Three Score & Ten

His own reflection gave little dissatisfaction. The clear, clean skin; the clear, clean teeth; the firm clean-shaven features; the nous, efficiency, and yet frankness of his face; the dark, well-kept hair; the dark brown eyes, set rather far back – all these collectively were as bracing to a remorseful spirit as you could wish. He was, however, not an Englishman. His American and Irish parentage gleamed from him – most particularly his American. His father had been (and it was his father’s proudest boast) an American “cop”. But he had never seen his father, and his mother had died in London when he was sixteen and at sea. He had spent his early life at sea, and England was the country of his adoption. He spoke with a cockney accent. He was now twenty-five, but looked any age between twenty and thirty. He was an acquisition to “The Midnight Bell,” and a favourite everywhere.

Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets UnderThe Sky

‘I lived with a man,’ she said, ‘a long, long time – too long. It was one of those awful mistakes people make. I lived with him a long time after I wanted to get out, but he couldn’t let me go. He’d try, but he couldn’t. So finally I ran away.’

He was listening, weighing but not judging. Nothing changed under the rose and blue hat. She was twenty-five or so. It would have been a waste if she had not loved and been loved.

‘We were too close,’ she said. ‘We should probably have had children – to stand between us. But you can’t have children when there’s no roof to the house.’

All right, he knew something of her. It would not be like last night when something kept saying, as in a story conference: ‘We know nothing about the girl. We don’t have to know much – but we have to know something.’ A vague background spread behind her, something more tangible than the head of Siva in the moonlight.

F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon