At last I got up to go. I gave the room a final look, then recrossed the galleried hall and passed out beneath the portico. My head was full of plans for restoring the house. I was ruthlessly sweeping away the waitresses, the laced parchment lamp-shades, the wicker furniture and the food counter.

My bicycle had been left leaning against one of the garden urns. I wheeled it over the gravel, looking back once or twice; then I jumped on and rode down another arm of the drive until I reached the main road again.

It was now only early afternoon and the heat haze seemed to be drawing nearer, to be shimmering on the grass as well as on the distant trees. I passed through the gates and pedalled on towards Bromley. I hoped that I might arrive at the vicarage in time for tea. Once I had to look at my map, and then ask the way. As cars and lorries sped past me, I remembered how my father used to call me Safety First when I was a small child, because of my fear of traffic and my great caution in crossing roads. I thought that the ride had been very easy and pleasant so far. I felt I had wasted many opportunities by leaving my bicycle in the country and not bringing it to London before.

I was going along a straight wide road, keeping close to the kerb, not looking behind or bothering about the traffic at all.... I heard a voice through a great cloud of agony and sickness. The voice was asking questions. It seemed to be opening and closing like a concertina. The words were loud, as the swelling notes of an organ, then they melted to the tiniest wiry tinkle of water in a glass.I knew that I was lying on my back on the grass; I could feel the shiny blades on my neck. I was staring at the sky and I could not move. Everything about me seemed to be reeling and breaking up. My whole body was screaming with pain, filling my head with its roaring, and my eyes were swimming in a sort of gum mucilage. Rich clouds of what seemed to be a combination of ink and velvet soot kept belching over me, soaking into me, then melting away. Bright little points glittered all down the front of the liquid man kneeling beside me. I knew at once that he was a policeman, and I thought that, in his official capacity, he was performing some ritual operation on me. There was a confusion in my mind between being brought to life — forceps, navel-cords, midwives — and being put to death — ropes, axes and black masks; but whatever it was that was happening, I felt that all men came to this at last. I was caught and could never escape the terrible natural law.

“What is your name? Where do you live? Where were you going?” the policeman kept asking. I could hear the fright in his voice. The fright made the voice more cruel and hard and impatient, I realized that he had been asking me these questions for a long time, and I told myself that I must give him the right answers at once, that I could think quite clear bloodless sentences, if I tried.

The words came out of my mouth. Some of them were slightly incorrect, others a little fantastic. I knew this, but felt that I had not real control over the words, and if I tried to repeat them again soberly they would arrange themselves in a still more grotesque pattern.

And as the shaken policeman bent over me, trying to take down my words, I felt the boiling and seething rise in me. It was drowning my brain, beating on it, plunging over it, shattering it. The earth swung, hovered, leaving my feet in the air and my head far below. I was overcome and drowned in waves of sickness and blackness....