The following afternoon finds him setting out to the little market town about half an hour’s walk from the school. Visits there are one of the privileges he enjoys as an upper-school boy in good standing, though they are limited to a single outing a term. The day is grey and cold, the skies threatening snow. Charlie walks briskly, trying to keep warm, but there is no way to keep the frost out of his hands and feet. Town is a butcher’s, a baker’s, a greengrocer’s, and a haberdashery. There is also a public house near the river and a Saturday market, though none of the boys have been to either, their privileges extending neither to weekends, nor to pubs. In a side street, not far from the market square, there is yet one other establishment. By three in the afternoon, when the bakery’s bread is all sold out and no longer dominates the smells of the town centre, one can find it by scent alone. A sticky smell: baked apples, cloves, and cinnamon along with something darker, black treacle burnt solid on the iron of a red-hot hob. HODGSON’S SWEETS, DRIED FRUIT, AND NUTS. The sign of a date tree, stooped low under its load.

Inside the shop the smell of sugar is near-overpowering. The shop’s heat, too, rushes in on Charlie, puts a tingle in his fingers, toes, and cheeks. A young gentlewoman is there, buying candied fruit and almonds. Her waist, seen from behind, is impossibly slender and accentuated by the bundled opulence of her skirts. Attending her is Mr. Hodgson: a short, balding man with pockmarked cheeks and tidy movements. At his feet, rolled up snout to tum, lies a runty whippet, as skinny as they come. The dog appears to be sleeping, dreaming; sweeps its tail across the floor in jerky crescents and sounds quiet, high-pitched yelps. It is, it occurs to Charlie, a very good thing that animals do not smoke.

Charlie keeps to the back of the shop until the woman is finished. The schoolboys are warned not to have any contact with the opposite sex other than the school nurse, though greetings, of course, are allowed. He takes off his cap when the lady turns to leave and holds the door for her; sees her smile with pleasure. Outside, she crosses the street holding up her skirts to avoid dragging them through muddy snow: a movement to the hips underneath that wasplike waist that puts a blush on Charlie’s cheek. The shopkeeper, too, looks after her with a certain fixity, a wisp of Smoke curling from somewhere at the back of his neck.