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Tim?
    Martin drove back to Park Road by way of Wood Lane. The wood was a crouching grey mass on either side of the road, crusted underfoot with brown leaves. If he had taken the car that morning in May or if he had walked along Wood Vale instead of Shepherd’s Hill, or if he had been five minutes earlier or five minutes later, he would never have met Tim and therefore never have won that huge sum of money. In an hour’s time he would once more be confronting Tim; Tim was coming at three.
    The purpose of his visit was to bring his tax return for the previous financial year and the fees statements from the various magazines that had used his stories. It wouldn’t have crossed Martin’s mind to keep the news of his win from Tim if Tim hadn’t been a journalist. Once tell Tim and the story of his acquisition of wealth would be all over the front page of next week’s
North London Post.
Suppose he asked Tim not to use it? It was possible Tim might agree not to, but Martin didn’t think it likely. Or, rather, he thought Tim would give a sort of half-hearted undertaking and then drop a hint to another reporter. And this story would be even better when he began on his philanthropy …
    Martin thought deeply about any major action he took, and about a good many minor ones too. He meant to conduct his life on a set of good solid principles. To perform every action as if it might form the basis of a social law, this was his doctrine, though he couldn’t of course always live up to it. Plainly, he ought to tell Tim. He owed Tim thanks, and no consideration that publicity would make life uncomfortable for him for a few weeks should be allowed to stop him. Suppose he received a few begging letters and phone calls? He could weather that.
He must tell Tim.
And perhaps also-a new idea so alarmed him that he was obliged to stop scrutinising Mrs. Barbara Baer’s investments and lay the file down—
offer
him something. It might be incumbent on him to offer Tim some of the money.
    Tim received the lowest possible salary the National Union of Journalists permitted his employers to pay him. He couldn’t buy a house because he had no capital. Ten thousand pounds would furnish a deposit for Tim to put down on a house, and ten thousand, Martin thought, was the sum he ought to give him, a kind of 10 per cent commission. He found the idea not at all pleasing. Tim wasn’t a deserving case like Miss Watson or Mrs. Cochrane. He was young and strong, he didn’t
have
to stay working on that local rag. At the back of Martin’s mind was the thought that if Tim wanted to get capital, he shouldn’t smoke so much. He had an idea too that Tim was a fritterer. It would be awful to give Tim ten thousand pounds and then find he hadn’t used it to get a home for himself but had simply frittered it away.
    Martin continued to present the two sides of this question to himself until three-fifteen. Tim was late. His inner discussion had led to nothing much, though the notion of telling Tim had come to seem rash almost to the point of immorality. At twenty past three Caroline put her pale red Afro round the door.
    “Mr. Sage is here, Martin.”
    He got up and came round the desk, thinking that if Tim asked, if he so much as mentioned the football pools, he would tell him. But otherwise, perhaps not.
    Tim was never even remotely well-dressed. Today he was wearing a pair of black cord jeans, a dirty roll-neck sweater that had presumably once been white, and a faded denim jacket with one of its buttons missing. Such clothes suited his piratical looks. He lit a Gauloise the moment he came into the room, before he spoke.
    “Sorry I’m late. A court case that rather dragged on.”
    “A story in it?” said Martin, using what he hoped was the right terminology.
    Tim shrugged. His shoulders were very thin, and hishands and his narrow, flat teen-ager’s loins. He looked hard like an athlete until he coughed his smoker’s cough. The only soft fleshy thing about