February passed; Charles started innumerable engines, stamped on pedals, gripped wheels, stared through windscreens, wore out pairs of gloves. One day, muffled up in furs and goggles, he took the road perched above the gigantic chassis of a twelve-wheeler; the next, elegantly flicking cigarette ash through the window, he floated in an expensive limousine. The arterial roads were usually quick to be cleared of snow, and on the whole the weather favoured his novitiate; his solitary mishap—when a van he was driving skidded helplessly, revolved three times, and ran back­wards up a bank of earth—served, if anything, to reassure him by the speed at which his ruffled nerves recovered. At least, thank Heaven, he was on top of the job; circumstances had forced him to master one more skill, and he acknowledged, even in his aching emptiness, the tonic effect of that mastery.

It was queer to look out of the carriage window and still be able to see distances and colours at seven o’clock at night; it was well into March, but the longer evenings still seemed a novelty. Charles waited impatiently for the train to start: after a long and tedious journey from Southampton, they had almost reached Stotwell, but evidently the signals were against them, and they had halted outside the station. Well, he had only himself to blame; he could have caught an express, but had discovered that if he travelled by a slower train, he could change trains at Stotwell, and break his journey for long enough to visit the Oak Lounge. Pitiless, humilia­ting obsession! The train waited and waited. Fretting, he snatched at the leather strap, dropped the window with a crash, and thrust his head out. He was staring angrily up the line, and was on the point of wrenching the door open and leaping out on to the metals, though it would have meant a walk of two or three miles to the town centre, when a rich, husky voice from inside the compart­ment summoned him back.

‘Have a heart, partner! I’m refrigerated to the marrow as it is!’

Charles brought his head and shoulders back inside and looked round. So intensely preoccupied with his gnawing emotions, he had not even looked at the compartment’s only other occupant; yet the man was not easy to overlook. Huge and squarely built, with the superfluous flesh that middle-age brings to the powerful physique. A broad face, broadly grinning. Loud, cheerful clothes, worn loudly and cheerfully.

‘Sorry,’ said Charles, drawing up the window. ‘It is a bit chilly, isn’t it?’

‘Very nicely understated, partner,’ came the reply. ‘Let’s light a bonfire, shall we?’ He produced a huge silver case containing what looked at first sight like small, cheap cigars. Charles accepted one and, examining it in the fading light, discovered it to be a cheroot. Obviously! No other kind of smoke would fit in so well with the fat man’s raffish good humour.