Six

i

The weather had changed now, and an Indian summer began which lasted for over a month, well into October. Every morning was misty, and ripened gradually into a mellow warmth, until by midday I felt the blue heat weighing on my head.

I always hung back until the others had gone off to work, so that I could dress in private and have the wash-­place to myself. On these fine days I got dressed quickly and often went out without breakfast, asking at the entrance if there were any letters. I had begun to hope for one from Cecil Luce, but it did not come. I would have been grateful for one from anybody.

There was a small area of garden at Millbank, with shrubs dotted about, rhododendron and privet, a rose tree, and a few seats, and I wandered towards it from the hostel, through the morning-­fresh streets. I did this daily, as a sort of discipline. It was comforting to have a fixed point to aim at.

Sitting there I would read a letter from my mother, perhaps an old one, and watch the clerks and shop assistants rushing to work, pouring thickly along pavements and roads and over bridges. They were like hordes of insects, not people. As I stared I tingled all over with a delicious exultation, rejoicing in my freedom, my miraculous escape. Only a week or two ago I would have looked like that, I kept telling myself in amazement. It was like watching scenes from my past life. The river fog made me chilly, but I sat there until the swarm of traffic had lessened, and a young blind man with leathery lips came tapping towards me along the wall. He always appeared at nine, as the clocks were striking.

For the first few days I had done everything too fast. I read a letter, or glanced at a book, then stuffed it into my pocket hastily and almost leapt to my feet, ready to rush off somewhere. Even though I knew I had nowhere to go, I found it hard to remember. And I had to force myself to walk slowly, adopting a deliberate measured stride, like a policeman’s, among all the fever and excitement of everything rushing past me. How difficult it was to do nothing!

From Millbank each morning I used to walk towards Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, travelling on slowly up Charing Cross Road past all the bookshops. At one of them I found an old copy of Browne’s Religio Medici buried in a heap of rubbish and bought it for sixpence. It was bound in tough, mustard-­coloured covers, the pages made of thick coarse paper, and the print was black and heavy and substantial. It fitted easily in my jacket pocket, so I carried it about with me everywhere. One day I found the sentence in it which I had seen quoted somewhere years before, and my heart swelled again with the same pride and recognition and kinship. I chanted the words over to myself: “I have shaked hands with delight in my warm blood and canicular days.”

I often saw the same men hanging about in front of those windows with nude photographs and dubious sex books on display, and I could not help pitying them. I knew what they were doing, but it was hopeless. It was like looking at another world through the bars of a cage.

In the same street was Zwemmer’s, where I could gaze in at the Braque and Rouault colour reproductions for as long as I liked. I stared at the one Rouault many times, trying to commit to memory its tremendous simplicity and the rich organ notes of its colour. It was a small landscape.

Every morning I made the same pilgrimage. Occasionally, as I discovered new approaches, I varied my route a little. My ultimate destination was always Hyde Park. I used to try and time myself to reach there about noon, when the sun was at its hottest, the asphalt roads spongy with heat underfoot. It was like striking out for a raft which floated miraculously on the sea of noise and traffic, then crawling on to it and rolling on to my back. Once I arrived I just plopped down like everybody else, not caring where I drifted. I felt quite purposeless, without direction. Lying on that parched earth and withered grass in the September sun was a strange sensation, as if the whole swarming hive of London revolved round me like a crazy wheel, while I remained perfectly stationary; as though I lay over an axle which sank right down through earth and rock, and if I once moved away from that hub of stillness I would start spinning madly. I went quiet and drugged and vacant, as the sun baked me. When I moved I expected to creak like dry leather.

Sometimes I read a few pages of the book I had rescued, admiring Thomas Browne the man more and more as I grew aware of him behind those rolling, sonorous sentences of his. I would plough on blindly, not understanding, with the words I had read beating up like surf in my memory, thunderous and then quiet, rising and falling. Now and then I broke into clarity, and it was like emerging from a dark forest into the blaze of noon. In the midst of his pages I sensed a vast deep calm, a happiness, a power drawn from the middle of the sky. The solemn river of prose I was following would begin to laugh, forgetting that it was vast, and the air streamed with birds over my head. It was all calm and broad and inevitable, with sudden gloryings in the lust of the goat, or meditations on simple joys, a great rolling song tinted with death and rooted in contentment. The passages of pure theology were obscure, plunging me back into the forest. Then I read on for the impassioned language, the chords, letting the meaning float away like the smoke of a subterranean fire. It gave me intense pleasure to think of Thomas Browne sitting in his house at Norwich, perhaps at Christmas, crouched forward over a book, reading those pagan Greeks. I dwelt on it and tried to picture it all—his twelve children, his books, his tolerance, his canicular days.

