“I’ll have to take the car round to the garage,” I said.

“Oh, no, George! You don’t get out of it like that. You’ll stay here and listen to what I’ve got to say, please.”

“But, damn it! I’ve got to switch the lights on, haven’t I? It’s past lighting-up time. You don’t want us to get fined?”

At that she let me go, and I went out and switched the car lights on, but when I came back she was still standing there like a figure of doom, with the two letters, mine and the solicitor’s, on the table in front of her. I’d got a little of my nerve back, and I had another try:

“Listen, Hilda. You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick about this business. I can explain the whole thing.”

“I’m sure you could explain anything, George. The question is whether I’d believe you.”

“But you’re just jumping to conclusions! What made you write to these hotel people, anyway?”

“It was Mrs. Wheeler’s idea. And a very good idea too, as it turned out.”

“Oh, Mrs. Wheeler, was it? So you don’t mind letting that blasted woman into our private affairs?”

“She didn’t need any letting in. It was she who warned me what you were up to this week. Something seemed to tell her, she said. And she was right, you see. She knows all about you, George. She used to have a husband just like you.”

“But, Hilda-”

I looked at her. Her face had gone kind of white under the surface, the way it does when she thinks of me with another woman. A woman. If only it had been true!

And Gosh! what I could see ahead of me! You know what it’s like. The weeks on end of ghastly nagging and sulking, and the catty remarks after you think peace has been signed, and the meals always late, and the kids wanting to know what it’s all about. But what really got me down was the kind of mental squalor, the kind of mental atmosphere in which the real reason why I’d gone to Lower Binfield wouldn’t even be conceivable. That was what chiefly struck me at the moment. If I spent a week explaining to Hilda why I’d been to Lower Binfield, she’d never understand. And who would understand, here in Ellesmere Road? Gosh! did I even understand myself? The whole thing seemed to be fading out of my mind. Why had I gone to Lower Binfield? Had I gone there? In this atmosphere it just seemed meaningless. Nothing’s real in Ellesmere Road except gas-bills, school-fees, boiled cabbage and the office on Monday.

One more try:

“But look here, Hilda! I know what you think. But you’re absolutely wrong. I swear to you you’re wrong.”

“Oh, no, George. If I was wrong why did you have to tell all those lies?”

No getting away from that, of course.

I took a pace or two up and down. The smell of old mackintoshes was very strong. Why had I run away like that? Why had I bothered about the future and the past; seeing that the future and the past don’t matter? Whatever motives I might have had, I could hardly remember them now. The old life in Lower Binfield, the war and the after-war, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, machine-guns, food-queues, rubber truncheons—it was fading out, all fading out. Nothing remained except a vulgar low-down row in a smell of old mackintoshes.