but he could not have been less than ten years old, possibly twelve, when
it had happened.
His father had disappeared some time earlier, how much earlier he
could not remember. He remembered better the rackety, uneasy circumstances
of the time: the periodical panics about air-raids and the sheltering in
Tube stations, the piles of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible
proclamations posted at street corners, the gangs of youths in shirts all
the same colour, the enormous queues outside the bakeries, the intermittent
machine-gun fire in the distance -- above all, the fact that there was
never enough to eat. He remembered long afternoons spent with other boys in
scrounging round dustbins and rubbish heaps, picking out the ribs of
cabbage leaves, potato peelings, sometimes even scraps of stale breadcrust
from which they carefully scraped away the cinders; and also in waiting for
the passing of trucks which travelled over a certain route and were known
to car