16
But it was not in her nature to do nothing. Next day she was up at six o’clock; fed, bathed, dressed and out of her house within the hour, and on her way to the scene of the crime.
What did she propose to do, having got there? She had no idea. She knew only that she had to do something, anything, with all the vigour God had given her. She went, first of all, to the shop of Sam Sabbatani and there asked a policeman the way to the Ingersoll Road School. He said: ‘Ingersoll Road School. Take the first on your right, go straight on, bear left, take the first on your right and the second on your left and then you’ll find it, just round the first corner at your left, mum.’
Asta said: ‘Is that the best way to get to it?’
‘You know, mum, there is no use going there before nine o’clock, don’t you?’
‘Why don’t you mind your own confounded business? What do you take me for? A school-teacher looking for a job? A new girl, or something? I am asking you a civil question. Give me a civil answer. Is there any other quicker way? God Almighty, man, give me a straight yes or a straight no, can’t you?’
The policeman looked her up and down; but having let his glance travel from Asta’s knees to her face he bit off and swallowed a little retort that he had been rolling on his tongue and said:
‘Well, no, mum. The way I told you is, actually, the best way to get to the Ingersoll Road School. I mean to say, the best way for the present. Leadbetter Street is still up. I dare say Leadbetter Street will be up for about another four or five days. When Leadbetter Street’s open again, then the quickest way is to take the first on your right, second on your right, bear right. and there it is on your left.’
‘Then why don’t you keep a civil tongue in your head?’
‘I try to, mum, but why don’t you try walking up and down all night on a night like last night?’
‘Officer, I sympathize with you. I’m not a school-teacher, you know.’
‘Aren’t you, mum? You know what? There was something about you that made me think perhaps you might have been.’
‘Exactly what?’
‘I can’t say exactly, but just for the moment I thought you might be a new school-teacher. Not long ago some girl came down from the north to take a job in a school around here, and she looked —’
‘— She looked what?’
‘Nothing. I forget. No,’ said the policeman, ‘that is your best way to the Ingersoll Road School, but it won’t be open until nine.’
‘And how long did you say this other road of yours had been closed?’
The policeman said: ‘I didn’t say, mum. But if you want to know, Casement Street, the first on the right, has been closed half-way along ever since the gas mains blew up three weeks ago. Why do you ask?’
‘I ask, policeman, simply because I want to know. Is that clear? All right, then. Good morning to you.’
Asta Thundersley walked away. She took the first turning on the right and went straight ahead into a street of soot-soaked brick; by passed a great hole in the road and found herself in an alley the lefthand side of which was the frontage of a brand-new slum, the windows of which looked out upon an ancient red wall. After that she had to make her way around the periphery of half of a crescent; could not decide whether at this point she ought to turn left or right or walk straight on, and was lost. She had an idea at the back of her head that she had been told to turn left; she turned left and found herself by the railings of a square full of rotting grass and dogs’ dung, surrounded by houses that looked all alike and overshadowed by a church spire like an ice-cream cone. The streets were empty. It seemed reasonable to Asta Thundersley that by this time someone, anyone, should be approaching the doors of the church. She waited. Nobody came. As she calculated it the nearest main road was to be found by turning to the right, the left, and the right again. She walked, turned right, and left, and right, and found herself in a street that seemed to have no beginning, no middle, and no end. So she walked. After fifteen minutes she arrived at a turning, turned and found another street. This street appeared to go on without perspective to the end of the world. Asta walked on. She turned left, she turned right; she turned right, and then she turned right again and walked straight on.
Soon people appeared in the streets; girls on their way to work, pale with a bluish pallor under their face- powder, and men whose pockets bulged with packets of sandwiches, filling the first pipe or lighting the first cigarette of the day. Asta asked first one and then another the way to Ingersoll Road School; nobody knew. One man said: ‘First right, second left,’ but said it as if he was, so to speak, picking it out with a pin. Another said: ‘Are you sure you don’t mean the Pross Crescent Kindergarten?’ The third, with the quiet smile of the man who knows that he is irrevocably in the right, said: ‘Ingersoll Road School, mum? Easy. First right, second right, bear left, straight on as far as you can go, turn right at the traffic lights, straight on till you come to a red-brick building, and there you are…. Not at all, it’s a pleasure. Good morning to you. Not at all, glad to have been of some assistance.’
In the end she found herself near the river, where she saw a policeman admiring the sunrise. In a thoroughly bad temper, Asta approached him and shouted: ‘I suppose if I was some poor down-and-out without a roof to my head, you’d be on my tail already. But if I was a murderer trying to give himself up, I’d have to fill in a form or something before you put in an appearance. Don’t talk to me, I’d fed up with you, fed up with the whole lot of you!’
‘What’s all this about, mum?’
‘I’m looking for Ingersoll Road School. Be so good as to direct me to it, will you? I warn you, I’m a friend of the Superintendent.’
The policeman put his finger in his mouth and sucked it, took it out and looked at it; inserted the fourth finger of his left hand into his right ear; blushed, said: ‘Just a minute,’ unbuttoned a pocket and pulled out a reference book, and said: ‘Ingersoll Road School, let me see.’
At that moment a taxi passed, and Asta Thundersley cried
