‘Bowling,’ I said very distinctly. ‘Mr George Bowling.’
‘Bowling, sir. B-O-A, oh! B-O-W? Yes, sir. And you are coming from London, sir?’
No response. Nothing registered. She’d never heard of me. Never heard of George Bowling, son of Samuel Bowling, Samuel Bowling who, damn it! had had his half-pint in this same pub every Saturday for over thirty years.
2The dining-room had changed, too.
I could remember the old room, though I’d never had a meal there, with its brown mantelpiece and its bronzy-yellow wallpaper, I never knew whether it was meant to be that colour, or had just got like that from age and smoke, and the oil-painting, also by Wm. Sandford, Painter & Carpenter, of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Now they’d got the place up in a kind of medieval style. Brick fireplace with ingleno
