More barges came downstream slowly. High and shrill sounded the hoarse protest of a siren, imperative and wild, and I seemed to feel, right in the heart of London, where all things are so ordered and inevitable, the ancient call to the open places that comes with the smell of tar and the sight of thin masts rising to the sky.
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.