Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/289

 grateful indeed to the American girl. They had no money. But the young woman tossed the rooms to them, and food and fuel, with a wild free hand. She was beautiful, reckless, one of the poetesses whose poetry Richard feared and wondered over.

Started a new life: anguish of nostalgia for Cornwall, from Somers. Wandering in the King's Cross Road or Theobald's Road, seeing his cottage and the road going up to the moors. He wrote twice to the headquarters at Salisbury insisting on being allowed to return. Came a reply, this could not be permitted. Then one day a man called and left a book and the little bundle of papers—a handful only—which the detectives had confiscated. A poor little show. Even the scrap of paper with Ver mi hiu. Again Somers wrote—but to no effect. Came a letter from John Thomas describing events in the west—the last Somers ever had from his friend.

Then Sharpe came up to London: it was too lonely down there. And they had some gay evenings. Many people came to see Somers. But Sharpe said to him:

"They're watching you still. There were two policemen near the door watching who came in."

There was an atmosphere of terror all through London, as under the Czar when no man dared open his mouth. Only this time it was the lowest orders of mankind spying on the upper orders, to drag them down.

One evening there was a gorgeous commotion in Somers' rooms: four poets and three non-poets, all fighting out poetry: a splendid time. Somers ran down the stairs in the black dark—no lights in the hall—to open the door. He opened quickly—three policemen in the porch. They slipped out before they could be spoken to.

Harriet and Somers had reported at Bow Street—wonderful how little heed the police took of them. Somers could tell how the civil police loathed being under the military orders.

But watched and followed he knew he was. After two months the American friend needed her rooms. The Somers transferred to Kensington, to a flat belonging to Sharpe's mother. Again many friends came. One evening Sharpe was called out from the drawing-room: detectives in the hall enquiring about Somers, where he got his money from, etc.,