Maybury [antikvár]

TIME OUT OF MIND Chapter One That was the day that Funjo appeared on the ward. He had appeared on the ward frequently before. But the stay which began on that day was to last longer and was to be more perplexing and troublesome than any of his others. The hospital stood on top of a small hill brooding from its six storeys height over the little houses at its feet. Eddie Roebuck turned the corner and the hospital came into view. He slowed down a little more than was necessary. Each morning the hospital looked différent; weather, season and time combined to produce an infinite number of variations in its appearance. Today he noticed that for the first time in the year the lime trees by the road looked brown rather than green. He remembered the cold of the day before. Behind the trees stood a row of small red houses with white stone window bays and identical stone carvings over 'their doors. Beyond and above was the hospital, its severe unornamented Victorian brick black against the pale blue sky. Underneath the layer of grime the bricks would be yellow, but the black remained, produced long before the present smokeless zone existed, a souvenir of the hearths and furnaces of the homes and work places whose people the hospital had served for the last hundred years. The coating was a reminder of the lives of générations of people who had come and gone through the buildings' wards. Cleaning and rénovation had been plan-ned again and again, only to be postponed as one economic crisis after another had to be met. The hospital, strong