A Blink of the Screen

himself. At other times he tried to beat his head on the wall and ranted the slogans that had sent him mad.
    ‘
Twenty Pence, Plus Envelope and Seasonal Greeting!
’
    In between he told me …
    It had been a wild day, with the snow blowing off the Plain and turning the hills west of Silbury into one great white waste. At such times it is possible to miss the road, and he had got down off the box to lead the horses. Yet, despite what one may read in the papers, the snow was not impossibly deep on the hills, and had abated so that the sunset could be seen. Spirits were generally high, for the lights of Calne were visible, and one and all looked forward to being off the freezing roads by darkness.
    And then, as he tells it, there was a creaking noise and a flicker of shadow and the world changed or, he believes, they stepped from this world into another. And, ahead of them, there was a great square hole in the landscape.
    He avers now that it was the gateway to Hell, and while it was not the Hell that Dante visited there is to my mind some internal evidence to suggest that his ignorant guess might be the truth. There was something a-glitter at the edge of the world and, when he examined the drifted snow, he found the same curious substance strewn haphazardly on the crest of each hummock. It appeared to be thin plates of silver, scattered so as to reflect the light in what would have been, in better circumstances, a pleasing manner.
    The coachman and several of the male passengers considered the situation. The sun was sinking fast into a western sky that was now a mess of livid red and purple tones, and to the east more snow threatened. Besides, it appeared to those who ventured a little way back along the coach tracks, which were already being erased by the blowing snow, that the road had been well lost and a white wildness stretched all around.
    At length, there appearing to be no alternative, several of the party resolved to venture closer to the rectangle that obliterated the sky a score of yards away.
    It was then that they saw for the first time the monster that appeared to be the guardian of the gateway, perched on a snow-covered log.
    It was a giant Robin, several times larger than a Turkey. It watched them with malevolence in its beady eyes, and they feared greatly that it would attack; but it remained unmoving as they reached the rim, and peered out on a blur of colour. Warm air, tinged with tobacco smoke, was blowing into the world, and according to the coachman they could hear strange sounds, distorted and distant …
    One of the party was a scholar from Oxford who, having in the coachman’s opinion refreshed himself mightily during the journey, suggested that some of the party climb through the opening, beyond which lay, at a depth of perhaps three feet, a wide expanse of brown plain, because, uncertain though this course might be, it offered a more certain chance of survival than a night in hills which seemed increasingly alien.
    ‘
Season’s Greetings! From all at the office!
’
    Several bold spirits in the party, with whom the scholar had been sharing his brandy, resolved to do this. The coachman was not among them, he told me, yet eventually decided to accompany them out of a sense of duty. They were still his passengers, he said, and he felt it incumbent upon him to bring them safely to Bath.
    It was the view of the scholar that Bath might be found across the plain, for, he held, if this was a window out of the world then it followed that there might be a window back into it …
    Strange though it may seem, this appeared to be the case. They had not gone above a hundred yards before they saw, looming out of the mists in front of them, another rectangle very similar in appearance to the one they had vacated.
    Imagine their joy to see that it opened on to a friendly street lined with yellow-lit windows. One of the party declared that it was in fact a street very close to his own home in London, and while many of the travellers had left London some time before, the prospect of a return now caused them the greatest joy; the traveller promised to open up his house for them, and one of the men volunteered to go back alone to the coach to fetch the rest of the party. For it seemed to all, in those last few moments of hope, that Almighty Providence had foreseen their fate upon the bitter road and had opened a gateway into the warm heart of the greatest city in the world …
    It was then that they noticed