H.E. Bates Companion

A twelve-year-old girl, whose overworked and materialistic parents have little time for her, runs off and takes refuge briefly with a homeless vagabond in the woods. While there she remembers home: "the telly, the fridge, the radio, the cooker and the washing machine all crammed in together, the table with uncleared breakfast remains still on it when she got back from school, the grey eye of the television set holding her a mute captive there in the dead half-darkness while she waited for someone to come home." In Today (December 30, 1961), The Fabulous Mrs V (1964), H.E. Bates (1975), Elephant's Nest in a Rhubarb Tree & Other Stories (1989).