ii

I dreaded the evenings, but while the daylight remained strong and the sun beat down, I knew I could defy the desolation. And being so utterly alone I had moments of pure happiness, in which my mind was as free of thoughts as the blue sky of clouds. I began to notice tiny things, to be absorbed by them, and I forgot where I was. I found myself looking at the pale dust on the blades of grass, the minute fissures in the baked earth, the drops of moisture glistening frostily on my skin. Raising my head a little I could see white buildings with exotic domes shimmering in the hazy distance, and it was easy to blot out the mean streets. It was only when the light weakened and the brown dusk gathered around the edges of this vast open ground, that I began to feel afraid. I scrambled hastily to my feet and made for the coffee-­stall. There was a hum and a clatter of people there, and cheery talk, which heartened me. I stood listening to the bubbling and hissing of the gun-­metal urn, and watched the small flames, white and blue, wavering and spurting underneath. On one side of me a shrunken man with a tooth-­brush moustache sold evening papers, howling out forlornly, and almost at my feet against the railings a gipsyish pavement artist worked at his meticulous copies of old masters. His finest achievement seemed to be a large reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier, with all its intricate lace at the throat and wrists. It covered four paving stones completely, and the artist placed his dusty cap of money at the bottom of it.

From this spot I would head back into the maze of streets as the shops and offices were closing, and scores of people rushed out of buildings, running past me to form long queues for buses. It was the evening stampede, with everybody escaping from boredom with glad cries.

One evening as I walked away from the coffee-­stall I glanced down into the basement of a big house, and saw a family seated round the table. The little room was warm with light. I could see their faces clearly, smiling and talking. Suddenly, as I loitered there, the whole scene became charged with anguish. The dying sun was flooding the street, bathing my hands and knees with its red death. Longing rose in my throat, and my eyes filled with tears. I hurried on, disgusted and frightened by this revelation of a weakness which I did not know how to fight.

I trudged past the row of big houses with my gaze averted; I did not want to see any more brightly lit rooms. But the one I had just seen kept returning; nothing would drive it away. I looked down again on the heads of the people sitting down to their evening meal. There was a man and a woman, and two boys. Some washing hung on a line over their heads. Then the scene faded, and a huge emptiness seemed to spread all over my body. It was like hunger. I felt exhausted. All the strength seemed to have poured out of me in a swift rush.

I came to a corner and stood helplessly. Passers-­by cast curious glances at me. A couple walked by quickly, laughing happily. They were lovers. The young man wore black pointed shoes which were highly polished. His sleek dark head was bare, and pressed down against the woman’s hair, his arm encircling her waist. Their laughter rang in my ears.

In desperation I changed direction a little and made straight for the Westminster Library. It was good to hurry along like the others and have somewhere definite to go. When I arrived it was almost empty, because of the warmth and lateness. In twenty minutes it would be closed. There were only two persons inside, wandering about in silence. Something made me dart into the reference section, and on a low shelf I found a bulky red volume full of small reproductions of Van Gogh’s work—more than I had ever seen before. I went over to the dark treacle of one of the tables with my treasure.

Dozens of the illustrations were of the Hague and Nuenen periods. They were all black-­and-­white, but that only added to their impressiveness. How different his solemn-­faced peasants were from Brueghel’s, I thought. These early portrait heads were carved out with deliberate crudity, stamped with melancholy, suffering and labour. And I was amazed at the range of subjects, never dreaming that he had cast his net so wide. He overlooked nothing. It was almost terrible, this consuming desire to paint the whole world. He had wanted everything for the huge, godless, holy song he was going to sing. I sat gazing at these black biting drawings and seething oil sketches, at Bibles, potatoes, apples, flowers, birds, fish, mice, trees, birds’ nests, cottages, books, babies, horses, women, hospitals, fields, old boots, undergrowth, the sea. It affected me deeply, turning the beautiful pages. I had such a renewal of power that I forgot where I was, and I wanted to grasp the hand of this dead man who was suddenly more warm and living than the people about me. ‘We do not lower him with our pity,’ I thought, ‘yet pity is not enough to comprehend his life, which must have known deep joy.’

