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There was an awful sound. It was a train in the cutting. The hoarse panting echoed across the rise of the hill, through the trees, mounting up to me in successive waves of nauseous liberation. It shattered the wood with its steady reverberation, gasping and wheezing in its hidden trough. It seemed as if the monster would never reveal itself but simply menace with its struggle...
The noise, after its slow accumulation, was sustained; then it began to drain slowly and we heard the heavy clacking of the loaded trucks over the rails. The echoing faded into itself; there was the steely slur of the last wheels on the rails, then that disappeared and the final exhausted panting of the engine gave way to the faint hiss of the drizzle on leaves.
There was a silence and stillness through the wood, which the strange hissing of the rain only intensified.
David Storey, Flight into Camden, Macmillan, New York, 1961, p.57, chap. 4.
PLACE: Lancashire, England
TIME: ca. 1950
I could hear his feet thudding between the houses, beating back up the street. I listened for some time, standing perfectly still in the darkness of the hall, afraid of the house. His sounds echoed towards me as if he were returning, then retreated slowly, fading away so slowly that I felt I could still hear them long after they must have disappeared.
David Storey, Flight into Camden, Macmillan, New York, 1961, p. 95, chap. 6.
PLACE: Camden Town, London
TIME: ca. 1950
Voices came from nearby houses, and overhead an aircraft lumbered through the tiny, fractured clouds.
Flight into Camden, David Storey, Macmillan, New York, 1961, p. 218, chap.13
PLACE: Camden Town, London
TIME: ca. 1950
There were kids playing over the backs. Their feet crunched on the ashes outside the door. They cried and screamed in the dark. Young Farrer in the next yard was revving his motor bike engine, making it splutter, and cough, then die. It was a circus going on out there. I stood up to go out.
David Storey, This Sporting Life, Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd., London, 1960, p. 27 - 28, chap. 2.
PLACE: Lancashire, England
TIME: ca. 1950
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