We were trained to stretch our necks, lift our chins and chests, straighten our backs and stand with just the skin of our heels on the ground so that our weight was centred on the arch of our feet. The models scowled with what Madame would have called ‘dead’ eyes. We were supposed to look engaged, expressive, reflective. It just shows how subjective beauty is.
After I had marvelled at the prices of the clothes and read the advertisements, I closed my eyes in a well-stuffed haze and thought long and hard about Sebastian without coming to any conclusion except that now I had at least five weeks with no possibility of seeing him he seemed much less frightening. I imagined signing a contract with Miko and receiving ovations and rave reviews from Didelot for my interpretation of Kitri in Don Quixote.
I must have slept again, for the next thing I knew we were drawing into York station. As we travelled further north the ridges of the ploughed fields were frosted with white and the occasional snowflake glanced against the window. By the time we left Darlington, snow was falling steadily and the sky had taken on a bluish tinge presaging dusk. While dreaming about taking the Met by storm in the jazzy, flashy Rubies section of Balanchine’s Jewels, I finished the rest of Bobbie’s picnic. Siggy deigned to eat some of the hazelnut chocolate, which could not have been good for him but the nuts kept him busy. I enjoyed looking at the white hills and dales that formed graceful parabolas like giant elbows and knees carved from marble.
A ticket inspector came aboard at Durham, so I dropped my shawl over the front of Siggy’s cage. When I removed it later he had eaten half the fringe, this despite my having given him an old jersey for this very purpose, which as far as I could see remained untouched.
‘You really are a naughty boy!’ I said with some heat, because the shawl was a fine wool paisley printed in lovely colours of rose and ochre which I had been delighted to find in an Oxfam shop.
A man sitting opposite, wearing a dog collar, glanced at me with an expression of alarm and then stared sternly out of the window, slowly reddening.
It was nearly dark when we chugged into Newcastle. The rawness of the weather had stolen the colour from people’s lips and cheeks and restored it to their noses. Each light had its own murky halo and every cold surface a silvery sheen of condensation. Our train was late, which left me five minutes to catch the connection to Haltwhistle. With my bag slung round my neck and Siggy’s basket in one hand, I tried with the other to pull my suitcase from where Bobbie had stowed it between the seats.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to the clergyman. ‘I’m awfully sorry, would you mind …?’
He pretended not to hear me and made a bolt for the exit, coat flapping.
‘Give it here, pet.’ A small stout woman in a grey gabardine mackintosh took hold of the handle of my case and tugged it into the aisle, along the carriage and down on to the platform. Luckily, a cool-looking porter sauntered up with a trolley.
‘I’m so grateful,’ I said to the woman, whose forehead glistened with perspiration.
She glared at the other passengers who were flowing around us like a torrent round a boulder. ‘It’s come to something if we can’t help a poor bloody cripple.’
I smiled. ‘It’s only temporary.’
She clicked her tongue. ‘I hope so, I’m sure.’ She trotted away on fat little legs.
My porter was waiting patiently by an open carriage door at a platform on the far side of the station when I hobbled up on my crutches, feeling feverish with anxiety and exhaustion.
The carriage was one of those old-fashioned ones with a corridor and compartments seating six. An old lady sitting by the door drew back her legs to accommodate my elephantine limb. I fell into the window seat and brushed my damp hair from my forehead with a glove beaded with moisture. The porter put Siggy’s basket on the seat beside me and my suitcase into the rack. I gave him a twenty-pence piece, which I could ill afford. He looked at it as though I had handed him something phosphorescent with putrefaction. A whistle blew and the train began to crawl out of the station.
While I waited for my breathing to return to normal, I ran a cursory eye over my fellow passengers. Opposite me was a wispy blonde with magenta lipstick. She was studying a magazine with intense concentration, holding it at an angle that made it possible for me to see photographs of the princess of Wales peeping shyly from beneath the brims of various neat little hats. The marriage of Charles and Diana the summer before had provided the stuff of dreams for every woman in the land. She turned to a picture of the balcony kiss, put her head on one side and pursed her lips slightly, perhaps imagining what it was like to be kissed by a prince of the blood royal.
Next to her was a small boy, who fixed his eyes on my plastered leg. The corner seat diagonally opposite mine was taken by a dark-haired man who wore a coat with an astrakhan collar. He was reading the New Scientist. The old lady who had drawn back her legs to make room for me had taken out a bag of sweets and was sucking one with a slow circular motion of her jaw, while staring at the picture of a heathery mountain and lake above the man’s head.
‘What’ve you done cha leg?’ asked the small boy.
‘I’ve told you not to ask personal questions, Gary,’ said the woman with the magazine, not looking up. ‘It’s rude.’
‘Was you run over?’
‘I’ve broken my foot.’
‘Was there masses of blood?’
‘No.’ I stared out of the window, hoping to discourage further questions. As it was dark I could see nothing but smeary, shivering trickles, twinkling lights and my own reflection.
‘How’re they goin’ to get it off? With a hammer?’
‘A little saw, actually.’
Gary seemed to cheer up a little. ‘They might saw your leg off too, by mistake. What’s in that box?’ He pointed to Siggy’s cage. ‘I thought I saw it move.’
I put my hand on the basket to hold it still, for Siggy had decided he had had enough imprisonment and was trying to tunnel his way through the wicker with his teeth. ‘Nothing interesting.’
‘I wanna see.’
It seemed a good moment to visit the lavatory. I stood up and took hold of the basket.
The elderly woman’s eyes had closed. She sat with her knees apart and her feet rolled outwards. I tried to step over her but my cumbersome limb made manoeuvring difficult and I accidentally trod on her foot. She drew herself up with a little scream, kicking my good leg on which all my weight was resting so that I fell back on to the knees of the man with the astrakhan collar. He muttered something incomprehensible beneath his breath and put me back on my feet.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to the woman. She looked furious.
I apologized to the man but he was busy smoothing out his New Scientist which I had accidentally crushed and did not look up. I struggled down to the lavatory at the end of the corridor; it barely had room for me, my cast and Siggy’s cage all at once. Returning to the compartment I accidentally buffeted the man’s knees with Siggy’s cage. This time he met my profuse apology with a nod of his head and a fleeting glance in which I read exasperation.
‘So I should think!’ said the elderly lady waspishly, and unfairly; this time her person was unscathed.
‘C’n I see what’s in it now?’
Gary was a maddeningly persistent child.
‘There’s nothing to see …’ As I teetered towards my seat, the shawl caught on the old woman’s knees and Siggy was momentarily revealed.
‘I saw it! I saw it!’ shouted Gary. ‘It’s a rat! A huge grey rat! With a long tail like a snake’s!’