There were no clocks ticking out the time of the universe, no radio broadcasting one-sided merriment, no sound of a neighbour’s baby crying. It was dark, too, the evening dying beyond the dense foliage that shaded the house even in the brightest of noonday suns. And there were scents . . . A rambling, run-wild, decadent honeysuckle lurked just beyond the flecking paint of the cottage windows, excreting a turgid, almost oleaginous perfume that mingled with lesser tones of damp, dust, mouse and fertilizer. The chair in which he was sitting was old and uncomfortable, although Sheldon knew that it was more welcoming than his visitor’s seat; Sheldon somehow fitted into it, presumably by a process of long years of slow integration and mutual accommodation. Somersby’s seat was a thing that looked well over a hundred years old and beyond all available medical intervention; it looked mean, with lumps and springs in all the wrong places that were ready to bite; it was worn and dirty too.
