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while. Keep you going until all this Netta business somehow ended, if it ever somehow did – keep you going till you somehow got a job again, if you ever somehow did. He was never going to touch that three hundred pounds if he could help it, and he was going to go on living down to four pounds a week. Two pounds a week for living, two pounds for drinks and smokes and Netta. (And ten pounds extra now, to spend all on smokes and drinks and Netta!)
    They, of course, would yell at this providence of his – regard it as meanly cautious, middle-class, poor-spirited, all part of his general ‘dumbness’. It was one of their greatest boasts, one of their major affectations, that they were always broke, always ‘touching’ people – that you would go out and spend your last twelve shillings on a bottle of gin rather than get in groceries.They thought this was clever, and that he was less clever than them. But actually he was one cleverer, because he could see what affectation it was on their part – he could see through them. He was one ahead of them, not one behind.
    Not that any of them knew anything in a concrete way about his money. They only knew that he tried to live down to a regular something every week, and despised him as a hoarder. But that was not going to stop him.
    It wasn’t much, but if it got too low he could live on less, spin it out till something happened, till something turned up.
    Till something turned up! What a hope. What could ever turn up now? The year was dying, dead – what had next year, 1939, in store for him? Netta, drinks and smokes – drinks, smokes, Netta. Or a war. What if there was a war? Yes – if nothing else turned up, a war might.
    A filthy idea, but what if a war was what he was waiting for? That might put a stop to it all. They might get him – he might be conscripted away from drinks, and smokes, and Netta. At times he could find it in his heart to hope for a war – bloody business as it all was.
    But now, according to them, according to Netta and Peter, there wasn’t going to be a war at all. They knew all about it, or were supposed to. But he wasn’t such a fool here, either – he could see how their minds worked, with what facility they turned their ignominious desires into beliefs. He hadn’t fallen for all this ‘I think it is peace in our time’ stuff. But they had – hadn’t they just! They went raving mad, they weren’t sober for a whole week after Munich – it was just in their line. They liked Hitler, really. They didn’t hate him, anyway. They liked Musso, too. And how they cheered old Umbrella! Oh yes, it was their cup of tea all right, was Munich.
    But it wasn’t his. He didn’t know much about politics, he didn’t know as much as them (not to talk about, anyway), but he knew that Munich was a phoney business. Fine for an Earl’s Court binge, but a phoney business, however much you talked. Shame, that was all he had felt, shame which he couldn’t analyse. He had felt it all the time they were getting drunk – in fact he had hardly been able to drink at all himself. He was soashamed he could hardly look at the pictures… All grinning, shaking hands, frock-coats, top-hats, uniforms, car-rides, cheers – it was like a sort of super-fascist wedding or christening. (Peter, of course, was a fascist, or had been at one time – used to go about Chelsea in a uniform.) And then home again, news-reels, balconies, ‘I think it is peace in our time,’ Mrs Chamberlain the first lady of the land… He was ashamed then, and he was still ashamed.
    ‘Peace in our time’… Well, we would see. We would see a lot of things… His thoughts flowed on, stopping temporarily and looking outwards, through the window, at each station the train stopped at, then sliding inwards and onwards as the train slid on. Darkness slowly fell, and the train slid on towards London in the night of Boxing Day, 1938. Steam collected on the window, which he rubbed away with his hand,