He was cold, but he did not notice it. Outside, the sky was pulling up the morning behind a large awning of murky, grey clouds. The boy could hear the soft-boned moans of warm bodies as they rolled out of sleep and out on to the freezing floors. Everywhere, people were huddled in ones and twos, hugging themselves into themselves, happy in the bliss or chaos of their greatest privacy. Soon, they would be up against each other once again, forced to pass judgements, make decisions, reveal what the night had put a pause on, conceal what their dreams had revealed. They would walk around, hiding their secrets inside themselves throughout the whole day. They would never tell of the squalor and violence, nor of the grandeur and charity, which was in each of them to hope for. All would be unexplained. All but that miniature representation of themselves which smoothed them through three meals and a job. They would not shout out; they would not clean the past and start again. But neither would they break with the revelation of their helplessness; neither would they give up out of knowledge of their sadness; they would not abandon their lives, nor would they destroy them. They would withhold their secrets and live another day. They would tread on the decay and look up to the tent of dreams, but they would walk on. They would not crack.
For Want of a Nail. Melvyn Bragg. 1965.