I closed my eyes so that I might not see his face. Normally it was a quite unremarkable middle-aged face; but now it seemed to have puckered and withered with his own bitterness. It was not only the mouth which seemed to have tasted something sour, but the eyes and forehead and even the long wispy hair.

He sat down and I opened my eyes again. I had agreed with all that he had said, as anyone not actually a certifiable lunatic was bound to; but he had not influenced events in the slightest. He might as well have spent his time in singing comic songs; the traffic lights would be installed whenever someone at the Min­istry of Transport got round to the Warley U.D.C. file or, which seemed more likely, drew the name blindfold from a hat.

I glanced up at Brown, who as Chairman of the Council sat above us on the dais at the far end of the room. The dais was rather too high and rather too far away from the long mahogany table round which the rest of the Council sat; generally one had the impression that he considered himself not the first among equals but our absolute master. This evening it was as if he were unpleasantly surprised to find himself in a position of such prom­inence; he read out the announcements in a lifeless mumble far removed from his usual loud assertiveness, and from time to time twitched his shoulders irritably under the weight of his golden chain of office.

“Three, Sub-Section One,” the Town Clerk said. “Three, Sub-Section Two. Four. Five. Six. Seven . . .”

Brown was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, his mouth half-open, I turned another page of the agenda; I noticed that Brown was not even looking at his. The Clerk whispered some­thing to him; Brown shook his head impatiently and took a sip from the glass of water beside him.

The Clerk continued his way through the agenda; the pause after each item was now almost non-existent. Usually Brown, by a scowl, an upraised finger, or a request for repetition of a num­ber, would make the Clerk go a little more slowly. Apart from the con­sideration of conducting Council business in a seemly manner, he didn’t like Ray Kempett very much; he felt with some justification that Kempett would, if he were per­mitted, run the whole show. In his own estimation he was, I re­flected, doing that now; as he stood there, tall and spruce and fresh-faced, he seemed palpably to radiate energy and competence. We wouldn’t keep him much longer in Warley; at thirty-three a small urban district council would only represent the beginning of his career.