Coming out in a daze, I turned to the right, starting to climb a short hill. I was almost treading on the heels of a tramp, so I began to pass him. He was a shrivelled, elderly creature, his brown face covered with greyish stubble. He had a faded potato sack slung over his right shoulder. There were no heels in his socks. “Bloody horrors,” he was shouting, in a weak voice choked with fury, “oh you bloody horrors,” toiling on up the hill, and I wondered if he meant the incessant traffic or the people. I listened, slowing down to stay behind him, but he said no more.

It was getting dark rapidly now. On the other side of the street, on a corner, a large display window of some kind blazed with light, a bright yellow rectangle in the surrounding darkness. Shop blinds were drawn on either side of it. I began to walk across. There were tramlines in this street, shining under my feet. I reached the window, and looked in at the open newspapers propped up, and the enlarged texts displayed. It was a Christian Science reading-­room. Inside, through the glass door, I could see a middle-­aged woman with bare arms, seated at a narrow table made of pale wood. She was smiling at someone in the room while her hands fidgeted with a bowl of anemones in front of her.

I stood outside, not wanting to move away. The place was like a sanctuary of light and friendliness, beckoning me. I did not profess any religion, but this was not like a church, this bright room. Ordinarily I should have been contemptuous of the linking of science and ritual. I read one of the texts: ‘Look unto Me and be saved’. And underneath that were the words: ‘You have nothing to do but look and love’. It made me want to groan aloud. The words were like measured blows on my heart.

I swung away from the window and began to walk swiftly towards the West End, to find a cinema.

iii

The queue in Charing Cross Road was growing steadily. It curled round a corner and stretched halfway up a side street. I had been standing there for three-­quarters of an hour, and no longer wanted to see a film. But it was still too early to go back to the hostel.

The doorman came out to survey the situation, taking off his green and gold cap and scratching his head. “’Strewth,” he said softly, and ran down the queue.

“Come on, move up, move up there!” he shouted. “Get closer together, now. You’ll be in the churchyard at the back there, if you don’t close up!”

He smirked as though he had said something clever, twitching his sharp grey face. His eyes were like moist currants, watchful and fixed, over his pointed nose, and made me think of a rat.

A few minutes later he darted out of his hole again and came up to a young woman who was holding up the queue, preventing those behind from moving forward.

“Move up, close up,” the doorman said, touching her arm.

She stood where she was.

“Can’t you move up, love?” the man asked, leering at her.

“I’m saving somebody’s place,” the woman said crossly.

“What if they don’t come back?” the uniformed man chanted, grinning round for approval. “You goin’ to stand there all night?” Again he put a gloved hand on her arm. “Come on, now. Close up.”

The woman turned red, then moved forward lumpishly without speaking.

“That’s the idea!” cried the doorman. “Now we’re getting somewhere!” And he scurried back along the gutter to the entrance.

In the main street the cars, buses and taxis ran past in an endless stream. A negro in a white felt hat walked over the crossing, at the mouth of the side street. Everything about him was soft and ripe, as if he were all pulp and blood. He wore a loose jacket with a loud check pattern, and his black skin under the drooping white trilby made several people in the queue look up, startled, and stare after him. I was fascinated by his slow padding gait, half waddle, half swagger, that was so soft-­boned, so different to the others.

It began to spatter with rain, large ominous drops, the first rain for nearly a month, and one or two umbrellas went up. But most of the people were even without raincoats. The drops ceased and gave way to a thick drizzle. I watched the balls of moisture clinging and rolling on the greasy peak of a man’s cap just in front of me. Then came a few minutes of quite fierce banging rain, and soon my hair was full of water.

I left the queue. My mind had been made up for me. I did not even know the name of the film.

People streamed past, all going in one direction, and I let myself drift along with them. I came to a corner and stood there a moment, then stepped off the pavement. Suddenly a tremendous voice bellowed in my ear: “D’you want to get killed?” The side of a red bus hung over me, towering up, and as it swayed past it brushed my shoulder. One of the giant rear wheels crunched against the kerb, only a fraction from my foot, as I leapt back. I stood trembling and watching it disappear.

The rain had eased off. Then it began again, and I started heading back for the hostel, from somewhere behind Bond Street.

I went past a number of shop doorways and saw women standing motionless in the shadows. Their lips and eyes glistened in the darkness. One stood near a street lamp, and I saw that she was tall, with reddish, piled-­up hair, her face so heavily made up that it was like a crude mask. As I drew level she stared like a gipsy full at my face. My heart began to lurch about, beating wildly, and all at once my hands felt on fire. Mad, impossible thoughts filled my mind. I felt the insidious, inhuman potency lurking in the street, making it sinister. Though they were squalid, there was something old and inevitable about the waiting women, older than evil. In another age they would have been sacred prostitutes.

