Mr Cromerty of Boston MP3 Full podcast here: (3rd story) Bonus Xmas podcast story here!
Read by David Mildon
Outside, a cold, clear evening, men going about bundled in woollens, steam rising from a rubble of horse manure in the road, the air steeped in stovesmoke – a hard frost in the night mail, if I am any judge. Inside, a table by a fire, ink and a pen, two heaps of paper, a mirror trimmed with a little holly. A glass on the table beside the paper, and in it a measure of bourbon whisky.
Between them the fire and the whisky almost keep the cold at bay.
It’s queer to think that before last spring I had barely ever written a word (aside from the dry documentation I assembled, the legal letters I drafted, the contracts and covenants I compiled in my work at at the real-estate office). Oh, as a young man I had attempted poetry, awful stuff, as young men do, but I always knew I had no aptitude for it, and soon gave it up. And then in more recent years I never seemed to have the time.
Now – tonight, last night, the night before that, a string of nights and days reaching back into darkness – time seems to be all that I have.