Only

The woman in the moss green overcoat stood sunk in a smile and tiny of height at the corner of the ticket hall. Accompanied by her hanging mustard umbrella. Her skin folded over itself, like ivy covering a very old wall, and her hair shaded each side of her forehead, like curtains hiding the very bright stage lights of her smouldering eyes, sunk in sockets of crumpled paper, she waited with the calmness and inevitability of a woman the popular accounts will have you believe did not exist until very recently.

   Did not exist in the hard times of war rubble, of Sheppard’s pie unpackaged, and red cheeked children with the burn of whip scars still fiery on their white behinds.

  The Umbrella could have been her collection tin, she grasped it with the kindness one might grasp a husband’s hand, a husband going blind and becoming senile, a husband, who like her, liked to listen to the saw, the metal trains clatter as it went on by, the thunder of the ticket gates clamping closed like jaws behind the streaming coat of every paying customer.

   And there was her, or was it more a lime green, with a tinge of herbal weed about it, with an impression, when partially dazzled by the sun, of the lattice work of ivy and moss, climbing on her like veins, neither pulling her down nor holding her up. Thoughts she held with a suitable weight between heavy and light.

  It is rare to see a woman of this age, alone, at the corner of the station, on a winter’s day. True, the summer time might coax them out, let them crawl from underneath the shelter they’ve been squashed against, ankles wading in dew, into the light.

   But today, the grey of the sky, the black clothed people with little white hands and aggressive aesthetic manipulation of their bodies, with the corners, like the ears left to flop, to hang as they’d been found, she sat in a corner outside the normality a driven person needs to function.

   He met her at half past two, he inched a smile and his whole mouth changed, hanging patiently open for a moment, revealing inside it the interminable hole, pulsating in its dark resource.

  He held her hand, and led her out, the day crumbling beneath dark clouds, to a old fish shop, they both remembered.

Cod and row they asked for together, chiming with a sororal edge which hung about them after the sound had died and the man had turned and rolled up his sleeves, grasping the batter like a cow’s udder.

  “Not been eating fish” she told him, when they’d sat down and he’d awkwardly maneuvered his coat and hers, empty now, devoid of all fashion, it had lost its head and hands, onto the coat stand shyly watching from behind the door.

He nodded gruffly still catching his breath

“Why is that then?”

“Don’t like the thought of it” Lily came out in all of her words, he noticed her hair pins slipping, her hair’s colourless grip had been lost with time. It was empty and stencilled now, held no compulsion, none of the constant sharpness that used to drag you in.

“God rest his soul” the man said, turning around and catching a glimpse of a wheezing, stuttering man, trying avidly to push buttons and restart an ailing laptop computer in front of him

“Bothering us like this during lunchtime”

To Peter’s mind, this was everyone’s lunchtime. He’d not accustomed himself to the idea that time zones were as fluctuating as people’s self identities. Though they all stayed solid in the place the observer classified them for the duration of the observation.

  “Imagine” he said “My granddaughters going to Arabia. Studying Arabic she is. So she’s going there to live”

“For how long?” Lily interjected, calming him, each haphazard word neglecting to hold the proceeding one

“As long as it takes. The teachers say. Could be a whole year”

“Think of what we could do there” Lily mused

“Riding camels ain’t for me” he answered “And besides they’ve got all those dangers there now ain’t they? What with Iraq and whatnot”

“Oh Iraq” They both were silent for a long moment, impossible to tell whether they were bathing in their words or just observing silence for its calming effect.

    “Them people shouldn’t meddle with their business in Iraq. They should be left alone. I wouldn’t want people coming into England with guns and tanks and bleeding airplanes like they did in the war. Those politicians are too young to remember, they don’t know what trouble they’ll cause”

“Well, she says, my grand daughter Kristy that is, says she’s going over there to be some sort of journalist”

“I thought she was learning Arabic”

“Yes. But she’s gonna be writing for a paper there as well”

“Well, Good luck to her”

Lily gasped at the effort of finally finishing her sentence. Peter nodded solemnly, agreeing with his face, and fumbling for a cigarette once his assurance, the validity of the whole situation had passed.

   “So how’s life been treating you?” He asked, as he exhaled his first proper breath.

 “Good, Good” she looked down and fiddled with the spoon that sat by her teacup.

He looked closer, from beneath the smoke that covered his eyes. Parts of the front of his hair was tinged yellow from such a constant snake of nicotine, crawling up past his eyes, it looked strangely like peroxide on such a wide framed, grey bodied man.

   “You don’t mean that do you Lily”

She looked up afraid

   “No. I don’t mean it” she uttered, her voice shaking with fear

   “Its terrible now we’re old”

“Oh its not that bad” he nudged her, giggling

“Its terrible not getting to see me grandchildren. Now they’re grown up so that they don’t want to see me no more. I’m just there to pet them like a mother while they’re young”

“Oh, but your Sandy’s a good boy isn’t he”

  “Ain’t been in over a month”

She warned

      “And I know he’s only round the corner, only I’m too afraid to go round there on me own, don’t think they like me round there”

“They’re sure to like you”

“I’m not so sure”

  Another silence told them the mood needed to be perked up, or else the moroseness would reach dramatic proportions

“We’ve got to look on the bright side though haven’t we just?”

Asked Peter.

“Oh yes” nodded Lily.

They clicked teacups, and smiled at each other, those tiny wormy smiles that let you know nothing about their past except how it felt.

   They bent together, from beneath the mist that steamed up the lettered window you could have told that they were kissing behind that other couple at the table in the foreground. But then you didn’t know. You just sat, watching them trying not to let your own thoughts get in the way.