24

Out in the street I feel so utterly alone.

I turn back abruptly, thinking to rejoin him.

However, a woman comes out of the main door, blocking my retreat. A minute earlier I’d been vaguely aware of her standing at the entrance to the textiles company, trying earnestly to gain admittance. She’s thin and sandy-haired, wearing a sleeveless dress and sandals. She asks me something which I don’t quite catch.

“Excuse me?” It’s stupid, but it’s automatic.

She’s been holding out a leaflet. Now she thrusts it in my hand. She repeats the last part of her question. She has, maybe, a Scottish accent.

“…born again?”

“Oh, Christ.” Normally I’d have caught on sooner. “Yes!” I say. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I crumple up her leaflet—toss it down—turn back to the sidewalk. Not, in all likelihood, her idea of born-again. But who cares?

Oxford Street one way, Regent’s Park the other. Heat and fumes and traffic; or water and greenery and the chance to think? I head for Oxford Street.

Yet, once arrived, I stand irresolute. Left or right? Tottenham Court Road or Oxford Circus? As little point to either.

Bourne & Hollingsworth.

“Bourne and What?” asks the guy.

“Large department store. Closed down now. Used to be someplace round here.”

“Sorry, mate. Could tell you where John Lewis is.”

So next I try a woman twice his age. “Yes, dear, you’re right—along here somewhere. Terrible how quick one forgets. This side of the road, though. Perhaps that gentleman selling papers might know. I once got such a lovely pair of shoes at Bourne & Hollingsworth.”

The news vendor also points me towards Tottenham Court Road. But he’s busy and less patient.

A short way further on, I’m standing at the kerb, outside a shopping complex called the Plaza. I’m craning back my head when a policeman stops in front of me. He’s fat and bluff and red-faced from the sun. His sleeves are rolled up.

“Can you help me, please? I’m looking for Bourne & Hollingsworth.”

“Are you indeed, sir? Sorry to have to break it to you. You’re about six years too late.”

“I know. I’m looking for where it used to be.”

“Then you’re standing in the right place. Took up the whole of this block it did.”

“Somehow I had a feeling it was here. Thank you.”

He moves on. I stare up again at the complex. After that I turn and look across the road. I experience a brief moment of sickness—even of faintness, almost of dislocation. I’m convinced of it: she’d have been standing in one of those doorways opposite.

Except that the doorways then would all have been so different. Or in fact would they; how can you tell? To my untutored, obviously un-British eye, the one I’m gazing at right now could easily—in the aftermath of war—have looked pretty much the same.

A bit rundown. Flaking paint. Rubbish blown in and left to settle.

And jeepers! This suddenly strikes me with the utmost force. If there is a God (and I seem to remember that, once, I may have thought there was) he must surely possess a sense of humour that’s—to say the least—ironic.

Why? Because at present there’s a woman standing over there in that particular doorway. And she’s not simply standing there, goddamn it; she doesn’t simply bear a passing resemblance to Rosalind, goddamn it; she’s even—would you believe this?—she’s even wearing an eye-catching yellow coat. (I can’t remember if I saw in my dream that it was yellow or if this was something Mrs Farnsworth may have mentioned? In any case, it’s exactly the kind of coat Rosalind was given by her mother—even down to the tie belt and single button at the neck. That one, too, had been dirty and in want of a good press.)

So, yes, God. You’ve an ironic sense of humour, all right!

But tricks aren’t what I need at present.

Neither tricks nor mockery.

Though there is one merciful thing. At least this stranger doesn’t mean to stay. I’ve hardly set eyes on her before she starts moving off in the direction of Oxford Circus—moving off with the walk of a person totally defeated. Well, lady, I can identify with that. I know exactly how you feel.

And my heart goes out to her. Amazing! At this moment, I wouldn’t have thought that I could empathize with anyone.

