He helped her to alight, lifted the luggage from the rack, and got out after her, the luggage in either hand, and set it down on the platform. Raising his voice above the amplified voice, and ignoring its information, he shouted, ‘Porter! Which platform for the London train?’

‘Due in here, sir, soon as this one goes out … Thank you, sir. I’ll be back when the London train comes in.’

‘Well, that’s very pleasant and easy,’ he said, looking down on her affably. From the moment they were on the platform his whole manner had changed. It seemed almost as though—but it could not be!—he were feeling an immense relief at the prospect of getting rid of her.

‘Thank you for getting me that porter. I hate scrambling with my bits and pieces.’

‘You won’t need to. I shall see to all that.’

‘But the London train comes in after yours has gone on. He said so.’

‘Yes. But I’m coming to London.’

‘That you’re not!’ she exclaimed, the motherliness and vulgarity of the class she was born into coming suddenly to the surface of her manner. Squaring her shoulders, she looked shorter and almost stout.44

‘Yes, I am,’ he insisted.

‘Show me your ticket, then.’

‘The ticket is out of date. I’ve changed my mind, and I am coming with you.’

‘I never heard such nonsense. And suppose I don’t want you?’

‘I’ll chance that.’

‘A boy of your age—I heard your father seeing you off, to your Eton or Harrow or whichever it is.’

‘As it happens, he is not my father.’

‘No, no! Your grandson, of course.’

‘And I am coming with you.’

‘You’re doing no such thing.’

Though she knew that every contradiction put them on more of an equality and strengthened his claim to insist, she was too flustered to use her advantage of sophistication. They stood on the platform, wrangling like man and wife.

His train was getting up steam. All along it, doors were shutting, and now only the door from which they had alighted still hung open. The guard slammed it to.

‘Guard! Guard! Don’t do that! My son hasn’t got in yet. He can’t miss the train, he’s got to go back to his school.’

To obliterate the look of triumph that she knew she must be wearing in his sight, she threw her arms about him. ‘Goodbye, my darling!’

Awkward as a schoolboy, he let himself be embraced, he let himself be released, he let himself be jostled into the moving train. His face, as he turned it away, wore the same 45expression of frozen abhorrence that it had worn when she saw it first.

Horrified at the deed, she asked herself what else she could have done. If he had come with her, what sort of life could he have had? If after a night he had returned, it would have been to all the rows, inquiries and indecencies that the old keep up their sleeves to abase the young with. As it was, he would lick his wound and forget her. Sooner than she would forget him, she told herself, trying to adjust the weight that lay on her heart. The London train was signalled, the porter had reappeared and was looking invidiously at her suitcases—or, rather, at one of them. Large and shabby, it stood out among the rest. It was Evan’s; he had set it down among hers, and it had been overlooked.