I have just arranged my legs comfortably by the time I begin to regret my choice of carriage, as that all too familiar combination of smells engulfs me: beer, tobacco and the body odour which develops after long immersion in both of the above. I pray silently that it was the contribution of a passer-by, someone on their way to the toilet in the next carriage, or more likely the buffet cart, in search of more elaborate bitter smelling liquids. It can’t be the body beside me, he’s asleep. I think. He’s breathing quite deeply; he’s either got poor sinuses or is on the cusp of a snore. I’ve been sat here too long now to give him a searching gaze, looking at your window-seat neighbour is a privilege reserved for the first few minutes after settling. It’s dark outside and we’re deep into the countryside, to look now would be too obvious, I’d have to pretend to be looking at my own reflection. If he’s asleep that would be safe but if he’s awake he’d either assume me vain or call me up on wanting a peep at his face which, though a seemingly innocent act, has some sort of stigma attached to it. It suggests you’ve seen something a little funny that you want a closer look at, and if, heaven forbid, the neighbour does turn out to harbour some sort of strikingly obvious facial deformity, the worst thing you could do is acknowledge it. Isn’t it? No I won’t risk it now. This is too good a spot to give up now, right next to the baggage shelves; I wouldn’t want to lose this. I can keep myself busy, a book might distract me from looking up at him, but music would probably be better help in ignoring the smell. But I can’t do both, I’ll end up listening to the lyrics and mixing them up with the words on the page, like on that six hour journey to Edinburgh where I kept inserting “sexy” into the conversations of Austen characters. Maybe there’s some deficient part of my brain that cannot distinguish between visual and aural senses. Maybe that will be useful one day. At the moment I wouldn’t mind confusing smell and aural, I wouldn’t mind hearing these hostile odours – but then that could lead to all sorts of misallocated sensations; I could start envisioning cans of lager and cigarettes floating above the seat of my aromatic neighbour. But then perhaps I could creep behind him, with the encouragement of my fellow shallow-breathing passengers, and pour rose water on the culprit. And be the savoir of the entire carriage. That’s a bit fanciful, I don’t carry rose water. Grandma used to, and I would covet it, gently unscrewing the top and sniffing at its miniscule opening – I was not permitted to spray it, Mum told me it was incredibly expensive and for it to be sprayed by anyone but Grandma, and at any other than the allotted time, would be wasteful. Perhaps that’s why I never thought it smelt of much. Grandma would always carry with her the most delicious scent, a mixture of lemon (which she used so liberally in her ice tea), hairspray and what I assume was rose water. Years later during a Christmas shopping trip to Solihull we went to The Body Shop and I saw it on the shelf. It sat there like a pristine purple jewel, barely an inch tall, besides dozens of its sisters. The effect of which was like seeing a row of Fabergé eggs lined up beside each other, all with the same pattern repeated, painfully identical. These preposterous Rose Water Eau de Parfums were, despite my scrutinising gaze, indistinguishable from the precious nugget of violet glass I used to find floating in amongst Grandma’s powder puffs and lipsticks and hair brushes, and then later amongst rattling orange pill bottles, tissues, and endless variants of toffees. By the time I saw the rose water on the shelf of a high-street store Grandma had been dead for nearly two years, and I found that my crystallised memory of her was so cruelly tarnished by that day that I never revisited the shop, or any of its kind.
The smell in the carriage seems to have dissipated a little, so I uncross my legs and reach down between them into the meagre leg room where my handbag is propped on the footrest, which, don’t get me wrong I appreciate but is never used by anyone and truly only leaves less space for possessions and, well, feet. I pull out a book, one which was recommended by a friend as being “perception-altering”. It’s written by a man, which makes me contritely sceptical, but Ali will insist in asking me on my page-count to-date so I persevere. I’m about to open it when I hear a squeak to my left.
‘Oh dear would you like a tissue?’ I look without thinking, 90 degree angle, no subtlety here, but maybe such boldness is allowed in emergencies. Emergencies often call for tissues, as I’m sure Grandma believed. The squeaker is a woman in her seventies, with brilliantly preserved chestnut-brown hair, with elegant, liver-spotted hands which protrude like twigs from a sand-coloured suede jacket as she delivers tissues to her neighbour.
“Thank-you. Thanks.” He’s keeping his words to a minimum, and as the white of her balmed tissues reach his face I see a drop of red appear on them. Blood is running slowly but steadily from his nose, I hadn’t noticed it on his face and chin, I’d hardly looked at his face, but as that bright, gaudy red appeared and expanded on the white tissue and it became suddenly so much more obscene, reminiscent of hospital beds, of swaddling.
In the peripheral of my right eye I see an orange orb float up and realise it is the head of the man beside me, whose conspicuous colouring was until now disguised by the hood of a mud-green duffle coat. “Sorry?” he says, looking at me with a face so round and heavy-browed that it could have been threatening were it not for his inquisitive eyes and sleep-scrambled voice.
“What? Sorry are you-”
“You said something.”
“Oh, nothing, just that.” I motion to the seats to our left.
“Just what dear? Is everything okay?”
