So I stood there, ogling her, studying her yellowness, controlling the impulse to step out, walk towards her and say Hey! That happened to me once!
She was about half my age – in her mid-twenties – and distinctly underweight. Hardly any shape to her, just a plank in pencil jeans and slip-ons over white socks. She was about five foot seven and wore a faded parka with a fur-trimmed hood which was a bit too big for her, flapping and tenting around her elfin face. What I could view of her flesh was bright yellow. She had eyebrow rings and a stud in her nose, typical urban memorabilia, over a thin, purplish mouth. And like the rest of them she was obsessing into her mobile phone – as if it were an occult altar, a pentangle in her palm. She was chain-smoking cigarettes and trembling, from the cold weather or the cold turkey – or both. Fresh out of hospital, I thought. Two young males buzzed around her, also in parkas, Mod relics or sub-stream chavs. But she wasn’t jaded – she seemed quite animated and lively. Of course, she could have been on the bounce back up after a couple of cans.
It’s at times like this that a good old-fashioned imaginary conversation comes in handy.
Soon I was standing next to her (in Never-Never land), chatting amiably. I don’t know about your imaginary chats (don’t fib – of course you have them), but mine are incredibly wise and the whole wide world would be an earthly paradise within days or maybe even hours if only people listened to what I have to say.
Our conversation starts on a banal note, both of us breaking the ice. Rule Number One is – treat a drunk carefully at first. Don’t rush the person.
But people who have been through a yellow period – and the accompanying spell in a hospital or psychiatric unit – usually identify fellow travellers quite quickly. No doubt about it, there seems to be a recognition system, as if we all had zebra stripes or spoke with a conspicuous accent. So I’m enjoying a close-up chat with this girl almost immediately. In my mind’s eye, of course.
You’re a flattie girl, aren’t you? I inquire.
Flatties are the half-sized bottles used by distillers – quite distinctive and comfortable in the hand, less likely to slip. Lots of sensual curves. Comforting groove down the back of the bottle, like the cool furrow running along a woman’s spine. The flattie is user-friendly and easier to hide, though prone to slide away in a hedge or a rabbit hole.
Me, I’m a full throttle man with a liking for the cylindrical litre bottle, triple distilled for ultimate purity. I don’t normally respond to ceramics or glassware, passing those piles of Portmeirion or Nantgarw or Lalique in museums without a second glance. But the vodka bottle could stroke me like a cat again if I let it. The feel of it in the hand, the crack of the seal as the top is released. The hot perfume of the first kiss.
Of course certain races simply can’t take alcohol. Take the Eskimo, or the native American Indian – genetically indisposed to it.
Like the Japanese and milk, I hear her say. Doesn’t suit them, makes them sick.
Having warmed up – ah! the sublime plunge into heat with that first sip – we move onto familiar territory.
Sick in the mornings? I inquire.
Every bloody day, she replies.
I sympathise with her. It’s very unpleasant, the end game. You desperately need more firewater inside you so that you can feel human again, but the body can’t process the alcohol and throws it straight back out again. I can still remember the taste of the vodka coming back up, warm and phlegmy, passing through my fingers. The hollow, empty retching.
Did you itch when you came off the booze? she asks.
Christ yes, I reply. Worse than wearing a hair shirt – like being wrapped up in that stuff they lag roofs with, makes me scratch just thinking about it.
On and on we went, worrying the same old subject, two little puppies with an old slipper. But it’s not the same, talking to yourself, it’s never as good. You can’t beat the real thing – a good head-to-head with a total stranger on a railway platform: pigeons flickering to and fro, the Tannoy sending disembodied messages to the otherworld. Detached Christian-looking people trundling their trolley-cases devoutly from the newspaper kiosk to Calvary and beyond.
