London is less a depicted setting than a measure of distance, habit, and preference in the Hennigers’ story. It connects David Henniger and Jo Henniger to Richard Galloway’s past and social knowledge, while David’s comparisons between London and other cities reveal how narrowly he defines comfort and escape. The city remains offstage as the couple travel abroad, but the routines and assumptions associated with it travel with them.

A City Known Through Its Connections

London enters the narrative through relationships rather than a description of streets or landmarks. Richard Galloway knows the Hennigers from London and has also known David since school. His account makes the city part of their shared social history: he remembers them as lively, affluent people who argued frequently, and David as witty, cutting, handsome, and loyal. Richard’s familiarity gives him a measure of authority when the couple arrive at Azna in distress, though it does not mean he fully understands their private life.

That London connection helps place the Hennigers within an international, privileged social world. Their friendship with Richard continues over the years, and he recognizes David’s forceful presence and capacity to entertain even as he sees the strain in him. London is therefore not simply a birthplace or a point on a map; in the evidence presented, it is the social setting through which one of the novel’s central friendships has been sustained. The city gives Richard a history against which to interpret the man now before him.

Work, Marriage, and the Interrupted Holiday

The pressures surrounding the Hennigers’ trip also suggest the life they have left behind. Jo says they rarely take holidays because David works continually. His patients are wealthy older people who contact him persistently, and the couple are governed by his pager. The detail makes professional availability a force inside their marriage: even a holiday has been difficult to arrange, and David’s work has occupied time that might otherwise have belonged to their shared life.

Jo’s own stalled work gives this imbalance another dimension. She has not written for years and is deeply unhappy; she allows that David may be largely responsible. Her remarks do not establish London as the direct cause of her situation, but they place the city within a life organized around David’s work and its demands. Their trip is consequently not just leisure. It brings the couple into unfamiliar surroundings while making visible the dissatisfaction and resentment that their ordinary routines have not resolved.

The contrast is sharpened by David’s own account of what travel ought to offer. He regards Italian and French cities as places to eat well, drink, admire the architecture, and recover from life. London, grouped with New York, is among the urban lives he thinks less desirable than those elsewhere. His ideal of travel is restorative and selective: a change of scenery should improve comfort, not require sustained engagement with a place that feels difficult to him. The trip to Morocco unsettles that expectation.

London as David’s Measure of Elsewhere

David’s dismissal of London is revealing partly because he treats it as a familiar standard without examining what has made his life there so unsatisfying. He imagines that a more beautiful city, with better food and calmer surroundings, would recharge him; the hope turns travel into a purchasable interval rather than a reconsideration of his habits or relationships. His preference for European cities offers a refuge from the demands of unfamiliar places, while his judgments about the wider world expose the limits of his willingness to understand it.

In Morocco, that preference shapes his response to the holiday. He regrets not choosing Rome and imagines a meal in a familiar Italian restaurant instead of participating in the experience before him. He had come for Jo, believing that the change might improve her, yet his own thoughts repeatedly return to the kind of trip that would satisfy him. London thus functions as part of a broader contrast: it is not the destination he wants, but it belongs to the familiar urban world from which he expects to escape through another, more comfortable city.

Narrative Significance

Because London is not presented through a sustained scene, its significance lies in the lives and judgments attached to it. It links Richard’s memories of David to the couple’s present crisis, and it helps explain why the holiday carries more weight than a simple change of location. David’s work has constrained their time away; Jo’s writing has lapsed; and their disagreements persist even after they have left their usual environment. The journey exposes rather than automatically repairs those conditions.

London also serves as a quiet test of perspective. For David, cities can be ranked by the pleasure and ease they promise, and the best escape is one that restores familiar comforts. The novel places that outlook beside the demands of travel and the complicated realities encountered beyond his preferred destinations. Since London remains largely unseen, the reader encounters it through what the characters carry away from it: professional routine, social history, marital frustration, and David’s conviction that a better city might make life better for a while.