Spit-filled subways. Red double-deckers that waited just long enough for us, before retiring gracefully a month later. An intemperate tabloid vendor who didn’t like the colour of our skin, maybe! And, Big Ben by the River Thames, lit up, helping grumpy Londoners keep their date with heady evening pints.
The capital of the Empire on which the Sun barely managed to set, rushed us about with brutal royalty, quaint cabs and cobble-stoned pavements — stopping only in front of red phone booths that reminded of Wole Soyinka’s “Telephone Conversation.”
7/7 was just a Jungian archetype now, it seemed, until we met furtive glances that forecast it was probably the city’s first of many-to-come festering wounds. Not to forget tough-looking air hostesses, famed for their British matter-of-fact politeness, sandwiched into their training manual demeanour.
London in November was unusually sunny, not a spot of rain, and definitely no late evening crabby fog to sheath your morbidity in. Just perfect for a slice of history!
And history began at the waterfront, with the Thames shimmering in the yet-to-be-night soft lights — with democracy drifting past, bathed in almost sepia tones, behind a thin film of mist. The boat that cut through the start-up cold was a picture of gaiety, forgetting for a moment the Kings and Queens who had let go of the sceptre to usher in the commoners. And Big Ben striking at each of those passing hours, nay centuries, and its craggy face always impassive as yet another Knight was beheaded. The uneasy republic barely coexisting with the Empire. Slipping in and out under London Bridge, with its peaceful orange glow, blissfully amnesiac about the blood on its sidewalks.
Morning brought in coffee and eclectic conversation, interspersed with the old English habit. But the daily had stories of gore, of death by asphyxiation and Blair’s battles in the Commons. Stepping out, with windows for sight screens, stone edifices everywhere helped retain both the warmth and the chill of the stiff, upper-lipped English. The great London fire having destroyed whatever wooden balustrades there were at its heart. A king’s command ensured Englishmen would henceforth swear by stone. And thus was the famed Street and others by its side, rebuilt.
Or so the condescending tour guide told us, all the while admiring an Aston Martin that had snuggled up alongside the bumpy London thoroughfare that snaked past sundry fashion boutiques, and the Mayor’s hall.
The capital of a nation that, by turns, revered its footballers and loathed their coaches, seemed a touch lazy on the senses, that supine November day of the azure blue sky filled with memento hunters from the former colony. Eagerly walking the spotless sidewalks, with just a blur of faces for company, some with laced hats, and gloved hands that had seen, perhaps, the cold, meatless days after the War. In retrospect, it seemed just like a scene out of 84, Charing Cross, minus the conversation and the damp, cavernous bookstore that Anthony Hopkins made it his own. To us, from a land that still keeps its Imperialist transplants in its railway platforms, old Victorian houses and Post Offices, it seemed just like home — a cleaner, more orderly place that one visits during a summer spent escaping the grind.
Everywhere, the quiet bustle of feet as commuters jumped over cobble-stoned pavements, hurried through traffic lights and slipped in and out of city stores like stage sets straight out of the Opera. Like Phantoms, in a place known to be cold to friends and slightly less than freezing to its many acquaintances. London, by turns was dazzling, insipid and clammy, just like the Webber play, snatching its lady love before love could distract her into submission. Except, when it turned on its charms at the Change of Guard. Performed like a Beethoven fugue, all precision and muted to begin with, but unleashing its crescendo in a spark of feet that lent a speck of art to a military march.
The feet that conquered diverse lands, could also dance to the tunes of a lady, it seemed.
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