I leave the shopping complex and head towards Tottenham Court Road, heaven knows why. And as I proceed, something bizarre crosses my mind, something just as bizarre as anything that happened earlier in Pilgrim’s Lane. (Earlier? Wasn’t it ten-forty when that song was playing on the radio?) “No, don’t be so stupid,” I tell myself. “Don’t be such an asshole!”

But I can’t help looking back from time to time towards the opposite sidewalk. Now there’s only the odd flash of yellow as she swiftly gets absorbed into those rush-hour crowds: strangely colourless crowds in comparison to her. I give myself a mental shake and force myself forward, doggedly attempting to think of something else, anything, it doesn’t matter.

So why then, again and again, do I find my footsteps faltering? Why am I still engaging—even as much as a minute, two minutes, conceivably three minutes later—why am I still engaging in that same mindless conversation?

“Have you gone mad? She’s dead—you know she’s dead. And even if she weren’t, she’d now be old. That woman you’ve just seen…all right, dishevelled, ground down, helpless. But still young. Still young! So you can’t give in to this! You—cannot—give—in—to—this! For the sake of your self-respect, for the sake of your health and future well-being… For the sake of restoring the proper balance of your mind—”

Abruptly I come to a standstill. Someone—I think it is a major or a captain—treads on my heels and apologizes. I glance about me at a London that suddenly seems as grey and washed-out as though it were coloured by my own despair. Or desperation.

I say the words out loud.

“Oh, fuck my health and future well-being! Fuck the proper balance of my mind!”

And then, almost before I’m aware of it, I have turned and I am running. Bumping into people, almost bumping into things. Sidewalk signs, bus stops, lampposts.

Also, I’m weaving through the traffic: traffic thankfully less dense than usual. Far less dense. Even so I’m provoking not just anger but actual oaths—mainly from two harassed cabbies and a bus driver who leans a long way out in order to harangue me. None of it’s important. I’m breathless and sweaty. Again I catch a glimpse of yellow coat. I see it disappear into the subway. It’s all that concerns me right now: the progress of a yellow coat.

I too, in time, hurl myself into the stormy sea converging on the subway. I do my best to penetrate.

But in the end I can’t get down those narrow steps any faster than anyone else. Why couldn’t she have stayed out in the open?

And then I realize. Oh God. I realize. How long since Tom had finished telling me?

That body on the line.

Here.

At Oxford Circus.

Realize? No—not realize. What’s the matter with me?

A measure of lucidity returns.

“You’re under stress and you’re confused and you’re in shock. You’re only doing all this to have something to aim towards, aren’t you—to find yourself a purpose? You’re only doing all this to channel your aggression and your fury and your impotence.”

All the same, I wish I’d got a closer look. I wish she hadn’t moved away the second I’d laid eyes on her.

“Please let me through! I must get through!”

“Yes, you and a million others,” says the man in front, turning his head ill-humouredly. He’s a labourer with old khaki shirt and unevenly cut grey hair. “So take your turn and stop shoving and everyone will get through a lot happier.”

Someone else, right next to me, is even more aggressive. He’s wearing a dark city suit, red carnation pinned to the lapel, and there’s an aura that’s practically satanic about him. “Just wait your turn!” he snaps.

Then adds in quite a different tone:

“Besides… There’s nothing you can do!”

He gives a queer laugh.

When I eventually make it down the steps, his words seem horribly prophetic. My sweat goes cold on me. I can’t see her.

But there’s a beggar woman on the concourse, holding out her palm to anyone who’ll listen. “Few pennies for a cuppa tea, sir? Few pennies for a cuppa tea, lady?” My eye’s caught by a fold of yellow that surmounts the ring of carrier bags behind her. I know immediately what’s happened.

Yet, dear God. How on earth—how in the name of heaven—how am I ever going to find her now?

The dress! Oh, let her be wearing the dress in the snapshot! Black-and-white there, of course, but I’m well aware the leaves are green. Not brown or russet or any other shade. Bright green, on a white background. Oh, let her be wearing that!

And she is!

She is!

I spot her.

In all that milling crowd I actually do spot her.

But she’s still a long way off: on the other side of a barrier and close to one of the escalators.

