Towards Another Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the cardboard tray where she kept the spare parts of the vacuum cleaner, the garden trowel and fork, a blood-stained handkerchief, electric light bulbs. Then she had set out for the BBC.
     
    Too early as usual, she loitered around Charing Cross Station, in the Ladies’ Room, reading a crumpled Daily News found on one of the seats beside an elderly woman who slept and snored, still clutching her bulging shopping bag. Every time the woman moved in her sleep the movement seemed to entice a current of air to pass through her, and her smell came blowing towards Grace, as from a stirred plantation of sweat. Behind the door of the waiting room a notice was pasted, You Need Never Be Stranded In London. It gave the address of a hostel in the East End. Grace looked about her at the women in various stages of sleep and dereliction, and thrusting the Daily News Heiress Made Ward of Court Chocolate Bid on to the skirt-polished wooden barred-back seat, she went down the gangplank, holding the brass rail,
to the underground lavatories, was given change for threepence by a stout white-coated stewardess or wardress who flourishing a duster opened one of the doors marked Vacant, leaned in, polished the seat, and withdrew.
    Still too early, Grace left Charing Cross Station and walked into the Strand. She crossed the road and passed New Zealand House. A few people stood staring with the usual February wistfulness at the displayed photographs of sun and sky and sheep; thinking, Shall I emigrate, they say it’s a great life out there, the sun, the beach, your own home. Grace felt herself infected by the attentive longing; an impulse surged through her to go to the Emigration Department, enquire, fill in forms. She could see one or two of the spectators swaying with indecision; then they and she turned from the display window New Zealand Land of Sunshine, and walked on through the grey sleety drizzle, the regular mid-morning migration completed through the simplest cheapest most satisfyingly unofficial procedure of dreaming. On impulse Grace retraced her steps for a few minutes. She did not go into New Zealand House. The last time she had gone there to make some enquiry the receptionist had looked haughtily at her,
    —Were you thinking of emigrating? Would you like some official literature about New Zealand? You can read up about the country and see whether you might be interested in going there.
    Pleased, yet ashamed at not being recognised as a New Zealander, Grace had said quickly, No thank you, and hurried from the building, glancing about her with a feeling of guilt as she left, letting her gaze rest a moment upon the people sitting in the Reception room reading New Zealand Air Mail News . Do I know any of them? she thought. Who are they? Farmers, students, secretaries, lawyers, teachers, doctors? They bore no distinguishing mark. Would they speak to her, saying - You come from New Zealand don’t you, North or South? How long have you been over here? When are you going back? What do you think of life over here?
    No one spoke to her. Feeling as if she were an intruder,
cooperatively taking a pamphlet on Immigration from the table beside the desk, establishing herself as a ‘Pommie’, she went out to rejoin the stream of people in the Strand, walking slowly towards Bush House. The chalked placards proclaimed Frizzle - Freezing rain plus drizzle! New word for weather! It’s not often, Grace thought, that the language is made a headline.
     
     
     
     
    The producer was crisp, the interviewer efficient. Both had notes; Grace held only a glass of water which she twirled in her hand, answering or not answering the questions, breaking off in midsentence, her mind blank. She sighed, repeated Sorry, Sorry in a whisper, shaking her head.
    —I don’t know, I don’t know. What are my books about? How should I be able to tell? My style? What does it matter?
    She wondered whether these accumulated stains that seemed so much a part of her