Several of the company members were married. Had they noticed? If so, did they disapprove of me? They knew Molly, of course, and I wondered what they’d say to her. But I didn’t care. I was where I wanted to be, out in the open with the girl, as if I had no responsibility to anyone else. Besides, here was England in the prime of the year! So celebrate! When it was all over, I realized that because of knowing this girl, I’d learned more about English street and village life, the ways of the common man, of the “proletariat” we used to talk about in the Party, than I could have learned in any other way from any other source. Diggie, whom I never saw, wrote to, or spoke with again, is my keenest memory of that English engagement. Isn’t it astonishing—I think so—that what I remember most keenly about my visit to London in 1938 is someone Molly would have called a tramp.

Was I trying again to break up my life?