An English rose
The window looked onto a garden which had in it a shed, a view possessed of that homely lack of grandeur, that almost remarkable domesticity, which some mistook for breathtakingly romantic. For Roger’s needs it was just perfect: the view was so instantly familiar from sentimental greeting cards and boxes of unpretentious English tea that it was quite impossible for its appeal to be dulled over the years, in the way that a window looking onto the Alps or the Golden Gate Bridge surely would. “Familiarity breeds contempt”, but he had found the view contemptible the first time he had leaned out of the window to smoke a cigarette, so it was very unlikely that anything would change with this, his hundredth cigarette or so in that position. Sometimes Roger held a tumbler of whisk
