One hadn’t to go far to see the whole of Hiverton. It was huddled together like a misplaced hill village. On one side was the sea, on the other stony fields. From a little distance it had the appearance of a watchful, red-brick citadel. He had plodded along the terraces which formed the northerly ramparts, turning deliberately from one to another until he had covered every yard. Here jerry-building had flourished in the years between the wars. The houses were sullenly ugly, needed plaster, needed paint. They were served by unmade-up roads. The yards behind them were small and slummy. In front they had patches of scuffed grass or anaemic flower beds edged with bottles. The paths to them, almost without exception, were of trodden earth, cinder, and cockleshells. And the people who lived in these places? At the thought he had hunched his shoulders. Yet something about them had struck him, difficult though it was to put it into words. He had met them coming out, seen them trudging up to their doors; here one had passed a civil word, there one plucked a curtain to stare at him.
