Perhaps it had needed that blow to drive it home. Now I came face to face with the fact that my existence simply had no focus any longer. My way of life, my plans, ambitions, every expectation I had had, they were all wiped out at a stroke, along with the conditions that had formed them. I suppose that had I had any relatives or close attachments to mourn I should have felt suicidally derelict at that moment. But what had seemed at times a rather empty existence turned out now to be lucky. My mother and father were dead, my one attempt to marry had miscarried some years before, and there was no particular person dependent on me. And, curiously, what I found that I did feel—with a consciousness that it was against what I ought to be feeling—was release…
It wasn’t just the brandy, for it persisted. I think it may have come from the sense of facing something quite fresh and new to me. All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash. Heaven alone knew as yet what others might arise—and it looked as though there would be plenty of them—but they would be new. I was emerging as my own master, and no longer a cog. It might well be a world full of horrors and dangers that I should have to face, but I could take my own steps to deal with it—I would no longer be shoved hither and thither by forces and interests that I neither understood nor cared about.
No, it wasn’t altogether the brandy, for even now, years afterward, I can still feel something of it—though possibly the brandy did oversimplify things a little just then.
Then there was, too, the little question of what to do next: how and where to start on this new life. But I did not let that worry me a lot for the present. I drank up and went out of the hotel to see what this strange world had to offer.
SHADOWS BEFORE
In order to give a reasonable berth to the Café Royal mob I struck up a side street into Soho, intending to cut back to Regent Street higher up.
Perhaps hunger was driving more people out of their homes. Whatever the reason, I found that the parts I now entered were more populous than any I’d seen since I left the hospital. Constant collisions took place on the sidewalks and in the narrow streets, and the confusion of those who were trying to get along was made worse by knots of people clustering in front of the now frequently broken shopwindows. None of those who crowded there seemed to be quite sure what kind of shop they were facing. Some in the front sought to find out by groping for any recognizable object; others, taking the risk of disemboweling themselves on standing splinters of glass, more enterprisingly climbed inside.
I felt that I ought to be showing these people where to find food. But should I? If I were to lead them to a food shop still intact, there would be a crowd which would not only sweep the place bare in five minutes but would crush a number of its weaker members in the process. Soon, anyway, all the food in the shops would be gone; then what was to be done with the thousands clamoring for more? One might collect a small party and keep it alive somehow for an uncertain length of time—but who was to be taken and who left? No obviously right course presented itself however I tried to look at it.
What was going on was a grim business without chivalry, with no give, and all take, about it. A man bumping into another and feeling that he carried a parcel would snatch it and duck away, on the chance that it contained something to eat, while the loser clutched furiously at the air or hit out indiscriminately. Once I had to step hurriedly aside to avoid being knocked down by an elderly man who darted into the roadway with no care for possible obstacles. His expression was vastly cunning, and he clutched avariciously to his chest two cans of red paint. On a corner my way was blocked by a group almost weeping with frustration over a bewildered child who could see but was just too young to understand what they wanted of it.
I began to become uneasy. Fighting with my civilized urge to be of some help to these people was an instinct that told me to keep clear. They were already fast losing ordinary restraints. I felt, too, an irrational sense of guilt at being able to see while they could not. It gave me an odd feeling that I was hiding from them even while I moved among them. Later on I found how right the instinct was.
Close to Golden Square I began to think of turning left and working back to Regent Street, where the wider roadway would offer easier going. I was about to take a corner that would lead me that way when a sudden piercing scream stopped me. It stopped everyone else too. All along the street they stood still, turning their heads this way and that, apprehensively trying to guess what was happening. The alarm, coming on top of their distress and nervous tension, started a number of the women whimpering. The men’s nerves weren’t in any too good a state either; they showed it mostly in short curses at being startled. For it was an ominous sound, one of the kinds of thing they had been subconsciously expecting. They waited for it to come again.