1

But the snow did not come. The sky remained as immovable as a pebble frozen in the surface of a pond. The lights had to be kept on in offices, and some people worked in their coats; those who looked out of the windows of expensive centrally-heated flats still saw the bare, motionless trees, the railings, the half-obliterated government notices.

It was easier to forget about it in the city, however. For one thing it was Saturday afternoon, and by one o’clock most people were free to go home. They could turn their backs on the window, and the slab of garden, and read the newspaper by the fire till teatime. Or if they had no real home, they could pay to sit in the large cinemas, where it seemed warmer because it was dark. The cafeterias filled up early, and the, shoppers lingered over their teas, dropping cigarette-ends into their empty cups, unwilling to face the journey back to where they lived. Everywhere people indoors were loth to move. Men stayed in their clubs, in billiard saloons, in public bars till closing time. Soldiers lay discontentedly in Y.M.C.A. rest rooms, writing letters or turning over magazines several weeks old.

And meanwhile, the winter remained. It was not romantic or picturesque: the snow, that was graceful in the country, was days old in the town: it had been trodden to a brown powder and shovelled into the gutters. Where it had not been disturbed, on burnt-out buildings, on warehouse roofs or sheds in the railways yards, it made the scene more dingy and dispirited. Women went round to the coal yards with perambulators and large baskets; elderly men picked up pieces of lath from heaps of rubble: there were no fires in waiting-rooms. Paper-sellers with the three o’clock edition stood well within the locked entrances of banks. The papers said nothing about the weather, but gave lists of football matches and race-meetings that had been cancelled.

On one of the stations, a crowd watched a porter come out and chalk up on a board that the Paddington train was eighty-five minutes late.