A Handful of Dust

Here I am in the coffee shop again. Today I decided not to write about the people I see around me, the observation of odd mannerisms, the telling voices, the watching of life go by. I decided instead to read the first chapter of a Carol Shields novel I picked up in a charity shop this morning. I only came across her words earlier this year; it was a strange meeting, a feeling that she'd been missing from my life and I'd finally found her by chance in an airport bookshop. The one I found today is called 'Unless'. Such an evocative word, a word that doesn't really stand alone - there has to be a sentence following: unless what?

"I wanted to write about the overheard and the glimpsed...", I read on page 9.

I looked across at the man sitting opposite me. I noticed he was wearing a silver wedding band. It seems to me now that wedding rings are just doors closed in your face: piss off, you're not allowed in. Slam! I expect I'll meet loads of closed doors from now on. He looked like Louis Theroux, maybe my age, maybe a bit younger. He was off beat, quirky; he was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt and had a dyed red stripe in his hair and his modern watch had an orange face. He was reading. I couldn't see the title, but the cover had an Art Deco feel. It was a Penguin paperback. He leaned forward towards me, as if to show me. It was Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. I remembered the first Waugh I'd read. I was on holiday in the Norfolk Broads with a group of school friends, including my first boyfriend. I smile momentarily, remembering the bleached stripe he had in his hair. A lifetime ago. Books are like music, they remind me of time and place; sometimes I completely forget the story, but I never forget where I was when I read it. My eyes brim with tears and I suddenly feel acutely alone. I look up from my page to find the man had left as quietly as he'd arrived; this happens a lot, I realised.