Tom’s Last Night at the Heppners

It was going to be impossible to sleep. There could be no doubt of that. Tom lay in his little room. It was neither hot nor cold.

One thought seemed unalterable, inescapable, and depressing beyond words.

I can never return to England.

Oh, he could go back. He would go back. As soon as possible. But his England, the England before Germany, before Hitler, the England of a little room and a lot of books, of napping and thinking and watching the slow sway of sunlight against his window – why that England was dead and gone. Worse than that – it was a fairy tale, or Santa Claus, which had never been real except in his imagination. His fantasy, more like.

But – and he had to be honest with himself about this – there was a certain measure of reli ...