Rupert and Will, in their commandeered steam train, stop at a gaunt, dusty, ugly station with:
coal bins;
switchyard;
semaphore;
a shed-like house;
the weeds of a former garden.
Rupert has seen new gardens planted in other stations and this again reminds us of the:
"...sleepy village station among carefully tended flower gardens..."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 4, p. 25.
That is in 1894 but of a different timeline. Anderson might have thought of "Time Patrol" when he wrote A Midsummer Tempest.
See Two Train Journeys.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The neglected garden seen in this chapter of A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST might have been like that because of the disruption caused by the Civil War. There was only an elderly man and his grandchild still living at this train station. Any younger men who might have been working there were probably called away for service in either the Royalist or rebel armies.
Ad astra! Sean
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