The railway line stretches into infinity. A bank of grey cloud hangs like a faded sheet above our heads. Recent copious rain has made the embankments lush and green. Swollen streams gush through verdant fields. The hills beyond are shrouded in purple mist. Elder flowers shine creamily in the gathering gloom.
She sits across from me. She is around sixty, as skinny as a skinny latte, with cheekbones as gaunt as knitting needles. The skin around her chin is map-folded with age and there is duck-down on her parchment cheeks. Her elfin ears are pierced for gold starfish studs. Her dyed auburn hair is swept severely back into a pony-tail. She wears on her face a pair of spectacles as thick as dessert spoons. She is dressed in a modest white top and a long, pleated black skirt. Her legs are encased in dark tights and her feet in ugly tan shoes. She has elegant arms and wrists but coruscated hands. Her long, spatulate fingers are devoid of rings, and her fingernails are carefully cut short and almost square. She is as clean as a fire-engine and mysterious as a seraph. Her maquillage is that of a younger woman. Her skin has lost its colour and she has had to regain it from the bottom of a jar.
She frowns darkly. She reads a newspaper as if it were in Braille. She is puzzled; the world has defeated her. The sands of time are running out – she sees her eventual demise on page seventeen. She drips class and self-respect. Her simple hair-clasp demonstrates her severity; the golden bangle on her right wrist her wealth and taste. She is proud of her ancestry. Her forebears were moneyed, bankers and the like. They imbued in her a sense of stealth. She’s Presbyterian, you can see it in her eyes and the relentless way she purses her lips. She’s lonely now, ploughing a silent furrow, sporting just one hook on the bathroom door.
She grimaces; she has read enough. How many policemen do we really need? She doesn’t seem attuned; she is pragmatic. Her head is somewhere in the clouds along with the cherubs and angels. I wish I’d met her, I wish I’d said ‘hello.’ Then I would have learned what made her tick. I sit silent, across the way, knowing that these few moments will be the last I’ll ever see of her, and she will die one day, somewhere in the nether regions of middle-classdom, and I won’t even know.
