The tricyclist was blocking the way off the platform while he lectured the ticket collector about facilities for invalids. Neither man immediately acknowledged Ellen. 'Excuse me,' she said to the collector, 'could you ask –'
'Just because I'm in a chair doesn't mean I can't talk.'
'I'm aware of that. So could –'
'See, there's people like her that don't think us cripples ought to be heard. We're just in their way, that's what they think.'
Ellen was growing hotter with frustration, which made her feel heavier still. 'Well, if you don't mind my saying so –'
'I do mind. We're not meant to have feelings, you see,' the old man informed the collector. 'At least there's some that still care about us. She got fired from her job for mistreating the likes of me.'
She might have tried to refute this if the collector hadn't said 'Do you two know each other?'
'I know all I want to know about her, thanks very much.'
'You don't know anything about me.' Despite feeling like a child in an outsize body, Ellen couldn't resist adding 'And I'd rather not know anything about you.'
'See, she admits it. That's how much she cares about cripples, and they were supposed to be her job.'
Ellen had a sense of helplessly performing a script for someone else's amusement or worse. 'I always cared for my patients, however disabled they were.'
'You can see how much, can't you? She won't even face me. Maybe she thinks I'm nothing to look at, but –'
'I don't care how you look,' Ellen said and stared at him. 'It isn't how people are on the outside, it's inside that counts.'
'And you're as bad one way as you are the other. Don't go putting on your nasty face again. I told you, there's no need to make yourself worse.' As Ellen's cumbersome lips shifted he said 'Just dry up, you ugly woman.'
She thought the collector was coming to her defence until he said 'Can you both go through now, please? There's another train in.'
She must have deserved everything, then, since he apparently thought so. As the tricycle moved off with a satisfied hum she brandished her ticket at the collector, though her distended fingers came close to dropping it on the ledge of the booth and letting it lie. She dragged her case and herself across the concourse to the departures monitor and saw that the next train to Huddersfield left in ten minutes. Having shown her ticket to another official, who looked unimpressed by it or her, she blundered into the nearest carriage on the train.
Despite its size, the train was nowhere near full by the time it left the station. Ellen couldn't blame the handful of commuters for wanting to avoid her, especially once she saw her blurred face slithering sluglike across the inside of a bridge. It was as dim as some bedroom item rendered monstrous by a nightmare that refused to dissipate. She closed her bloated eyes and clasped her hands tight in her lap against the temptation to finger her face. They felt like clammy lumps of tripe resting on more of the same, and in general refusing to see only aggravated her sense of herself as just a hulk of loathsome meat. Now and then sunlight flooded over her, unless it was some exudation of her own, which reminded her of the old man's advice. She wished she could indeed dry up and wither too. Writers might be meant to use their own experiences, but she was afraid she'd passed the limit. Her imagination felt crushed by her body, reduced to a sense of the misshapen mass of flesh.
At last the train wavered to a stop in Huddersfield. Once she heard she was alone, unless someone was silently watching her, she opened her eyes and heaved her deformed bulk towards the platform. Perhaps the ticket collector had seen her coming, because he took her ticket without looking at her. She trudged out to a taxi rank, where she felt her midriff swell like an inflated tyre as she bent to the window of the first vehicle. She was sure the driver barely managed not to shrink away, but she wasn't going to subject him to her presence in the car. As soon as she'd obtained directions to Empire Street she stepped back.
The beginning of the route was steeply uphill. The dark sky looked laden with moisture, if no more so than Ellen felt. A bridge over the ring road seemed to coat her with noise and grimy fumes before the route led between a factory and a wall overhung by trees. When she plodded into the shade of the foliage it seemed to leave her moister. Most of the few people she encountered were on the opposite side of the road, and all were by the time she came abreast of them. Were they glancing hastily away from her or from somebody behind her? Surely she was bad enough. If there appeared to be a scrawny shadow on the pavement when she turned her burden of a head, it must be an elongated stain. The clumps of outstretched spindly objects at the ends of two thin twisted branches of the main discolouration couldn't drag her back or down or chase her off.
Beyond the factory a side street led past a copse to Hugh's house. An unpainted gate slouched in the entrance to his garden, more like a scrap of wilderness. However shabby the building was, it looked like a haven to her. Whatever had befallen her, surely Hugh and Charlotte would understand. She was suddenly so desperate to see her family that she grew afraid of being prevented somehow as she and her thunderous luggage made for the house. She had almost reached the gate when she saw Hugh.
He was on the stairs, framed by the window and the doorway of the front room, and seemed paralysed with shock. There was no question that she was the cause of his distress. In a moment Charlotte peered across the room at her and cried out, unless she was too appalled to make a sound. Ellen couldn't run, but she and her case lumbered away as fast as they could. The front door must have opened, because this time she heard Charlotte, whose question only spurred her onwards. 'Oh, Ellen, what have you done to yourself?'
TWENTY-ONE
That couldn't be Ellen, Hugh tried to believe. It mustn't be. Perhaps his thoughts were visible, because she retreated, dragging her wheeled suitcase or using it as support. As soon as she disappeared from the double frame of the doorway and the window he had no idea which way she'd gone. The banister gave a pained creak before he realised how hard he was clutching it. As he managed to relax his grip in case the rail came loose from the uprights, Charlotte ran to open the front door. 'Oh, Ellen,' Hugh heard her cry, 'what have you done to yourself?'
They could have been his words, and he shouldn't let her speak for him. He was too prone to behave as if Rory and their cousins were more capable of just about anything than he was. If he couldn't help Ellen, he was no use whatsoever. He swung towards the sound of Charlotte's footsteps dulled by moss. The hall was straight ahead, and so was the path. He was able to keep Charlotte in sight all the way to joining her outside the gate.
Ellen was heading doggedly towards a clump of trees as if she planned to take cover among them. 'Ellen, don't,' Charlotte called and ran after her. 'Ellen.'
'Where are you going, Ellen? Come in the house.'
The ominous rumble of her luggage faltered to a halt, and then she did. She didn't turn, and even in the silence her voice was barely audible. 'Don't you want your neighbours to see me, Hugh?'
'I always would.' He only mouthed this, from embarrassment more than doubled by Charlotte's presence. Aloud he said 'We don't want them seeing us arguing, do we?'
'There's nothing to argue about. I saw you both.'
'What did you see?' Hugh felt so guilty that he imagined it might help to protest 'We weren't doing anything.'