I sheltered in an empty doorway and waited, pretending to watch the rain. Did I want one of them to come up to me? I felt I was being tugged in several directions, my mind fogged with hot rushing thoughts. I tried to stand casually, and gazed up with all my will at the night sky, where it merged with the black of roofs. What if no one came up? I hoped they would not, yet at the same time I wanted something to happen, and the one rigid thing in this wavering was a refusal to give in to my fear. I stood with a strained, blank face, feeling that my reason for waiting there was obvious to everybody, revealed, like a placard hung round my neck. What would I say if anyone came? The thought made me tremble and want to run off. The street was absolutely deserted, yet I seemed to feel eyes watching me from every direction. I wish I had never submitted myself to this ordeal.

A car swung fatly round the corner, tyres swishing, lights smudging over the blue-­black road. It crept forward obscenely like a black-­beetle, and drew up not far from me, on the other side of the street, its engine purring. Inside, the driver’s cigarette glowed mysteriously. Then a woman crossed over from one of the doorways, carrying an umbrella. The invisible driver slipped the catch of the door, in readiness. I watched the woman get in sedately, and the opulent car slide away from the kerb.

iv

A woman was advancing towards me. I had not noticed her because of the car. I stood rigidly. She wore a white plastic mackintosh, and stalked forward on long legs, holding an umbrella over her head of black shiny hair. She was smiling.

“Hallo, darling,” she said, coming up to me, smiling. I stammered and could not speak, burning deeply with shame. Almost blindly I met her large black eyes, and the white, smiling face glowing out of the wet darkness. I struggled to speak, and a convulsion went through my body.

“Are you lonely, darling?” the woman said. She asked wearily, as if she did not expect an answer, with a foreign accent I was unable to identify. She stood closer to me.

“Would you like to come with me? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Have a nice time?” She stepped a little closer. Her lips were ruinous, ill-­treated things stranded in white powder.

My face felt dead and useless, like something frozen. “I’m—I’m waiting for somebody,” I blurted out, and was astounded at what I had said.

“Oh!” laughed the woman, lifting her eyebrows with mock surprise. “Who are you waiting for?”

Then she touched my arm.

“I haven’t got much money,” I muttered.

“How much is that?” A hard note had crept into her voice.

“Only a pound,” I lied.

“Come along, then—all right, darling? You want to?”

She was tugging at my arm and smiling. “Coming?”

As we hurried along she began to talk briskly and easily.

“What lovely weather, until this nasty rain spoilt it!” she said. We might have been old friends returning home together. I answered all her remarks with a yes or no, and then fell silent. My mind was a turmoil, I could not think clearly. I kept telling myself I was mad to go with her.

“Have you ever been to France?” she flung at me, without pausing in her speech. She spoke as though she had said the same thing hundreds of times.

“No,” I answered, and my voice quivered with nervousness. I felt ashamed of my lack of experience, and angry with this woman for bringing it home to me.

“Have you been in this country long?” I gulped.

She shrugged. “Oh, I should say about ten years. Yes, about that. A long time, isn’t it?”

The rain increased, and the woman strode forward, so that I lagged behind. “Come on!” she cried indulgently, “d’you want to get soaked through?”

I stared down at the pavement as I walked, unable to bear the glances of passers-­by. The woman looked sideways at my face, curiously, during a long gap of silence.

“Cheer up!” she cried. “Why the frown?”

She took my arm, and we strolled along like lovers; only I walked too stiffly, and was unsure of our direction. I kept blundering into her with my unnatural body.

We turned into a deserted, forlorn back street, with tall buildings reared up on both sides. I was lost now.

Suddenly a thought entered my head. It was a morsel of worldly knowledge, something I must have read in a newspaper, perhaps in a Sunday article ‘exposing’ vice, and I found myself saying wildly: “Do you work for anybody?”

It was as if a barrier had been flung across the pavement. The woman stopped dead and stared into my face. Her smile had vanished; now she was bristling with anger.

“What d’you mean?” she demanded. She looked at me closely, suspiciously, not indulgent now.

I lost my nerve and began to stammer. “Oh, I—I only wondered. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Where on earth did you get that idea from?” Her eyes kept boring into my face. “Good heavens, there aren’t any gangsters round here!”

