The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street Read Free Page B

out the sights:
    â€œThere’s Piccadilly!”
    â€œThis is the West End.”
    â€œThis is Regent Street.” And finally, from Sheila:
    â€œYou’re on Charing Cross Road, Helene!”
    I peered out at the darkness, wanting to say something appropriate, but all I could see were narrow wet streets and a few lighted dress-shop windows, it could have been downtown Cleveland.
    â€œI’m here,” I said. “I’m in London. I made it.” But it wasn’t real.
    We drove on to Bloomsbury and found the Kenilworth on the corner of a dark street. It’s an old brownstone with a shabby-genteel lobby, it’s going to suit me.
    I registered and the young desk clerk handed me some mail, and then Nora and Sheila and I rode up to inspect Room 352. It looked pleasant and cheerful with the drapes drawn against the rain. Nora surveyed it judiciously from the doorway and announced:
    â€œIt’s gawjus, Helen.”
    â€œMy name’s Helene,” I said.
    She looked surprised but unimpressed.
    â€œI’ve been calling you ‘Helen’ for twenty years,” she said, peering into the bathroom. It has a shower stall but no tub. “Look at this Sheila, she’s got her own loo!”
    The loo is the toilet, Sheila thinks it comes from Waterloo.
    We went back down and found the Colonel fuming in the sleepy lobby: he’d found his roses lying half dead on the Cumberland Package Room floor and had had a row with the management.
    We went into the dining room, empty but still open, and the Colonel located a young Spanish waiter who said hisname was Alvaro and allowed we could have sandwiches and tea-or-coffee.
    â€œYou smoke too much, Helen,” Nora announced, after we ordered.
    â€œI know it,” I said.
    â€œYou’re too thin,” she went on. “I dunno what kind of bloke that surgeon is, to let you come away so soon after your op. A hysterectomy is a very serious op.”
    â€œIs it, Mum,” said Sheila mildly in her university accent. She and Nora exchanged a look, and Nora giggled. They’re remarkable, they talk in code and finish each other’s sentences, you’d never guess they were stepmother and daughter. Sheila’s an attractive girl in her twenties, laconic and unruffled. (“Just like Frank,” Nora told me.)
    Nora was much struck by the fact that she and the Colonel were both widowed two years ago. He has one child, a daughter who’s being married in the country on Saturday.
    â€œNow, why don’t you three girls put on your prettiest dresses and come to the wedding?” he invited expansively. “It’s going to be a superb wedding!”
    I declined and Nora obviously didn’t think she should go if I didn’t, so she declined, too, wistfully. (“I don’t know him, Helen,” she said when I got her alone. And I said: “Who knows him?!”)
    They left at eleven. Nora said she would give me tomorrow to rest and would call me Saturday about the interview. (“We’re being interviewed together by the BBC! You’ve made us all famous!”)
    The Colonel said he’d be in the country for a week and would call me when he got back and “arrange a little trip into our glorious countryside.”
    I came up and unpacked a few things and climbed into bed with the mail.
    Postcard from Eddie and Isabel, old friends from back home. They’ll be in town Monday and will pick me up to go sight-seeing.
    A note from Carmen at Deutsch’s:

    Welcome!

    I know you’re going to be very tired but I’m afraid we have a journalist from the Evening Standard along to see you here at 10 A.M. tomorrow. Someone will be by to pick you up before 10.
    On Saturday at 2:30, the BBC want to interview you and Mrs. Doel on “The World This Weekend.”
    On Monday at 3:30 an interview on “The Woman’s Hour,” also at Broadcasting House.
    On Tuesday, visits to bookshops,