And perhaps at the very end his mind moved back, back through the cloud of the years, to older and even older memories: to the rain falling over the grey sea off Jura; to the thump of the bombs going off in the streets beyond Piccadilly; and the lofted torches in the great square at Barcelona; and the electric shock of the bullet slamming home; and Eileen’s face under the church gate; and Eileen at the supper table in Hampstead, and out riding at Blackheath; and the smell of the hops in the Kentish fields; and Pétain with his spreading moustache; and the flying fish in the bay at Colombo; and picking mushrooms up on the hills above Henley; and roaming through the silent dormitories at dawn on a summer day; and the portraits of the Blairs in their frames; and the shallows near Jordan; and his mother’s shadow falling across the garden; and the sound of the night jars on summer evenings in the lanes; and the woods and the streams of Oxfordshire.