And once again, why not? Isn’t it queer how we go through life, always thinking that the things we want to do are the things that can’t be done? Why shouldn’t I catch those carp? And yet, as soon as the idea’s mentioned, doesn’t it sound to you like something impossible, something that just couldn’t happen? It seemed so to me, even at that moment. It seemed to me a kind of dope-dream, like the ones you have of sleeping with film stars or winning the heavyweight championship. And yet it wasn’t in the least impossible, it wasn’t even improbable. Fishing can be rented. Whoever owned Binfield House now would probably let the pool if they got enough for it. And Gosh! I’d be glad to pay five pounds for a day’s fishing in that pool. For that matter it was quite likely that the house was still empty and nobody even knew that the pool existed.

I thought of it in the dark place among the trees, waiting for me all those years. And the huge black fish still gliding round it. Jesus! If they were that size thirty years ago, what would they be like now?

THREE

IT WAS June the seventeenth, Friday, the second day of the coarse-fishing season.

I hadn’t had any difficulty in fixing things with the firm. As for Hilda, I’d fitted her up with a story that was all shipshape and watertight. I’d fixed on Birmingham for my alibi, and at the last moment I’d even told her the name of the hotel I was going to stay at, Rowbottom’s Family and Commercial. I happened to know the address because I’d stayed there some years earlier. At the same time I didn’t want her writing to me at Birmingham, which she might do if I was away as long as a week. After thinking it over I took young Saunders, who travels for Glisso Floor Polish, partly into my confidence. He’d happened to mention that he’d be passing through Birmingham on the eighteenth of June, and I got him to promise that he’d stop on his way and post a letter from me to Hilda, addressed from Rowbottom’s. This was to tell her that I might be called away and she’d better not write. Saunders understood, or thought he did. He gave me a wink and said I was wonderful for my age. So that settled Hilda. She hadn’t asked any questions, and even if she turned suspicious later, an alibi like that would take some breaking.

I drove through Westerham. It was a wonderful June morning. A faint breeze blowing, and the elm tops swaying in the sun, little white clouds streaming across the sky like a flock of sheep, and the shadows chasing each other across the fields. Outside Westerham a Walls’ Ice Cream lad, with cheeks like apples, came tearing towards me on his bike, whistling so that it went through your head. It suddenly reminded me of the time when I’d been an errand-boy myself (though in those days we didn’t have free-wheel bikes) and I very nearly stopped him and took one. They’d cut the hay in places, but they hadn’t got it in yet. It lay drying in long shiny rows, and the smell of it drifted across the road and got mixed up with the petrol.