just missed me, silvering the highstreet as it slid north. And I remembered Of Love and Hunger and Fanshawe shivering under the sheets in his buffeted room atop the boarding house, alone and broke, not even a shilling left for a pack of fags, rain greasing the windows, smell of kippers and damp carpets drifting up from the guest lounge. Maclaren-Ross earned his shelf space in the Library of the Dead with that one book, with its puddled roads, warm beer and shut terrace doors. And when the storm passes, Fanshawe mutters to himself,
Some other town’d catch it now.
England changed so much, and changed not at all.
