The following day was so extremely wet that he could not in conscience pack Loveday out to enjoy herself. He told her not to bother him, and she obeyed. The gale whirled him into the dusk before he remembered to feel hungry. During the night the storm blew itself out.

‘Loveday, have you ever been to Rochester?’

‘Yes, Mr Bateman. I’ve been there several times, to a dentist.’

‘Ah! Well, have you ever been across the Thames on the Gravesend Ferry? No? Now that’s a thing everyone should do. This would be an excellent day for it. You’d better start at once.’

Smoke, shipping, the pale estuary horizons: the mind’s eye prospect delighted him, he would have gone himself if he had not had better fish to fry. ‘To-morrow,’ he added, ‘you might go to Canterbury. I know you’ve been there before, but one cannot go too often to Canterbury.’

The weather continued implacably fine, and after a couple of days it became necessary to send Loveday for a breath of sea air at Ramsgate. He was getting to a stage when the combination of a high barometer and Loveday fidgeting about on tiptoe might be fatal. When he was over this precarious bridge, where the inexperience of the original narrative had to be underpinned by knowledge of real life and yet preserve its air of fortuitous infallibility, things would be easier. Loveday could stay at home and the woman could come to scrub.

‘I think you had better spend a night at Ramsgate, while you are about it.’129

She put on her look of being a bear that can dance no longer, and said that if it were the same to him, she would much prefer not to. He had to give way. But the thought of her return that evening irked him. It shortened the day. Two separate interruptors, a gipsy selling clothes-pegs, and a man coming to read the electricity meter, shortened the day still further. When he had eaten the tray luncheon that Loveday had left for him, he realized that for the moment, only for the moment, he had written himself to a standstill. He would have coffee, and then he would go for a walk.

The coffee-pot was on the stove, it only needed heating. This time, instead of leaving it to boil, boil over, and boil away, he remained in the kitchen. One of Loveday’s lending library books was on the window-sill. Without looking at the title, he opened it at random and read on till the coffee boiled.

The recollection of what he had read stayed pleasantly with him as he walked. The book had shadows in it: though what Norman Leigh (he had noticed the name as he put the book down: it was a name unknown to him) meant by calling such an unbedizened piece of work Reverse the Sun was another matter. Perhaps it was something astrophysical. Titles change like women’s hats. He must find a title for his old story made new, for The Bride of Smithfield smacked of the twenties and wouldn’t do. His mind went back to his own affair. He hit on a possible answer to a difficulty which had hampered him all that morning, and he turned home.