch didn't insist on putting you on the train,' Dixon said.
'Yes… Actually I was the one who insisted.'
'I don't blame you.' Dixon's physical discomfort grew steadily at the thought of Christine's 'news', now nearing revelation. He wanted to bet himself it would be bad so that he might stand a chance of its being good. His head, and an inaccessible part of his back, itched.
'I wanted to get away as quickly as I could from the whole bunch of them. I couldn't bear any of them for another moment. A fresh one arrived last night.'
'A fresh one?'
'Yes. Mitchell or some such name.'
'Oh, I know. You mean Michel.'
'Do I? I picked the first train I could get.'
'What's happened? That you wanted to tell me.' He tried to force his spirits down, to expect nothing but unexpected and very nasty nastiness.
She looked at him, and he again noticed that the whites of her eyes were a very light blue. 'I've finished with Bertrand.' She spoke as if of a household detergent that had proved unsatisfactory.
'Why? For good?'
'Yes. Do you want to hear about it?'
'Come on.'
'You remember me and Carol Goldsmith leaving your lecture in the middle yesterday?'
Dixon understood, and felt breathless. 'I know. She told you something, didn't she? I know what she told you.'
They stopped walking involuntarily. Dixon put out his tongue at an old woman who was staring at them. Christine said: 'You knew about Bertrand and her all the time, didn't you? I knew you did.' She looked as if she were going to laugh.
'Yes. What made her tell you?'
'Why didn't you tell me?'
'I couldn't. It wouldn't have done me any good. What made Carol tell you?'
'She hated him for taking her for granted. I didn't mind what he'd done before he started going about with me, but it was wrong of him to try to keep us both on a string, Carol and me. She said he asked her to come away with him the night we all went to the theatre. He was quite sure she would. She said she began by hating me and