We came to a green door.

“Here we are.” And her voice was professional again, friendly, tinged with amusement.

I stood at her side, feeling terribly foolish.

“What weather!” She was shaking out her umbrella. “Let me just find the key, then we’ll soon be in the dry. Here it is.”

The door swung open and I followed her in. It was exactly like entering a doctor’s surgery; I wanted to get the visit over quickly, and I had the same unpleasant thickening sensation inside me, and I felt cornered.

“Just close the door behind you,” she called back mechanically. I noticed for the first time what a deep, husky voice she had.

She led the way up the steep narrow stairs rising from the tiny hallway. They were uncarpeted, and the light was dimmed.

The woman was above me, and I gazed at her long back, her fat, tightly-­clothed hips. She had taken off the mackintosh, draping it over her arm, and as she went up it dragged against the beige wallpaper, leaving a damp smear.

My heart pounded. A feverish excitement dulled my senses, like an intoxicant. The woman still climbed wearily above me, putting her feet down like weights. We came to a landing, and I heard a mumble of voices behind a closed door. Then more stairs twisted away to the left. At the next landing the woman paused, waiting for me to reach her. I looked down at my feet as I climbed, but when I drew level I was forced to meet her bold stare.

“Go straight in,” she said, pointing to a door that stood slightly ajar. “I shan’t be a minute.”

And she disappeared through another door. I heard a female voice lift up with excitement, high and shrill. It sounded like a greeting in another language.

I was in a small bedroom, which was windowless. The electric light was already burning, the bulb snug in its pink shade, and everywhere looked smooth and neat, yet barren, like a room in a show-­house or an hotel. There was a low, wide bed, covered with a blue silk spread, and a cane chair in one corner, near the dressing-­table with its little tangle of jewellery and tall blue candlesticks.

I stood motionless, listening for sounds as I tried to calm my hands. It was like a dream. All the desire seemed to have fled from my limbs. I shivered in the cold air of the room, and struggled to recall walking through the streets, as if it had happened months ago. It was so fantastic, being there. I gazed round in amazement, rubbing my forehead. In a few minutes I would wake up. A sentence I had read that evening began to unwind and repeat itself idiotically: ‘Look unto Me and be ye saved’.

The woman came into the room.

“Don’t stand there!” she cried in irritation, as soon as she saw me. “Take your things off! And don’t look so miserable—what’s the matter with you?”

Rather taken aback, I had sat down in the cane chair. Now it creaked as I got up hastily to obey her second instruction.

“Heavens, it’s chilly in here!” she exclaimed. Kneeling down by the fireplace she plugged in an electric fire of green tin.

She started to unfasten her skirt, bending her head. Her hair fell over her face like a black cloud. Taking off her skirt, she hung it over the chair, then stood before me in her underskirt.

“A pound,” she said flatly, holding out her hand, her lips pressed together so that her mouth was a line. I gave her the money.

“And something for the maid?” She looked me straight in the face with a bleak, business-­like expression.

I was in confusion, not expecting this. I fumbled in my pockets and at last produced a two-­shilling piece, and when the woman saw it she relaxed at once, smiling encouragement at me. She patted my arm and the coin vanished. “Good boy.”

She went over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, smoothing the place beside her with her palm.

“Sit down here,” she said, smiling.

Sitting on the bed, I gazed stupidly at her. My hands were trembling. She wore only a vest. I had no desire to touch her, and sensed her dim bewilderment.

“You want to see?”

She lifted her vest and held it up. Her loose belly protruded. She had hardly any breasts. I felt my lips curve of their own accord in a slow, foolish smile as my eyes roamed over her naked body.

“Good?”

She gave me some obscene photographs, scattering them over the bed from an envelope, and I stared blankly at them. They were just unreal, quite meaningless enormities, yet I shuddered, and a slight spasm ran through my shoulders, which she must have seen.

“Don’t be afraid, darling. Haven’t you got a sweetheart to do this for you?”

“No.”

“What a shame.”

Her pity goaded me. As if belonging to a blind man, my hands groped and found her big thighs, and she gave a cry of pain: “Your hands are cold!” I drew back, startled, and seemed to wake up, and in the same instant a wave of fear rose up, a submerged horror of disease. It was like something out of the past yawning open, a black, churning hole of dread and fascination.

I shrank away and sat forward on the edge of the bed, and the woman at my side shot upright. For a moment she was too dumbfounded to speak. Then she let out a screech of rage.

