But I had to see the pool at Binfield House.
I felt really bad that m. The fact was that ever since I struck Lower Binfield I』d been drinking almost tinuously from every opening time to every closing time. The reason, though it hadn』t occurred to me till this minute, was that really there』d been nothing else to do. That was all my trip had amouo so far—three days on the booze.
The same as the other m, I crawled over to the window and watched the bowler hats and school caps hustling to and fro. My enemies, I thought. The quering army that』s sacked the town and covered the ruins with fag-ends and paper bags. I wondered why I cared. You think, I dare say, that if it had given me a jolt to find Lower Binfield swollen into a kind of Dagenham, it was merely because I don』t like to see the earth getting fuller and try turning into town. But it isn』t that at all. I don』t mind towns growing, so long as they do grow and don』t merely spread like gravy over a tablecloth. I knoeople have got to have somewhere to live, and that if a factory isn』t in one place it』ll be in another. As for the picturesqueness, the sham trified stuff, the oak panels aer dishes and copper warming-pans and what- not, it merely gives me the sick. Whatever we were in the old days, we weren』t picturesque. Mother would never have seen any sense iiques that Wendy had filled our house with. She didn』t like gateleg tables—she said they 『caught ys』. As for pewter, she wouldn』t have it in the house. 『Nasty greasy stuff』, she called it. A, say what you like, there was something that we had in those days and haven』t got now, something that you probably 』t have in a streamlined milk-bar with the radio playing. I』d e back to look for it, and I hadn』t found it. A somehow I half believe in it even now, when I hadn』t yet got my teeth in and my belly was g out for an aspirin and a cup of tea.
And that started me thinking again about the pool at Binfield House. After seeing what they』d doo the town, I』d had a feeling you could only describe as fear about going to see whether the pool still existed. A might, there was no knowing. The town was smothered under red brick, our house was full of Wendy and her junk, the Thames oisoned with motor-oil and paper bags. But maybe the pool was still there, with the great black fish still cruising round it. Maybe, even, it was still hidden in the woods and from that day to this no one had discovered it existed. It was quite possible. It was a very thick bit of wood, full of brambles and rotten brushwood (the beech trees gave way to oaks round about there, which made the undergrowth thicker), the kind of place most people don』t care to pee. Queerer things have happened.
I didn』t start out till late afternoon. It must have been about half past four when I took the car out and drove on to the Upper Binfield road. Half- the hill the houses thinned out and stopped and the beech trees began. The road forks about there and I took the right-hand fork, meaning to make a detour round and e back to Binfield House on the road. But presently I stopped to have a look at the copse I was driving through. The beech trees seemed just the same. Lord, how they were the same! I backed the car on to a bit of grass beside the road, under a fall of chalk, and got out and walked. Just the same. The same stillness, the same great beds of rustling leaves that seem to go on from year to year without rotting. Not a creature stirring except the small birds