I finished my second cup of coffee and looked at my watch. “I’ll have to go,” I said.

She corked the thermos.

“Joe, this is your home. You can stay the night if you want. Or why don’t you rest for a while?”

“I can’t rest now.” I picked up the thermos flask. “I’ll write you.”

“Phone me. Phone me as soon as you’ve reached London. Promise.”

“All right.”

She started to cry. “Take care, Joe. Oh, do take care!”

I looked at her in surprise; I had not felt so close to her since we were first married. But I made no move to comfort her.

23

23

“I’m going to collect the car today,” Norah said.

I poured myself a second cup of tea, reflecting that the com­bination of London water and the cheapest brand of Ceylon didn’t make a very enlivening brew, even had she been able to bring herself to put more than two teaspoonsful into the pot.

“That’s very exciting,” I said. “Have you made your final choice?”

“I told you,” she said impatiently.

“I remember,” I said. “A Morris Minor.”

“You should,” she said. “There’s one standing outside at this very moment. And has been for a fortnight.”

“All right, darling. I’ll arrange for it to be returned.”

“Just the same, you should take it back yourself. You’ll have to see her again sometime, if only to arrange for the divorce.”

“The lawyers will arrange that. I don’t want to see her again, and that’s final.”

“You really have written her off, haven’t you?”

“She’s dead as far as I’m concerned. Dead and buried.”

“What will you do if she asks for the car back?”

“Never mind the damned thing,” I said harshly. “I’ve told you to leave it to me—” I swallowed and continued in a calmer tone. “I’m sorry, Norah. Honestly, Susan won’t give a damn what happens to the car. Besides, she’ll use my car. Or rather the firm’s car. She’s on the payroll of Brown’s, you know.”

“Clever as well as pretty. And doesn’t care about a trifling little thing like an almost new Morris Minor.”

I looked at the black ring on the kitchen table. All the fur­niture and fittings in the flat seemed to bear similar signs of hard usage and carelessness: the top of the little gas refrigerator was scratched and the door to the ice-compartment broken, the chain of the bath-plug was missing, the W.C. functioned but only at the second attempt, every door knob had at least four inches of play; none of the many people who had lived there had ever cared enough about the place either to make the necessary minor repairs or not to do the damage in the first instance.