Beatrice Waters lives in the corner flat on the top floor of a council house in the Islington district of London. She spent four years of her life making the arrangements to rent a flat in this particular block of council houses. Four long years of speaking with this or that authority and arguing with her husband over whether they had made the right decision. At fifty, Henry Waters doubted he could survive still another move. He couldn't even remember all the places in which he had lived, as if immigrating from the West Indies to England wasn't significant enough. “Don't you think,” he would ask Beatrice, “there comes a time that people just settle down, no matter how good or bad a deal they've made for themselves? How long do you keep changing homes just to prove you're really getting somewhere in the world?’