Bill did go on, ad-lib no doubt, but he did it well, playing up the sex side a little, how they’d finished up in a night club with three of these girls; Alec, a chap from the political adviser’s office and Bifi, and Bill had been so embarrassed because he hadn’t any money on him and Alec had paid, and Bifi had wanted to take a girl home and Alec had lent him another tenner–
“Christ,” said Leamas, “I remember now, of course I do.”
“I _knew_ you would,” said Ashe happily, nodding at Leamas over his glass. “Look, do let’s have the other half, this is _such_ fun.”
Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response. Where there was softness, he would advance; where he found resistance, retreat. Having himself no particular opinions or tastes, he relied upon whatever conformed with those of his companion. He was as ready to drink tea at Fortnum’s as beer at the Prospect of Whitby; he would listen to military music in St. James’s Park or jazz in a Compton Street cellar; his voice would tremble with sympathy when he spoke of Sharpeville, or with indignation at the growth of Britain’s colored population. To Leamas this observably passive role was repellent; it brought out the bully in him, so that he would lead the other gently into a position where he was committed, and then himself withdraw, so that Ashe was constantly scampering back from some cul-de-sac into which Leamas had enticed him. There were moments that afternoon when Leamas was so brazenly perverse that Ashe would have been justified in terminating their conversation–especially since he was paying; but he did not. The little sad man with spectacles who sat alone at the neighboring table, deep in a book on the manufacture of ball bearings, might have deduced, bad he been listening, that Leamas was indulging a sadistic nature–or perhaps (if he had been a man of particular subtlety) that Leamas was proving to his own satisfaction that only a man with a strong ulterior motive would put up with that kind of treatment.
It was nearly four o’clock before they ordered the bill, and Leamas tried to insist on paying his half. Ashe wouldn’t hear of it, paid the bill and took out his checkbook in order to settle his debt to Leamas.
“Twenty of the best,” he said, and filled in the date on the check form.
Then he looked up at Leaxnas, all wide-eyed and accommodating. “I say, a check is all right with you, isn’t it?”
Coloring a little, Leamas replied, “I haven’t got a bank at the moment–only just back from abroad, something I’ve got to fix up. Better give me a check and I’ll cash it at your bank.”
“My dear chap, I wouldn’t _dream_ of it! You’d have to go to Rotherhithe to cash this one!” Leamas shrugged and Ashe laughed, and they agreed to meet at the same place on the following day, at one o’clock, when Ashe would have the money in cash.
Ashe took a cab at the corner of Compton Street, and Leamas waved at it until it was out of sight. When it was gone, he looked at his watch. It was four o’clock. He’guessed he was still being followed, so he walked down to Fleet Street and had a cup of coffee in the Black and White. He looked at bookshops, read the evening papers displayed in the show windows of newspaper offices, and then quite suddenly, as if. the thought had occurred to him at thó last minute, he jumped on a bus. The bus went to Ludgate Hill, where it was held up in a traffic jam near a tube station; he dismounted and caught a tube. He bought a sixpenny ticket, stood In the end car and got off at the next station. He caught another train to Euston, trekked back to Charing Cross. It was nine o’clock when he reached the station and it had turned rather cold. There was a van waiting in the forecourt; the driver was fast asleep.
Leamas glanced at the number, went over and called through the window, “Are you from Clements?”