The Sense of an Ending

the train one stop before and sat on a bench reading a free newspaper. Or at least, staring at it. Then I took a train to the next station, where an escalator delivered me to a ticket hall in a part of London unknown to me. As I came through the barrier I saw a particular shape and way of standing. Immediately, she turned and walked off. I followed her past a bus stop into a side street where she unlocked a car. I got into the passenger seat and looked across. She was already starting the engine.
    ‘That’s funny. I’ve got a Polo too.’
    She didn’t reply. I shouldn’t have been surprised. From my knowledge and memory of her, outdated though it was, car-talk was never going to be Veronica’s thing. It wasn’t mine either – though I knew better than to explain that.
    It was a hot afternoon still. I opened my window. She glanced beyond me, frowning. I closed the window. Oh well, I said to myself.
    ‘I was thinking the other day about when we watched the Severn Bore.’
    She didn’t reply.
    ‘Do you remember that?’ She shook her head. ‘Really not? There was a gang of us, up at Minsterworth. There was a moon –’
    ‘Driving,’ she said.
    ‘Fine.’ If that was how she wanted it. After all, it was her expedition. I looked out of the window instead. Convenience stores, cheap restaurants, a betting shop, people queuing at a cash machine, women with bits of flesh spurting from between the joins of their clothes, a slew of litter, a shouting lunatic, an obese mother with three obese children, faces from all races: an all-purpose high street, normal London.
    After a few minutes, we got to a posher bit: detached houses, front gardens, a hill. Veronica turned off and parked. I thought: OK, it’s your game – I’ll wait for the rules, whatever they might be. But part of me also thought: Fuck it, I’m not going to stop being myself just because you’re back in your Wobbly Bridge state of mind.
    ‘How’s Brother Jack?’ I asked cheerily. She could hardly answer ‘Driving’ to that question.
    ‘Jack’s Jack,’ she replied, not looking at me.
    Well,
that
’s philosophically self-evident, as we used to say, back in the days of Adrian.
    ‘Do you remember –’
    ‘Waiting,’ she interrupted.
    Very well, I thought. First meeting, then driving, now waiting. What comes next? Shopping, cooking, eating and drinking, snogging, wanking and fucking? I very much doubt it. But as we sat side by side, a bald man and a whiskery woman, I realised what I should have spotted at once. Of the two of us, Veronica was much the more nervous. And whereas I was nervous about her, she clearly wasn’t nervous about me. I was like some minor, necessary irritant. But why was I necessary?
    I sat and waited. I rather wished I hadn’t left that free newspaper on the train. I wondered why I hadn’t driven here myself. Probably because I didn’t know what the parking restrictions would be like. I wanted a drink of water. I also wanted to pee. I lowered the window. This time, Veronica didn’t object.
    ‘Look.’
    I looked. A small group of people were coming along the pavement towards my side of the car. I counted five of them. In front was a man who, despite the heat, was wearing layers of heavy tweed, including a waistcoat and a kind of deerstalker helmet. His jacket and hat were covered with metal badges, thirty or forty of them at a guess, some glinting in the sun; there was a watch-chain slung between his waistcoat pockets. His expression was jolly: he looked like someone with an obscure function at a circus or fairground. Behind him came two men: the first had a black moustache and a kind of rolling gait; the second was small and malformed, with one shoulder much higher than the other – he paused to spit briefly into a front garden. And behind them was a tall, goofy fellow with glasses, holding the hand of a plump, Indianish woman.
    ‘Pub,’ said the man with the moustache as they drew level.
    ‘No, not pub,’ replied the man with the badges.
    ‘Pub,’ the first man insisted.
    ‘Shop,’ said the woman.
    They all spoke in very loud voices, like children just let out of school.
    ‘Shop,’ repeated the lopsided man, with a gentle gob into a hedge.
    I was looking as carefully as I could, because that was what I had been instructed to do. They must all, I suppose, have been between thirty and fifty, yet at the same time had a kind of fixed, ageless quality. Also, an obvious timidity, which was emphasised by