'I'll walk to Bantry Street, thought Betty; his taxi might overtake me. And she struck out into the crowds. In her Agatha Christie country clothes and pearls and polished shoes, she strode among an elbowing, slovenly riff-raff who looked at her as if she were someone out of a play. Pain and dislike, bewilderment and fear, she thought in every face. Nobody at peace except the corpses in the doorways, the bundles with rags and bottles, and you can't call that peace. She dropped money into hats and boxes as she would never have done in Dacca or Shanghai, and would have been prosecuted for doing in Singapore. Beggars again in the streets of London, she thought. My world is over.'
from Jane Gardam's Old Filth (2004)
