Putting a last touch to the bobbed hair on the blotting-paper, he got up. St Paul’s, that girl had said. He might stroll up and have a squint at Bicket. Something might occur to him. Tightening the belt of his blue overcoat round his waist, he sallied forth, thin and sprightly, with a little ache in his heart.
Walking east, on that bright, cheerful day, nothing struck him so much as the fact that he was alive, well, and in work. So very many were dead, ill, or out of a job. He entered Covent Garden. Amazing place! A human nature which, decade after decade, could put up with Covent Garden was not in danger of extinction from its many ills. A comforting place – one needn’t take anything too seriously after walking through it. On this square island were the vegetables of the earth and the fruits of the world, bounded on the west by publishing, on the east by opera, on the north and south by rivers of mankind. Among discharging carts and litter of paper, straw and men out of drawing, Michael walked and sniffed. Smell of its own, Covent Garden, earthy and just not rotten! He had never seen – even in the war – any place that so utterly lacked form. Extraordinarily English! Nobody looked as if they had anything to do with the soil – drivers, hangers-on, packers, and the salesmen inside the covered markets, seemed equally devoid of acquaintanceship with sun, wind, water, earth or air – town types all! And – Golly! – how their faces jutted, sloped, sagged and swelled, in every kind of featural disharmony. What was the English type amongst all this infinite variety of disproportion? There just wasn’t one! He came on the fruits, glowing piles, still and bright – foreigners from the land of the sun – globes all the same size and colour. They made Michael’s mouth water. ‘Something in the sun,’ he thought; ‘there really is.’ Look at Italy, at the Arabs, at Australia – the Australians came from England, and see the type now! Nevertheless – a Cockney for good temper! The more regular a person’s form and features, the more selfish they were! Those grape-fruit looked horribly self-satisfied, compared with the potatoes!
He emerged still thinking about the English. Well! They were now one of the plainest and most distorted races of the world; and yet was there any race to compare with them for good temper and for ‘guts’? And they needed those in their smoky towns, and their climate – remarkable instance of adaptation to environment, the modern English character! ‘I could pick out an Englishman anywhere,’ he thought, ‘and yet, physically, there’s no general type now!’ Astounding people! So ugly in the mass, yet growing such flowers of beauty, and such strange sprigs – like that little Mrs Bicket; so unimaginative in bulk, yet with such a blooming lot of poets! How would old Danby like it, by the way, when Wilfrid took his next volume to some other firm; or rather what should he – Wilfrid’s particular friend! – say to old Danby? Aha! He knew what he should say:
‘Yes, sir, but you should have let that poor blighter off who snooped the Copper Coins. Desert hasn’t forgotten your refusal.’ One for old Danby and his eternal in-the-rightness! Copper Coin had done uncommonly well. Its successor would probably do uncommonly better. The book was a proof of what he – Michael – was always saying: The ‘cockyolly-bird period’ was passing. People wanted life again. Sibley, Walter Nazing, Linda – all those who had nothing to say except that they were superior to such as had – were already measured for their coffins. Not that they would know when they were in them; not blooming likely! They would continue to wave their noses and look down them!
‘I’m fed-up with them,’ thought Michael. ‘If only Fleur would see that looking down your nose is a sure sign of inferiority!’ And, suddenly, it came to him that she probably did. Wilfrid was the only one of the whole lot she had ever been thick with; the others were there because – well, because she was Fleur, and had the latest things about her. When, very soon, they were no longer the latest things, she would drop them. But Wilfrid she would not drop. No, he felt sure that she had not dropped, and would not drop Wilfrid.
He looked up. Ludgate Hill! ‘Near St Paul’s – sells balloons?’ And there – sure enough – the poor beggar was!
Bicket was deflating with a view to going off his stand for a cup of cocoa. Remembering that he had come on him by accident, Michael stood for a moment preparing the tones of surprise. Pity the poor chap couldn’t blow himself into one of those coloured shapes and float over St Paul’s to Peter. Mournful little cuss he looked, squeezing out the air! Memory tapped sharply on his mind. Balloon – in the square – November the first – joyful night! Special! Fleur! Perhaps they brought luck. He moved and said in an astounded voice: ‘You, Bicket? Is this your stunt now?’