“Won’t he get back to his wife, poor sweet?”
“Lor’ bless you, no. She lives in London.”
At this stage Archie Schwert, whose humanitarian interests were narrower than Miss Runcible’s, lost interest in the discussion.
“The thing we want to know is, can you let us have beds for the night?”
The landlady looked at him suspiciously.
“Bed or beds?”
“Beds.”
“Might do.” She looked from the car to Miss Runcible’s trousers and back to the car again, weighing them against each other. “Cost you a quid each,” she said at last.
“Can you find room for us all?”
“Well,” she said, “which of you’s with the young lady?”
“I’m afraid I’m all alone,” said Miss Runcible. “Isn’t it too shaming?”
“Never you mind, dearie, luck’ll turn one day. Well, now, how can we all fit in? There’s one room empty. I can sleep with our Sarah, and that leaves a bed for the gentlemen—then if the young lady wouldn’t mind coming in with me and Sarah …”
“If you don’t think it rude, I think I’d sooner have the empty bed,” said Miss Runcible, rather faintly. “You see,” she added, with tact, “I snore so terribly.”
“Bless you, so does our Sarah. We don’t mind … still, if you’d rather …”
“Really, I think I should,” said Miss Runcible.
“Well then, I could put Mr. Titchcock on the floor, couldn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Miles, “just you put Mr. Titchcock on the floor.”
“And if the other gentleman don’t mind going on the landing. … Well, we’ll manage somehow, see if we don’t.”
So they all drank some gin together in the back parlour and they woke Mr. Titchcock up and made him help with the luggage and they gave him some gin, too, and he said it was all the same to him whether he slept on the floor or in bed, and he was very pleased to be of any service to anyone and didn’t mind if he did have another drop just as a nightcap, as they might say; and at last they all went to bed, very tired, but fairly contented, and oh, how they were bitten by bugs all that night.
Adam had secured one of the bedrooms. He awoke early to find rain beating on the window. He looked out and saw a grey sky, some kind of factory and the canal from whose shallow waters rose little islands of scrap-iron and bottles; a derelict perambulator lay partially submerged under the opposite bank. In his room stood a chest of drawers full of horrible fragments of stuff, a washhand stand with a highly coloured basin, an empty jug and an old toothbrush. There was also a rotund female bust covered in shiny red material, and chopped off short, as in primitive martyrdoms, at neck, waist and elbows; a thing known as a dressmaker’s “dummy” (there had been one of these in Adam’s home which they used to call “Jemima”—one day he stabbed “Jemima” with a chisel and scattered stuffing over the nursery floor and was punished. A more enlightened age would have seen a complex in this action and worried accordingly. Anyway he was made to sweep up all the stuffing himself).
Adam was very thirsty, but there was a light green moss in the bottom of the water bottle that repelled him. He got into bed again and found someone’s handkerchief (presumably Mr. Titchcock’s) under the pillow.
He woke again a little later to find Miss Runcible dressed in pyjamas and a fur coat sitting on his bed.
“Darling,” she said, “there’s no looking-glass in my room and no bath anywhere, and I trod on someone cold and soft asleep in the passage, and I’ve been awake all night killing bugs with drops of face lotion, and everything smells, and I feel so low I could die.”
“For heaven’s sake let’s go away,” said Adam.
So they woke Miles and Archie Schwert, and ten minutes later they all stole out of the Royal George carrying their suitcases.
“I wonder, do you think we ought to leave some money?” asked Adam, but the others all said no.
“Well, perhaps we ought to pay for the gin,” said Miss Runcible.
So they left five shillings on the bar and drove away to the Imperial.
It was still very early, but everyone seemed to be awake, running in and out of the lifts carrying crash-helmets and overalls. Miles’ friend, they were told, had been out before dawn, presumably at his garage. Adam met some reporters whom he used to see about the Excess office. They told him that it was anyone’s race, and that the place to see the fun was Headlong Corner, where there had been three deaths the year before, and it was worse this year, because they’d been putting down wet tar. It was nothing more or less than a death trap, the reporters said. Then they went away to interview some more drivers. All teams were confident of victory, they said.
Meanwhile Miss Runcible discovered an empty bathroom and came down half-an-hour later all painted up and wearing a skirt and feeling quite herself again and ready for anything. So they went in to breakfast.
The dining-room was very full indeed. There were Speed Kings of all nationalities, unimposing men mostly with small moustaches and apprehensive eyes; they were reading the forecasts in the morning papers and eating what might (and in some cases did) prove to be their last meal on earth. There were a great number of journalists making the best of an “out-of-town” job; there were a troop of nondescript “fans,” knowledgeable young men with bright jumpers tucked inside their belted trousers, old public-school ties, check tweeds, loose mouths and scarcely discernible Cockney accents; there were R.A.C. officials and A.A. officials, and the representatives of oil firms and tyre manufacturers. There was one disconsolate family who had come to the town for the christening of a niece. (No one had warned them that there was a motor race on; their hotel bill was a shock.)
“Very better-making,” said Miss Runcible with approval as she ate her haddock.
Scraps of highly technical
