“I was to have shared life with Margaret in a beautiful place; and instead of that I’m in hell, fighting the local skunks alone.”
That was the thought always present to him, in the Works, and at Mullples, and in all those places about Newbury which brought memories of her. He did not think it so often when driving alone at night. Besides, if he took a car and went away at a venture, soon after dinner, he dodged the long evening alone. He could reach the sea at a lonely point of the coast, in a little more than an hour. That was a favourite run of his. Or he could enter a distant city, and seek out the queer places of amusement in its lower ways, thinking that “what amuses the foundation of the race may amuse me, who am shaken to my foundation.” It did not amuse him in the least his old friends, well, he shrank from them; he was a hurt beast shunning the herd, and they, knowing his queerness and prickliness shrank from him, fearing to hurt him and rouse an explosion. So he began to drive out from Mullples late in the evenings and return in the early mornings after runs of a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles. Then he took to driving afield before dinner, to dine far off among strangers, in odd places, where no-one and no thing could remind him of his past, where he would be the unknown among the unknown, in a relationship too brief to be unhappy.
Then he took to searching in shops of second-hand goods for books and prints of interest to himself. He had always had a flair for things; he beat through the grimy nooks of many a foul old shop, and found much that was of value, but unfashionable at the moment. But what good was it? He didn’t want the things. Margaret was dead, who might have liked them.
Soon after the Magistrates’ Court, it chanced that he was driving home late in a dark, moist and somewhat misty night, bad for driving, upon roads not well known to him. He was saying to himself: “Somewhere near here there’s a beast of a bend,” when he knew suddenly that the bend was there, just ahead. He slackened and changed gear, and proceeded round with caution. As he came round, he saw something on the road in front of him; he switched all his lights upon it. A big car, with its bows in the ditch to the left, was slued half across the road. As it was on the bend of the road, Frampton crawled past it, put his car in safety, and came back with a strong pocket torch to examine.
“There’ll be a corpse or two under that,” he told himself. “Blessed are they who find a motor-smash, for they will be charged with manslaughter.”
He flashed the light of his torch upon the wreck. A figure of a man in evening dress rose unsteadily from the ditch, screening his eyes from the light. Frampton recognized him at once; this was Pob Ted, who found it so difficult to get anything to do; Pob Ted, the leader of the drag.
“Are you badly hurt?” Frampton asked. “Is anyone hurt?”
“No, there’s nothing the matter. But something’s happened to this damned car,” Pob said. “Funny thing. I can’t get her to start. The ignition’s konkt, or something.”
He was unsteady in his gait. A sweet and strong smell of alcohol was diffused all round him. Frampton saw a little blood trickling down his face.
“I’ve been working at the self-starter the last half-hour,” Pob went on. “Can’t get a signal.”
“Let’s have a look,” Frampton said. “It looks to me as though more than the ignition has gone. Are you all alone here?”
“Just like Jonah in the whale,” Pob said.
Frampton turned the light on the wreck. Like most motor wrecks, it looked bad, because of the crumpling of the wings; but this one was bad; more than the wings had suffered. The left front wheel was bent to a V shape, and the fore part of the car was very nearly wrenched off the rest of it; the windscreen had been torn off. It seemed to Frampton that Pob must have been flung through it.
“How did the car get in the ditch?” Frampton asked.
“Some damned chap must have put it there,” Pob said. He laughed in a crazy, weak way. “Some damned chap when I wasn’t looking, what.”
“That’s the idea,” Frampton said, thinking that this was a concussion case and should be treated in bed as soon as might be. “It wants a vet, this car,” Frampton said. “You’ll not start this car to-night. You’d better let me drive you home. Where d’you want to go?”
“I don’t want to go without the car,” Pob said. “It’s my father’s car. He doesn’t let me drive this. It’s only the ignition’s got some grit on it; any grit’s bad for ignition. If you’ll give me a hand to start her, I’ll be all right.”
“The car’s ruined,” Frampton said. “Look. See for yourself. It’ll cost a sink of monkeys to mend this car, if she can be mended. Jump into my car, and let me drive you home. Or, better still, get your father’s driver to come out with you to look at the ignition.”
“Old Bill Bailey will get her to start,” Pob said. “Wonderful feller, Bill Bailey; and, of course, he knows this car.”
“Come on, then; I’ll drive you to him. Where is he to be found.”
“He lives at the Manor, Stubbington,” Pob said, “the same as me. You know, it’s very funny, the car getting into that state. It must have had a push. You know, more I come to think of it, more it seems someone ran into me and didn’t stop. Some bounder road-hog feller; lots of ’em on the road; no manners, no road sense. They hit a chap and go on.”
“Well,” Frampton said, “here’s my car. You’d better sit still and not talk. You have had a bang, I should judge, even if you don’t remember it.”
He helped Pob into the seat beside him. “It’s only a few miles,” Pob said. “It’s awfully decent of you to give me a lift like this.”
He saw Frampton’s face for an instant, as he took his seat. Frampton switched off the light as he took the wheel, but some memory was touched in Pob.
“I say,” he said, “do I know you? I seem to have seen your face somewhere. I suppose I met you out hunting.”
“One meets a lot of chaps out hunting,” Frampton said.
“Yes, by Jove,” Pob said, “one does meet a lot out hunting. I say, were you out the opening day? Tibb’s Spirr Cross Day? We had a rare old score off that gunman. We laid a drag through his bally old cover. The chap’s an awful bounder; a bolshie who makes guns; wants to stop hunting. Stinks of money, of course; all these chaps do. But we scored him off all right. I wonder, have you got a spot of brandy on you? Always carry brandy in a car myself. Would you mind just turning back and get me a spot of brandy? It’s in the car; in the pocket of my car. A bottle, half-full of the Best.”
“I saw it all smashed to flinders,” Frampton said. “Besides, I must go on. I’ve got an appointment.”
“I say, what rotten luck,” Pob said crossly. “You needn’t keep an appointment at this time of night. I say,” he said suddenly, “is this my car?”
“No,” Frampton said, “it’s mine.”
“Well, I wish you’d let me drive to a pub; or let me drive.”
“I’ll drive, thanks.”
“But I like driving.”
“Not so much as I do.”
“By Jove, I’m going to drive,” Pob said. “I’m going back for the brandy.” He grabbed at the wheel. As it chanced, Frampton had expected something of the sort and elbowed him off pretty hard. “I must get back to my car,” Pob cried.
“I’m taking you there. You’ll be there in a minute,” Frampton answered.