‘It’s an emergency,’ Rachaela repeated.

‘All right. You’d better come in.’

Rachaela moved through. The hallway smelled beery and unclean.

‘I need the number of a hire car,’ said Rachaela.

‘Wants the phone and wants a bloody number an’ all.’

‘I’m sure you have some numbers.’

‘Maybe, in the bar. I’ll have to go through. Wait there.’

The man went off in his brown dressing-gown.

From above, a woman called plaintively, ‘What is it, Harry?’

Rachaela stood in the dark and threadbare hall. She gazed at the telephone. She felt drunk. Perhaps it was the smell.

The man came back and thrust a card at her.

‘That’ll do. I’ll ask you two pounds for the call. Don’t be more than five minutes.’

Rachaela took the card, opened her bag, and put down the money on the smeary table. The man scooped them up at once.

‘Harry!’ called the woman.

‘What the hell is it?’

‘What’s happening, Harry?’

‘Some girl here wants the phone,’ he shouted. ‘Get up and make us some tea. You women,’ he said to Rachaela in disgust.

She picked up the telephone receiver, disbelievingly, and dialled the number of the card. Quickies.

It rang. It rang and rang.

Twenty-four-hour service said the card. Perhaps they had gone to make tea also, or to the lavatory.

‘Quickies Cars.’

Rachaela caught her breath.

‘I need a car to get to the town station.’

‘And where from?’

Where from. Rachaela said, ‘Just a moment.’ She said to the man, ‘What’s the name of this place?’

‘What, here?’

‘Yes, the village.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Bidgely,’ he said. She thought he said.

‘Bidgely,’ she enunciated cautiously into the phone.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the man on the line.

‘Bidgely. Can you spell it for me?’ she asked the pub owner.

He spelled the word. It was ‘P-i-t-c-h-l-e-y’.

‘Don’t think I know that one,’ said the car-hire man.

Rachaela said firmly to the impatient pub man, ‘Would you be very kind and give him directions?’

‘Well you’ve got a bleeding cheek I must say. Getting me out of bed at this hour, wanting me to give directions.’

Rachaela handed him the phone.

To her relief he took it and did as he was bid. The advice sounded incomprehensible to her but when he handed her the phone receiver back, the car man said, ‘OK, I’ve got that. Be about an hour. That’s the soonest I can make it.’

‘All right. Thank you.’

‘What number is the pick up?’

‘By The Armitage public house.’

‘Right-oh.’

Quickies clicked into the void.

‘There you are then,’ said the man.

His woman was coming down the stairs in a blue candle wick dressing-gown and her hair in curlers.

They watched Rachaela off the premises and slammed and locked the door.