The bus stops at a large anonymous hotel near the Air Terminal, where several taxis are actually waiting. Mr. Mumpson helps her stow her luggage into one of them, and she parts from him with sincere thanks and insincere agreement with his hope that they will “run into each other” again.

It is now nearly one in the morning. As her cab splashes north through the rain, Vinnie, exhausted, wonders what new disasters await her at the flat on Regent’s Park Road she has rented for the third time from an Oxford don. Probably there won’t be anyone at home downstairs to give her the keys, Fido whines; or the place will be filthy; or the lights won’t work. If anything can go wrong for her it will.

But the young woman in the garden flat is in and still awake; the keys turn smoothly in their locks; the light switch is where Vinnie remembers it, just inside the door. There is the white telephone with its familiar number, and the stack of phone books in their elegant pastel colors: A-D cream, E-K geranium pink, L-R fern green, S-Z forget-me-not blue, holding between their closed petals the names of all her London friends. The sofa and chairs are in their proper places; the gold-framed engravings of Oxford colleges glow quietly on either side of the mantel. The clean grate is decorated as always with a white paper fan that echoes the white enameled pots of English ivy on their stand in the tall bay window. For the second time that evening tears ache behind Vinnie’s eyes; but these are tears of relief, even of joy.

Since she is unobserved, she allows them to fall. Weeping quietly, she hauls her bags into the flat, bolts the door behind them, and is safe at last, home in London.

2

Every man hath a right to enjoy life.

John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera

IN the Underground station at Notting Hill Gate a tall dark handsome American is waiting for the eastbound train.