So here I am. And what I would like to know, is how you know my name.
Perhaps we ought to first sort out, said Arthur, looking back over his shoulder as he eased his car into the motorway traffic, where I’m taking you.
Very close, he hoped, or long away. Close would mean she lived near him, a long way would mean he could drive her there.
I’d like to go to Taunton, she said, please. If that’s all right. It’s not far. You can drop me at…
You live in Taunton? he said, hoping that he’d managed to sound merely curious rather than ecstatic. Taunton was wonderfully close to him. He could…
No, London, she said. There’s a train in just under an hour.
It was the worst thing possible. Taunton was only minutes away up the motorway. He wondered what to do, and while he was wondering with horror heard himself saying: Oh, I can take you to London. Let me take you to London…
Bungling idiot. Why on Earth had he said “let” in that stupid way? He was behaving like a twelve-year-old.
Are you going to London? she asked.
I wasn’t, he said, but… Bungling idiot.
It’s very kind of you, she said, but really no. I like to go by train. And suddenly she was gone. Or rather, that part of her which brought her to life was gone. She looked rather distantly out of the window and hummed lightly to herself.
He couldn’t believe it.
Thirty seconds into the conversation, and already he’d blown it.
Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.
Taunton 5 miles, said the signpost.
He gripped the steering wheel so tightly the car wobbled. He was going to have to do something dramatic.
Fenny, he said.
She glanced round sharply at him.
You still haven’t told me how…
Listen, said Arthur, I will tell you, though the story is rather strange. Very strange.
She was still looking at him, but said nothing.
Listen…
You said that.
Did I? Oh. There are things I must talk to you about, and things I must tell you… a story I must tell you which would… He was thrashing about. He wanted something along the lines of Thy knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular quill to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine but didn’t think he could carry it off and didn’t like the hedgehog reference.
…which would take more than five miles, he settled for in the end, rather lamely he was afraid.
Well…
Just supposing, he said, just supposing he didn’t know what was coming next, so he thought he’d just sit back and listen that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn’t know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I’ve only just met and not crash into lorries at the same time, what would you say… he paused helplessly, and looked at her, I… should do?
Watch the road! she yelped.
Shit!
He narrowly avoided careering into the side of a hundred Italian washing machines in a German lorry.
I think, she said, with a momentary sigh of relief, you should buy me a drink before my train goes.