"No one over-night?"
"No, sir. No spare men for that. Anyhow, they'll be all right once the light's gone. People go home. Especially the Larborough lot. They don't like the country once it gets dark."
Robert, who remembered how silent the lonely house could be, felt doubtful. Two women, alone in that big quiet house after dark, with hatred and violence just outside the wall-it was not a comfortable thought. The gate was barred, but if people could hoist themselves on to the wall for the purpose of sitting there and shouting insults, they could just as easily drop down the other side in the dark.
"Don't worry, sir," the Force said, watching his face. "Nothing's going to happen to them. This is England, after all."
"So is the Ack-Emma England," Robert reminded him. But he got back into the car again. After all, it was England; and the English countryside at that; famed for minding its own business. It was no country hand that had splashed that "FASCISTS!" on the wall. It was doubtful if the country had ever heard the term. The country, when it wanted insults, used older, Saxon words.
The Force was no doubt right; once the dark came everyone would go home.
12
As Robert turned his car into the garage in Sin Lane and came to a halt, Stanley, who was shrugging off his overalls outside the office door, glanced at his face and said: "Down the drain again?"
"It isn't a bet," Robert said, "it's human nature."
"You start to be sorry about human nature and you won't have time for anything else. You been trying to reform someone?"