was conscious that had I done my research for Lover at the Gate with any integrity I would know the street intimately. But I had not done so. I have relied on my intuition: that is to say I was not going to waste time on facts while Hugo was in my bed and Eleanor Darcy in my imagination. I was relieved to see that the street was exactly as I had imagined it. I came into it halfway along its length, where it was bisected by Union Street. It was a long road of semidetached houses, two up, two down, most in desultory repair, many lace-curtained, some, although small to begin with, converted into flats. Few of the cars which lined both sides of the street were new: most were clean and better kept than the houses; quite a few the kind that young men like to tinker with, to keep on the road in the face of all odds. I could see a couple of motorbikes; a clutch of bicycles leaning against a fence: a group of children, a couple of black faces amongst them, playing ball in the road, able to do so because this was a street which was a throughway to nowhere: on the corner where I stood was an Asian newsagent—it was empty of customers; closed until evening, no doubt, when the employed would begin to drift home from work. People of no aspiration could live here all their lives, and women married to men without aspiration, and I supposed vice versa, and forget easily enough that there was anything to aspire to.
I stood unsure of what I was looking for. Perhaps I hoped to find Brenda out walking with the children, or to run into Eleanor Darcy herself. Perhaps, I thought, if I knocked on another door someone would help. I had come a long way to go home with no reward. I wondered which way to walk, but both ways seemed equal. I started to go west, but the same sun which shone on deserts and mountains, baked the wide steps of city halls, glazed the air in gracious parks, shone into my eyes in Mafeking Street and dazzled me. So I turned my back on it and went east, and in the shadowed end of the street saw movement, people clustering in groups, and I was both disconcerted and pleased, because there seemed more of them than the houses around could possibly disgorge, and because here at last was a sense of event, of gathering together, of something about to happen. A minibus passed me by, and a coach. I walked towards the source of activity: there were men, women and children here. Why were they not at work, not at school? What was so important that kept them away? They were of all races, all classes: the kempt and the unkempt, the rich and the poor, but mostly those in between. They were devout, I could tell that—something mysterious and important was going on here—but not the black-shawled devout who all over the world mourn and murmur at shrines and pray for forgiveness: a sous-surrous of grief and reproach to rise to heaven: no, they were the kind who have library tickets in their wallets and cinema stubs in their pockets, and they are a multitude, stronger than they know.
I saw that they were waiting to go into a house, rather larger than the other ones in the road, and detached, which had been turned into a meeting hall. Outside was a wooden boarding, and on it was painted the words ‘The Darcian Chapel (16), Mafeking Street Branch’, and underneath that a poster, on which, handwritten, was the inscription ‘Today’s meeting: 4 p.m. Pastor: Hugo Vansitart. Subject: The Fiscal and the Self.’ I stood and stared at it, trying to take this remarkable sight in, and while I stared a Rolls-Royce pulled up, chauffeur driven. The door opened and Hugo stepped out: he wore a grey suit and a crimson cravat. Many in the crowd, I had noticed, wore just such crimson scarves. Hugo did not see me. I was one of many, and glad, at least for the moment, to remain so. He went into the chapel: the crowd followed, jostling, joking, their faces eager with expectation. No sombre religion this.
I stood at the back of the chapel and listened. I wondered if I should make myself known to Hugo, after the service, but thought I would not. I