The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street Read Online Free Page B

you must.”
    It’s fifty degrees here and raining, I’m not climbing into a summer skirt for him.
    Nora just phoned, she’ll pick me up at two this afternoon for the interview.
    â€œYou’re right behind the British Museum, Helen,” she said. “Go sit in the Reading Room, it’s very restful.”
    Told her I see enough museums in New York, and God knows I sit in enough Reading Rooms.
    Will now slog out in the wet and tour Bloomsbury.
    Midnight
    Nora and I were interviewed at Broadcasting House, it’s the only big modern building I’ve seen here and I hope I don’tsee another one; it’s a monstrosity—a huge semicircular block of granite, it looks obese. They don’t understand skyscrapers here. In New York they don’t understand anything else.
    The interviewer was choice. First she told the radio audience that though Nora and I had corresponded over a twenty-year period we’d never met. Then she turned to us and asked us what we thought of each other: now that we’d met, were we disappointed? If we’d never corresponded and had just met, would we like each other?
    â€œNow what kind of question was that to ask me?” Nora demanded when we came out. “How-would-I-like-you-if-we’d-just-been-introduced. How do I know whether I’d have liked you or not? I’ve known you for twenty years, Helen!”
    She drove me out Portland Place and through the Regent’s Park section, which I loved passionately on sight. We passed Wimpole Street and Harley Street—and there I was in a car , I felt as if I were locked in a metal container and couldn’t get out, but it was raining. I’m going back there on foot the first dry day.
    There’s a Crescent of Nash houses—I’m not too clear about when Nash lived but he built tall white opulent houses reeking of Beau Brummell and Lady Teazle—and when the rain stopped for a little we got out of the car and sat on a park bench so I could stare at the Crescent. We chose which houses we’ll buy if we’re born rich next time.
    Nora told me she came to London as a poor servant girl from Ireland before the war. She worked in one of the houses of the gentry as a kitchen maid, cutting paper-thin bread for the cucumber sandwiches.
    She drove me home to Highgate for dinner. She and Sheila bought a house out there after Frank died and the younger daughter married. We drove past Hampstead Heath on the way, and Nora stopped the car at the cemetery where Karl Marx is buried. The gates were locked but I peered over the wall at him.
    Their house is high in the hills of North London on an attractive suburban street that blazes with roses, every house has a rose garden in full bloom. The roses here are as wildly colored as a New England autumn: not just red, pink and yellow, but lavender roses, blue roses, purple and orange roses. Every color has a separate fragrance, I went berserk smelling my way around Nora’s garden.
    We had strawberries and thick English cream for dessert, and when Nora came to her last berry she looked up at Sheila, stricken, and said:
    â€œIt came out ‘never’ again, Sheila!”
    She eats berries to the old children’s rhyme to find out when she’s going to marry again: “This year, next year, sometime, never.” When it comes out “never,” Sheila has to comfort her. Sheila’s much more like Nora’s mother than her stepdaughter.
    Nora cut a fresh armload of roses for me, and Sheila drove me home. She teaches in a suburban school. There are two men who take her out; I think both of them bore her, she still hasn’t met one she wants to marry.
    Big excitement in the lobby when I came in because of the Evening Standard interview; one of the desk clerks had saved a copy for me.
    Excerpt:

    She steps into London, frightfully trim in a chic navy trouser-suit from Saks and a foulard tied French-style.

    Kill yourself