Betty Spiro

A Room in Regent's Park

Robert Hale, 1942.

"Let's go on the grass." They turned aside from the path, and Robert slung lean legs over the four-tiered railings. Judith climbed them: she was sandalled and stockingless; he watched her sidle along the rail like a fowl on a perch, as she manoeuvred to descend with decency....This part of the park, it seemed, was given over exclusively to nurses and the children in their charge. Little groups of them were everywhere, having their tea out of picnic sets: the children brushed and bibbed, sipping Certified milk, eating banana sandwiches, crumbly biscuits, on Beatl-ware plates: presided over by nurses and nannys in green uniform or in pink, with starchy white aprons, and correct straw hats...

The young couple had previously rendezvoused at Park Square Gardens, on the south side of Regent's Park, where entry was restricted to keyholders from the surrounding houses. 'Behind railings, behind neatly clipped hedges, the lawns lay outspread; tender and green, amid the cement; an oasis, guarded by privilege'. Privileged seclusion, as well as nannys and children, was to disappear once the German bombing raids began. Judith, who had played in the Gardens as a child, returns there later and registers the transformation.

At this hour of the afternoon, the lawns, the paths, should be alive with children: boys and girls, of various ages, in their leggings, in their bright coats, should be running across the grass, cycling on the paths, darting in and out of the bushes: nurses should be sitting, in grey or navy blue; fingering the Nursery World; gossiping...There were none. The children's swings hung motionless; the sand in the play-pit was stale, unaltered... High in the air, a bloated constellation, guarding the city, London's balloon barrage glinted