Sick Notes by Gwendoline Riley

Author:Gwendoline Riley [Gwendoline Riley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446485767
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

8

I thought I wanted to walk home, but I find I don’t have the energy, so I go to the bus stop. In Piccadilly Gardens the rock kids are all acting casual – sitting hunched on the lawns asking each other who’s here and who’s coming. They pull up their jersey hoods against the sharp wind, which quivers the stiff branches of all the decorative saplings that are stabbed into tiny squares of earth amongst the benches. Pigeons cut up the blank sky.

Upstairs on the bus I sit in the last empty double seat. The thin air is dank and there’s a breathy grey film on the windows. There’s the smell of worn-out mint gum and of sweet shampoo, from the girl in front of me who is combing her wet blonde hair out over and over. I watch her and I don’t think about anything. Then I watch a puddle of spilt drink in the aisle elongating with the acceleration, licking at a screwed-up sweet wrapper as the bus heaves itself away from a stop.

A man huffs his way upstairs: fifty-odd, in a striped shirt, a leather jacket. He stands in the aisle mouth-breathing with one hand tight on the smeared metal banister. Everyone with a free seat next to them looks absorbed in themselves and the windows they can’t see out of. When he sits down I move just enough so our legs aren’t touching, that’s all. I close my eyes and lean my head against the damp glass. He nudges me as he struggles to take his bomber jacket off. The grey leather squeaks. He’s all elbows. I can smell his sweat spreading. I try and get engrossed in an excitable phone conversation on the seat behind me. With my eyes still closed I lift my eyebrows and press my lips together when the he-said she-said prompts. I breath in time with a baby’s crooning crying downstairs. But I have to move up again, a little, because his leg keeps pressing mine and I can feel his soft flesh through the fabric, shifting. Can hear a ticking noise, too. He presses against me again and I’m going to just get up and go and stand downstairs, but then I look round at him. Down at him.

‘Jesus. Fuck’s sake,’ I say. I shoo him off, tutting, ‘Go away. Get off the bus, you fuck. Go on.’

He gets up. He looks at me with sulky little boy eyes before he goes back down the stairs. He doesn’t say anything. I can’t imagine his voice. People look round. Someone laughs. People tell people what happened. I press my hands flat against the seat in front and put my head forward.

At an old man’s stall by the bus stop I buy a squashy pear, its skin blooming with traffic soot. I rub it on my anorak and eat it as I walk home. My fingers and wrist get wet from the thin juice twirling down. My hand feels freezing. My shoe ribbons are trailing.

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