“What’s the matter?”

I felt suddenly very tired, and longed to escape. I did not bother to speak.

“What’s wrong? Can’t you answer?” The words came to me venomously, but I no longer cared. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I was afraid.”

“What of?” She was astounded. “Afraid?” She merely shrugged her shoulders, baffled and disgusted. It was beyond her. She waved her hand jerkily, dismissing me and the whole situation. Already she was half-­dressed.

“What d’you want?” she demanded, turning back abruptly. Her professional pride was hurt; she still wanted to earn her money.

“I don’t know. Nothing.” I felt so tired that I had begun to whisper­.

She shouted, “Oh, don’t be such a stupid fellow! Why are you so silly? I can’t waste any more time, you’ll have to go now—somebody else is waiting for this room.”

She was almost dressed. I sat guiltily, watching her angry dissatisfaction as it ebbed away. Then I shivered again, and my back was slightly convulsed. My head ached, and I put my hands to my face to rub my forehead. I heard the woman cry out as I did this, in an urgent, almost pleading voice:

“Shh! Shh! Don’t do that, darling! Stop that, you mustn’t do that!” She sounded so shocked that I lifted my head in surprise to look at her. I believe she had thought I was crying.

I slipped on my jacket and made for the door without speaking. Just then the little maid came in. She held open the door for me, standing there demurely, like a dentist’s receptionist.

“Good night, sir,” she said cheerfully.

I looked back into the room at the woman fastening a stocking, her head lowered. “Good night, dear,” she said, though she had not looked up.

“I’m sorry,” I said, in a rush of humility and remorse.

“What for?” she asked, raising her head for a second. “Don’t be foolish.” She smiled to herself.

I descended the dark stairs, and heard the maid call down in her high voice with its strong accent: “The catch is on the right! Will you close the door after you, please, sir?”

v

Now I was safely free I became brave, and longed to go back and cancel the insult of my behaviour. I hated leaving it behind in the prostitute’s memory. It was only one more insult to her sex, but it seemed somehow worse than that of an ordinary client who made use of her.

As I stepped into the street I felt old and wise. A strange knowledge filled me with warmth and softness, that I had not experienced before. I could not have said what it was. It turned my heart and lungs to liquid, without entering my mind.

It was getting quite late. The rain had stopped now. I walked swiftly and blindly, thinking over all that had happened.

When I reached the hostel it looked so squalid and depressing that I decided there and then to start searching for lodgings at a private house, with a family. I had not forgotten that scene in the basement of the large house.

But when I went inside I forgot everything else, for on the small card table near the booking-­in desk lay a parcel with my name on it. The writing was unfamiliar. I picked it up gratefully and groped my way upstairs. It felt wonderful to be remembered by someone, though I was baffled by the strange handwriting.

In my dormitory one or two of the beds were already occupied, and the men in them were asleep. They were just dim mounds, hardly visible in the poor light. It was like being in a cemetery, surrounded by unknown graves.

I tiptoed to my bed and tried to examine my package in the gloom. It was cylindrical in shape, a sort of hollow canister. When I shook it gingerly, it rattled. Very carefully I tore off the layers of brown paper. In the next room a low voice was grumbling about a stolen or missing razor.

There was a note inside, which fluttered down on to the blanket. It was almost impossible to decipher in that mournful light, but I made out the signature, and a few words. It was from Jessie Hammond; she must have asked Cecil Luce for my address.

I lifted the mystery package in front of my face, peeling off the last covering of paper. It was a tin of some kind. Then I dragged off the lid, and three pears and an apple fell out, rolling into a hollow on the bed. The skins were broken, and the apple was very badly bruised, almost uneatable, but that did not matter. In my excitement I wanted to write back to her at once. Somehow I should have to wait until next day. I ate one of the pears, then replaced the others in the tin. As I bent over, putting back the lid, I thought of the forgotten water-­colour in my suitcase. Before going on to look for lodgings, I would take it to one of the galleries. Then I should have some real news to write in my letter of thanks to Jessie. I felt ridiculously happy, suddenly full of plans, shedding my homesickness and the sense of abandonment I had felt, ever since I had arrived in London. I hugged this new feeling, which made me so warm and comfortable, and looked around.

Yorky was perched on his bed, opposite me, unlacing his boots and singing softly to himself. He had just come in. He stopped singing abruptly and stared down at the floor. “The old bitch! The old bitch!” he whispered to himself. Then he began singing again.