Night Birds
It is three o'clock in the morning. Piccadilly Circus is empty of life and movement—save for a prowling policeman trying shop doors, and a group of men directing water from a giant hose over the gleaming, empty road.
A taxicab is an event, and a stray person walking quietly into the Circus holds dramatic possibilities. The mind fastens on him. Who is he? He may be a great criminal, or a great lover walking home after a dance with his head full of glorious dreams, or he may be a burglar, or a young man who has just inherited a million, or a young man without a place to rest his head. The emptiness of Piccadilly at three a.m. is awful, unnatural, death-like....
Yet London is not asleep. Hundreds of people in London never seem to sleep. Come into one of the all-night cafés which have sprung up within the last year or so. It is full. It hums with talk and laughter. Waiters move about between the crowded tables. There is a constant clatter of cups and saucers, and the air is blue with smoke. In contrast with the desolation of the empty streets outside, it is an astonishing place. At first you think there is nothing to distinguish the café from the same place at normal hours. You look again and realize the difference. The people are different. The woman with three or four brown paper parcels—the shopping woman—is absent. There are no children. Few elderly people.
Those present are mostly young people distinguished either by an air of lassitude or an unnatural hectic gaiety.
At the next table a girl is eating lobster salad. Lobster at three a.m.!
* * *
Who are these people? You begin to wonder about them. Some are obvious—extremely obvious—some are mysteries.
In a corner a man in evening dress has dropped in for a cup of coffee with the nice girl with whom he has been dancing. She keeps her velvet evening cloak tightly round her, and looks about at the other people, trying to fix them. It is to her an adventure. Her partner's glance at her over the broad rim of his cup suggests that he is desperately trying to prolong the "night out." He is a clean, blonde young man, and he pretends to take no notice of the elderly satyr at another table who is openly admiring the girl in the cloak. But she sees and gives the satyr a cold Kensington eye, hard as an eviction order.
Quite a number of other dancers seem glued to rolls and coffee, unable to go home. They laugh and discuss the dance. Someone says: "I must be in the office at nine!" They laugh and order more coffee.
A group of men with music cases under the chairs talk in a corner. They are a jazz band which has just finished work. There are a number of solemn, self-centred men smoking quietly, alone. They may be night-workers, post office officials, or what not, waiting for the next tramcar.
There are inevitable Japanese students. They sit together talking, occasionally taking an expressionless survey of the company. What are they doing? Studying night life? Winding up an innocent party?
Most interesting are the unplaceable people: the number of foreign-looking young men who argue together: the type of man who at the precise crack of Doom with graves opening and the world closing, would try to sell you a cheap pearl tiepin. A number of night birds are evidently in the habit of drinking coffee at three a.m. There is movement from table to table, group to group. Dotted about the room are girls who would describe themselves as dance instructresses or cinema actresses.
Four or five men who look as though they have been celebrating a friend's last night of bachelorhood enter with exaggerated politeness, apologizing for occasional conflicts with chairs and tables. They order black coffee. Another man comes up to their table. They all leap up and shake hands.
"The last time I saw you was in Bagdad!" he says. "What's happened to old 'Whisky Willie' of the Gunners? You remember that night...."
This sort of talk still goes on in London where young men are linked together by common memories of the War.
* * *
As we go from the brilliantly lit room the emptiness and the chill of sleeping London meets us at the door. Long lines of lights shining on desolate pavements, a shuffling figure under a lamp, a slow taxicab cruising near the kerb, and then, surprisingly, like a ghost of old London, a hansom cab standing in Piccadilly, the ancient horse, head down as if remembering past things!
In the cold air is the vague promise of a new day, a faint rumble of market carts and vans as if London stirs in her impressive slumber.