THURSDAY 7TH FEBRUARY 1980
I set off from school with even more of a sense of escaping this week, even though it was raining, the kind of irresistible damp drizzle that gets through every crack. If I had clothes of my own here I could have changed into them before leaving, but I don’t so I couldn’t. Arlinghurst wants its girls to be recognisable at all times. If they could make us wear the uniform in the holidays they would. At least the coat is good and solid, and the hat might be awful but it does keep the rain off, mostly.
Wim was waiting in Gobowen station. It’s not much of a station, more like a bus shelter beside the line with a ticket machine and a couple of empty hanging baskets. He was sitting in the shelter with his feet up on the glass, folded up like a paperclip. His bike was chained to the railings outside, getting wet. There was a fat woman with a child sitting next to him, and a balding man with a briefcase, all in raincoats. Wim was wearing the same duffle coat as before. Next to him, the other people looked as if they were in black and white while he was in colour. He didn’t see me for a moment, then the balding man saw me and made a fuss about getting up to give me his seat, so Wim noticed and smiled and got up instead. It was funny, we were kind of shy with each other. It was the first time we’d been alone together since Saturday, and we weren’t really alone, they were there, but they didn’t quite count. I didn’t know how to behave, and if he did—and he should, as he’s had a lot more practice—he didn’t show it.
The train came, people got off, and then we got on. It was only a two-carriage train, and again full of people from North Wales with their funny singsong voices and yes/no questions. We managed to get a double seat because a nice lady moved across to give us one. We couldn’t really talk about anything, because she was sitting across from us, along with a worried young man with a cat in a carrier on his lap. The cat kept crying, and he kept trying to reassure it. It must be awful taking a cat to the vet on the train. Or maybe he was moving. He didn’t have much with him except the cat, but maybe you wouldn’t. Or perhaps, worst of all, he had to give the cat away, and he was taking it to a new home. If so, though, he’d probably have been crying too, and he wasn’t. The funny thing about the man with the cat was that Wim didn’t notice him at all. When I said something about him, after we were on the platform in Shrewsbury walking along, he didn’t know what I was talking about.
I don’t think Wim goes to Shrewsbury very often, for all that it’s so near. He didn’t know where anything was. He didn’t know there was a bookshop in Owen Owens. I had to go for acupuncture first, so I left him in a cafe—a shiny coffee bar, all chrome and glass, after he’d rejected the one with the nice booths where I went last time because it didn’t have real coffee. I never knew before Saturday that there were any kinds of coffee but Nescafe (or Maxwell House, but they’re the same), granulated coffee you make with boiling water. It seems a funny thing to be fussy about.
The acupuncture went well again. The acupuncturist says the traction might well have done it some violence (that’s the word he used) and been unwise. I’d use considerably stronger language than unwise, but I suppose it is my leg, and just any old leg to him. I looked at the chart the whole time I was on the table, memorising where the points are and what they affect. It could be really useful to know. Just pressing them might help. I can feel the magic, the “chi” when the pins are in, moving smoothly around my body with a jump like a spark-gap where the pain would be. I’m going to try it without needles and see if I can drain the pain out. The easiest thing would be to put it into something, like a rock or a piece of metal, but then anyone picking it up would get it. The acupuncture just drains it out into the world, as far as I can tell. Good trick if you can do it.
Afterwards I went back—faster down the stairs than up them!—to where I’d left Wim. I sat down opposite him. The coffee machine let out a blast of coffee-scented steam. “Let’s go somewhere else,” he said. “I’m sick of this place.”