They had emerged into the brightness of Goswell Road, near the great junction with City Road. Ivan, with drunken recklessness, lunged off the pavement and struck out on a long diagonal across both lines of traffic. Beddoes rolled up his eyes, suppressing the hope that a heavy lorry would take Ivan off his hands, and followed; only he kept with propriety to the pedestrian crossing, which lay like a tape measure straight across the double width of the converging main roads, divided only by the island with its lavatories and huge yellow road signs. Oxford, S. Wales; Slough, The West, they promised. Beddoes, launching himself on the second half of the black and white strip, looked to his right, but not as traffic drill. Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle. Where was the Eagle? Not far down you could look from the road into the grey water of the Basin, banked by wharves, factories and dumps. Within the gentle throw of a stone a wooden boom slanted across the surface; a clump of rushes sprouted in the centre of it, and in that solitary patch of vegetation a pair of swans had built a nest. That was the nearest thing to the Eagle that he knew. But he wasn’t going to see that tonight. Ivan was going straight on. It began to look as if he meant to go home; and, not before time, he was going faster. There were few people about. The street was quiet; but not dead, being dotted with bright windows, outward sign of the warrenlike nature of the old houses which rose flat and sheer from the pavement. Beddoes could and did look down into snug carpeted basements, with coal fires glowing in the grates. Coal from the cart didn’t burn with that still brilliance, he knew; but the great railway depots of Somerstown were not far away. He averted his eyes from the tantalising prospect of so much untouchable comfort, and studied the erratic course of Ivan. The faster he wished to go, the wider he rolled. One of the houses, shaken by past bombing, was shored up by two large beams, their bases embedded in the pavement. Ivan skirted the first, swerved, and went under the second, as though he were starting a figure of eight in a country dance. He was trying to run. He passed, or rather, narrowly missed, a young couple coming towards him. Quite unconcerned, they minded their own business. Beddoes watched them approach. They walked with their arms round each other, the girl’s head resting on the boy’s shoulder; yet they were walking fast, and discussing something between themselves with a brisk, businesslike air. They were foreigners, Beddoes realised, as their incomprehensible speech bubbled into his ears. Perhaps that accounted for their uninhibited pose, taken for granted and adhered to regardless of mood. In this part of London many foreigners lived. Beddoes thought they could do a lot worse, Islington had some kick, some independence in it. He wouldn’t mind living there himself. In Bright’s Row, perhaps? He smiled. There were blacker spots than Bright’s Row in some fancy-named outflung suburbs. And what was wrong with these roads, where the houses were well kept, well curtained, well fired, respectable without insipidity—