Escorts in Marble Arch, W1H: who is close, and how soon
Will anybody look twice when she walks in? At Marble Arch, almost certainly not, and the reason is the place itself. Few corners of the West End see so many strangers arriving with a purpose: shoppers coming off Oxford Street with their bags, travellers wheeling cases, families heading for the park, residents crossing from the Edgware Road to the squares behind it. A well dressed woman walking into a lobby or up a flight of steps here is simply one more arrival among hundreds. That is the quiet advantage for Marble Arch escorts, and it holds for as long as the evening keeps to the manners of whichever side of the arch it is spent on, because W1H has two very different sides, and a third just up the road.
On the ground
Marble Arch in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW1H 7DL, W1H 7TW, W1H 5DN, W1H 7FD, W1H 7BH, W1H 7BG.
Nearest stations
Walking timeMarble Arch, 1 minute. Edgware Road, 6 minutes. Bond Street, 8 minutes.
Getting there
W1HTravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Marble Arch
Who works here
On the board in Marble Arch
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Marble Arch tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
At the arch: large hotels, anonymous lobbies
The junction is lined with large hotels, and a large hotel is about the easiest place in London to be unremarkable, because nobody passing through its public rooms expects to know anybody else. She arrives as your guest, crosses the lobby the way any guest does and goes straight up. No hotel has an arrangement of any kind with the office, and no hotel hears a word about the booking, so there is nothing for anyone to connect.
If you would prefer her not to walk through a lobby at all, mention it when you write, and she waits below until you come down to collect her. Either way, the office needs the surname on the reservation, and the room number only after the booking is confirmed.
Dress follows the evening rather than the building. Tell the office whether the night begins in a dining room or stays upstairs, and she comes dressed for that, which at this corner is the surest way of looking as if she belongs, because she does.
Note 03
Behind the arch: the Portman squares
Walk a few streets north and W1H turns into a residential estate. Much of the land between Oxford Street and the Marylebone Road has belonged to the Portman family since the sixteenth century, and in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries they covered it with terraces and garden squares. Bryanston Square, named after the family seat in Dorset, and Montagu Square, named after the writer and hostess Elizabeth Montagu, are the long narrow pair, their gardens railed and their houses mostly divided into flats.
These are streets where people live, and they behave accordingly after dark: quiet pavements, lit windows, voices kept low on the steps. For a private address here the office asks which flat it is and which bell to press, which spares anyone a wait on the doorstep, and nothing more. If the building keeps a porter's desk, say whether you would rather come down to the street door yourself. Nothing is ever sent ahead to a building, and nobody in it is told who is visiting.
Note 04
The Edgware Road, awake after the squares have gone quiet
North-west of the arch the Edgware Road runs dead straight, because it follows Watling Street, the Roman road that ran out of London towards the north-west. Its lower end is one of the liveliest late streets in the capital, lined with Lebanese and other Middle Eastern cafés and restaurants whose pavement tables stay busy long after the squares behind them have gone to bed.
The manners here are sociable rather than hushed. Two people sharing mint tea and a late plate at an outside table are part of the scenery, and nobody expects a couple to explain themselves. The discretion that matters on the Edgware Road is the ordinary kind: a table rather than a crowded counter, conversation rather than display, and the walk back to the squares taken at the unhurried pace of people who live there.
Note 05
What the office asks, and what it leaves alone
The office asks for very little: a first name, the hotel or address, the date, the hour and the length, then the room or flat number once the booking is confirmed. It never asks for identity documents, a photograph of you or an account, and a message asking for any of those did not come from this board.
W1H is home to none of the twenty eight. The nearest homes lie on three sides of it: two names in Marylebone to the north-east, three in Paddington to the north-west and three in Mayfair to the south-east, which keeps escorts in Marble Arch within easy reach of the whole board. Reckon on an hour or a little over from the office's go-ahead to her arrival, longer again when Oxford Street is jammed at six, with her time sent in the chat once she is travelling; the lengths and figures sit on the rates.
Beyond the postcode, Marylebone begins behind the squares, the Edgware Road runs north, and Hyde Park opens across the junction.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Marble Arch
Asked most often
Marble Arch, asked and answered
Should she come straight up, or wait for me downstairs?
My flat has a porter. What should I tell the office?
How will she be dressed?
Is a late table on the Edgware Road discreet enough?
Does the hotel learn anything about the evening?
One zone either way
Next along from Marble Arch
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.