He began to see things that he had never seen before — at least not in real life: a viaduct; a white horse carved into the chalk of a hillside; an aeroplane, curiously silent and majestic, floating down over the train, almost grazing the tops of trees, its underbelly plump and vulnerable. A highly irregular thought occurred to him. Supposing he had left the village before now. Supposing he had left when he was younger, more receptive, more energetic, and returned armed with vivid first-hand experience of the outside world. Then he would really have known what he was talking about. Then he would have understood exactly what he was legislating against. And he would have been able to dispense his knowledge in tantalising fragments like some kind of oracle. A knowledge that only he (miraculously) possessed. How wise he would have seemed. Imagine the increase in prestige and credibility. Who knows, perhaps even the breakdown could have been avoided. An interesting idea, in any case. Something to mull over. He jotted a few words down in his notebook: The relationship of hypocrisy to the exercise of power. He wondered if the idea had occurred to any of his predecessors. He doubted it, somehow. After all, it had only occurred to him once he had already left the village. Surely such an idea would have been unthinkable, quite literally unthinkable, while you were actually living there? Only this extraordinary detachment, this sense of removal, made it possible. It was as if he had risen out of his body and was looking back down at himself. He could see things in a way that he couldn’t have seen them before.
The train chattered over the rails. You’ll-never-go-back, it seemed to be saying. You’ll-never-go-back-you’ll-never-go-back.
Nonsense. Of course he would. He had to. He even wanted to.
He had allowed himself a maximum of twenty-four hours. Deadline Saturday 2100 hours. If he hadn’t located Moses Highness by then, too bad. He had to be back in New Egypt by midnight. Otherwise his cover would be blown.
Once again he was struck by the enormity of the risk he was taking. Still, there was nothing for it now. Here he was, thirty miles out of the village, and moving further away with every minute that passed.
The train hurtled on towards the city, beating complicated rhythms now. Beneath the smeared glass, the landscape flowed like green weeds through water. He had never imagined such fluid speed. The percussion of wheels on rails. The flick-flick-flick of telegraph poles. Lulled him. He leaned his head back against the seat.
*
Where was he?
His eyes took in the blue and green check upholstery, the silver luggage-racks, the discarded newspaper, his own face in the window’s mirror. A blonde girl sitting across the aisle returned his glance of confusion with a smile. She hadn’t been there before.
Through the window he watched the march of strange buildings. Three tower-blocks, an office of reflecting glass, a multi-storey car-park. Semidetached houses in a row like vertebrae. He was on the train. But where was the train?
As if to answer his question, the train lurched, throwing him forwards. It was slowing down. For a station, presumably. But which station?
‘Is this London?’ he asked the blonde girl.
‘No, this is East Croydon,’ she said. ‘London’s next.’
He thanked her.
So. He must have dozed off. He wondered how long he had slept. Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes — not much more. That girl must have joined the train at Three Bridges. Everything under control again, he began to move his mind into the immediate future. They were due in at 8.23. By the time he found a hotel and registered, it would be close to ten. He doubted whether he could accomplish much that night. He had a phone-call to make, but he could do that from his room. All right, then. An early night. An early start in the morning.
The white signs of suburban stations flashed by, almost too fast to read. West something. Something Common. Clapham Junction. Houses rushed up to the railway line. He saw a woman washing her hair, the bathroom lit by one naked bulb. It embarrassed him, this glimpse into her privacy. Then he saw two people standing in a yellow kitchen. Then an empty room with the TV on. Window after window. Life after life on display. He found himself thinking of the police museum.
As the train rattled over a bridge, he looked down. Though rush-hour was over, the street pulsed with the red tail-lights of cars. Glowing, dimming, glowing again as feet touched brakes. All those cars, all those lights. He sensed a surge of electricity. Friday night. The city charged up for the weekend. Perhaps the fascination showed on his face because the blonde girl chose that moment to speak to him:
‘I love this place, don’t you?’
He turned to look at her. The thrill in her voice, the ingenuous warmth of her smile, drew him in, persuaded him to tell the truth. There was nothing to fear from her.
‘It’s the first time I’ve been here,’ he confessed.
‘The first time?’ Her voice lifted in disbelief. It was a musical voice. It resonated. It would be capable, he imagined, of wonderful laughter. ‘Where have you been hiding?’
He instantly forgave her the slight impertinence of her question. She was an attractive girl — in her early twenties, he guessed — and some part of him was charmed by her forwardness.
‘I live a very quiet life. In the country.’ He sounded appropriately sedate.
‘Oh, I’m just coming back from a week in the country — ’ the girl began.
How easily these people speak of coming and going, he thought. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.
‘— but what brings you to London,’ she was asking him, ‘for the first time?’
The phrase had become their theme, linking them privately. When she got home she would tell her mother, or her boyfriend, or whoever she lived with, that she had met a man on the train who had never been to London before. It was his first time, she would say. Can you imagine?
While they had been talking, the train had crossed another bridge, over the Thames this time (he caught a glimpse of the water, glinting black, sluggish as oil), and everybody was standing up, pulling on coats, hauling down cases. All this gave him time to frame a suitably vague answer to what had been, potentially at least, a rather awkward question.
‘Business,’ he said. ‘I’m here on business.’
The girl, adjusting the belt on her raincoat, gave him a quick smile. Brisk rituals of arrival were beginning to override their conversation. Soon they were walking side by side down the platform. Gritty irritable light. The station, with its high arching roof, hollow and draughty, echoed with footsteps, voices, the whisper of clothes. Somehow the sound reminded him of birds — thousands of birds folding their wings. Once they had passed through the ticket barrier, the girl swung away from him.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope your business goes well.’
Her tiny downward smile intrigued him, as the beginning of a story does, but this, he realised, was already the end.