Golden Calves
AFTERTHOUGHT
By JOHN WELLS
THERE are various places on earth where the con- sciousness, either by in- stinct or by long prepara- tion, is heightened to a point where it is only possible to expect some almost superhuman experi- ence. If our perception is suddenly instinctively in- tensified, among moun- tains, or in a strangely lit landscape, then the moment is usually more important than the place, and our heightened consciousness of that moment becomes in itself the almost superhuman experience. If, on the other hand, we have been prepared by reading or hearing about the rapturous experiences of others, then the place becomes all-important, and it is the smooth stone of the Parthenon that we touch and which towers over the family in the photograph album. We may be fortunate, and our fantasy wholly realised: we may sur- render to the myth like the American women who used to have themselves ravished by the Arab guide on top of the Great Pyramid by moonlight : we may just feel cheated or dis- appointed. But all our responses will be con- ditioned by the glamour of the location, the stage set and the physical backdrop.
No such glamour, even in the eyes of the most fanatical follower of fashion, could conceivably attach to the half-mile of architectural scrap.. heap that constitutes the latest Wonder of the World, the King's Road, Chelsea. From the sea- green glass and steel of Peter Jones, past the shabby back of the barracks on the left, and down through the supermarkets and pet shops and antique dealers to the final peeling squalor of the World's End, the whole sinuous develop- ment seems to lack any sort of cohesion or aesthetic unity. The new shops that have opened to sell clothes, like, the new shopping precinct and the new bank on the corner of Markham Square, all seem as much stuck on the old King's Road as the torn posters fluttering on the buildings 'destined for demolition : a boom town built on the scrap yards and seedy chard) of the dreary, gentle old road of ten years ago.
And yet, in the eyes of the pilgrims arriving on Saturday morning in taxis outside Mary Quant's, or thronging up the steps of the Under- ground in Sloane Square, there is the same light of expectation that, must gleam in the eyes of those approaching Lourdes or visiting the sacred shrine at Mecca. Nor do they seem for the most part to go home disappointed. Dressed in their Swedish mini-skirts, _ their French mini-skirts, their Danish mini-skirts, they soon blend with the Chinese and South American mini-skirts jostling on the overcrowded pavements, twitching their. hems excitedly higher at the whoops and
raucous cries of gesturing Italians in small cars. Other Italians, hunched ape-like in fluttering short-sleeved white shirts, roar up and down on motor-bikes, emitting sharp blasts on whistles in order to express their general feeling of well- being and satirical disrespect for authority, Bronzed Americans in brightly coloured shirts. and sunglasses loll nonchalantly in powerful sports cars thundering at the kerb, occasionally lighting a slow cigarette from the pack in their • breast pocket, and everywhere the French flare their nostrils, pout and shrug.
The pilgrims seem in fact to ignore both the road and its original inhabitants. The procession floods and flows back along the pavement, eddy- ing round a toothless and tone-deaf violinist and a lady sellingAags for Dumb Friends, washing, to one side the nut-brown • wrinkled gipsies who push forward offering white heather, and forcing tiny, wizened old women into the backwateri between the parked cars. Lithe, ageing men in pale-blue jeans wriggle through the crush v■ ith yellow string bags, discussing their shopping li,ts; • sad, .dated figures in pink shirts, white stiff., collars, grey suits and elastic-sided boots thrust forward their chins in an attempt to recall that . last pale sunset of the public-school man; sag- ging county mothers with straw shopping bags and long heavy shoes wander about consider-- ing the cabbages, and here.and there an ancient man dressed as a Chelsea Pensioner pauses at the kerb to hawk and spit thoughtfully and with satisfaction into the gutter.
But the pilgrims outnumber them everywhere. Some of them, the older ones, confused but still believing that there is some solid sight to see, take refuge in the cafe's and restaurants to rest their tired feet. Heavy German families pick gravely through their spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, loyal to their former allies, but ignoring a group of bantamweight Japanese who sit at the next table, flash their golden teeth and chatter quietly, in their odd, hissing language. In a Chines* restaurant opposite, a tall. pale-faced Swedish couple re-enact one of the heavier pieces of dialogue from a Bergman film, dwarfing' the elderly Frenchman and his small, aggressive wife who sit beside them. Eventually the Frenchman yields to his wife's repeated instructions and taps the Swede-on the arm, 'Excuse me, sir, but you 'ave your helbow in the plate.' His wife' clasps her hands in-admiration: `Voila, Bernard, ii t'a compris!' Then they both turn gloomily and stare out of the window.
Outside, the believers continue to flock glassy= eyed with wonder through the streets of the Holy City. The walls may be ugly, and the streetg' littered with cigarette packets, but they have not come in search of sacred stones or monument-' to a former time: they have come to worship. the time and not the place. The shutters clink incessantly in a whisper of mechanical thanks- giving: pictures of- moving crowds caught in the hundredth of a second, pictures of pictures being taken, camera lens to camera lens, refining and registering the moment with ever-increasing precision, elevating the present instant of exisg= tente as the holiest object of adoration. Fe* creeds could be more fundamentally opposed to the essential belief of Billy Graham, which he claims is sweeping the King's Road: it seems more likely. that his disciples are. But offered the prospect Of the King's Road in ten years*- time as a waste- of grey ash with a few blackened ruins, or the King's Road shuttered and desolate; patrolled by grey Chinese jeeps, or even just tan years older, with girls of twenty -become women of thirty, the new pagans seem to win on•most points.
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