“A great part of it. Did you ever hear of Mendip?
“‘The rugged miners poured to war
From Mendip’s sunless caves.’”
“I came from a little village on the top of Mendip. Twenty years ago it was decaying. Now I expect there’s next to nothing left of it. Twenty years makes a lot of difference. It’s made a lot of difference to me.”
“And what was the name of the village?”
“I don’t suppose you will ever have heard it. It was called Highberrow.”
“Highberrow . . . no. It’s a jolly name.”
“I don’t think it ever struck me in that light.”
“Highberrow . . . is it right in the hills?”
“Yes . . . quite high up. I don’t know how many hundreds of feet. I wasn’t interested in that sort of thing then. It lies right under Axdown, the highest point of the range. On a clear day you can see right over the Bristol Channel into Wales. All the mountains there. The Brecon Beacons. The Sugarloaf. The Black Mountain.”