The street he walked stood in anachronistic silence. He was going home. Near in space, it still wore the distant expression, presented the vague purpose of familiar places that have been jerked out of their setting by an emotional upheaval. Even if here stood the pub on the corner with one queasy drunk swaying at the kerb, even if your legs had turned this corner many times, the eyes rested on a series of identical queasy drunks, it was unconvincing, the present version with the past, something that your mind could only take for granted. Detail was soluble in rain. He might have been merged with the drunk, fumbling now in his pocket for the bus fare or else the price of another drink, wondering feebly at the back of those yellow eyeballs if he was really going to vomit, or fall, just fall, into a receptive gutter.

Elyot stood on the kerb. He had time, all time in a dissolved world to watch many deliberating drunks. But absorbed, he was still no closer to the grease-spotted macintosh and sagging hat. The night dissolved without bringing you closer. Either to Eden, in spite of a chance moment of illumination, or to the excess humanity spewed out of pub doors. It was a remoteness once alarming, then inevitably accepted. He closed himself to sentimental regret, and felt with satisfaction the drizzle on his face, because with it a sense of still being there, the bones and flesh, heading homeward to bricks and mortar, and bread and cheese in the kitchen.

The drunk had ventured out from the corner, following the line of some imaginary tightrope. He moaned a little, and looked at Elyot, conscious perhaps in the way of the drunk or mad, that some transient thought was resting on him. But there was no contact. He meandered into the street, not so much man as the clown upon his tightrope, a flapping of empty sleeve and hollow leg. And then just at this moment, the moment before, Elyot realized it would happen, he must move from this fixed spot, at once, quickly, associate himself with the anonymous figure, that it was for this purpose they had lingered close to each other on the pavement. Because he could see it, the bus, ballooning down by lamplight, very red and ominous. The whole side of the street came careening over into his close vicinity. I must do this, his mind shouted, tossed out into the screaming of the bus. The lights spun. The whole neighbourhood moved. Except his feet. He was anchored where he stood. He was the audience to a piece of distant pantomime.

They put the macintosh on the pavement. The legs protruded stupidly, the turned-up soles, round them a sudden flowering of pale, uneasy faces. First and foremost this was an accident, an additional throb to be felt over the fish and chips or the last glass of stout.

What do you know! the driver said.

He was shaken. Down on the pavement he began to bluster. Because he was afraid.