When I was walking along the Embankment on a path of pale sun, I saw
a young man and a young woman leaning over the grey stone watching
the river. There were white gulls wheeling, and the river was high;
and this man and this woman were very still and intent. When I stood
beside them I found they were not looking at the river, they were
looking at the Future!
Under cover of their leaning arms they were holding hands. They were
in the last stage of love, their eyes like fields full of
moon-calves. His clothes were Sundayfied and his boots were new and
brown--the colour of a retired Indian general.
Her hat had been made at home in a hurry. And they were standing
there lost in the illimitable wonder of each other. They were not in
London. They were in that aerial country on the boundaries of
paradise, from which such men and women descend to a small red box in
the suburbs and the current price of eggs.
I could compose their imaginary dialogue easily. I could tell you
that he whispered about the fifteen pounds in the bank, that they
murmured daringly of banns, and an oak suite on the instalment
system. But, no! They said nothing, because they had reached that
condition when words cease to capture meaning.
And I thought how well worth writing of are the lovers of London, the
ordinary little lovers, whose sitting-out places are the parks, whose
adventures are omnibus rides to Kew, whose extravagances are tea and
buns.
Every Sunday they walk London. Every week-day you can see them in
the solemn City snatching a half-hour at luncheon, she with an index
finger purpled by a new ribbon, he very clerkly and correct. And you
must never think them mean when, having watched each other eat steak
and kidney pie as if they were sitting at a mystery play, they call
for separate bills.
He pays his one and threepence and she pays hers. How significant
that is. Had he been philandering with her they would have had a far
nicer luncheon in a very much nicer restaurant, and he would have
carelessly ordered an ice and ended up recklessly with coffee and
perhaps even a sinister _crème de menthe_. And he would have paid
the bill, giving her the impression it was a mere nothing. She would
not be allowed to know that his hand, groping mysteriously in his
pocket, was trying desperately to discover whether there was enough
left for seats in a cinema, whether--dash it all!--that little coin
in the dark of his slender pocket was a penny or a much-hoped-for
half-crown.
Ah, a bad sign. The road to bankruptcy is paved with boasting and
insincerity and such little showings off! Let him once discover the
Girl, and then with life imminent they get down to truth, and she
discovers that he is not the lordly thing he pretended to be, that he
is not earning a splendid fiver a week but a solemn two pounds ten.
Crisis? Oh, dear, no!
There then begins a wrestle with a skeleton disguised as a bank
account. They both stand guard over it. An extra packet of
cigarettes is a betrayal, a reckless splash at a movie is a crime
against a new little home that exists nowhere but in two hearts. So
he pays his bill and she pays hers, and all the time the modest
little pile grows, leading them to those helpful organizations which
give two hundred pounds worth of property for ten per cent down and
the rest over eternity.
* * *
They are happy, are these little lovers of London; as all honest,
simple things are happy. No great winds of passion or ambition blow
like storms in their hearts. They wish to escape from their
surroundings into something which is their very own. They dream of
the little house, just like every other little house in the row, and
they dream of locking the front door on life and opening their arms
to each other.
In the great hive of London you can see them meeting, hungrily
snatching a moment from their separate labours which are just a means
to an end. In the City she comes, lighting his heart with her
beauty, and she goes, leaving him feeling that the light has been
turned off inside him. At Kew in lilac time you will find them in
sweet green avenues; the red buses bear them and their Dream to
country places; and one day you will meet them in a tube train
bending self-consciously over a furniture catalogue....
* * *
Dante and Beatrice came out of their dream beside the Thames and
walked away. Dante's new boots squeaked. Arm-in-arm they went along
the sun path, two ordinary little actors in the great play, with that
stillness about them that suggests how full two hearts can be.
If one could only peep into their lives again in ten years' time.
That, however, is tempting Fate.