"You dirty bastard," his friend said, and tried to kick me in the groin. More by good luck than good management I turned sideways; but not properly as the PT Sergeant had taught me; his foot landed home on my thigh and I lost my balance and went down with him on top of me. We rolled about on the pavement like quarrelling children; I was trying to keep him off and he, I think, had no idea in his head that wasn't based upon making me suffer as much as his friend (whom I could still hear choking with agony) had been made to suffer by me. He got both hands around my throat and began to squeeze; a black and red stream of pain spread like lava behind my eyes. My hands had lost their strength and I couldn't move my legs and I could taste blood from my cut cheek and smell his hair oil and the laundered stiffness of his shirt and orange and fish and dog from the gutter; the lampposts shot up suddenly to a hundred times their height like bean flowers in educational films, taking the buildings with them in elongated smudges of yellow light; and then I remembered another of the PT Sergeant's maxims, and I spat in his face. He recoiled instinctively, his hold relaxing for a second; then I remembered a lot more things and within thirty seconds he was in an untidy heap on the pavement and I was running as fast as I could down the street.
My luck was in that night; I didn't see one policeman, and I heard no pursuing footsteps. After I'd been running for about ten minutes I came to the main road and caught a tram to the city centre. My hands and face were bleeding when I mounted it, and I saw from my reflection in the lighted window that my suit had big splotches of dirt and blood on the jacket, and that not one button on my fly was fastened. Fortunately there were a lot of other drunks on board, so I was not as conspicuous as I might have been. I was squeezed up against a woman who seemed the only sober person on the tram, white-haired, with an old-fashioned thick wedding ring, who kept looking at me with a disgusted expression. The words of a Salvation Army hymn erupted to the surface of my mind and, without knowing it, I started to sing under my breath - The old rugged cross the old rugged cross I will CLING to the old rugged cross - The disgust on her face deepened to contempt. She looked so clean and motherly, her blue boxcloth coat showing a vee of crisply starched white blouse, that I found tears coming to my eyes. I was grateful to her for noticing me, for caring enough to be disgusted.
The lights and the noise and the cars and the buses and the trains and the people in the centre of the city were too much for me. I was nearly run over twice, and I was just as frightened of the people as I was of the traffic. It seemed to me as if they too were made of metal and rubber, as if they too were capable of mangling me in a second and speeding away, not knowing and not caring that they'd killed me.
The Warley bus station was away from the city centre. I couldn't remember the way, and I couldn't remember the time of the last bus. I lit a cigarette which tasted of Mavis's powder and stood, or rather swayed, outside a milk bar near the railway station. I wondered if the police had picked up the two yobs; I'd probably hurt them badly. I thought of the first one's hands, red and scarred, with black ridged nails, clutching his throat, and the limp body of the other with his nice clean collar and new rayon tie spoiled, and I felt a deep shame, as if I'd hit a child.
I walked around until I found a taxi rank. It took a great deal of finding; having visited Leddersford a few times, I kept a mental street map of the place, which normally I could unfold in a second. That night it had been turned upside down and all the streets had changed their names; I went up one street and found myself in Birmingham Road again, and twice I repassed the milk bar from where I'd set off. When I saw the row of taxis at the other side of the road, I paused for a second to see if it was safe to cross.
Then I found myself falling. There was a kind of exhilaration about it; I imagined a mattress below me to break my fall, to bounce away from, higher and higher into the sky.... There was only the pavement, the cold stone that I wanted to lie upon, to kiss, to sleep with my face against. I struggled up to my feet when I heard a car stop beside me, holding on to a lamp standard. If it was the police, there was nothing left but to face them; I was too tired and confused to run away, and I knew that if I tried to cross the road by myself I should be killed. I braced myself for the official questions, staring at the dark green standard.
"Time for you to come home, Joe." I turned. It was Bob Storr.
"I have no home."
"Yes, you have. We've all been worrying about you." He took my arm. Eva came out of the car and took my other arm; as soon as she came, I let myself be taken quietly, but I still insisted that I had no home. I sat in the back with her; I was trembling with cold, and she put a rug over my knees.
"My God," she said, "what have you been up to? There've been search parties out all over Yorkshire for you. The Thompsons are nearly off their heads with worry .
"Susan," I said. "What about Susan?"
"You are pie-eyed, aren't you?" Eva said. "She went to London for a wedding dress this morning. Had you forgotten?"
"Leave him alone," Bob said. "He's had enough for one day."
"I murdered Alice," I said, and began to cry.
"Don't talk rubbish," Bob said.
"Everyone knows that I killed her. The Thompsons too."
"The Thompsons knew that she was your mistress," Bob said. "They had a son themselves and they know what young men are like. They don't blame you. Nobody does."
The car was climbing the eastern heights of the city now, away from the smoke and the dirt and the black fingernails scrabbling the pavement and the sad, lost faces that had tried to keep up with me; the engine purred smoothly, as it would have done if Alice had been beside me instead of Eva, as it would have done if Bob had suddenly grown talons and horns, as it would have done if the world were due to end in five minutes.
I went on crying, as if the tears would blur the image of Alice crawling round Corby Road on her hands and knees, as if they would drown her first shrill screams and her last delirious moans. "Oh God," I said, "I did kill her. I wasn't there, but I killed her."
Eva drew my head on to her breast. "Poor darling, you mustn't take on so. You don't see it now, but it was all for the best. She'd have ruined your whole life. Nobody blames you, love. Nobody blames you."
I pulled myself away from her abruptly. "Oh my God," I said, "that's the trouble."