“Oh,” I chuckle and instantly wish I hadn’t, in case the bleeding man thinks I am laughing at his expense. I try to whisper but realise how oddly intimate it feels and raise my voice, “just that man over there, he has a nose bleed.”
“What?”
“That man, that man has a nose bleed.”
“What man?” The orange man leans in, peering across at our neighbours as if the space between were a valley rather than a hip-twistingly narrow aisle. “That boy?”
“Yeah that guy.” I whisper while looking firmly down at my unopened book, feeling etiquette disintegrate around me.
“That boy.”
“Alright whatever but he’s probably looking now so…”
“Oh don’t you worry about that, the boy’s too polite to notice.”
“Okay, okay stop talking,” I stumble and then let out a desperate “please”
“Yeah but look at him.” He finds this funny, Orange actually chuckles to himself. “Puffy jacket? Only two people wear those, Marty McFly and the young patrons of Jack Wills.”
I’m agitated and slightly confused now, how has this man so quickly pulled me into his mockery of the haemorrhaging man/boy? “Look he’s got a nosebleed who cares what he’s wearing?” I say, in the hope of sounding sharp, and for a second he appears defeated, straightening his back and moving away, but he’s clearly only evaluating me, eyeing me not only up and down but side to side, as he had been previously too distracted to do. Then he moves in closer than before, an attempt at subtlety.
“His chin’s so smooth, and look at that mole, he could cover it up with stubble but he doesn’t know about its big warty future.” I giggle, it’s a horribly girlish giggle but Orange smiles with victory in his eyes. “It’s hereditary anyway,” he continues, “so really it’s not his fault, men don’t get nosebleeds, just kids on buses, actually I’ve never seen a nosebleed on a train, that’s something isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Well it proves my point, noses bleed on coaches, coaches destined for swimming galas and the sea life centre and whatever, Disneyworld.”
“You went to Disneyworld on a school trip?”
“No, obviously.” He looks me in the eye, that was a stupid question. And what is this? Shame! shame bubbling up in me – something in me wants to impress Orange.
“Oh.” That’s the best response I can come up with.
“He must be Jewish.”
“That’s so racist.”
“He got it from his Father, the nose bleeds, he said a moment ago, were you not listening?”
“How is that Jewish?”
“They said that his Father’s stopped when he turned thirteen?” The assuredness in his tone squeezes my stomach, I have no response. “When he became a man? Are you not listening to me either?”
He smiles again, this time he’s showing teeth. They’re perfectly straight, but yellow, even brown in some places and the immediate and uncontainable reaction in my gut must show momentarily on my face because he quickly retracts it and sits back.
“I’m going to read now,” I say, “I’ve got so much work to do.”
“I’m really just trying to tell you you’re right.” He says, this time looking forward.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Sure. I mean it’s not his fault that he’s been put in reverse, clearly that boy has been forced by his situation to be a child forever, did you see the way that old woman responded to him?”
“She just gave him a tissue.”
“She gave him her tissue, it was all crumpled up, only a mother would do that. Then she went up two carriages to find a toilet.”
“She probably needed to…y’know.”
“Nah she’s just sparing his poor degenerate feelings.”
“You said you were being harsh on him before!”
“Hey a bastard’s a bastard.” At this I can’t contain a laugh and snort quite loudly.
“Yes, King Henry,” I say, acutely aware that I’m using his confidence to feed mine, “but you don’t need to say it. And he’s not. Is he?”
“Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s the same principle. He'll be forever trapped in a state of childish neediness and therefore incapable of taking over any sort of masculine position in the household or business world. He’ll spend the rest of his life appealing to strangers because he might need them later, so his kindly blue eyes manage to find the mother-figure in the carriage and sit by her? That’s routine. He has been locked into the path of good manners and an appealing face just like all those beside him will be momentarily led into the path of, perhaps uncharacteristic, generosity.”
“How do you know it’s a façade?”
“What? No, face, appealing face.”
“You implied façade.”
“When you sat down beside me I probably implied snorer, no?” I can feel a sudden heat in my cheeks and I stutter, making noises but no words in particular, just filling the space where I should speak, should I have a clever comeback? Or apologise? “Sorry,” he says, “didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, you haven’t offended me!” A larger smiles breaks out and I make possibly too much effort to avoid looking at his teeth.
“I think I should move.”
“No really it’s fine, please.”
“But still, maybe I should –”
“Please don’t leave.”
His voice breaks on the last word, as if about to fall into a coughing fit, but he doesn’t, he’s looking at me, he’s too afraid to cough in case he put me off or, worse, misses my reply. I know this; without looking up I know this, so again I pick up my book and settle it on my lap. “Okay.” He smiles widely, and returns to leaning against the window.
My Grandma always had a toffee in her mouth, that’s why Mum always spoke for her, even if I try really hard I can’t remember her voice. I know that her elocution lessons would have given her clipped enunciation, but that may well have faded in age, and twang of Southern English may well have crept back in. But I cannot know, I cannot place how she would’ve said my name, whether she went up at the end like most people do, or whether she pronounced the vowel funny. If Grandma had ever smiled I don’t remember it, and she probably had yellow teeth.
