The packed train moved slowly into another morning: smuts were thick on all the faces, everyone had slept in his clothes. Mr Cholmondeley had eaten too many sweets; his teeth needed cleaning; his breath was sweet and stuffy. He put his head into the corridor and Raven at once turned his back and stared out at the sidings, the trucks heaped with local coal; a smell of bad fish came in from the glue factory. Mr Cholmondeley dived back across the carriage to the other side trying to make out at which platform the train was drawing in. He said: 'Excuse me,' trampling on the feet; Anne smiled softly to herself and hacked his ankle. Mr Cholmondeley glared at her. She said: 'I'm sorry,' and began to mend her face with her tissues and her powder, to bring it up to standard, so that she could bear the thought of the Royal Theatre, the little dressing-rooms and the oil-heating, the rivalry and the scandals.
'If you'll let me by,' Mr Cholmondeley said fiercely, 'I'm getting down here.'
Raven saw his ghost in the window-pane getting down. But he didn't dare follow him closely. It was almost as if a voice blown over many foggy miles, over the long swelling fields of the hunting counties, the villa'd suburbs creeping up to town, had spoken to him: 'any man travelling without a ticket,' he thought, with the slip of white paper the collector had given him in his hand. He opened the door and watched the passengers flow by him to the barrier. He needed time, and the paper in his hand would so quickly identify him. He needed time, and he realized now that he wouldn't have even so much as a twelve-hour start. They would visit every boarding house, every lodging in Nottwich; there was nowhere for him to stay.
Then it was that the idea struck him, by the slot machine on No .2 arrival platform, which thrust him finally into other people's lives, broke the world in which he walked alone.
Most of the passengers had gone now, but one girl waited for a returning porter by the buffet door. He went up to her and said, 'Can I help and carry your bags?'
' Oh, if you would,' she said. He stood with his head a little bent, so that she mightn't see his lip.
'What about a sandwich?' he said. 'It's been a hard journey.'
'Is it open,' she said, 'this early?'
He tried the door. 'Yes, it's open.'
'Is it an invitation?' she said. 'You're standing treat?'
He gazed at her with faint astonishment: her smile, the small neat face with the eyes rather too wide apart; he was more used to the absent-minded routine endearments of prostitutes than to this natural friendliness, this sense of rather lost and desperate amusement. He said, 'Oh yes. It's on me.' He carried the bags inside and hammered on the counter. 'What'll you have?' he said. In the pale light of the electric globe he kept his back to her; he didn't want to scare her yet.
'There's a rich choice,' she said. 'Bath buns, penny buns, last year's biscuits, ham sandwiches. I'd like a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. Or will that leave you broke? If so, leave out the coffee.'
He waited till the girl behind the counter had gone again, till the other's mouth was full of sandwich so that she couldn't have screamed if she'd tried. Then he turned his face on her. He was disconcerted when she showed no repulsion, but smiled as well as she could with her mouth full. He said, 'I want your ticket. The police are after me. I'll do anything to get your ticket.'
She swallowed the bread in her mouth and began to cough.—She said, 'For God's sake, hit me on the back.' He nearly obeyed her; she'd got him rattled; he wasn't used to normal life and it upset his nerve. He said, 'I've got a gun,' and added lamely, 'I'll give you this in return.' He laid the paper on the counter and she read it with interest between the coughs. 'First class. All the way to—Why, I'll be able to get a refund on this. I call that a fine exchange, but why the gun?' He said: 'The ticket.'
'Here.'
'Now,' he said, 'you are going out of the station with me. I'm not taking any chances.'
'Why not eat your ham sandwich first?'
'Be quiet,' he said. 'I haven't the time to listen to your jokes.'
She said, 'I like he-men. My name's Anne. What's yours?' The train outside whistled, the carriages began to move, a long line of light going back into the fog, the steam blew along the platform. Raven's eyes left her for a moment; she raised her cup and dashed the hot coffee at his face. The pain drove him backwards with his hands to his eyes; he moaned like an animal; this was pain. This was what the old War Minister had felt, the woman secretary, his father when the trap sprang and the neck took the weight. His right hand felt for the automatic, his back was against the door; people were driving him to do things, to lose his head. He checked himself; with an effort he conquered the agony of the burns, the agony which drove him to kill. He said, 'I've got you covered. Pick up those cases. Go out in front of me with that paper.'
She obeyed him, staggering under the weight. The ticket collector said: 'Changed your mind? This would have taken you to Edinburgh. Do you want to break the journey?'
'Yes,' she said, 'yes. That's it.' He took out a pencil and began to write on the paper. An idea came to Anne: she wanted him to remember her and the ticket. There might be inquiries. 'No,' she said, 'I'll give it up. I don't think I'll be going on. I'll stay here,' and she went out through the barrier, thinking: he won't forget that in a hurry.
The long street ran down between the small dusty houses. A milk float clattered round a corner out of sight. She said, 'Well, can I go now?'
'You think me a fool,' he said bitterly. 'Keep on walking.'
'You might take one of these bags.' She dropped one in the road and went on; he had to pick it up. It was heavy, he carried it in his left hand, he needed his right for the automatic.
She said, 'This isn't taking us into Nottwich. We ought to have turned right at the corner.'
'I know where I'm going.'
'I wish I did.'
The little houses went endlessly on under the fog. It was very early. A woman came to the door and took in the milk. Through a window Anne saw a man shaving. She wanted to scream to him, but he might have been in another world; she could imagine his stupid stare, the slow working of the brain before he realized anything was wrong. On they went, Raven a step behind. She wondered if he were bluffing her; he must be wanted for something very serious if he was really ready to shoot.
She spoke her thoughts aloud, 'Is it murder?' and the lapse of her flippancy, the whispered fear, came to Raven like something familiar, friendly: he was used to fear. It had lived inside him for twenty years. It was normality he couldn't cope with. He answered her without strain, 'No, I'm not wanted for that.'
She challenged him, 'Then you wouldn't dare to shoot,' but he had the answer pat, the answer which never failed to convince because it was the truth. 'I'm not going to prison. I'd rather hang. My father hanged.'