The Lonely Londoners: Section 7 Summary & Analysis

When summer arrives, Galahad is cold. “I don’t know why I hot in the winter and cold in the summer,” he says to Moses, who pokes fun at his friend. Nonetheless, things are going well for Galahad, who takes great delight in living in London and “using the names of the places like they mean big romance, as if to say ‘I was in Oxford Street’ have more prestige than if he just say ‘I was up the road.’” Indeed, when he says something like, “She waiting for me by Charing Cross Station,” he “feel like a new man.” Likewise, he loves going to the Piccadilly Tube Station to marvel at its large clock and to watch the people passing through the station. Moses says he was like that when he first came to London, but all those places mean nothing to him now.

Because Galahad works the nightshift, he walks through the streets tired and dirty every morning, passing people he’s barely able to greet due to his intense fatigue. In the evenings, though, he puts on his best clothes and strolls around, saying hello to everybody and thinking, “This is London, this is life oh lord, to walk like a king with money in your pocket, not a worry in the world.” While walking like this one evening, he passes a white woman and her daughter, who says, “Mummy, look at that black man!” Instantly, the mother says, “You mustn’t say that, dear!” but Galahad stoops and gives the child an affectionate pat on the cheek, saying, “What a sweet child!” as the youngster begins to cry. “What’s your name?” he asks, but the mother quickly becomes uncomfortable and backs away, leaving Galahad alone on the sidewalk.

Regarding Galahad’s interaction with the white woman and her child on the sidewalk, the narrator writes: “If that episode did happen around the first time when he land up in London, oh Lord! he would have run to the boys, telling them he have a big ballad.” Now, though, Galahad simply smiles at the racist mother as she inches away. Nonetheless, he sometimes lies on his bed and thinks, “What it is we want that the white people and them find it so hard to give?” Looking at his hand, he says, “Colour is you that causing all this, you know. Why the hell you can’t be blue, or red or green, if you can’t be white? You know is you that cause a lot of misery in the world. […] I ain’t do anything to infuriate the people and them, is you!”