You can’t beat a meeting of like minds in unexpected places. Birds of a feather. Fellow travellers. I’ve picked them up all over: I call it cottaging because it’s just the same but without the sex. I love the stakeout, the silent patient watch, the thrill of the encounter, the quick exchange, the retreat into anonymity. Much more sophisticated than pestering or moidering or ear-bashing – it’s the cerebral equivalent of two spies exchanging microfilms on a ferry crossing the Bosporus. Instead of a one-night stand with a ten-second orgasm, it’s a ten-minute encounter with a clunking psychological orgasm guaranteed to last all day.
So I’m standing at Crewe station, a spaghetti nexus for travellers, a focal point for hordes of people on the move, and in this inpouring and outpouring of humanity I’ve been deposited next to a yellow girl. Destiny? Don’t be ludicrous. Chance, nothing more. Statistics allow for this sort of thing, in the way they predicate against my winning the lottery. The laws of chance were drafted by a despot with a quirky sense of humour, probably a retired tax inspector with a huge store of Ken Dodd jokes.
Still feeling the need to swim out to this girl and grab her, drag her in from the human tide around her, I turn again to converse with her on my brain-platform.
Her flattie’s almost empty and she’s beginning to sweat on the next one; her mind’s already clouded with logistics. She exerts her brain day and night, there’s a noise like the railway station’s arrivals and destinations board going cha-cha-cha-cha-cha metallically as she counts the bottles in, counts them out, worries about being late, worries about never getting there on time.
What would I say to her anyway, if I spoke to her for real?
I hope you don’t mind me telling you this, but I was yellow too, once. Looked like a bloody banana, actually. Poisoned by a Russian agent, Miss Smirnoff by name. The bitch ruined me. Met her in a bar and fell for the oldest trick in the book – went back to her place and they filmed us having a fabulous time. Best lover I ever had. When I woke they’d filmed my soul, sold my body to the national health. Dreary business. How about you?
Or would I saunter towards her, theatrically, and say: I’ve been there too kid.
Our eyes would meet and we’d both know the truth about each other, immediately, without saying a word. Not bloody likely. And if she listened to me, wouldn’t I sound like a born-again Christian trying to sell her a miracle cure?
But I wanted to go to her, yes, and I wanted her to recognise me for what I was, quickly – someone who was trying to share an experience, to show some compassion. But was there one single thing I could tell her that would change things?
No, said a little voice in my head. Nothing you could say would change the course of this girl’s life. Except two words maybe. I survived. And that would sound a mite triumphalist, wouldn’t it now?
I conceded the game. She knew and I knew that the yellow people already know which train they’re going to catch – up or down the line, heaven or hell, freedom or slavery. Usually they don’t have much time to decide which one to board, and some say the ticket was bought long ago, way back in childhood.
I ended my ‘conversation’ and returned to my studies on the platform at Crewe station.
She was still there in front of me. I could still step up to her. It could be done.
Perhaps she would want to talk – it’s often easier with strangers. A quick exchange. Perhaps I could tell her, as un-evangelically as possible, that it wasn’t as difficult as she might imagine, staying above ground. And worth it, dammit – life could be very sweet when compared to the war zone of addiction. If only for a year or two.
Be kind to yourself, I’d say. Don’t punish yourself any more.
The pigeons cooed some more and the Tannoy gabbled some more too – in fact I made a connection between its announcements and the message I’d intended
to give this girl – equally garbled, more likely to induce panic than composure.
When I lifted my eyes from the pigeons she was moving towards the lip of the platform and a train was chuntering towards her. It wasn’t my connection, so I watched her do the standard black and white feature film exit, the Brief Encounter wave through the window to her mates, without all the steam and romance.
I almost walked to her even then – had it been an old-fashioned train, with pull-down windows, I think I might have. But I didn’t. Then I lost her, and in the ensuing vacuum my brain instigated two wayward meditations on the colour yellow.
