And then they came, the hot tears, like a sneeze, like a sudden, churning faultline split in the soul. I moved off among the indifferent faces; the rib-cracking weight on my chest doubled, if not almost trebled.
In case you’re wondering whether the train has moved or not, it hasn’t. Tracksuit Man is still sitting in his Santa hat, bellicose with booze. A third game of dominoes has just commenced before me. The tensed carriage is still putrid with the stink of pasties, whisky-breaths, wet cattle, hot leather, sweaty fabrics, migrainey perfumes and burps.
Think I’ll take a look outside.
Stationary, abandoned luggage-buggies crouch forlornly on the concourse. A smattering of leather-smocked desperadoes and tubercular grans are sucking whey-faced at last-minute cigarettes (how I long to join them!). A porter with his porter-hands clasped trimly behind his back like a beat-copper perambulates unsteadily, close to the crouched carriages, disguising his six lunchtime shots with a practised ease. Further off, where no people go, a ragged T-shirt caught in a bulging wire-mesh fence flaps madly on the whippet-quick wind. No blessing in that ungentle breeze.
Getting dark out there.
The blood-crimson ribbons of cloud seem to have been cowed, demoted somehow to the bottom of the sky’s three-tier colour hierarchy. Red, hospital-white, then boiling storm-blue; like a judgement hand unclosing over sewery, dogshitty London. A quick look around. Everyone seems glad to be getting out. Brightly relieved to be heading off, departing, travelling from station to station. Released from the cage of work or school, or penurious debasement, they all appear lighter than perhaps they would if one encountered them in the street or job uniform; as if they’d all been given an extra lung or a transfusion of new blood. See them smiling: exalted and helium-light. Getting out of the smoke. The dirty old town. Leaving Old Father Thames to receive its Christmas suicides, unobserved by the writhing directional hordes that batter its bridges by day.
Rattle-tattle-spattle.
The rain has picked up from nowhere, announcing itself like a spew of gravel against my smeary window. An hysterical rivulet of water in the corner of the frame, like a mad artery, pulsates and quivers—endlessly replenished. It must be time to go. I need to go. Every stasis-yellowed nerve in my body yearns for movement, extradition. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. To convert the present quickly and painlessly into the past. To slide away amnesic, the chromium rails diminishing to nothing behind.
Go, go, go. Please—let’s get out of here.
I suppose I should tell you more about her. No. She can wait. She made me wait enough, over the three tarnished, nightmare-vivid years of our marriage. I must have clocked up a thousand man-hours in attendance for her. Not just the usual bum-numbing sojourn outside the women’s changing rooms in the alarmingly populous department store. Not just the nervy, tenterhooks evening by the phone wondering whether to ring around the hospitals and enquire about recent traffic accidents. Not just the pregnant millennium it always took her to decide on tea as opposed to coffee in the greasy spoon before quickly reversing her decision. But the season, the lifetime, the fourth dimension spent waiting for her to change. To reach her emotional first birthday. To grow out of her scarily psychotic temper tantrums. To stop taking everyone she encountered up and down in her emotional elevator. To cease being a habitual liar and truth-strangler. To take her first faltering, nappy-free steps on the road to having any insight into anything at all, anywhere. To stop being what psychologists amusingly call an ‘adult baby’. To learn how to behave .
There. I’ve already started telling you about her. She’s burst through what I originally intended to report and established herself centre stage, grossly unavoidable—forcing everyone, through
In case you’re wondering whether the train has moved or not, it hasn’t. Tracksuit Man is still sitting in his Santa hat, bellicose with booze. A third game of dominoes has just commenced before me. The tensed carriage is still putrid with the stink of pasties, whisky-breaths, wet cattle, hot leather, sweaty fabrics, migrainey perfumes and burps.
Think I’ll take a look outside.
Stationary, abandoned luggage-buggies crouch forlornly on the concourse. A smattering of leather-smocked desperadoes and tubercular grans are sucking whey-faced at last-minute cigarettes (how I long to join them!). A porter with his porter-hands clasped trimly behind his back like a beat-copper perambulates unsteadily, close to the crouched carriages, disguising his six lunchtime shots with a practised ease. Further off, where no people go, a ragged T-shirt caught in a bulging wire-mesh fence flaps madly on the whippet-quick wind. No blessing in that ungentle breeze.
Getting dark out there.
The blood-crimson ribbons of cloud seem to have been cowed, demoted somehow to the bottom of the sky’s three-tier colour hierarchy. Red, hospital-white, then boiling storm-blue; like a judgement hand unclosing over sewery, dogshitty London. A quick look around. Everyone seems glad to be getting out. Brightly relieved to be heading off, departing, travelling from station to station. Released from the cage of work or school, or penurious debasement, they all appear lighter than perhaps they would if one encountered them in the street or job uniform; as if they’d all been given an extra lung or a transfusion of new blood. See them smiling: exalted and helium-light. Getting out of the smoke. The dirty old town. Leaving Old Father Thames to receive its Christmas suicides, unobserved by the writhing directional hordes that batter its bridges by day.
Rattle-tattle-spattle.
The rain has picked up from nowhere, announcing itself like a spew of gravel against my smeary window. An hysterical rivulet of water in the corner of the frame, like a mad artery, pulsates and quivers—endlessly replenished. It must be time to go. I need to go. Every stasis-yellowed nerve in my body yearns for movement, extradition. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. To convert the present quickly and painlessly into the past. To slide away amnesic, the chromium rails diminishing to nothing behind.
Go, go, go. Please—let’s get out of here.
I suppose I should tell you more about her. No. She can wait. She made me wait enough, over the three tarnished, nightmare-vivid years of our marriage. I must have clocked up a thousand man-hours in attendance for her. Not just the usual bum-numbing sojourn outside the women’s changing rooms in the alarmingly populous department store. Not just the nervy, tenterhooks evening by the phone wondering whether to ring around the hospitals and enquire about recent traffic accidents. Not just the pregnant millennium it always took her to decide on tea as opposed to coffee in the greasy spoon before quickly reversing her decision. But the season, the lifetime, the fourth dimension spent waiting for her to change. To reach her emotional first birthday. To grow out of her scarily psychotic temper tantrums. To stop taking everyone she encountered up and down in her emotional elevator. To cease being a habitual liar and truth-strangler. To take her first faltering, nappy-free steps on the road to having any insight into anything at all, anywhere. To stop being what psychologists amusingly call an ‘adult baby’. To learn how to behave .
There. I’ve already started telling you about her. She’s burst through what I originally intended to report and established herself centre stage, grossly unavoidable—forcing everyone, through
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