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London Sights
The New Statesman vol. 36, no. 920 (December 13, 1930) : 303
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Chelsea Embankment.
The river is high. A box filled with straw rushes with the tide. Orange skins slip up and down little waves looking bright and beautiful. There is a mist among the yellow trees in Battersea Park. Albert Bridge hangs in graceful loops against four tall chimneys. Traffic rushes across it. Traffic rushes across Battersea Bridge. Traffic roars along the Embankment shaking the air, the pavement, the bodies of the strolling pedestrians; muffling their voices, blurring their hearing, addling their thoughts.
      On a bench sits a young man in a white jersey without sleeves or collar. His skin is incredibly brown and his hair rises up in defiance of hats. He holds an open case on his knee with paper roses sticking up on long wires. A sign on the cover says “2d. Each.” His hands move quickly, making a pair of very big, very bright scissors curl pink paper into petals. His lips are tucked in complacently.
      Beside him on the bench is something female, flaccid, painted, young, with hanging lip, burned hair and drooping body. She watches the scissors snip and twist. “You got a be clever to do that.”
      The scissors whirl more quickly, his eyebrows give a superior lift. “Anyone can do it. They haven’t thought of it, that’s all.”
      “They ain’t got the brains.” Her eyes stare at the forming rose and her body sags hopelessly.
      The man’s head wags like a preening bird.“People don’t think for themselves. They’re not free. I am. It’s thinking that does it.”
      “Aw, you got brains!”
      “So has everyone, but they don’t use them. I do.” His scissors fly, his shoulders rock one way, his head another. He almost dances with satisfaction.
      The girl’s cheeks seem to fall away from the paint that covers them. Her mouth sprawls out. “That’s what I say. We ain’t got brains like you.”

Sunday in the Park.
One orator yelled out, “Where are the dead?” but nobody told him. Twenty feet away a black man cried, “Where’s Jesus?” His partner behind him, holding the placard, plucked at his elbow. Pulling himself away and flinging out his black hands, he shouted, “Not in my pocket; Jesus never was in no man’s pocket!” His partner prodded him and said, “It’s my turn now.” The black man said in a low cluck, “You get along.” And chanted, “Jesus’s in my heart, Jesus’s in my heart, That’s where Jesus is, Jesus’s in my heart.”
      “You take the placard now,” his partner said, getting nasty.
      “Have peace in yo’ heart ; that’s what Ah say to all men — have peace in yo’ heart!”
      The black man talked so fast that he sang, and snapped a grace note back at his partner of “Ho’d ye tongue!”
      “It’s my turn,” said his partner, and began to use the placard as a snuffer.
      “Love one another, love one another. That’s what you got a do, love one another!”
      The placard was screening him, so that he took it and said, “Oh, go on, then.”
      And the partner, stepping forward at once, asked briskly, “What is sin?”
      The crowd gazed blankly, and made deaf by being talked to, had no idea.
      But the partner shook a bony finger and said, “Let us see what happened in the Garden of Eden.”
      So everyone settled under their umbrellas while he went as far as that to find sin.

Tea Hour in a Big Shop.
A woman’s orchestra dressed in scarlet evening dresses played a tango. Mannequins strolled in studied calm between the tables, pausing that women with bundles at their feet might see the little card bearing the words, “Model twenty-two guineas, copy fourteen guineas.” The women became embarrassed and drank their tea, the mannequins strolled off, jerking to right and left.
      The lift door opened, and more stolid, staid people poured out and stood staring at the marble columns, soft lights, and scarlet band. A well-dressed, hatless woman with hostess manners said, “Four? This way, please. Four, Mr. Hicks.” And Mr. Hicks, in faultless morning dress, gazed round the closely packed tables, and seeing someone grubbing in her purse, took it as a sign that she would soon rise, and with encouraging bows he installed the newly-arrived four back of her chair, where they watched her every mouthful.
      At a small table were two women with a little girl between them who wore a red ribbon on her arm. They all sipped tea politely, crunched silently, and gazed with abashed eyes at the palms, rich carpets, and delicately coloured walls.
      The woman who was not the child’s mother made a grimace indicating profound knowledge, after which she said, “You believe in vaccination?”
      The mother looked challenged but stubborn. “Not in the first six months. I wouldn’t think of allowing that. I signed a paper specially to say I didn’t. But now that Baby is seven, the body changes every seven years — — —” She could not remember any more reasons, so she bit a scone suddenly as though that was the reason she had stopped talking.
      The other woman looked long at Baby, lifted a crumb from the plate on the tip of her finger, ate it reflectively, and said, “I believed in it till I knew what they did. But now that I know, I suppose you do know?” She sent a stabbing glance that made the mother wince.
      “How do you mean? Know?”
      “Oh, well, if you don’t know what they’ve put in your child!”
      Her child had been licking icing off each finger, and she had got to the ninth finger when she saw the woman who was not her mother swell and swell with what she knew, until Baby and her mother felt sick at the size she was getting.
Florida Pier
 

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