First, I went back to my childhood, and it was a morning in summer, soon after dawn, with the early sun flooding onto my bed and songbirds singing outside. I was a little boy who wondered why each window attracted the sun, my fingers trying to catch it – without a thought of what would become of me later in life, when the sun and I were older and weaker.
Next I thought of an incident which happened when I was a gardener, briefly, at a stately home – it was a summer holiday job and I hated it. Plagued by mice in the walled vegetable garden, we set traps – or rather the head gardener did, because I managed to avoid the task. Traps were never really my thing, though I managed to end up in one myself eventually. Don’t we all. But despite the fact that I wouldn’t set the traps it was me who examined them first each morning, fascinated, driven to discover…
And in one of them I found a mouse, still warm but limp, the eyes glazed over. I turned it over in my hands, this newly dead and still lovely thing. It was a yellow-necked field mouse, with a bib of cadmium yellow. Dead and most beautiful.
That day on the platform at Crewe I caught my connection and returned to Pembrokeshire. For the greater part of a long and tiring journey I was followed by the reflection of the sun in the carriage window, hot and buttery. I had met the only yellow girl I was ever likely to meet at a railway station, and I’d missed my opportunity. I still think of her, often. I wonder to myself idly – is she alive or dead? Happy? Lost? Waiting at another railway station?
I hope she chose the right train. But I have to face up to the truth, because that’s what I try to do every day after my fling with Miss Smirnoff. You see, there was only one genuine reason for wanting to talk to her, and it was this: I wanted to tell her my own story, not to listen to hers.
A story I’ve told to so many people in so many places. That’s the legacy of survival: the wish to tell your story, always, to anyone, at railway stations – or pretty well anywhere for that matter, when you’re far away from home.
wine
I AM a methodical man – a modern professional. I’m an accountant or, as outsiders refer to my line of work, a bean counter. Every working day I bring order and meaning to Nitromo’s spreadsheets; every night I sleep on sheets made of French silk in my waterside flat, already paid for. Thank you Lord for making it all add up for me. There is someone special in my life, at last, and I am content. My parents and family live on another continent and I see them once a year, at Christmas time. I am thirty-three and fit, though last year I had a health scare (rather personal); fortunately, I was alerted to the condition by an article in my paper, the Daily Mail.
I have a small group of friends, mainly from the gym and the church. Generally I live a well-ordered existence, which makes me happy. However, an incident happened recently which made my life rather difficult for a while. My friends in the Bible class have lost interest now, thank God, but my employers insisted on a course of counselling and my superior invited me into his office for ‘little chats’ every Friday afternoon for a month or two. All was not well. This is the nub of the story.
On my birthday, which falls (unfortunately!) on Boxing Day, I was given a new address book by one of my fellow choristers in the New Jerusalem Choir. It is rather nice, bound in soft calfskin leather, and each section from A to Z has a fronting page which tells the story of a famous saint: for instance the letter A features St Adrian of Nicomedia, patron saint of soldiers and butchers, while the letter Z features St Zenobius of Florence, who could bring the dead back to life, and is shown reviving a small child run over by a cart.
One Sunday morning after church I began transferring names and addresses from my old address book to the new, with diligence and pleasure, in my neatest handwriting, using my favourite pen. It’s a Parker, and I use turquoise ink for all my personal correspondence. Whilst transcribing I noticed that many people in the old book had already disappeared from my life, for one reason or another. This made me sad, but I continued. I also noticed, for the first time, that I had no friends or relatives in the O section, nor a professional contact either. The O pages were completely blank in the old book, and remained so (of course) in the new book. I especially like the illustration which fronts the O section. It features St Omobuono ‘the good man’ of Cremona, who gave all his food and drink to a beggar one day and, on refilling his flask in a stream, found the water had been changed into wine – a miracle. St Omobuono died suddenly in a church, which seems appropriate – I wouldn’t mind going that way myself!
