Perfectly Pure and Good [antikvár]

PrologueIt was an ordinary place. People lived and died in it. On Sunday mornings in summer, somé of the men who lived nearest gathered on the quay to gossip. News of death was underplayed; views of life, casual. For most of them, like StonewalPs new father, who did not frequent the pubs unless driven by a louder-than-usual row indoors, the occasion was a mixed relief. Ali of them made it look as if they had met by accident. When they dispersed, they did not arrange to meet again, same place, same time. That would have been somé kind of admission, as if they needed one another. Which they did, but could not say.The overgrown village of Merton on Sea boasted a population of eight thousand, doubling in summer. The high street förmed the undulating backbone of the village, flanked by alleys and uneven cottages spreading out like crooked limbs. The main thoroughfare, too narrow for the dustbin van, wound uphill away from the quay into an almost elegant square surrounding a green. Here, where the merchants in wool and grain had lived a century