7
Left alone with silence all along the street, Christine inaudible in the kitchen, dead silence in the house, Miriam gathered up her blouse and ran upstairs. As she passed through the changing lights of the passage, up the little dark staircase past the turn that led to the little lavatory and the little bathroom and was bright in the light of a small uncurtained lattice, on up the four stairs that brought her to the landing where the opposing bedroom doors flooded their light along the strip of green carpet between the polished balustrade and the high polished glass-doored bookcase, scenes from the future, moving in boundless backgrounds came streaming unsummoned into her mind, making her surroundings suddenly unfamiliar ... the past would come again.... Inside her room—tidied until nothing was visible but the permanent shining gleaming furniture and ornaments; only the large box of matches on the corner of the mantlepiece betraying the movement of separate days, telling her of nights of arrival, the lighting of the gas, the sudden light in the frosted globe preluding freedom and rest, bringing the beginning of rest with the gleam of the fresh quiet room—she found the nearer past, her years of London work set in the air, framed and contemplable like the pictures on the wall, and beside them the early golden years in snatches, chosen pictures from here and there, communicated, and stored in the loyal memory of the Brooms. Leaping in among these live days came to-day ... the blouse belonged to the year that was waiting far off, invisible behind the high wall of Christmas. She dropped it on the bed and ran downstairs to the little drawing-room. The fire had not yet conquered the mustiness of the air. The room was full of strange dim lights coming in through the stained glass door of the little greenhouse. She pushed open the glass door turning the light to a soft green and sat sociably down in a low chair her hands clasped upon her knees, topics racing through her mind in a voice thrilling with stored up laughter. In her ears was the rush of spring rain on the garden foliage, and presently a voice saying where are we going this summer?... By the time they came back she would be too happy to speak. Better perhaps to go out into the maze of little streets and in wearying of them be glad to come back. As she moved to the door she saw the garden in late summer fulness, the holidays over, their heights gleaming through long talks on the seat at the end of the garden, the answering glow of the great blossoms of purple clematis hiding the north London masonry of the little conservatory, the great spaces of autumn opening out and out running down rich with happenings to where the high wall of Christmas again rose and shut out the future. She ran busily upstairs casting away sight and hearing and hurried thoughtlessly into her outdoor things and out into the street. She wandered along the little roads turning and turning until she came to a broad open thoroughfare lined with high grey houses standing back behind colourless railed-in gardens. Trams jingled up and down the centre of the road bearing the names of unfamiliar parts of London. People were standing about on the terminal islands and getting in and out of the trams. She had come too far. Here was the wilderness, the undissembling soul of north London, its harsh unvarying all-embracing oblivion.... Innumerable impressions gathered on walks with the schoolgirls or in lonely wanderings; the unveiled motives and feelings of people she had passed in the streets, the expression of noses and shoulders, the indefinable uniformity, of bearing and purpose and vision, crowded in on her, oppressing and darkening the crisp light air. She fought against them, rallying to the sense of the day. It was Christmas Day for them all. They were keeping Christmas in their homes, carrying it out into the streets, going about with parcels, greeting each other in their harsh ironic voices. Long ago she had passed out of their world for ever, carrying it forward, a wound in her consciousness unhealed, but powerless to re-inflict itself, powerless to spread into her life. They and their world were still there, unchanged. But they could never touch her again, ensconced in her wealth. It did not matter now that they went their way just in the way they went their way. To hate them for past suffering now that they were banished and powerless was to allow them to spoil her day.... They were even a possession, a curious thing apart, unknown to anyone in her London life ... dear north Londoners. She paused a moment, looking boldly across at the figures moving on the islands. After all they did not know that it was cold and desolate and harsh and dreadful to be going about on Christmas Day in a place that looked as this place looked, in trams. They did not know what was wrong with their clothes and their bearing and their way of looking at things. That was what was so terrible though. What could teach them? There were so many. They lived and died in amongst each other. What could change them?... Her face felt drawn and weariness was coming upon her limbs ... a group was approaching her along the wide pavement, laughing and talking, a blatter of animated voices; she turned briskly for the relief of meeting and passing close to them ... too near, too near ... prosperity and kindliness, prosperous fresh laughing faces, easily bought clothes, the manner of the large noisy house and large secure income, free movement in an accessible world, all turned to dangerous weapons in wrong hands by the unfinished, insensitive mouths, the ugly slur in the speech, the shapelessness of bearing, the naïvely visible thoughts, circumscribed by business, the illustrated monthly magazines, the summer month at the seaside; their lives were exactly like their way of walking down the street, a confident blind trampling. Speech was not needed to reveal their certainties; they shed certainty from every angle of their unfinished persons. Certainty about everything. Incredulous contempt for all uncertainty. Impatient contempt for all who could not stand up for themselves. Cheerful uncritical affection for each other. And for all who were living or trying to live just as they did ... The little bushes of variegated laurel grouped in railed-off oblongs along the gravelled pathway between the two wide strips of pavement, drew her gaze. They shone crisply, their yellow and green enamel washed clean by yesterday’s rain. She hurried along feeling out towards them through downcast eyes. They glinted back at her unsunned by the sunlight, rootless sapless surfaces set in repellent clay, spread out in meaningless air. To and fro her eyes slid upon the varnished leaves ... she saw them in a park set in amongst massed dark evergreens, gleaming out through afternoon mist, keeping the last of the light as the people drifted away leaving the slopes and vistas clear ... grey avenues and dewy slopes drifted before her in the faint light of dawn, the grey growing pale and paler; the dew turned to a scatter of jewels and the sky soared up high above the growing shimmer of sunlit green and gold. Isolated morning figures hurried across the park, aware of its morning freshness, seeing it as their own secret garden, part of their secret day....
From the sunlit white facade of a large London house the laurels looked down through a white stone-pillared balustrade. They appeared coming suddenly with the light of a street lamp, clumped safely behind the railings of a Bloomsbury square ... the opening of a side street led her back into the maze of little roads. The protective presence of the little house was there and she sauntered happily along through channels of sheltered sunlit silence.... What was she doing here? At Christmas-time one should be where one belonged. Gathering and searching about her came the claims of the firesides that had lain open to her choice, drawing her back into the old life, the only life known to those who sat round them. They looked out from that life, seeing hers as hardship and gloom, pitying her, turning blind eyes unwillingly towards her attempts to unveil and make it known to them. She saw herself relinquishing efforts, putting on a desperate animation, professing interests and opinions and talking as people talk, while they watched her with eyes that saw nothing but a pitiful attempt to hide an awful fate, lonely poverty, the absence of any opening prospect, nothing ahead but a gloom deepening as the years counted themselves off. Those were the facts—as almost anyone might see them. They made those facts live; they tugged at the jungle of feelings that had the power to lead one back through any small crushing maiming aperture.... In their midst lived the past and the thing that had ended it and plunged it into a darkness that still held the threat of destroying reason and life. Perhaps only thus could it be faced. Perhaps only in that way. What other way was there? Forgetfulness blotted it out and let one live on. But it was always there, impossible, when one looked back.... The little house brought forgetfulness and rest. It made no break in the new life. The new life flowed through it, sunlit. It was a flight down strange vistas, a superfluity of wild strangeness, with a clue in one’s hand, the door of retreat always open; rest and forgetfulness piling up within one into strength.