WESTERN LIBERIA IIJ

tion came between, left you on one side with the little
stout Esthonian peasant girl who spoke English and
German and didn't trouble to flirt, and them with
the ikons in the second-hand shops, the Orthodox
priest selling pictures on the pavement, a wilderness
of empty champagne bottles. . . .

It was a late winter evening when I drove through
into the Nottingham suburb from the station, round
streets quite as dark as Riga's, down and down below
the castle rock and the municipal art gallery with
the rain breaking on the windows. I had a job, it
excited and scared me, I was twenty-one, and you
couldn't talk of darkest Africa with any conviction
when you had known Nottingham well: the dog
sick on the mat, the tinned salmon for tea and the
hot potato chips for supper carried into the sub-
editor's room ready-salted in strips of newspaper (if
you had won the football sweep you paid for the lot).
The fog came down in the morning and stayed till
night. It wasn't a disagreeable fog; it lay heavy and
black between the sun and the earth; there was no
light but the air was clear. The municipal 'tart' paced
up and down by the largest cinema, old and haggard
and unused. Her trade was spoilt; there were too
many girls about who hadn't a proper sense of values,
who would give you a good time in return for a fish
tea. The trams creaked round the goose market, and
day after day the one bookshop displayed a card iu
the window printed with Mr, Sassoon's poem:

Have you forgotten yet? . . .
Look up, and swear by the green of the
Spring that you'll never forget.