the start of the city. There were now few people. There had begun, from the moment she had left Oxford Street and the shops, that heightened wary atmosphere which meant she must walk careful of her eyes, because in this stretch of the Bayswater Road, men prowled after women. Invisible boundaries, invisibly marked territories: just as, across the river a boundary could be marked by an old hulk of timber with riversalt in its seams, so that one side of it was the riverbank, the other a landlubber’s country, here the corner of a street, or the hour of day could say: Here a certain kind of order ends.
Martha now walked fast, protected by the thick ugliness of Mrs. Van’s coat; but she was a ‘young woman’, category ‘young woman’ - yes, she must remember that she was, and that along these pavements, a category of being, ‘man’, prowled beside or behind her. That was what she must be for a few minutes, not Martha or ‘Matty’, only ‘young woman’. A man veered up beside her, muttered an anxious aggressive invitation and dropped behind when she presented to him her aloof lifted profile. He fell back, muttering words she was meant to hear. The greatest city in the world … if only I could understand that it’s a question of trying to see things steadily all the time, then perhaps I could understand it. Martha’s daytime brain had become detached, wary, watchful, on guard-to protect another part of it which had just started to wake, to listen,because of the fast walk through the moving, lit streets. And when this happened-and she never knew when it would-nothing mattered but to protect, to keep the irrelevant at bay. It was this business of having to divide off, make boundaries-it was such a strain. Jimmy and Iris’s café, the bombed streets, the river city where Stella was, this hunters’ street, the great stained damp houses where Henry Matheson’s and John Higham’s parents and grandparents might have lived, one family to a house: even to begin to understand it was … but one’s daytime brain was slotted, compartmented, pigeon-holed …
Now she slowed, almost stopped in surprise at a cool hard getaway look from a young woman who stood with her back to a hedge. Of course, she had passed another invisible boundary. From here until Queensway, the pavements were lined with prostitutes, standing singly or in pairs, dozens of them, along the pavements. But Martha was freer here than she had been in that other territory she had only just left, whose boundary was simply a bisecting street. She was protected precisely by the line of girls for sale, who knew she wasn’t one of their trade union and because their hostile warning faces that said go away, you shouldn’t be here, kept her safe from being accosted. Three kinds of animal here. The women, standing with their backs to the hedges, on sale. The ordinary traffic of the pavement-but a slight traffic, mostly couples hurrying past the marketplace, keeping close under the lights, looking embarrassed, as if they were here by a mistake, yet glancing furtively at the buying and bargaining. The customers, men of all ages, walking slowly past the women, or standing under the trees smoking, making choices. And across the street, policemen, spaced out with twenty or thirty yards between each couple, not looking directly at the haggling and dealing, but observing it sideways to make sure that it went on without incident. Martha walked more slowly than she had had to walk in the part of the street she had left. All the way down the street, by lit airy trees, they stood. Although it lightly drizzled, they wore summer dresses, bare necked, bare shouldered; and high thick sandals with bared insteps; and sometimes they held a jaunty umbrella. But there was no elegance here either. They weren’t well-dressed. They shared the national disposition towards gracelessness. There has been a war on. Suppose one of these men who was making up for the starvation of the war (like
Martha now walked fast, protected by the thick ugliness of Mrs. Van’s coat; but she was a ‘young woman’, category ‘young woman’ - yes, she must remember that she was, and that along these pavements, a category of being, ‘man’, prowled beside or behind her. That was what she must be for a few minutes, not Martha or ‘Matty’, only ‘young woman’. A man veered up beside her, muttered an anxious aggressive invitation and dropped behind when she presented to him her aloof lifted profile. He fell back, muttering words she was meant to hear. The greatest city in the world … if only I could understand that it’s a question of trying to see things steadily all the time, then perhaps I could understand it. Martha’s daytime brain had become detached, wary, watchful, on guard-to protect another part of it which had just started to wake, to listen,because of the fast walk through the moving, lit streets. And when this happened-and she never knew when it would-nothing mattered but to protect, to keep the irrelevant at bay. It was this business of having to divide off, make boundaries-it was such a strain. Jimmy and Iris’s café, the bombed streets, the river city where Stella was, this hunters’ street, the great stained damp houses where Henry Matheson’s and John Higham’s parents and grandparents might have lived, one family to a house: even to begin to understand it was … but one’s daytime brain was slotted, compartmented, pigeon-holed …
Now she slowed, almost stopped in surprise at a cool hard getaway look from a young woman who stood with her back to a hedge. Of course, she had passed another invisible boundary. From here until Queensway, the pavements were lined with prostitutes, standing singly or in pairs, dozens of them, along the pavements. But Martha was freer here than she had been in that other territory she had only just left, whose boundary was simply a bisecting street. She was protected precisely by the line of girls for sale, who knew she wasn’t one of their trade union and because their hostile warning faces that said go away, you shouldn’t be here, kept her safe from being accosted. Three kinds of animal here. The women, standing with their backs to the hedges, on sale. The ordinary traffic of the pavement-but a slight traffic, mostly couples hurrying past the marketplace, keeping close under the lights, looking embarrassed, as if they were here by a mistake, yet glancing furtively at the buying and bargaining. The customers, men of all ages, walking slowly past the women, or standing under the trees smoking, making choices. And across the street, policemen, spaced out with twenty or thirty yards between each couple, not looking directly at the haggling and dealing, but observing it sideways to make sure that it went on without incident. Martha walked more slowly than she had had to walk in the part of the street she had left. All the way down the street, by lit airy trees, they stood. Although it lightly drizzled, they wore summer dresses, bare necked, bare shouldered; and high thick sandals with bared insteps; and sometimes they held a jaunty umbrella. But there was no elegance here either. They weren’t well-dressed. They shared the national disposition towards gracelessness. There has been a war on. Suppose one of these men who was making up for the starvation of the war (like
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