Homecomings by C.P. Snow

ON the ceiling, the wash of firelight brightened; a shadow quivered and bent among the benign and rosy light; there was the noise of a piece of coal falling, the ceiling flickered, faded, and then glowed. It might have been a holiday long forgotten or an illness in childhood, as I lay there in a content so absolute that it was itself a joy, not just a successor of joy, gazing up at the ceiling. In the crook of my arm Margaret's neck was resting; she too was gazing up.

Despite the blaze the air in the room was cold, for Margaret had to eke out her ration of coal, and the fire had not been lighted until we arrived. Under the bedclothes our skins touched each other. It was nine o'clock, and we had come to her room two hours before, as we had done often on those winter evenings. The room was on the ground floor of a street just off Lancaster Gate, and in the distance, through the cold wartime night, came the sough of traffic, washing and falling like the tide over a pebbly beach.