ears wired to his Walkman, and his feet jig gently to some private rhythm. He wears clothes more expensive, more stylish, than anyone else in this travelling room. Next to him is an Indian woman with a girl of ten or so. They wear saris that show brown midriffs as glossy as toffee, but they have cardigans over them. Butterfly saris, workaday cardigans that make the statement, if you choose to live in a cold northern country, then this is the penalty. Never has there been a sadder sartorial marriage than saris with cardigans. They sit quietly conversing, in a way that makesthe little girl seem a woman. These three get out at Finchley Road. In get four Americans, two boys, two girls, in their uniform of jeans and T-shirts and sports shoes. They talk loudly and do not see anyone else. Two sprawl opposite, and two loll on either side of, a tall old woman, possibly Scottish, who sits with her burnished shoes side by side, her fine bony hands on the handle of a wheeled shopping basket. She gazes ahead of her, as if the loud youngsters do not exist, and she is possibly remembering-but what London? The war? {Second World War, this time.) Not a poor London, that is certain. She is elegant, in tweeds and a silk shirt and her rings are fine. She and the four Americans get out at St John’s Wood, the youngsters off to the American School, but she probably lives here. St John’s Wood, so we are told by Galsworthy, for one, was where kept women were put in discreetly pretty villas by rich or at least respectable lovers. Now these villas can be afforded only by the rich, often Arabs.
As people get into the waiting train, I sit remembering how not long ago I visited a French friend in a St John’s Wood hotel. While I stood at the reception desk three Arabs in white robes went through from a back part of the hotel to the lift, carrying at shoulder level a tray heaped with rice, and on that a whole roasted sheep. The lobby swooned with the smell of spices and roast meat. The receptionist said, to my enquiring look, ‘Oh, it’s for Sheikh So-and-So, he has a feast every night.’ And she continued to chat on the telephone to a boyfriend. ‘Oh, you only say that, oh I know all about men, you can’t tell me anything’-using these words, as far as she was concerned, for the first time in history. And she caressed the hair above her left ear with a complacent white hand that had on it a lump of synthetic amber the size of a hen’s egg. Her shining hair was amber, cut in a 1920s shingle. Four more Arabs flowed past, their long brownfingers playing with their prayer beads, like nuns who repel the world with their rosaries. ‘Hail Mary Full of Grace …’ their lips moving as they smile and nod, talking part in worldly conversation: but their fingers holding tight to righteousness. The Arabs disappeared into the lift, presumably on their way to the feast, while the revolving doors admitted four more, a congregation of sheikhs.
Not far from here, in Abbey Road, are the studios where the Beatles recorded. At the pedestrian crossing made famous by the Four are always platoons of tourists, of all ages and races, standing to stare with their souls in their eyes, while their fingers go click-click on their cameras. All over the world, in thousands of albums, are cherished photographs of this dingy place.
This part of London is not old. When the villas were full of mistresses and ladies of pleasure it was a newish suburb. Travelling from NW6 or NW2 into the centre is to leave recently settled suburbs for the London that has risen and fallen in successive incarnations since before the Romans. Not long ago I was at lunch in the house that was Gladstone’s, now a Press Club. For most of us it is hard to imagine a family actually living in a house that seems built only to present people for public occasions, but above all, no one could stand on Carlton House Terrace and think: Not long ago there was a wood here, running water, grazing beasts. No,
As people get into the waiting train, I sit remembering how not long ago I visited a French friend in a St John’s Wood hotel. While I stood at the reception desk three Arabs in white robes went through from a back part of the hotel to the lift, carrying at shoulder level a tray heaped with rice, and on that a whole roasted sheep. The lobby swooned with the smell of spices and roast meat. The receptionist said, to my enquiring look, ‘Oh, it’s for Sheikh So-and-So, he has a feast every night.’ And she continued to chat on the telephone to a boyfriend. ‘Oh, you only say that, oh I know all about men, you can’t tell me anything’-using these words, as far as she was concerned, for the first time in history. And she caressed the hair above her left ear with a complacent white hand that had on it a lump of synthetic amber the size of a hen’s egg. Her shining hair was amber, cut in a 1920s shingle. Four more Arabs flowed past, their long brownfingers playing with their prayer beads, like nuns who repel the world with their rosaries. ‘Hail Mary Full of Grace …’ their lips moving as they smile and nod, talking part in worldly conversation: but their fingers holding tight to righteousness. The Arabs disappeared into the lift, presumably on their way to the feast, while the revolving doors admitted four more, a congregation of sheikhs.
Not far from here, in Abbey Road, are the studios where the Beatles recorded. At the pedestrian crossing made famous by the Four are always platoons of tourists, of all ages and races, standing to stare with their souls in their eyes, while their fingers go click-click on their cameras. All over the world, in thousands of albums, are cherished photographs of this dingy place.
This part of London is not old. When the villas were full of mistresses and ladies of pleasure it was a newish suburb. Travelling from NW6 or NW2 into the centre is to leave recently settled suburbs for the London that has risen and fallen in successive incarnations since before the Romans. Not long ago I was at lunch in the house that was Gladstone’s, now a Press Club. For most of us it is hard to imagine a family actually living in a house that seems built only to present people for public occasions, but above all, no one could stand on Carlton House Terrace and think: Not long ago there was a wood here, running water, grazing beasts. No,
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