The Country Life

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I was to take the four o’clock train from Charing Cross to Buckley, a small town some three miles, I had been told, from the village of Hilltop. The short notice at which I was required had left me with little time for more than a glance at the area on a map, where I had learned only that the two names belonged to the lower part of the county of Sussex, and where I had gained the impression of a series of subdivisions eventually resulting in a narrow scribble of road and terminating in the dot of my destination. The prospect of travelling away from London was an unnatural one. Some gravitational principle appeared to be being defied in doing so. Tracing the route with my finger, the distance seemed more unsustainable as it grew, and once beyond the city’s edge took on in my mind the resistance of an inhospitable element, as if I were now forging out to sea or tunnelling underground. To me the town of Buckley was as remote an outpost as an Antarctic station, and, still further, the village of Hilltop — represented there by a dot, as I have said — seemed to promise neither oxygen nor human life.

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