So this is it. Bag
on her lap, Una gazed from the back window of the airport saloon taxi, jaded
and simultaneously irked by the urban degradation, environmental catastrophe,
visual noise like two saucepans banged together. People
actually live here! Dehumanised – minds,
souls dislocated from bodies. Animals? But not like animals. Animals have a
natural sense of being, of moving.
The taxi driver asked gruffly through the plexiglass if she
would like the radio on. Una said ‘no’,
but he didn’t hear her, put it on anyway. Springsteen singing Born to Run - but from what, who? Ourselves?
A meat truck passed by, heading in the opposite direction and
then shortly after a refrigerated lorry. Una imagined cow carcuses strung on
hooks, row upon row, the same way you would hang fur coats, mink, Christmas
decorations. What was Christmas without a
good side of beef anyhow? On her lapel Una wore, had worn for yonks, a
badge that read: ‘Cows are not for Christmas Dinner’. She had to concede
though, in general, she liked America ,
or the notion of it – DIY meat culture aside. And she did once admit to having
a crush on Bill Clinton. Bill who? Her boyfriend had said.
Una was on her way to stay with her sister in Chicago . Her sister had moved out there years previously with
her husband. ‘We’ll be back within a few months’, they had both said, and Una
had felt a horrible jar in her stomach.
‘What’s the matter’, her sister asked, ‘oh nothing’, Una replied, went
to the bathroom of her Chelsea
flat, was sick. Man and womankind commiserated with all the doe-eyed boys who stumbled out into the world with high-fluted notions only for them to be
left crushed and deserted, but what about the girls? The girls who weren’t allowed high-fluted notions in the first place!
Half the time.
‘I just want to be with someone nice’, she had said at college to
friends, and she had got someone nice, and she had felt smothered, as if she was being
buttered and fattened up for the oven. Then she had thought she liked the
thrill of the chase, but the two boys she had chased were smarter, or rather
more heartless than her and treated her like a rag doll, Jessie from fucking Toy Story but without cowboy boots and hat … except
perhaps at hen-dos – Una had been on far too many of late.
Una remembered her sister’s hen. They had gone deluxe camping – glamping? - in the woods somewhere near London . She had really tried to be happy for her sister, and join in the general
uproar but something in her told her that this would never be for her, oh, and then he got down on one knee … the Spanish
steps …
She turned her attention back to the radio - there was an
advert for beds, double beds, and then a news article about Hilary.
No comments:
Post a Comment