The roar was abruptly muffled by the growl of a bus engine, gears cranking and a conductor’s bell, all of which made Jemima sit up with a start. The strike. Had it started? If so, why could she hear a bus? She was up and out of bed, grabbing her shawl and pulling it around her shoulders. She pulled aside the faded blue curtains, rubbed the mist from the window and peered out to the street below. The first thing she saw was people, droves of them, in their working clothes and all on foot, moving in excited clusters east towards the city. On the road was every sort of motor vehicle you could imagine. From the earliest horseless carriages to the latest Morris, from charabancs to delivery vehicles, milk carts and even a hearse, all laden with passengers and all making their way slowly east. One vehicle, a fruit delivery van, carried a dozen bowler-hatted city gentlemen, crammed in like apples in a barrel. Behind it a brewer’s dray pulled by a sluggish cart horse contained a gaggle of shop girls who waved at the crowds and blew them kisses until, accompanied by loud shrieks, the cart slid into a rut, tipping them all forward so that they tumbled over each other.
