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London Sights
The New Statesman vol. 1, no. 4, New Series (March 21, 1931) : 148-149
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Cocoons in the Green Park.
They lie deep in the long grass of a knoll facing the Park Lane Hotel. Hands are hidden in pockets or held under armpits. Feet are drawn up under coats, and with heads under hats and coat collars there is no way of saying who it is that lies drawn in out of life.
Military music comes over from Buckingham Palace, where the guard is changing, and the ground vibrates with the cars rushing along Piccadilly. Sometimes a cocoon stirs, chafes hands red and black with dirt and cold, then draws in again, and this time gets deeper in, flatter down. There is no head or foot — just a half-warm centre turning in, away from discomfort.
By eleven there are still a dozen cocoons sleeping; then one sits up and makes his toilet, spitting on his hand, rubbing down his hair, retying his scarf, and shaking himself as though he had feathers. One breakfasts with his dog. He throws crumbs to birds who catch them in mid-air, and with crumpled newspapers about him containing something, he seems to have a good deal — London, music, nature and leisure.
The cocoons that are awake are as silent as those that are asleep. They sit silent inside their many wrappings. A fat cold woman and a youngish man drink tea together, looking settled. A youth carries a tin pail carefully from the cabmen’s shelter which must be where boiling water is, and offers the first draught to his young woman who perches respectably on a chair.
Another cocoon wakes and sits up, looking private. She readjusts the thing on her head, and looks about chilled but contained. The man with the dog is near her, and he gives a little nod. She lets her cheeks relax and lifts her eyebrows. He proffers a bag held in a nest of other bags, and she presses in her fingers till they come out stuck with the crumbs of biscuits. These are munched by both in silence, and then, a cool wind searching past buttonless garments to the flesh of the man, he shivers and looks up, annoyed, at the sky.
This makes her prod into her person for a pin, which she offers him. Just as the moment of anxious adjustment is over the grey air brightens to a pale cream and she says “’Snice in the sun.”
“’Snice,” he says.
School Was Out.
And Grandmother was bringing her two grandchildren home. She flowed into the ’bus like a striving amoeba, and in her arms, but not wanting to be there, was Harry, all in blue wool except for his round red face. Ethel darted in front, perched simultaneously on three separate seats, then collapsed to where Grandmother pulled her.
Now, dear, wait until I get the money out — don’t wriggle, Harry — one two, and a half, please — let go, Ethel; you'll make me drop it — thank you — but Harry wants the tickets, dear; can’t you hear what he’s saying? ”
Ethel snapped “He’s saying ‘Polly, put the kettle on.’”
“Well, dear, it doesn’t make it any easier if you take it in that spirit — Grandmother understands you, Harry, dear ; not so loud, love — Ethel, there is no use in your scowling like that — I am sorry if you didn’t like Harry being at school this afternoon, and I know you wanted to catch the same bus as your little friend, but Grandmother couldn’t run, dear, and now that I’ve explained I really feel — Ethel, I will not have you make faces, it shows the gold band on your teeth, and it looks dreadful — —”
Harry waved his short arms and ululated “Tally tat it all adin — Tally ate it alladin — —”
“Not so loud, darling; think of the other passengers. Nice tickets, yes, dear, blue; Grandmother understands you. What is he saying, Ethel?”
Ethel withdrew her tongue from its efforts to explore the furthest reaches of her gold band and answered tartly “He says ‘Sally put it on again.’”
“Oh, quite so, quite so, Harry.” Grandmother pulled her coat from under Harry’s trampling feet, got her fur out of his grasping hands, and straightened her hat for the twentieth time. She was feeling to see if she still had her glasses when it occurred to her that Ethel’s moral character was being neglected. “I wish, Ethel, you could take things in a better spirit. Everything is in the way you take it — if you could learn — —”
Harry drowned everything, even traffic, with “Polly ut te tettle on,” and Ethel’s nerves gave way with a “Shut up!” that drowned even Harry.
Out of Grandmother’s billows came “Who did you say that to, Ethel?”
But Ethel wouldn’t tell, and as Harry now tried to climb up on Grandmother’s chest Ethel’s moral character had to go.
The Marble Arch.
Mist held the trees in the Park, and the lights on the gates into the Park. It banked up into the heavy grey sky where the setting sun burst through feebly. The wroughtiron gates looked very black, and the motors rushing out of the Park made a crunching sound from the sand on their [149] wheels. At the Regal a small group of people standing in disciplined twos were the beginning of a queue, and though they kept their feet pointed the right way, their heads strained to watch a man who stood high up on a slender ladder placing coloured bulbs in Gamage’s Christmas sign.
As it grew darker the lights grew brighter. They flicked out of the Park, they streamed down the Bayswater Road, they came up Oxford Street, and swung round and round the Marble Arch. The traffic turning, rumbling, flashing, made a pool of quiet for the Arch to stand in with its gate leading nowhere. The flagging surrounding it was untrodden and white, and the beaded plane trees beside it let their leaves fall softly to lie a delicate yellow-green in the wet. Long lines of light glimmered on the stippled surface running straight from the lamp posts, and one led to a woman in a waterproof who knelt on the pavement in prayer.
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