Free The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon by R. F. Delderfield Page A

shunted and abandoned by all but .himself and that the wayside station, marked 'Westbury-Revel' in white stones sunk in the embankment, looked like the station of a ghost-town in the mist of what promised to be a sparkling April morning.
    He slipped on his 'mac', slung his rucksack and went along the corridor bawling "Guard!" and "Hi there!" but it was just as he feared, there was no guard aboard and when he let himself out of the guard's van and stamped the length of the short platform no one appeared at the windows of the station-house and no wisp of smoke curled from the squat chimney.
    "Curious!" he said to himself but then reflected that perhaps it was not so curious after all, for the genial guard who had accepted a florin to let him sleep in the carriage had warned him that no train would depart for Exeter until 8.23 a.m. and that he doubted whether Fred Minims, the part-time level-crossing keeper at Westbury-Revel, would put in an appearance until just before 8 o'clock.
    Mr. Sermon had been so tired and so emotionally exhausted at 2.30 a.m. that he had given no thought to the prospect of breakfast and a wash-and-brush-up but now he felt a serious need of both. There was no water in the train closet so he roved the platform until he found a tap under which he soused himself thoroughly, using a vest as a towel. After that he felt less frowsty but hungrier than ever and after prowling round the shuttered station and shouting "Hi!" once or twice, he set off resolutely down the winding road in the
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    general direction of the West. It was easy to discover which was the West for a pale, yellow sun, tinged with crimson, was peeping over the horizon beyond the station buildings and this was clearly the East, so Mr. Sermon began his march with confidence.
    The way led over a wide heathland that seemed to Mr. Sermon to be entirely uninhabited. Folds of heather were dotted here and there with patches of gorse and lonely, wind-whipped firs but as he went along, climbing slowly, he passed through several small copses of beech, oak and ash, where wild flowers grew down to the roadside, a straggle of primroses, violets, campion and viper's bug-loss, with here and there the promise of bluebells in a week or so and once, where a stream ran under the road, a white cloud of wood anemones. It was an idyllic place to be at that time of day. Behind him the sun was now clear of the earth's curve and looked exactly like a vast poached egg, pale pink in the centre and washed-out yellow at the edges. The sky was stippled with ribs of cloud and the air was sweet and heady. After a mile or so his corn began to twinge but this was a trifling matter when measured with the glory of the morning and only the steady gnaw of hunger made him wish to share his solitude with other human beings. He kept a sharp lookout for a village or hamlet, or even an isolated cottage where he could buy some breakfast, any kind of breakfast, but for all he saw of human habitation he might have been pushing up the Amazon. He thought with mild sympathy of all the millions of people who lived in cities and suburbs like the one he had quitted the previous evening and such was his mood that he could find it in him to think tolerantly of Sybil and the children, and even of Lane-Perkins and the Reverend Victor Hawley, all not yet awake but doomed the moment they opened their eyes to tread the dismal round of come-day-go-day routine, slaves to the tyranny of bells and meals and striking clocks. Presently, however, the void in his stomach began to master him. He could not remember when he last ate. Was it a canteen lunch at Napier Hall an hour or so before flashpoint? He remembered that he had had no tea or supper, and .that he had bought nothing but the cigarettes in the station buffet, but it seemed to him now that weeks had gone by without his having swallowed so much as a cup of tea or a ham sandwich.
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    He was plodding up a long, winding incline and praying that the