Let us call her Ruby, because she had a name like that: old-fashioned, staid, anomalous. 'I am known everywhere as sparrer,' she said. We had sparrows enough and to spare in those days, but I couldn't think of her as a cheery little bird. She was 16, with the face of a skull. She wrapped bony limbs around herself, bending stiff joints; she was always cold. She looked like a victim of anorexia nervosa, but in fact she had pulmonary tuberculosis, and for the next long weeks, possibly months, she was confined to hospital. Ruby was no daughter of the developing world. She lived on a council estate in Stockport, which didn't in 1974 seem to be developing; dominated by a massive railway viaduct, the town had steep streets connected by flights of steps, red brick buildings glued together by soot, and a handsome wedding-cake town hall, which I passed every day as I headed uphill from the bus station in Mersey Square.

LRB 11 June 2009 | PDF Download