The long hot summer is coming to an end. Britain has basked under the sun, safe and supreme in the world. Her Empire covers a quarter of the planet, as every schoolboy learns. Her industries are unrivaled and her armed forces undefeated. For the gilded rich, the world is their playing field. For the working poor, the omnibuses have taken them to the pleasure beaches at Skegness and Mabelthorpe and the steam trains, packed with merrymakers, have spilled holidaymakers into the parks of London. The summer has been long indeed.
But now the days lengthen. A mist rises from the fens and soaks into the fields and the hedgerows. Strange figures move across the furrows and loiter under the trees, strange voices are heard in the yard, foreign voices, whispering. Beyond the grey seas, strange news makes its way from Europe and the world beyond, rumours of war and revolution, assassination and threat. "Foreigners!" snort the labourers in the public houses, but their eyes move to the windows, to the fog in the lane, to the unfamiliar face that peers in and then is gone. They return to their beers but now they drink in silence.
The dusk comes on quickly. The men from the picket lines return to their mean homes, grumbling. The women put away their placards and banners and return to their husbands. The regiment marches through the echoing streets to the siding below the embankment where a train is waiting. In Whitehall, new orders are being issued. The newfangled Dreadnought, belching steam, cruises into the night.
It is 1913 and the long summer is coming to an end.
(Extract from the introduction to Season of Mists)
But now the days lengthen. A mist rises from the fens and soaks into the fields and the hedgerows. Strange figures move across the furrows and loiter under the trees, strange voices are heard in the yard, foreign voices, whispering. Beyond the grey seas, strange news makes its way from Europe and the world beyond, rumours of war and revolution, assassination and threat. "Foreigners!" snort the labourers in the public houses, but their eyes move to the windows, to the fog in the lane, to the unfamiliar face that peers in and then is gone. They return to their beers but now they drink in silence.
The dusk comes on quickly. The men from the picket lines return to their mean homes, grumbling. The women put away their placards and banners and return to their husbands. The regiment marches through the echoing streets to the siding below the embankment where a train is waiting. In Whitehall, new orders are being issued. The newfangled Dreadnought, belching steam, cruises into the night.
It is 1913 and the long summer is coming to an end.
(Extract from the introduction to Season of Mists)