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him under a vow of discretion. Keeping up a false front over drinks or dinner would be no fun at all. Simon decided to shower and change, and then give the others the slip, leave the hotel, and find what his mother would call a ‘show’ to go to.
    His hotel was a modest but respectable one on the fringes of Bloomsbury, and when he left it he directed himself towards the theatres. An evening paper told him that The Sound of Music was still spreading cow-bells and schmaltz over Cambridge Circus, but there was Edith Evans in Hay Fever at theNational, and an interesting new play called Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Arts. He’d find something, just by walking.
    But he never reached the theatres at all. He was idling along New Oxford Street when, above the traffic noise, he heard raised voices. He halted in his tracks, looked down a murky passageway, and saw that he was near one of those dingy, down-at-heel blocks of municipal flats that still cling on in parts of central London, hiding shamefacedly behind the plate-glass shop-fronts like poor relations at a posh wedding. Suddenly, into the meagre courtyard at the end of the passage, there burst first a screaming woman, then, following her, a hefty, red-faced man bellowing abuse. She had not gone more than a few feet towards the street when he caught her. He pulled her round to face him, and began belabouring her about the head with heavy fists, punctuating the blows with all the words of sexual abuse that his sodden brain could dredge up.
    â€˜Here! Stop that!’ began Simon. He started towards them, but almost at once the blows and the screams sent over him a wave—of recollection, of nausea, of fear, whatever it might be—that seemed to submerge him, that sent his legs staggering under him, so that he could only stop and clutch at the walls of the passageway for support. The voice continued to bellow insults, the fists to fall, but Simon could only cling there, his eyes closed, his stomach rising in great heaves of panic and remembered fear.
    Suddenly windows opened above the dirty courtyard. Voices began to be raised in protest. One woman screamed: ‘I’ve called the police.’ The man straightened up, bellowed back an obscenity, and in a moment was barging past Simon, down the passage, and out into the street.
    Gradually the panic subsided. He shook himself and opened his eyes, feeling very much less than heroic. He walked over to the sobbing bundle of clothes on the paved floor of the courtyard.
    â€˜Are you all right?’
    â€˜Oh, go to hell.’
    An overpowering smell of sweat, urine and cheap spirits rose up and over him from the sobbing heap.
    â€˜You really ought to see a doctor, you know.’
    â€˜Oh, f—off.’
    â€˜Don’t bovver abaht ’er, mate,’ said a voice from the window above. ‘It ain’t the first time.’
    â€˜Enjoys it, if you ask me,’ said a woman’s voice.
    â€˜You might as well save yer breath,’ said another. ‘You’ll get no thanks from ’er, I can tell you.’
    So Simon, awkwardly and unhappily, turned on his heels and slunk away. Out into New Oxford Street, along to the tube at Tottenham Court Road, then down into its depths, where he bought a ticket for Paddington.
    When he emerged from the station he made his way, straight, confident, unflinching, to Farrow Street. He knew the way. Suddenly it occurred to him that he knew the way from Farrow Street to the Station. That was the way he had done it—or had done it as Simon Cutheridge. But he seemed to know the reverse journey equally well. How often had he done it as—as whatever his name was then?
    As he walked, he asked himself why he had come back. Because he had just funked intervening in a fight, and had by some quirky idea of compensation determined to follow through what he had funked eight years ago? But he had been in fights before, and had not funked them: playground