“But those kind of people are generally so interfering,” said Teresa. “Mother is not.”
“No, but she is a master of strategy,” said Cyril. “I used to read about Napoleon when we were taught strategy. Did you ever hear of his battles?”
“You mean Waterloo?” she asked.
“Yes, but that didn’t come off. His great success was before then. She may meet her Wellington on the playing fields of Millport for all you know. We shall see. Let’s go back to tea. Have a taxi?”
“No, let’s go on the top of a tram,” said Teresa. “I want to have that rod thing arranged over my head. Did you see the conductor running round with a string and hooking the little wheel on at the back?”
“Well, I don’t mind,” he conceded, “but the smell will knock you down.”
“What smell?” asked Teresa.
“Demos, a crowd,” he replied, as they made their slow progress between the jostling workers who still poured uninterruptedly across the bridge, “see also ‘Demosthenes’ and ‘demon’— and ‘demi-monde’,” he added reflectively, as a whiff of strong scent struck him from a girl with a sharp elbow.
“What a fuss you make about smells and things,” she said. “They’re all life. They mean all sorts of things.”
“Well, they don’t mean anything I want,” he grumbled. “I believe everybody in this damned place wears fish next the skin.” This was said with profound disgust as they took their places on a little seat at the top of the tram staircase, and other swarms of people with pale, serious faces and drab clothing pushed past his knees to the glass shelter beyond. The windows became fogged with human breath and clouds of cheap tobacco, and as the sun disappeared in the drifting fog from the river, the mud began to filter down once more on to the roofs, and to ooze up from under the stones of the pavement. The car swayed under its heavy load, with occasional grinding squeals, stopping every few hundred yards to take up new burdens in place of those who had reached their destination. Teresa watched the squalid forms and weary faces with a new-born ecstasy. Some veiled desire, a love for something unknown, which had led her in pursuit for as long as she could remember, had stopped and shown itself to her for a moment. Then it fled again from her reach.