The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [35]
Felix fretted and peered, and tried to draw out of line to turn into a side-street, but he was solidly wedged. He backed until he struck the bumper of the car behind him, and a man in a yellow cap got out of it and came to shake his fist at Felix through the closed window. Felix spun his wheel, paying no attention, but he still could not get round the car in front. He struck that one too, and the tail-light fell off, for it was very old; but it was full of young men with bottles of beer, who were shaking the car up so much from the inside that they did not feel the bump.
A strange man in a college muffler suddenly climbed into the back of the car, slapped Felix on the back, kissed Virginia clumsily, climbed out of the other door and into the car alongside, where he was received with female shrieks.
They had almost reached Piccadilly Circus now. Virginia could see the people skirmishing round the pedestal of Eros, the turbulent sea of shouting faces, vivid under the neon signs, the young men climbing up the lamp-posts, the policemen with linked arms forming cordons here and there from habit, although in this heaving ocean of equality there was nobody who need be guarded from anyone else.
The cars could go no further. ‘It will be midnight in a few minutes.’ Virginia turned to Felix with shining eyes. ‘Let’s get out and stand with the crowd. They’ll sing Auld Lang Syne.’ Felix would sway with her, pressed close against her, excited, caught up in the boisterous harmony of the people. They would kiss. Everyone kissed in the streets on New Year’s Eve.
‘Come on.’ She caught at his arm. She was half-way out of the car when he pulled her back.
‘Are you crazy? I’m supposed to be at the hospital. I’ve got to get out of this. I’d better leave the car and start running.’
‘I’ll run with you.’
‘You’ll have to stay with the car.’ It was the first time he had ordered her to do anything. She was almost surprised into obeying him, but she did not want to be left alone to play chauffeur to the shiny black car. She saw a policeman and shouted to him. Like all Londoners, she believed that a policeman was the answer to everything.
This one did not disillusion her. There was much calling and waving and shouts of: ‘Doctor here! Let the doctor through! Easy a bit. Right hand down. Steady as you go!’ The policeman got Felix out to the other side of the road, and held back the cars there while he drove up it on the wrong side and turned off.
Virginia hated to leave the crowds, but she had felt important. People had stared at them, and demanded: ‘What’s that fellow doing? Oh, a doctor. Come on, you chaps, what’s the matter with you? Let the doctor through. Emergency.’
If the woman with the ovarian cyst was still capable of feeling anything, she should feel flattered that the common surge towards midnight in Piccadilly had been held up and disrupted on her behalf.
The streets rapidly grew emptier as they drove away from the lights and noise. Felix drove fast, his face intent. Without looking at her, he put his hand on Virginia’s knee.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Another time. I’ll see the New Year in with you next year in Piccadilly Circus, or anywhere you want.’
As they crossed Parliament Square, the yellow harvest moon of Big Ben showed that it was nearly the hour. Virginia turned on the wireless. A choir was singing the last hymn of the Watch-Night Service.
Felix stopped the car outside the hospital. ‘Take the car home,’ he said. ‘You’ll never get a taxi tonight. I’ll get back all right.’
‘I’ll wait for you, if you like.’
‘No, I might be a long time. But thanks for saying you would.’ He looked at her with a hesitant smile, and held out his hand. ‘Virginia, I –’
‘Hush. It’s midnight.’ She took his hand, and they heard above and behind them in the sky the first note of Big Ben, coming to them just a fraction of a second after its radio voice boomed out and filled the car.
‘Happy New Year,’ he said. Then his