A knot of members turned aside from the pay-desk and came up with congratulations and welcome. Eric was caught up and carried along with them until it was time for him to return with the doctor and have himself examined. That night he left London for Hampshire. The sight and smell of Waterloo were a new and unexpected pain, for the six-ten was a Winchester and Crawleigh train: Eric had travelled by it a dozen times with Barbara and, though he knew her to be away from London, he reconnoitred the filling carriages as though he feared that she would spring out and attack him. Once inside an empty compartment, he hid behind his paper, refusing to look up when the door opened and only rousing when a hand gently patted his knee and Jack Waring’s voice enquired with surprise:
“Well, Eric, old man, when did you get back? And what sort of time did you have? D’you know I’ve not seen you for nearly four and a half years? When I came home after being a prisoner, I always missed you. Then you went off to America... Tell me all about yourself, old son!”
The voice was unmistakably cordial, and from Waterloo to Winchester the two men discussed themselves and each other. Jack Waring’s head-wound had incapacitated him for work indoors; after a dozen failures he was abandoning the bar and taking to horse-breeding in Worcestershire; two friends, equally maimed by the war, were coming into partnership with him.
“And there I propose to end my days,” he said. “Thirty-five’s a bit old to be making a new start; but I’m alive, when I didn’t expect to be, and that’s something.”
Eric nodded and looked out of the window at the familiar glimmering lights of south-west London. In different ways but in equal measure Barbara had spoiled both their lives; both must know it; and, now that she had left them for ever, there was a dramatic fitness in their rebuilding an old friendship out of their common experience and disaster. This was the fourth act of their play; and, after the catastrophe, the survivors could meet and prospect to see what remained... In the gleaming mirror of the window, Eric studied the reflection of his companion’s face; he was glad to hear that Jack was going away to the other side of England; after all, the old friendship could never be revived when one had prayed aloud for the death of the other... He looked up, startled and conscience-stricken; he had been mad, but it was Barbara who made him mad, and Jack’s friendship was part of the price which she exacted.
“I’ve read all about you in the papers, of course,” said Jack, “but I’ve not seen you in the flesh since the first months of the war. Do you remember when you were ill and I walked over to talk to you? I’d just got my commission.”
“I remember.” Eric mustered all his courage and plunged before it had time to evaporate. “I’ve seen you once since—in the distance. You and your father and mother and Agnes came to a first night of mine—”
“Were you there?,” Jack asked in surprise. “I came up on purpose to see you.”
“Only for a moment. I’d been ill again and I was supposed to be in bed. I saw the first act from a box, but I couldn’t sit it out. You were all in the front row of the stalls—”
“Oh, I remember it well.”