GETTING TO DR TEMPLE’S office involved a bus journey into town and then a short walk. My travel pass had expired, and it was symptomatic of my general feeling of Weltschmerz, of anomie, that I hadn’t even bothered to renew it last week. Marianne. Everything else was just trivia. I dropped two pounds into the driver’s slot, caring not one whit that it bore an ugly sticker saying no change given, and that I had therefore needlessly sacrificed twenty pence. Who gave a fig about twenty pence, when it came down to it?
All of the seats already had an occupant, which meant I was going to have to position myself next to a stranger. In a different mood, I enjoyed this game: one had ten seconds to scan the occupants and select the slimmest, sanest, cleanest-looking person to sit next to. Choose wrongly, and the fifteen-minute journey into town would be a much less pleasant experience – either squashed beside a sprawling fatty, or mouth- breathing to minimize the penetration of the reek emanating from an unwashed body. Such was the excitement of travelling on public transport.
I took no pleasure in the game today, however, and merely seated myself as close to the front as possible, taking no interest in the merits or demerits of my companion. As luck would have it, she was an elderly woman, slightly on the plump side but not inconveniently so, who smelled of hairspray and kept herself to herself. Good.
She got off at the next stop and then I had the seat to myself. More people got on, and I watched a handsome young man – tall, slim, with disproportionately large brown eyes – play the scanning game in order to select a seat. I looked forward to sitting next to him, being sure that he was neither mad nor malodorous.
However, he walked straight past me and sat on the other side of the bus, next to a short, rough-looking man in a sports jacket. I couldn’t believe it! Two people got on at the next stop – one went upstairs, the
other, once again, eschewed the spare seat next to me and walked towards the back of the bus, where, I noticed when I turned around to look, she seated herself next to a man with no socks on. His bare ankles looked distressingly white above his oxblood leather brogues, which he had teamed with green jogging bottoms. A madman.
I stared at the floor, my mind racing. Did I … did I look like the kind of person who ought to be avoided in a game of bus seat selection? I could only conclude, in the face of the evidence, that I did. But why?
I would have to reason my way to the answer. I wasn’t overweight. I didn’t smell – I showered daily, and I laundered my clothes regularly. That left madness, then. Was I mad? No. No, I wasn’t. I was suffering from clinical depression, but that was an illness. It wasn’t madness. Did I look mad, then? Act mad? I didn’t think so. But then, how would I know? Was it my scar? My eczema? My jerkin? Was it a sign of madness even to think you might be mad? I rested my elbows on my knees and placed my head in my hands. Oh God oh God oh God.
‘You all right, hen?’ a voice said, and I felt a hand on my shoulder, causing me to startle and sit up again. It was the man with no socks, who was en route to the front of the bus.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, not making eye contact. He sat down next to me while the bus approached the next stop.
‘You sure?’ he said kindly.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I repeated. I risked a look at his face. He had very gentle eyes, the same delicate shade of green as newly emerged buds on trees.
‘Just taking a wee moment, hen?’ He patted me on the arm. ‘Everybody needs to take a wee moment to themselves now and again, eh?’ He smiled, full of warmth, and stood up to leave. The bus was slowing down.
‘Thanks!’ I called after him. He didn’t look round, but raised a hand in salutation, trousers riding up past his bare ankles as he left.
He wasn’t mad. He just didn’t have any socks on.
Eleanor, I said to myself, sometimes you’re too quick to judge people. There are all kinds of reasons why they might not look like the kind of person you’d want to sit next to on a bus, but you can’t sum someone up in a ten-second glance. That’s simply not enough time. The way you try not to sit next to fat people, for example. There’s nothing wrong with being overweight, is there? They could be eating because they’re sad, the
same way you used to drink vodka. They could have had parents who never taught them how to cook or eat healthily. They could be disabled and unable to exercise, or else they could have an illness that contributes to weight gain despite their best efforts. You just don’t know, Eleanor, I said to myself.
The voice in my own head – my own voice – was actually quite sensible, and rational, I’d begun to realize. It was Mummy’s voice that had done all the judging, and encouraged me to do so too. I was getting to quite like my own voice, my own thoughts. I wanted more of them. They made me feel good, calm even. They made me feel like me.