I vault the barrier.

“Hey, you, sir! You! Come back!”

The shout hardly registers. Yet when I briefly turn my head I see some outraged official now pointing me out to a colleague; get the impression that they mean to follow. Well, let them, who cares, haven’t they anything more meaningful to occupy their time?

But the coat—the dress—it is you, isn’t it? Yes, it’s got to be! Got to be! If only you’d turn round and let me see your face!

The escalator is jam-packed.

Although it’s a strikingly long one, by the time I get there she’s nearly at the bottom.

I say it only softly to begin with.

“Rosalind…?”

But then I give it every ounce of energy I can.

“Rosalind!”

Yet with all the usual noises of a busy subway (there’s even the distant moan of a saxophone) how far can one voice ever hope to carry? Those who do hear turn and stare at me dispassionately. The men look stupid in their stupid trilbies, the women in their stupid headscarves; all their senses addled by their stupid cigarette smoke.

“That woman down there! Please stop her! Stop her!” But she has now stepped off the escalator. “Please let me through! I must get through!”

People do their best to move over—more embarrassed than anything—but it scarcely helps. Is there another escalator after this? An old guy says there is.

But when I get to it the woman is a long way down.

“Rosalind!”

No response.

“That woman’s going to kill herself!”

A man calls back to me, an able seaman.

“Where? Which one?”

“That woman in the white dress. White dress with leaves on! She’s… Oh, Christ.”

Again she’s just stepped off. Is wholly out of sight.

But suddenly I know what I must do. The down-staircase and its counterpart run parallel. They share a broad dividing band. I scramble onto it. People gaze at me in fascination. Their smiles, their gasps, their staring eyes don’t bother me. I think it’s true that since I glimpsed her on the street I’ve hardly thought about myself.

It’s weird, however…the thoughts that do occur. Up here the lighting seems dimmer and for the first time I notice that the steps have wooden slats. I’m struck by the heavy gloss on Rita Hayworth’s lips—‘Gilda’ is back at the New Gallery. Joan Crawford’s, too: ‘Mildred Pierce’ at the Warner. And some newsreel theatre is showing the Wembley Cup Final, plus Shakespeare’s birthday celebrations. Yes, definitely it’s weird.

But wholly irrelevant. Like the cries of those two station officials now in hot pursuit. They’re not getting through any quicker than me, though—their shouts no more effective than my own.

I jump down.

The crowds appear to have thinned a little. But on the platform—a platform which I’ve got onto roughly halfway along—people are standing a good half-dozen deep. I see no sign of her.

“Oh, God. Please help!”

I know the train will come in from the left. Panic-stricken I hear subterranean rumblings; but those are tubes for other platforms. I thread my way towards the edge of this one—reach it—nervously lean forward and look in both directions. She’s over to my right.

Yes, she’s altered, certainly—damaged, bedraggled, bowed down—but just possibly, and for the merest instant, I may smile. “Rosalind, it is you!”

But then I yell:

“No, don’t! Don’t do it!”

Yet she still doesn’t hear and anyway there’s now a roar in the tunnel that’s got to be the prelude to arrival.

“Rosalind! Don’t! I promise you it’s going to be all right!”

She doesn’t hear.

I wave, frantically.

She doesn’t see.

“That woman over there! She’s going to kill herself!”

But no one, absolutely no one, appears to be taking notice; and the roar in the tunnel is growing tumultuous.

“Rosalind, I’m here! I’m here!”

Nothing.

Oh, dear God. What can I do?

The answer comes with quick, storm-centre clarity. Of course! I can create a diversion.

“Me,” I say. “Not you.”

For surely no two individuals ever jumped independently—and during that same small fraction of a minute—in front of the same tube.

The train is now out of the tunnel. Three seconds or less from where I stand.

Those ticket inspectors are pushing their way through the ranks immediately behind me. I feel the hands of one of them reach out to grab my arm.

But he’s too late.

I close my eyes and throw myself forward.