An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge Page A

impossible to get into character here.’
    ‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Meredith, and he pushed past him impatiently and ran down the grand staircase in search of Bunny. He found him in the station buffet slouched against the counter eating toasted tea-cakes. Beside him stood a man whose boots had burst asunder at the toes.
    ‘No wonder you look ill,’ Meredith said. ‘You should eat proper food.’
    ‘I don’t have your appetite,’ said Bunny. ‘Nor your taste buds.’
    ‘My God, what a stench,’ cried Meredith and, snatching up Bunny’s plate, took it to a table near the door.
    Bunny followed. ‘You don’t have to be so unkind,’ he complained. ‘People have feelings, you know.’
    ‘If you’d stood next to him much longer you’d be scratching by teatime.’
    ‘I haven’t got your sensitive skin either.’
    ‘That’s true enough,’ said Meredith and, unable to apologise directly for his outburst at rehearsal, invited him instead to dinner that evening at the Commercial Hotel.
    ‘I’d rather read,’ said Bunny.
    ‘Come early and leave early,’ coaxed Meredith, and as though it had just occurred to him wondered aloud whether it would be a good idea to include young Harbour.
    ‘Better not,’ said Bunny, avoiding his eye. ‘It’s as well not to rush things.’
    ‘I wasn’t very nice to him this morning.’
    ‘You weren’t very nice to quite a few people,’ said Bunny mildly.
    His amiability irritated Meredith; it made him spiteful. He referred disparagingly to Bunny’s demob suit. ‘Own up,’ he demanded. ‘You sleep in it.’
    ‘Only in the winter months,’ conceded Bunny. ‘I suppose this has to do with Hilary.’
    ‘I telephoned twice this morning. I couldn’t raise a dicky bird.’
    ‘People go out, you know.’
    ‘At eight in the morning!’
    ‘Hilary’s mother could be ill. From what you say she’s very frail.’
    ‘Could be,’ sneered Meredith. ‘But I bet my bottom dollar she isn’t.’
    ‘The phone could be out of order. Perhaps the bill hasn’t been paid.’
    ‘I’ve paid the damned bill,’ shouted Meredith. ‘I pay for everything,’ and he lit another cigarette and exhaled furiously, glaring through the smoke at Bunny munching on the last of his tea-cakes.
    The man in the worn-out boots limped towards the door carrying an ancient suitcase. Meredith, noticing Bunny fumbling in the pocket of his mackintosh, leaned across the table and seized him by the wrist. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he hissed. ‘By the state of you, it’s you that needs the hand-out.’
    ‘I was looking for my matches,’ said Bunny crossly. He pursed his big mouth into such a babyish pout that Meredith found him comical; he sniggered.
    ‘You lack consistency,’ said Bunny. ‘You blow with the wind.’
    Meredith couldn’t deny it. Often he suspected he hadn’t the capacity to sustain either love or hate.
    Encouraged, Bunny suggested he would be doing himself a favour if he asked Desmond Fairchild to dinner. The man might be something of a bounder, dispatching young Geoffrey every afternoon to that bookie in the Nelson Arms, not to mention the way he tapped his cigarettes on his thumbnail, but he was, after all, a favourite of Rose Lipman. Leastways, he was a distant connection of Councillor Harris, and he had made an enormous success as Cousin Syd in that comedy series on the Light Programme, quite apart from his role in Charley’s Aunt on Saturday Night Theatre. Appreciative letters were still arriving at the stage door from listeners to the Home Service. Meredith might not like him but he was a box office draw and bearing in mind that unfortunate incident in Windsor . . .
    ‘Like him!’ said Meredith. ‘I detest him. The man’s a sartorial offence. That camel-hair coat with the velvet collar . . . that vulgar hat.’
    ‘It’s possibly a mistake to make an enemy of someone on account of his trilby,’ warned Bunny.
    ‘I wouldn’t stand him dinner if my life depended on