LITMIR.BIZ

       FOURTEEN

      Claire walked purposefully toward the corner. In her bag was the guide to London that Abigail had given her as well as the pounds. She also had her dollars and needed to find a bank to go to change them. She looked around her. Every single thing was different. It wasn’t like the hotel or the flight: – it wasn’t just rich people’s air – but the air did smell better, at least to her. Of course there were crowds – almost as many as in the usual walk she made up Water Street – but there wasn’t the elbowing and rudeness. People seemed to make their way out of the small streets and the subway in a more orderly and polite fashion. She had asked at the hotel front desk where she might get on a bus: she didn’t want to do the obvious tourist thing and be one of those dumb groups she saw on Wall Street all the time, gaping from a bus or running after some impossible woman waving a red umbrella.

      It was a little warmer here than in New York but the sky was gray and the air had a promise of rain so she buttoned her new coat and was grateful for it. She looked around her and felt as if she looked close enough like everyone else. Now she was aiming for Knightsbridge and Sloane Street. The man at the desk had told her, ‘Walk out of the door, turn right then left. You’ll be on Knightsbridge. Look for Sloane Street on the left and the bus stops are just there.’ But there didn’t seem to be a bridge anywhere. She kept walking but soon her attention was caught by a window display. She’d never seen anything quite like it. A swimsuit without a body was suspended in the air. At the end of it there was a huge scaly fish tail. On the other side, where the head should be, only a long blond wig, reaching to the bottom of the window and cascading across the sandy floor, stood in for the absent mermaid. Discreetly written in the sand was a message Bathing costumes on two. Claire had to stop and wonder what it meant.

      She immediately realized there would be no problem in converting her money into sterling. There seemed to be little offices to change currency everywhere. The sign at the one she went into had little flags of every country with two columns beside each that were headed We Buy and We Sell. She changed a hundred dollars, feeling very sophisticated. She could do this, and all by herself.

      At the next corner she found Sloane Street and a bus stop. She wasn’t sure why – perhaps it was because she was so used to her long ferry trips every morning – but she felt as if she’d be safer and more comfortable on a bus. The sign explained not only the numbers and times but also which buses ran at night. There was a vast choice – it was a busy corner – but it didn’t really matter to Claire which direction she went in. The first bus that came along was a twenty-two and, to her delight, it was a red double-decker. First, a wave of people got off the wide platform at the back then people beside her began to board and following them, she did too. Right in front of her was a small spiral staircase to the upper level. She began to climb up it then the bus lurched and she nearly fell down it. She grabbed at the railing and as the vehicle moved into the flow of traffic she climbed to the top.

      She wasn’t sure why, but on top the bus was virtually empty. Later she would learn that she was traveling in the opposite direction to most commuters, out to Putney where people lived and traveled into the center to work. Unconscious of that she simply smiled at the opportunity literally before her – the front seats on both sides of the bus were available. She almost ran down the center aisle and nearly fell again when the bus pulled to an abrupt stop. But once she was in her seat she was thrilled. It seemed as if the bus had no motor: she was looking straight out at the traffic and the people who moved like powerful tides in front of her. And to each side were shop windows and above them glimpses into apartments with window boxes, terraces and a world’s variety of curtains, blinds and shades.

      Sloane Street was long, but at the end of it she was settled enough to enjoy looking down on Sloane Square and finding it on her map. King’s Road seemed a bazaar of delights: clothing shops, cafés, restaurants, pubs (which looked so much more inviting than bars back home did) and a swiftly moving stream of pedestrians.

      She had a few pages for notes at the back of the guidebook and began taking some. There was a stop called ‘World’s End’ which seemed, actually, to be in the middle of everything.

      When the conductor got to her she apologized. ‘I don’t have a token,’ she told him. ‘Or a Travelcard.’

      ‘It’s all right, luv. You c’n buy a ticket right ‘ere from me. Where’d you get on, then?’

      ‘Sloane Street up near Knightsbridge. Is there a bridge?’

      He laughed, showing a gap between his front teeth. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said but Claire had no idea what was funny. ‘Where you gettin’ off?’ he asked.

      ‘Well, I’d like to go to the end of the line,’ she told him.

      ‘Putney Bridge. You’ll see a bridge there, me girl.’

      ‘But I’d like to stay on and come back.’

      ‘I’m afraid I can’t ‘elp you with that part. You’ll ‘ave to get off and get right on again. Regulations.’

      She nodded. ‘But will the bus go back?’ she asked, nervous that she might be stranded.

      ‘If not this one then another,’ he told her. ‘There’ll be a queue of them lined up, like as not. Fag break for the drivers.’

      She blinked but asked no questions.

      ‘It’ll be one pound,’ he told her. She rummaged through her change purse and remembered the chunky golden coins. She handed him one and he returned a ticket that he cranked out of a machine strapped around his waist. ‘‘Old onto that, luv,’ he told her. ‘They’re makin’ us redundant, they are, and it will all be computer cards. You’ve got an antique of the future,’ he said and laughed. ‘I guess that’s what I am.’ He laughed again, turned and made his way down the aisle of the bus from handgrip to handgrip without even a lurch.

      Claire looked out of the windows, fascinated. Everything, even the rare graffiti had charm, at least to her. When they turned a corner and she saw a pub with the sign outside declaring it the ‘Slug and Lettuce’ her delight was, even to her, almost unreasonable. Why it should make her so happy didn’t matter. Though if she had thought of it, Claire might have ascribed it to the general glow she had because of her pleasure in Michael. But there are places that can be found by each of us, places we may have never been or never thought of that, in themselves, hold a mysterious key to our happiness.