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made difficulties, but I
knew I had to go. For one thing, there was nothing to stop me. I checked that
they were still where they had been, not in Shepherd’s Bush any more but nearer
the centre and perhaps classier in Maida Vale. Then I hung up and to show my
independence or something rang the High Commission of one of the South-East
Asian countries and failed to raise the Commercial Attaché, which was nothing
out of the way. Finally I got moving — in the Apfelsine, naturally.
    The
traffic was a bit hard and I used up some endurance just getting out of the car
park. At the lights at the bottom of Fetter Lane I was behind an enormous tourist
bus from Frankfurt. The guide spotted me and pointed me out to his passengers
as a typical Fleet Street editor. They all seemed to be about sixteen. I tried
to give them their money’s worth by looking energetic and ruthless, also
thoroughly up-to-date in my approach. Or perhaps it was just the car. Talking
of which, as I pulled away and again by the Law Courts the clutch was
definitely on the heavy side, still, after everything I had done to it. I would
have to get somebody in who knew a bit about the subject. Not my field,
clutches. When it came to gearboxes, now, I reckoned I could hold my own, even
with the paper’s motoring correspondent, not that that was saying much. In
fact, a good half of my published works, articles as well as letters, had to do
with gearboxes one way and another, trade press only of course. So far, at
least. But if …
    No, I
must not let myself get out of thinking about what was on the way up. First,
though, I was going to go back to that short phone conversation with Nowell.
Had she really not named Steve, not laid it on the line that that was who she
was talking about? Very likely. It was the sort of thing distracted females did
in films — it just went to show how distracted they were. It was also the sort
of thing some females did in real life distracted or not, and that went to
show, really show, how wrapped up in themselves they were. In a small way. They
knew who they were talking about and that was it. Not that they knew who they
were talking about and you could bleeding well catch up as best you might — no,
just they knew who they were talking about. Another time I might have pretended
I thought she was talking about Prince Charles, but not today.
    I had
never felt I had had too much to do with either marrying Nowell or not being
married to her. After going round with her for about six months I had suddenly
noticed that I was already well on with a trip that ended in marriage and had
no places to get off. Not that I had wanted to. Then after thirteen years and
at no particular point that I could see she had gone and set up with this Bert
Hutchinson. Between then and now I had done a great deal of thinking about him
and how he compared with me, but it had not taken me all that long to decide
that about the one difference between us there could be no argument about had
to do with him being showbiz and me not being. In talking to people like
Lindsey Lucas I would admittedly say that Nowell had gone off with Bert to be
got better parts in television by him, but the fact that it had not happened
told against that idea — she was too shrewd to be so wrong about what somebody
could do for her. No, it was just that Bert fitted in with her by presumably
liking to spend as much time as possible with showbiz people and I never had. I
could stand spending quite a lot of time with them and looking after myself the
rest of the time, only from Nowell’s point of view that was unsatisfactory in
at least two ways. No prizes for seeing a connection here with her not having
been able to run the whole of her and my life whereas perhaps Bert let her run
the whole of theirs and even liked it, but that you obviously could argue
about.
    I had
got to that point, and also to the Marylebone flyover, when it suddenly came to
me that it was not trouble with or about