Why is it that no one seems to know what north London is? They say it is healthy and open. Perhaps I shall meet someone who feels like I do about it and would get ill and die there. It is not imagination. It is a real feeling that comes upon me. …
The north London omnibus reached the tide of the Euston Road and pulled up at Portland Road station. Miriam got out weak and ill. The first breath of the central air revived her. Standing there, the omnibus looked like any other omnibus. She crossed the road, averting her eyes from the north-going roads on either side of the church and got into the inmost corner of another bus. She wanted to ride about, getting from bus to bus, inside London until her misery had passed. Opposite her was a stout woman in a rusty bonnet and shawl and dust-defaced black skirt, looking about with eyes that did not see what they looked at, all the London consciousness in her. Miriam sat gazing at her. The woman’s eyes crossed her and passed unperturbed. …
The lane of little shops flowed away, their huddled detail crushing together, wide shop windows glittered steadily by and narrowed away. When the bus stopped at Gower Street the spire of St. Pancras church came into sight spindling majestically up, screened by trees.
The trees in Endsleigh Gardens came along gently waving their budding branches in bright sunshine. The colour of the gardens was so intense that the sun must just be going to set behind Euston Station. The large houses moved steadily behind the gardens in blocks, bright white, with large quiet streets opening their vistas in between the blocks, leading to green freshness and then safely on down into Soho. The long square came to an end. The shrub-trimmed base of St. Pancras church came heavily nearer and stopped. As Miriam got out of the bus she watched its great body rise in clear sharp outline against the blue. Its clock was booming the hour out across the gardens through the houses and down into the squares. On this side its sound was broken up by the narrow roar of the Euston Road and the clamour coming right and left from the two great stations.
Her feet tramped happily across the square of polished roadway patterned with shadows and along the quiet clean sunlit pavement behind the gardens. It was always bright and clean and quiet and happy there, like the pavement of a road behind a seafront. The sound of a mail van rattling heavily along Woburn Place changed to a soft rumble as she turned in between the great houses of Tansley Street and walked along its silent corridor of afternoon light. Sparrows were cheeping in the stillness. To be able to go down the quiet street and on into the squares—on a bicycle. … I must learn somehow to get my balance. To go along, like in that moment when he took his hands off the handlebars, in knickers and a short skirt and all the summer to come. … Everything shone with a greater intensity. Friends and thought and work were nothing compared to being able to ride alone, balanced, going along through the air.
On the hall table was a postcard. “Come round on Sunday if you’re in town—Irlandisches Ragout. Mag.” Her heart stirred; that settled it—the girls wanted her; Mag wanted her. She took Alma’s crumpled letter from her pocket and glanced through it once more … “such a dull Sunday and all your fault. Why did you not come? Come on Saturday any time or Sunday morning if you can’t manage the weekend?” What a good thing she had not written promising to go. She would be in London, safe in Kennett Street for Sunday. Mag was quite right; going away unsettled you for the week and you did not get Sunday. She looked at her watch, five-thirty; in half an hour the girls would probably be at Slater’s; the London weekend could begin this minute; all the people who half-expected her, the Brooms, the Pernes, Sarah and Harriett, the Wilsons, would be in their homes far away; she safe in Bloomsbury, in the big house, the big kind streets, Kennett Street; places they none of them knew; safe for the whole length of the weekend. Saturday had looked so obstructed, with the cycling lesson, and the visit to Miss Szigmondy and the many alternatives for the rest of the time. … “Oh I’ve got about fifty engagements for Saturday” and now Saturday was clear and she felt equal to anything for the weekend. What a discovery, standing hidden, there in the
