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11 Flying Horses on the Silk Road London after the war was like a beautiful woman, sadly mauled by the years.Mile upon mile of redbrick tenements,a legacy of the previous age, turned the edges of the city to a wasteland. Craters around St. Paul’s, still waiting to be filled, told of German bombing. Meat was rationed; coal, in a hard winter, justified its old name, black diamonds. Elegant women at the opera stuffed newspaper in their Italian leather boots. My then-wife developed chill blains. I lived on the second floor of a semidetached “villa” in NW3, northwest London, the shabbier part.The man in the flat above us, decidedly Blimpish, thanked his stars for the “moat defensive” separating him from French,Irish,and“Gypos.”He nearly took to his bed when they rampaged through Cairo, burning down Shepheard’s Hotel. London had its homegrown toughs, and you didn’t venture into the city’s East End or along the Thames in the gloomier precincts of Southwark, not unless you saw a bobby walking his beat. Of old, a billy club had been his only weapon; now he carried a handgun. Since then London has undergone a metamorphosis. The East End, upscale and priced to suit, mimics Chelsea, and in the newly gentrified South Bank, a friend of mine owns a pied-à-terre across the river from the Tower.This transformation of the old deserves kudos and gets them. So two cheers for modern London. I ration the cheers, doubting as I do that this city has changed for the better. The dead days—dear dead days— were a great time to be living in a great place that won’t come again. flying horses on the silk road 183 My jingo neighbor upstairs had us in for drinks, and from him I learned about London burning.As an air raid warden during the war, he had stood on Hampstead Heath, a little to the north of us, watching the Germans come over. He and his mates in Belsize Park, our venue, stayed up half the night more nights than not to put out the fires.Tears filled his eyes as he re-created the scene. He had never been so alive. One of the mates was the butcher on the corner.When we went to him each week for our ration, he looked at us sadly over an ounce or two of sinewy gristle. That was what there was. At Thanksgiving, however, “knowing how youAmericans like to celebrate the day,”he found us a genuine turkey. It was small, off-ration, and costing a bundle, but he found it. Part of the net that sustained us was the milkman, known as the milk.You had to be up early to see him and his horse-drawn wagon stopping before each house on the street. Since we had a new baby he left us two bottles, making sure that the cream had risen to the top. Nobody had a fridge, but he told us to keep the milk,also butter and eggs,in a pitcher of cool water on a window ledge facing north. When we wanted a drink, we drank warm English beer or Devon cider at a few pence a half pint.The public house on the Heath, called the Castle, became our poor man’s club.Years later I was put up for the Cosmos Club inWashington, but after Jack Strand’s Castle it seemed a bit hohum . No darts! At least once a week we went to a playhouse like the Old Vic or to concerts at the StollTheatre on the Kingsway. If it looked like a rush on tickets, we queued up at the box office the day before. London’s queues, civility raised to the nth power, are worth more than the cursory glance they get here. We meant to be cultured, and our resolve was put to the test.The day of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, a blustery day in March, we took the Underground to St.Mary’s Cathedral in Southwark.Shakespeare’s brother is buried in a side chapel.They were doing one of Bach’s passions, and as hour followed hour I thought of the Oxbridge boys in their skivvies, sculling on the near-frozenThames. At last it was over, and we stood outside, clapping our mittened hands to get the blood going. Suddenly a burst of song broke over us, birdsong from...

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