“Cheers, Dominic!” She drank to him in the acrid, sugary tea. “Did you know this used to be a bottle of stout once? I mean they used to give the victims stout to restore them afterwards. Old man Shelley told me so. I’m being done, Dominic, that’s what.”
“Norris’s stout?” asked Dominic, venturing timidly on a joke. It had a generous success; she threw back her head and laughed.
“Too true! I’m being done two ways,” she said indignantly as she swung her feet to the floor and shook down her sleeve over the already slipping bandage.
It was nearly at an end, he thought as he followed her out.
The transport had arrived and was disgorging its load of volunteers on the forecourt; the evening had closed in as it does in late September, with swiftly falling darkness and sudden clear cold. She would get into the Karmann-Ghia and wave her hand at him warmly but thoughtlessly, and drive away, and he would walk alone to the bus stop and go home. And who knew if he would ever see her again?
“Where can I take you?” she said cheerfully, sliding across from the driving-seat to open the other door.
He hesitated for a moment, worrying whether he ought to accept, whether he wasn’t being a nuisance to her, and longing to accept even if he was. “Thanks awfully,” he said with a gulp, “but I’m only going to the bus station, it’s just a step.”
“Straight?” said Kitty, poker-faced. “That where you spend your nights?”
“I mean I’ve only got to catch a bus from there.”
“Come on, get in,” said Kitty, “and tell me where you live, or I shall think you don’t like my car. Ever driven in one of these?”
He was inside, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, their sleeves brushing; the plastic hide upholstery might have been floating golden clouds under him, clouds of glory. The girl was bliss enough, the car was almost too much for him. Kitty started the engine and began to back towards the shrubberies to turn, for the transport had cramped her style a little. The bushes made a smoky dimness behind her, stirring against the gathering darkness. She switched on her reversing light to make sure how much room she had, and justified all Dominic’s heady pride and delight in her by bringing the car round in one, slithering expertly past the tail of the transport at an impetuous speed, and shooting the gateway like a racing ace. They passed everything along Howard Road, and slowed at the traffic lights.
“You still haven’t told me where I’m to take you,” said Kitty.
There was nothing left for him to do but capitulate and tell her where he lived, which he did in a daze of delight.
“Comerford, that’s hardly far enough to get going properly. Let’s go the long way round.” She signalled her intention of turning right, and positioned herself beautifully to let the following car pass her on the near side. The driver leaned out and shouted something as he passed, gesticulating towards the rear wheels of the Karmann-Ghia. Dominic, who hadn’t understood, bristled on Kitty’s behalf, but Kitty, who had, swore and grinned and waved a hand in hasty acknowledgment.
“Damn!” she said, switching off her reversing light. “I’m always doing that. Next time I’m going to get a self-cancelling one. Don’t you tell your father on me, will you? I do try to remember. It isn’t even that I’ve got such a bad memory, really, it’s just certain things about a car that trip me up every time. That damned reversing light, and then the petrol. I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I’ve run out of petrol inside a year.”
“You haven’t got a petrol gauge, have you?” he asked, searching the dashboard for it in vain.
“No, it’s a reserve tank. I thought it would be better, because when you have to switch over you know you’ve got exactly a gallon, and that’s fair warning.”
“And is it better?” asked Dominic curiously.
“Yes and no. It works on long journeys, because then I don’t know how far it will be between filling stations, so I make a point of stopping at the very first one after the switchover, and filling up. But when I’m just driving round town, shopping or something, I kick her over and think, oh, I’ve still got a gallon, I needn’t worry, plenty of time, pumps all round me. And then I clean forget about it, and run dry in the middle of the High Street, or halfway up the lane to the golf links. I never learn,” said Kitty ruefully. “But when I had a petrol gauge on the old car I never remembered to look at it in time, so what’s the use? It’s just me. Dizzy, that’s what.”
“You drive awfully well,” said Dominic, reaching for the nearest handful of comfort he could offer her. That self-derisive note in her voice, at once comic and sad, had already begun to fit itself into a hitherto undiscovered place in his heart like a key into a secret door.
“No, do you mean that? Honestly?”
“Yes, of course. You must know you drive well.”
“Ah!” said Kitty. “I still like to hear it said. Like the car, too?”
It was one subject at least on which he could be eloquent, doubly so because it was Kitty’s car. They talked knowledgeably about sports models all the way to Comerford, and when she pulled up at his own door in the village the return to his ordinary world and the shadow of his familiar routine startled him like a sudden blow. Those few minutes of utter freedom and ease with her were the end of it as well as the beginning. He had to be thankful for a small miracle that wouldn’t drop in his lap a second time. He climbed out slowly, chilled by the fall back into time and place, and stood awkwardly by the door on her side of the car, struggling for something to say that shouldn’t shame him by letting down the whole experience into the trivial and commonplace.
“Thanks awfully for the lift home.”
“Pleasure!” said Kitty, smiling at him. “Thanks for the lift you gave me, too. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather shed my blood with.”
“Are you sure you feel all right?” was all he found to say.
An end of muslin was protruding from Kitty’s sleeve; she pulled it experimentally, and it came away in a twisted string, shedding a scrap of lint on the seat beside her. They both laughed immoderately.
“I feel fine,” said Kitty. “Maybe I had blood pressure before, and now I’m cured.”
An instant’s silence. The soft light from the net-curtained front window lay tenderly on the firm, full curves of her mouth, while her forehead and eyes were in shadow. How soft that mouth was, and yet how decided, with its closely folded lips and deep, resolute corners, how ribald and vulnerable and sad. The core of molten joy in Dominic’s heart burned into exquisite anguish, just watching the slow deepening of her valedictory smile.
“Well, thanks, and good-bye!”
“See you at the next blood-letting,” said Kitty cheerfully, and drove away with a flutter of her fingers to her brow, something between a wave and a salute, leaving him standing gazing after her and holding his breath until the blood pounded thunderously in his ears, and the pain in his middle was as sharp and radical as toothache.
But she saw him again earlier than she had foretold, and in very different circumstances; and the blood in question on that occasion, which was neither his blood nor hers, had already been let in considerable quantities.
CHAPTER II.
THE LATEST OF Alfred Armiger’s long chain of super-pubs, The Jolly Barmaid, opened its doors for business at the end of that September. It stood on a “B” road, half a mile from Comerford and perhaps a mile and a quarter from Comerbourne; not an advantageous position at first sight, but old Armiger knew what he was doing where making money was concerned, and few people seriously doubted that he would make the place pay. Those who knew the beer baron best were already wondering if he had any inside information about the long-discussed by-pass, and whether it wouldn’t, when it eventually materialised, turn out to be unrolling its profitable asphalt just outside the walls of the new hotel. It was seven months now since he’d bought the place and turned loose on it all the resources of his army of builders, designers and decorators, and everyone came along on the night of the gala opening to have a look at the results.