They’d found the box of pipes. Of course there weren’t any with amber mouthpieces among them.

“I don’t know as we got any amber ones jest at present, sir. Not amber. We gossome nice vulcanite ones.”

“I wanted an amber one,” I said.

“We gossome nice pipes ‘ere.” She held one out. “That’s a nice pipe, now. ‘Alf a crown, that one is.”

I took it. Our fingers just touched. No kick, no reaction. The body doesn’t remember. And I suppose you think I bought the pipe, just for old sake’s sake, to put half a crown in Elsie’s pocket. But not a bit of it. I didn’t want the thing. I don’t smoke a pipe, I’d merely been making a pretext to come into the shop. I turned it over in my fingers and then put it down on the counter.

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll leave it,” I said. “Give me a small Players’.”

Had to buy something, after all that fuss. George the second, or maybe he was the third or fourth, routed out a packet of Players’, still munching away beneath his moustache. I could see he was sulky because I’d dragged him away from his tea for nothing. But it seemed too damn silly to waste half a crown. I cleared out, and that was the last I ever saw of Elsie.

I went back to the George and had dinner. Afterwards I went out with some vague idea of going to the pictures, if they were open, but instead I landed up in one of the big noisy pubs in the new part of the town. There I ran into a couple of chaps from Staffordshire who were travelling in hardware, and we got talking about the state of trade, and playing darts and drinking Guinness. By closing time they were both so boozed that I had to take them home in a taxi, and I was a bit under the weather myself, and the next morning I woke up with a worse head than ever.

FIVE

BUT I HAD to see the pool at Binfield House.

I felt really bad that morning. The fact was that ever since I struck Lower Binfield I’d been drinking almost continuously from every opening time to every closing time. The reason, though it hadn’t occurred to me till this minute, was that really there’d been nothing else to do. That was all my trip had amounted to so far-three days on the booze.