Hi,
I’ve come across the passage at the book and can’t understand the logic behind tenses:
Harry came into the room and sat down, exhausted. He had had a terrible day at the office and had only just arrived at home. Mary would be coming round later and she would almost certainly want to go out. Harry wasn’t sure he could face that.
Please could you explain why the bolded verbs were put in these tenses? To my mind, the first one should have been in Present Perfect (has only just arrived). As for the second sentence about Mary, I don’t understand its logic and meaning at all.
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The simple past describes what happened - Harry sat down. The two examples of past perfect - ‘had had’ and ‘had only just arrived’ took place before he sat down.
The two subjunctive type tenses - ‘ would be coming (continuous)’ and ‘would want’ point to a possible future. In other words these suggest what might happen.
Incidentally I would say . had arrived home and leave out ‘at’.
Does that help, Irina ?
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Thank you very much, Alan!
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Hi Irina,
My pleasure. By the way in another reply you asked how things were going. Send me your email and I’ll tell you.
Alan
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