At the station he bought a daily paper, the North Bromwich Courier. As usual on Monday it was full of football. Albion at the top of the first league: Notts Forest, second. Strange clubs from the Southern League had invaded that sanctuary: the season was half over, and they were shaping well. He read words that meant nothing to him. He could not concentrate, for he had drunk as much as was good for him. The platform seemed to him a noisy, exposed situation; for he could not yet be at his ease in a crowd. He started at the sound of a familiar voice speaking the word Lesswardine. A man passed him in a drab covert-coat: Mr Prosser of The Dyke, talking to young Maddy. They had not recognised him. He slipped into a urinal to avoid them and waited there till he heard the south-bound train roll in. Then he made a dash for a non-smoking carriage and hid himself behind his newspaper in the corner. The train was not full, and to his great relief no one entered his compartment.
They started smoothly and soon left Shrewsbury behind. A wintry landscape unfolded on either side of him: the low bow of the Wrekin; Caer Caradoc, a sheer crag on the left; the cloven bastions of the Long Mynd. He threw up the window and drank in great draughts of hill air. He laughed to see the green of the fields and the gray, monstrous hills. But he knew that he was a stranger. The country that he rejoiced to see had rejected him. If he lived to be a hundred not a single man of his acquaintance would forget that he had spent a year in jail. As soon as he should have left Craven Arms the hills would fold him in, draw him within the confines of his old life. He was free, but this could never be a real freedom. A wider country, a new life, Canada. . . . He was dying for a drink.
At Craven Arms the satisfaction of this desire did not seem easy, for others were before him in the Refreshment Room and every moment his chance of meeting Lesswardine people increased. He took a flask of brandy from the counter and paid for it without waiting for the change. The local train stood humbly in the siding. He chose a carriage already full of Radnor farmers whom he did not know. He drank down the whole of his flask of brandy, and then fell into a kind of doze lulled by the sing-song voices of his companions. The train twisted along the valley in the dark, pulling up with a jolt at every upland station. At Llandwlas he turned out in a hurry and handed his ticket to a new porter, who stood at the gate in the dusk swinging a lantern. Men were shouting, driving bullocks into a pen. A trap was waiting with the lamps already lit. He avoided their light, but guessed by the colour of the horse and the erect figure of the driver that Marion was waiting for Mr Prosser. A year before he might have dared to ask for a lift to Chapel Green. God, how strange, how hauntingly strange the country smelt!
An hour later he staggered into the bar at the Buffalo. Mrs Malpas, a withered, pathetic figure, half the size of the woman whom he remembered, gave a cry and ran to meet him.
‘My son, my son!’
He kissed her, laughing heavily, blowing gusts of brandy into her eyes. She would not think of the spirit in his breath. Her hands caressed his face. She turned him to the light to see if he were changed.
‘Oh, George, you’re that thin! They haven’t fed you proper.’
He freed himself from her. ‘How’s dad?’ he asked.
‘The same as ever, George.’
‘Poor old devil!’ he said.