'Change' by Emilie Lamplough
Posted by sregan | Filed under prose
Triumph over personal trauma, now that's the bestseller. 'Mislit' they call it, misery literature, market mostly female - what does that say? It flatters the reader's sense of moral outrage.
"What are you reading?" one elderly woman says to another sitting opposite her on the Tube.
The other lifts the paperback up only slightly to reveal the front cover, thumb still holding open the pages - A Child Called It. The title and colourless picture of a wide-eyed boy together scream for sympathy.
The woman was just trying to make conversation, but the other had barely acknowledged anyone had spoken to her. Maybe she's going deaf at sixty-one. Doubtful. Deeply involved in the distant childhood struggle, she glances up only momentarily at each station, turning the pages in search of the author's next minutely described account of abuse; being beaten, burned on a stove or just starved for days on end. Not the cheeriest of reads.
As she is reading, a young man boards the trains at the far end of the carriage. He's bony and grave with a rough-looking face, and is dressed in tattered jeans and a grubby jacket. He can't be any more than twenty-five.
In one arm he carries a sign made of cardboard: "Please help - spare change?" In the other, he gently rattles a Starbucks coffee cup of coins, walking down between the aisles of passengers.
They don't want to see this. Nobody wants to acknowledge this man and people suddenly become immersed by the second-hand news in their Metro magazines, or checking old messages on their phones.
The woman is more engrossed than ever before in her jovial little book.
Perhaps if he says something?
"Spare change?" The words come out in a raspy sort-of-voice and he coughs and asks again more clearly, though careful not to be too loud. "Any spare change? Any spare change you may have greatly appreciated. Spare change for food ladies?"
The woman shakes her head without looking at him.
The one sitting opposite guiltily roots her pockets and drops a few pounds in the cup.
He thanks her and is obliged to move on. The young man's name is Steve. Years ago he'd married and moved in with his teenage sweetheart. But people grow leaps and bounds in their twenties and seeing her life in a whole new light (those were the words), she'd left within a year, taking half the monthly payments.
This might not have been such a problem had his job not been cut soon after. And then there was the eviction so it wasn't his best of times.
Now here he is, on the bus.
Which is okay. But he wouldn't get on the "Tragic Life Stories" shelf in Waterstone's.
Spare change?
- Emilie Lamplough
