Bicycling, at least, was better than hanging about for buses or stifling in the Underground, though – his practical eye considered the landscape as he wheeled swiftly along – the winter-bleached grass looked dirty and there was a dismal scatter of litter everywhere. But the children of the age of affluence could not spoil the trees. Some forty feet above the marred earth there were bare silver branches, robust and thewed as the arms of giants, massive trunks, delicate tracery of leaf skeleton and twig. He recalled his straying thoughts. What was to be done during the rest of the day? Tea with Mrs Lysaght; Evensong; the list of his Lenten sermons to sketch out; the Men’s Group at eight-fifteen; an hour or so after that with Sunday’s sermon … what a waste of time these teas with poor Helen were. Mrs Lysaght herself opened the door to him. Her flat was in a solid Edwardian block lifted up on one of Hampstead’s numerous baby hillocks above the unceasing hell of noise in Heath Street.
