That sounded silly, but it was a fact.

Or was all this shilly-shallying on his part? Was he putting it off again? He was always putting it off. In some mysterious way it seemed to go right out of his head, and it had all been going on too long. Perhaps he ought to take himself in hand, and kill her while it was cold. Perhaps he ought not even to wait until he had had the benefit of his ten pounds. He had put it off such a long while now, and if he went on like this would it ever get done?

By now he had reached the edge of the Town Golf Course and he turned round and retraced his steps. A light wind struck him in the face and roared in his ears, and he looked at the feeble sun, in the nacreous sky, declining behind the bleak little winter resort of an aunt who had come up to scratch. Strange aunts, strange Hunstantons! – how did they stand it? He had had three days of it, and he’d have a fit if he didn’t get back tomorrow. And yet Aunt Mary was a good sort, trying to do her duty by him as his nearest of kin, trying to be ‘modern’, a ‘sport’ as she called it, pretending that she liked ‘cocktails’ though she was nearly seventy. My God – ‘cocktails!’ – if she only knew! But she was a good sort. She would be cheerful at tea, and then when she saw he didn’t want to talk she would leave him alone and let him sit in his chair and read The Bar 20 Rides Again, by Clarence Mulford. But of course he wouldn’t be reading – he would be thinking of Netta and how and when he was going to kill her.

The Christmas Day children were still playing with their Christmas Day toy pistols around the Christmas Day shelter. The wet grass glowed in the diffused afternoon light. The little pier, completely deserted, jutted out into the sea, its silhouette shaking against the grey waves, as though it trembled with cold but intended to stay where it was to demonstrate some principle. On his left he passed the Boys’ School, and then the row of boarding-houses, one after another, with their mad names; on his right the putting course and tennis courts. But no boys, and no boarders, and no putters, and no tennis players in the seaside town of his aunt on Christmas Day.

He turned left, and went upwards and away from the sea – the Wash in which King John had lost his jewels – towards the street which contained the semi-detached villa in which tea, with Christmas cake and cold turkey (in front of an electric fire at eight o’clock), awaited him.

Chapter Two

Click!…

Hullo, hullo – here we are! – here we are again!

He was on Hunstanton station and it had happened again. Click, snap, pop – whatever you like – and it all came flooding back!

The sound-track had been resumed with a sudden switch; the grim, dreary, mysterious silent film had vanished utterly away, and all things were bright, clear, vivacious, sane, colourful and logical around him, as he carried his bag, at three o’clock on Boxing Day, along the platform of the little seaside terminus.

It had happened at the barrier, as he offered his ticket to be clipped by the man. You might have thought that the click of the man’s implement as he punctured the ticket had been the click inside his head, but actually it had happened a fraction of a second later – a fraction of a fraction of a second, for the man still held his ticket, and he was still looking into the man’s grey eyes, when he heard the shutter go up in his head, and everything came flooding back.

It was like bursting up into fresh air after swimming gravely for a long time in silent, green depths: the first thing of which he was aware was the terrific sustained hissing noise coming from the engine which was to take him back to London. While he yet looked into the man’s eyes he was aware of this noise. He knew, too, perfectly well, that this noise had been going on ever since he had entered the station, while he was buying his ticket, while he was dragging his bag to the barrier. But it was only now, now that his brain had clicked back again, that he heard it. And with it every other sort of noise which had been going on before – the rolling of a station trolley, the clanking of milk-cans, the slamming of compartment doors – was heard by him for the first time. And all this in the brief moment while he still looked into the eyes of the man who had punctured his ticket. Perhaps, because of his surprise at what had happened, he had looked into the eyes of the man too long. Perhaps the man had only caught his eye, had only looked at him because he had subconsciously wondered why this passenger was not getting a ‘move on’. However that might be, he had only betrayed himself for a fraction of a second, and now he was walking up the platform.

What a noise that engine made! And yet it exhilarated him. He always had these few moments of exhilaration after his brain had ‘blinked’ and he found himself hearing and understanding sounds and sights once again. After that first tremendous rush of noise and comprehension – exactly like the roar of clarification which would accompany the snatching away, from a man’s two ears, of two oily blobs of cotton wool which he had worn for twenty-four hours – he took a simple elated pleasure in hearing and looking at everything he passed.

Then there was the pleasure of knowing exactly what he was doing. He knew where he was, and he knew what he was doing. It was Boxing Day, and he was taking the train back to London. He had spent the Christmas holiday with his aunt who had given him ten pounds.