under the steering wheel and stepped on the starter. "Suppose I can get any speed out of this?"
"Say, but it's not mine, you know! Mine's parked over there."
"Who cares whose it is? Don't be dull, Jock Hamill."
She threw the car into gear and pointed it down the drive. As they fled past the clubhouse the saxophones from within seemed to be jeering at them—"Yah-yah-yah"—like impudent urchins with their thumbs at their noses. Jock looked to see whether anyone watched their departure, but apparently did no one. Swiftly they reached the main road, swung into it with a backward spatter of gravel, and headed south.
He said, "Now it's my turn to say 'Where are we going? Not that it matters.'"
"Nowhere in particular," answered Yvonne. "We're just going. Don't talk, Jock Hamill. I don't like to talk when I'm riding. I like to sing, though," she added.
She had a strange voice, haunting, with a sob in it. It made you think of things. Plantation nights. Wind in pine trees. Plaint of a restless sea. Things you had lost. Things you had forgotten. Things you were groping for blindly and would never quite achieve. . . . Jock closed his eyes as he listened. Gradually he lost the world, in a sort of way, and became conscious only of breathless motion and of Yvonne, beside him, singing into the dark . . .
They rode for half an hour. Not until they were back at the club again, and the machine was resting precisely over the puddle of oil that marked its original stand, did either of them speak. Then Jock said, "Where in the world did you learn to sing like that?"
