Old Compton Street smelled of coffee, oranges and exhaust fumes. People were going to theatres and cinemas. Dirty-book shops flourished. Strip shows did good trade. She had to walk along the roadway because some cars blocked the pavement. Cafés and restaurants were full. Those who lived on their own must feel better at seeing how many others also lived alone. Life went on, which was no doubt an improvement on no life at all.
George, wearing a hat, and his heavy olive-drab rainproof overcoat belted at the waist, looked at a showcase of illuminated photographs. A hand at the side of his face indicated that he was about to go into the cabaret place. The man at the door was cajoling, and George said something inaudible, changing his mind, jerking his head aggressively to make the words plainer. He walked along the street, away from her. The man in the doorway swore after him. When George looked back he still didn’t see her. Misery had made him fatter, and made her thin. In bed together, their combined weight would no doubt be the same as before.
He turned the corner into an alley. The right angle of the wall seemed as if to fold over her, but she waited, and hoped it wouldn’t, her fingers opening on the brick surface. A woman looked as if she would kill her, then moved on, swaying a handbag like a piece of plate-glass.
She changed her track for Piccadilly Circus. She could have said: ‘Take me home. Let’s go, for God’s sake, and get it over with.’ But she hadn’t. The sight of him confirmed the pointless existence she had given up for good. Fear that he might have seen her made life in her room seem like a blissful prison in which she could hide when necessary.
Shaftesbury Avenue concealed her. She pushed, and made headway. Four jet engines whined in from a place Tom had no doubt been to. A man in overcoat and cap had the same predatory jaw and fixed grey eyes as Bert. She stepped aside without reducing her pace. She expected him to reach out but, his mouth set in cunning, he pretended not to see her. The banging of machines and the dull jingle of coinage came from an amusement arcade as big as a garage. Perhaps Alf and Harry were among the flash of coloured lights, having sponged George’s small change.
She walked in the road to avoid a cinema crowd. When a taxi horn blared she jumped back. Popcorn sellers and hot-dog vendors shivered in the drizzle. Wastepaper clung to the feet as if it were magnetized. She knew the streets better than George and his brothers. The four of them must be out on a spree, or as a last effort to help George find her before giving her up for ever. Women with figures contorted beyond all credulity showed up in vivid lighting. Men came out, and men went in. She walked quickly from juke-box noise and traffic, and people ceaselessly on the alert for something they would surely never find. She wasn’t one of them, because what she wanted did not exist where people could never meet or understand each other no matter how many times they gyrated. The area to her was an artificial flower, blazing with light, and rotten to the middle of the earth. The only certain road from it was to cut a straight line for as far as she could go.
Her mind had never been so clear nor her eyes so sharply focused. She had seen George and his brothers, and it was necessary to flee. A young man with flowing auburn hair and a rucksack held high in one hand, ran through traffic to the Eros statue. A girl followed, her laughter screaming above the noise of motor cars. Pam pushed against the tide of people coming from deep under earth, holding the rail as she descended the steps with such determination that a way was made for her.
Her last tenpenny coins went into the machine. Yes, I’ll go to Brighton with you, she would say, and if he’d changed his mind she would take a trip on her own. As unobtrusive stalkers there were none better than George and his brothers, therefore she got on the Piccadilly Line so as to change to the Circle Line at South Kensington and do a devious if not zigzag walk from Bayswater. In spite of such crowds in Soho George’s brothers may have kept her in sight, she being one against four. Yet knowing the system, where she assumed they did not, decreased their advantage. She was a free person, but if they found her lair she would get no peace.
Instead of South Kensington she went to Earls Court and then changed north as far as Edgware Road, when she crossed platforms and came back to Notting Hill Gate, switching on to the Central Line for Holland Park.
She had lost them, if indeed they had lasted beyond the first interchange. But she couldn’t be sure – feeling that she had been followed up Ladbroke Grove. In any case it was time to abandon London, look for work in a place with better air, where George and his tracker-dog brothers would never think to hound her down. She would buy a map, but would it be of England or of the world?
7
George sat in his car, looking up at her room. She walked by with Tom. George stared, and rolled the window down as if to speak. He didn’t. She was with a person unknown to him. His round face under the usual trilby hat pleaded with her, but she had severed contact, and wondered why he couldn’t leave her be. Her life was her own, and he didn’t yet know it. When her fear came back she regretted not tackling him, but with every step it was less possible. To delay such a matter would build up a dangerous mood in him, a process she knew well. The day was ruined before it had begun.
Tom waved a taxi in Ladbroke Grove, and put down the small seat to face her. He wore a cap, a brown suit with waistcoat and watch-chain, well-polished shoes, and an overcoat. His leather briefcase was of the kind used for carrying sheet-music. He was freshly shaved and smelled of soap.
She wondered who had taught him to dress, supposing it had been necessary, or who had influenced his choice. Perhaps girl-friends had put him right on harmony and colours, just as she had tried to smarten George by persuading him to get at least one suit made at the best tailors but who, when he had, was too shocked to wear it because of the cost. In the matter of ties, socks, shirts and shoes he had no matching sense at all.
Neither had she, on occasion. If she felt happy, she could achieve a plain sort of smartness with what she had in drawers or wardrobe, but there were also times when a clash of styles showed her unsettled state of mind to the most casual eye on the street. The only way to avoid this was by devising simple permutations at more confident moments – clothes she could put on without thought. But no matter what her mood, she’d always had a sense of judgement regarding George’s appearance. While he resented her criticisms, he was careful to act on them, though his training had lapsed, to judge by the odd tie and pullover he had been wearing in the car.
She would forget him, if she could, for today at least, feeling smart and comfortable in her grey skirt, white blouse, heavy cardigan and walking shoes. There was nothing of fashion, but she didn’t care for that. Her coat was longer than it should be, but in such weather it seemed an advantage. A headscarf and woolly hat in her bag would help if it got any colder. She wondered that young girls in London didn’t perish considering how little some of them wore.
Tom looked out at the overcast sky. The park was dull under its pall of winter. A piece of paper scooted along the pavement when the taxi paused at a crossing. ‘Should be clearer on the coast,’ he said briskly. ‘Still changeable, though. You might need that umbrella.’
He then fell silent, but she didn’t feel threatened, didn’t have to talk in order to defend herself, or attack him before he sent verbal shot at her. Such thoughts ruffled her ease, but she fought to stay calm. When the taxi came into the station forecourt he slammed up the seat so as to get out first and hold the door open.
He bought single tickets on the assumption that no one could say when they would be coming back. Pam waited by the bookstall, looking over the paperbacks. He had no expectations, no plan except to sort out the family junk, no sense except that of happiness at not going to the flat alone. He looked at the departure boards. ‘The fast one leaves in half a minute.’