Evans GE by The Strength of the HIlls

Author:The Strength of the HIlls [HIlls, The Strength of the]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rack 2 - Literature & Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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tell Herbert Naylor that I had made up my mind to go on the course.

Having made the decision, I was easier in my mind. I was more sure I could get a job. What sort of job was not of first importance as long as I was able to press on with the writing, I would have to learn patience and to think in terms of years and not weeks and months. I ended my week with the Lamberts with mixed feelings, and travelled down to Southwark on the Sunday. The hostel where the course members were staying was in Trinity Square in the Borough. It was an early nineteenth-century square with well built Georgian terraced houses, and we were in one that was big enough to hold most of the twenty-nine men who were on the course. A large proportion of them were ex-regular soldiers, men who had served seven years abroad and were now in the reserve. A number of them had been in the Indian army, and some of them had served in the Far East. They had all done physical training as part of their military service and a few of them had specialised in it; all were now being trained as leaders of boys' clubs and groups of unemployed that were being formed all over the country. There were also two or three atypical members like myself who joined the course after it had started. One was an athlete about my age. He had been a stockbroker and given up his career to start a new one. Another mysterious member turned up to take part in the morning sessions. He was a man of about twenty-eight who was dressed in an impeccable City uniform: dark suit, white shirt, and bowler hat. He was just about to be married (though I feel sure that a physical training course had not been prescribed particularly for that). He was said to have a private income and that his father was Master at one of the Cambridge colleges. He was a good mixer. One of his favourite tricks after a morning's vigorous programme was to take his leave by somehow bouncing his bowler hat on his arm in a gesture often performed by music-hall comedians - and afterwards guiding it on to his head, raising it ceremoniously again to wish us a humorously formal goodbye. The gymnasium where we spent most of the day was in Tooley Street near London Bridge, a very busy street where heavy dock-loads drawn by brisk teams of horses were continually passing. The gymnasium was a quarter of an hour's brisk walk from the hostel, passing through the rather grim streets of Bermondsey.

While I was on the course I occasionally went up to the West End but I found it more absorbing to explore Southwark itself, with its cathedral and Chaucerian links; and to cross London Bridge and explore the deserted City. In the early Thirties, before the bombings of the second

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