I suppose I’d better admit I was a bit perturbed by not having any contacts in the O section, which remained bare. So I took more notice of people’s names when they introduced themselves to me. I scanned the church membership register but there was no Orwell or Owen sufficiently well known to me, and it seemed un-Christian to seek someone’s friendship merely to have them in my address book. A few weeks passed by, the issue became less important, and I almost forgot about it.
Then, one Friday afternoon, I did a Christian Act. I try to do one every day, but often that’s impossible due to my lifestyle, since I can go for weeks without meeting anyone who needs help. My friends are mostly well off, and they rarely disclose their problems to me, since I am a bit green in these matters, having led a rather uneventful life. I don’t think I’m particularly selfish – just inexperienced.
The Christian Act I refer to became possible while I was travelling home for the weekend, having completed an exhausting but highly successful audit at Nitromo’s regional office in the pretty city of Chester. I was guaranteed a bonus, and I felt good about my work, which after all is as essential as a doctor’s or a politician’s if the country is to run smoothly. So, while entering a slip road in the environs of the city, I spotted a hitchhiker by the side of the road. I scanned him as well as I could, given the time limit: he had short hair (no dreadlocks!), no visible tattoos, was relatively well dressed, and had a newish-looking red rucksack propped up against his knees. I made a snap decision and picked him up, since I needed to do something good before church on Sunday. Fortunately he didn’t smell, and seemed sober. I thanked God in the sky above for my good fortune, since I don’t normally pick up strangers in this way. After I established that he was going in my general direction, we made small talk about the weather, the state of the country, the usual topics. He asked me my name: I said Paul. I asked him his, he said Oggy. Apparently he never uses his real name – everyone knows him simply as Oggy. He said he was unofficial. What he meant by that, apparently, was that he doesn’t exist in the eyes of the state – he has no home, no National Insurance number, no birth certificate, no passport, no documentation at all. Zilch. As you can imagine, I was intrigued, and felt an urge to report him to someone – but to whom? – as soon as I got home. I didn’t, as it happens. Call it Christian charity. Besides, I was tired and hungry. Oggy told me a terrible, disturbing personal story, a testimony of abuse and deprivation which moved me deeply – and which moved everyone else when I repeated it at Friday evening’s Bible Class. It was nice to capture their attention, because quite frankly they were boggled by the story I told them. I tried not to embroider it, but maybe I added a detail or two, I’m not sure. I was rather surprised at myself, because I enjoyed telling the tale. I’m normally very reserved and taciturn, since I’m a man of figures and sums rather than verbs and nouns – but there was little doubt, I was able to command their atten
tion and stir their emotions with Oggy’s desperate story. I’d slipped him a twenty-pound note because he said he had no money to buy food that night, and he wanted to buy a present for his sister’s handicapped baby daughter.
We agreed at the Bible Class to collect money in a china moneybox, shaped like a sleeping cat, which was about to be cleared out of the attic by Rachel Turnbull (Registered Class Member Number 101, I seem to remember!). We called it Oggy’s Moggy and set a target of £250, I agreed to look out for poor Oggy and present him with the money, or if I failed to find him, we would send it to Shelter. I didn’t tell them about the empty O pages in my new address book. But his name began with an O and I was tempted to put Oggy in my new book’s blank O section. Instead I put it in my old book, as a sort of practice, to see what it looked like.
The following Friday we met again for Bible Class and everyone wanted to know more about Oggy – had I seen him again? They all seemed disappointed when I said no, so nobody paid much attention to me after that; indeed, I felt depressed by their reaction, as if they were reproaching me silently for letting them down. They wanted to know everything about Oggy, and I felt responsible. So on Monday evening after work I headed straight for the slip road where I’d met him, to see if he was there. But the cupboard was bare. No Oggy. I felt my heart sink down to my boots. I went on Tuesday again – same story. Wednesday and Thursday – no Oggy. So on Friday I took time off in lieu and spent the whole afternoon cruising around the slip road area, hoping to catch him.