3: Corinne

If Corinne ever had an identity distinct from this anonymous lost soul, she could no longer remember it. There was nothing more left of her now, in the dank November evening, than a beseeching expression, and a paper coffee cup in which half a dozen copper coins rattled, and the grubby knitted shawl she huddled under in her Covent Garden doorway. Sometimes these ingredients almost seemed like a life; more often not.

Just at that moment, things were hazy. As was the case all too often these days. Fragments of memory lay about her mind in great jumbled piles, like the pieces from a hundred jigsaws all mixed up, but she couldn't even begin to fit together the corners and edges, let alone make sense of the overall picture.

There were moments when she thought she grasped more; when great clumps of the past would drift through her mind, taunting her with their coherence, their intelligibility. At those times she might read parts of the story to herself, and identify with the woman she had been in other lives. Sometimes she could even trace some of the threads from there to here.

Coming to London, for instance. That was one of her most teasingly tangible memories.

Corinne had never been quick-witted, never been especially able to make sense of the world before it changed around her. She wasn't stupid -- she learned right enough, could read and write and add up -- but wasn't good at putting things together, lost focus easily, got distracted and confused. She experienced perfect clarity at the level of words and sentences, but by the time she got to the end of the page everything tended to be in a bit of a muddle.

She had gotten by in her youth, back in her little Scots village. People had made allowances and she had made an effort. She always did her best to be independent, to support herself. If there was one thing she really couldn't bear -- and sometimes she even remembered why -- it was being a burden on others.

But there wasn't much else she could be, there; and, after her mother died, nowhere to hide. She worked briefly as a shop assistant in the tiny post office, but the blurry, dissociative patchwork that was her experience of the world didn't lend itself to satisfactory performance of such a job, and the manager soon, regretfully, let her go.

She came across an advert for an au pair in The Lady. She was never clear how -- nor why it had struck her as appealing -- but somehow she cast herself in that role. It was exactly what she needed. It would get her out of this backwater and into the big city, where she could disappear, where nobody would know her business and they wouldn't condescend. Deciding that it would best to apply in person, she boarded a coach and was gone.

Sometimes she would have a vague recollection of talking to the lady on the telephone; sometimes it seemed like she went to the house. There was a lot of awkwardness in those memories, but the specifics remained stubbornly out of reach. One way or another, she didn't get the job; as anyone could have told her she wouldn't, if anyone had been interested, if she had let anyone know her plans.

And so she'd found herself in London, with nowhere to stay and nothing to do and only a vague sense of what was going on. She found herself on the hostile streets with hostile people in a hostile world whose rules of operation were so far beyond her understanding that she was only dimly aware they existed at all.

Just about the only thing she came to understand was that everything she did was wrong. There was always someone shouting at her, pushing her around, moving her on. Days were bewildering, evenings worse. Only in the darkest hours of the night, when everyone else was asleep, did things calm down enough for her to grasp the vague shape of the situation, and then she wept, shivering in whatever dank refuge she'd been driven to, great heaving sobs of uncomprehending agony.

Sometimes she ate, and sometimes she washed herself, and sometimes she almost seemed like anyone else. Sometimes she wished she was back home, being a burden on people, condescended to; but even if she'd had the money to get back, she didn't know the way. Didn't even know what the village was called.

She was arrested a few times. The police said she was on drugs, which she wasn't, and a vagrant, which she was. She didn't argue, it was warm and dry in the cells, and sometimes they fed her. She lacked the guile to get herself locked up on purpose, but every now and then it made a nice change.

She begged, of course. What else was she to do? She wasn't good at it, could no more understand the rules of that activity than anything else, but sometimes she received a few coins from suburban commuters wanting to be rid of this shambling apparition by the quickest means possible. She would accost passengers at busy bus stops and pedestrians waiting to cross traffic-heavy roads, and every now and then one might respond.

Just once, just for a few minutes, someone paid attention.

"Spare some change, sir?" She always called them "sir" and "ma'am", it seemed respectful.

Her mark was turning away with the usual cold disregard and something crumpled within her. She wasn't quite crying, but her empty despair poured out:

"Please don't ignore me. Please. I've been asking people all night and no-one even looks at me. One person gave me this." It takes the man a moment to identify the small pink cuboid as a pencil eraser. "The only thing I've got all evening. What for? I don't understand. Then he laughed and pushed me away."

Somehow this struck a chord with the listener, and he slowly unravelled her whole fragmentary story. He was won over completely -- if she'd had any guile at all she could have taken him for a ride. Before long they were crying together by the 73 bus stop. He gave her all the money he had, but it was the contact that stayed with her, that occasionally flitted across her mind in the years to come as one of those taunting memories, almost making sense. When she slept that night, someone stole most of the cash, but she dreamt of having someone listen to her, and weep with her, and care, and they were sweet dreams.

But that was years ago.

This night, this dank autumn night, she was huddling in her doorway with bewilderment on all sides. It was cold and drizzling and her body was a tapestry of aches and pains, which was quite normal. Her feet were swollen and she dared not take off her shoes. She'd eaten sometime recently -- perhaps today, perhaps yesterday -- and had a few coins in her cup, so she wasn't too focussed on the begging, or on anything. Which was quite normal. There were plenty of people on the streets, spilling out of restaurants and bars, even a few still-open shops, so it couldn't have been too late.

She was used to this, in her way. Crowds all around, not one person in them even registering she was there, and they nearly as absent and indistinct to her. Everyone was blurry, smeared out, background. Until he walked by.

The clarity was shocking, like a physical blow. What was he doing here, amongst this throng? His presence was so concrete, so palpable, that it showed the rest of the world for the grey murk it was. Corinne couldn't look away.

For a moment, he faltered, suddenly aware of being seen. He looked around, picked her out, held her gaze. Held it hard.

His expression softened. His mouth formed words she could not comprehend, and he smiled. Warmth flowed through her, and her aches faded, and her shoes suddenly seemed a little less tight. Odd memories came to her, but these ones did not tease; perhaps they weren't hers at all. There was a thundering of hooves across the moor, and the baying of hounds, and lusty cries on the high wind, and the clash of iron on iron.

Then the huntsman turned and walked away, and was quickly lost to her sight.
Posted by matt at November 4, 2004 01:33 AM