I held out my hands to him and asked if he knew how that was done. He didn’t answer a word, just waited for further information.

‘Look here!’ I said to him, ‘I swear there isn’t a soul in this country who knows I am alive except yourself. I want gloves, shaving tackle, and a clothes brush. Don’t buy them. Give me old things that have no mark on them by which they could be traced back to you if I am caught. And if you don’t mind putting your hand in my inside coat-pocket you will find money.’

‘I don’t want money,’ he said.

His face was absolutely expressionless. He wasn’t giving anything away. He might have meant that he wouldn’t help a fugitive for all the money in the world, or that he wouldn’t take money for helping a fugitive. The next move was up to me.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked.

I saw a flicker of interest in his eyes, but he made no sign that he had understood me. I carried on in English. I was completely in his power, so that there was no point in hiding my nationality. I hoped that the foreign tongue might break down his reserve.

‘I won’t tell you who I am or what I have done,’ I said, ‘because it is wiser that you shouldn’t know. But so long as no one sees us talking together, I don’t think you run the slightest risk in helping me.’

‘I’ll help you,’ he answered in English. ‘What was it you wanted?’

I repeated my requirements and asked him to throw in an eye-patch and some food if he could manage it. I also told him that I was a rich man and he shouldn’t hesitate to take any money he might need. He refused—with a very sweet, melancholy smile—but gave me an address in England to which I was to pay what I thought fit if ever I got home.

‘Where shall I put the things?’ he asked.

‘Under the cart over there,’ I answered. ‘And don’t worry. I shall be in the wheat, and I’ll take care not to be seen.’

He said good-bye and moved off abruptly. In one stride he had dissociated himself from me completely. He knew by experience that among the proscribed the truest courtesy was to waste no time in courtesy.

The traffic on the road was increasing, and I had to wait some minutes before I could safely cross into the shelter of the wheat. The sun rose and the landscape budded men and business—barges on the river, a battalion out for a route march on the road, and damned, silent bicycles sneaking up every time I raised my head.

The fisherman was back in an hour, but the road was too busy for him to drop a parcel under the cart unseen. He solved the problem by fetching his rod and sitting on the cart while he took it apart and packed it. When he got up he accidentally left the parcel behind.

To get possession of it was the devil of a job, for I could not see what was about to pass until the traffic was nearly opposite me. I knelt in the wheat, bobbing my head up and down like a pious old woman divided between silent prayer and the responses. At last I plucked up courage and reached the cart. A stream of cars went by, but they did not matter; the danger was a pedestrian or a cyclist who might be tempted to stop and talk. I kept my back to the road and pretended to be tinkering with the axle. A woman wished me good morning, and that was the worst fright I had had since they pushed me over the cliff. I answered her surlily and she passed on. To wait for a clear road was exasperating, but I needed a full minute free from possible observation. I couldn’t plunge boldly back into the wheat. I had to tread gently, separating the stalks so as not to leave too obvious a track behind me.

At last I knelt in peace and unpacked the parcel which that blessed fisherman had left for me. There were a bottle of milk well laced with brandy, bread and the best part of a cold chicken. He had thought of everything, even hot shaving-water in a thermos flask.

When I had finished his food I felt equal to looking in the mirror. I was cleaner than I expected; the morning swim was responsible for that. But I didn’t recognize myself. It was not the smashed eye which surprised me—that was merely closed, swollen and ugly. It was the other eye. Glaring back at me from the mirror, deep and enormous, it seemed to belong to someone intensely alive, so much more alive than I felt. My face was all pallors and angles, like that of a Christian martyr in a medieval painting—and I had the added villainy of bristles. I marvelled how such a beastly crop could grow in so poor and spiritual a soil.

I put on my gloves—limp leather, God reward him, and several sizes too large!—then shaved, brushed my clothes, and dressed myself more tidily. My coat and shirt were patterned in shades of brown, and the blood stains, weakened by my swim to the island, hardly showed. When I had cleaned up and adjusted the eye-patch, I came to the conclusion that I aroused pity rather than suspicion. I looked like a poor but educated man, a clerk or schoolmaster, convalescent after some nasty accident. That was evidently the right part to play.

As soon as I was ready I left the wheat, for now I did not care how wide a track I made so long as no one actually saw me emerge. The road was clearer; it had ceased to feed and empty the town, and become an artery in a greater life. Lorries and cars sped by with the leisurely roar of through traffic. Their drivers had no neighbourly feelings towards that mile of road, no damned curiosity about a lonely pedestrian. I covered the mile into town, limping along as best I could and stopping frequently to rest. At need I could walk very slowly and correctly, hanging on each foot, as if waiting for somebody.

I was desperately nervous when first I engaged myself between two lines of houses. There seemed to be so many windows observing me, such crowds on the streets. Looking back on it, I cannot think that I passed more than a score of people, mostly women shopping; but, at the best of times, I have a tendency to agoraphobia. Even in London I avoid crowds at all cost; to push my way through the drift of suburban idlers in Oxford Street is torment to me. The streets of that town were really no more full nor empty than those of my own country town, and normally I should not have been affected; but I seemed to have been out of human society for years.

I cut down to the river by the first turning, and came out on to a paved walk, with flower-beds and a bandstand, where I could stroll at my artificial pace without making myself conspicuous. Ahead, under the bridge, were moored a dozen boats. When I came abreast of them I saw the expected notice of ‘Boats for Hire’ in a prettily painted cottage. There was a man leaning on the fence, meditative and unbuttoned, and obviously digesting his breakfast while mistaking that process for thought.

I wished him good day and asked if I could hire a boat. He looked at me suspiciously and remarked that he had never seen me before, as if that ended the discussion. I explained that I was a schoolmaster recovering from a motor accident and had been ordered by my doctor to spend a week in the open air. He took his pipe out of his mouth and said that he didn’t hire boats to strangers. Well, had he one for sale? No, he had not. So there we were. He evidently didn’t like the look of me and wasn’t going to argue.

A shrill yell came from a bedroom window:

‘Sell him the punt, idiot!’

I looked up. A red face and formidable bust were hanging over the window-sill, both quivering with exasperation. I bowed to her with the formality of a village teacher, and she came down.

‘Sell him what he wants, dolt!’ she ordered.

Her small, screaming voice came most oddly from so huge a bulk. I imagine he had driven her voice higher and higher with impatience until it stuck permanently on its top note.

‘I don’t know who he is,’ insisted her husband with stupid surliness.

‘Well, who are you?’ she shrieked, as if I had repeatedly refused her the information.