Into the white

They’re wait­ing. As I reside in the muffled still­ness of an all too rare sun-dappled after­noon and silently mouth my prayer for peace, I can sense their pres­ence out­side the door. Wait­ing for me.

A snak­ing line of three hun­dred and thirty-three fig­ures queues along the dark cor­ridor, round the bend and down the stairs. They are so des­per­ate to avoid invad­ing any­one else’s pre­cious space, to remain bliss­fully ignor­ant to mere passers-by, that they press their backs up against the painted, peel­ing, repainted walls and barely dare to exhale.

Yet I can hear the shuff­ling feet, care­fully pacing time in their places, and the nervous coughs as sly glances are exchanged before eyes return to gaze at the floor. This wait­ing game seems a pecu­li­arly Brit­ish insti­tu­tion: the epi­tome of polite­ness just beg­ging to be ripped asun­der by the lat­ent viol­ence seeth­ing under the skin and bone. The assembled and expect­ant are clench­ing their knuckles and grit­ting their teeth, because one wrong move will almost cer­tainly res­ult in a burst blood ves­sel or two.

This hal­ted pro­ces­sion may come clad in reg­u­la­tion blacks and greys, but in shape and size they couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent. The straightened and the straight-backed, the straight up and down again; the bent and the bowed, the doubled up and round again; the crossed and the dot­ted, the cornered and the curved again. Each could wax lyr­ical for hours on end about their indi­vidu­al­ity, whilst claim­ing almost in the same breath that they believed in co-operation, team­work, and striv­ing together for a com­mon goal.

They are so eager to please. Why would I want to dis­ap­point them?

I should let them over my threshold. I should throw open my door, my wel­com­ing arms and my dusty pages so they can reac­quaint them­selves with the sur­round­ings and make them­selves at home. Once, not so long ago, I was only too glad of their fre­quent com­pany — even if, at times, their knock­ing was insist­ent, bor­der­ing on fren­zied. I would wel­come them under my roof, wash and clothe them in fresh apparel, listen to their tales from far and wide, then feed them warm words in return for such silver-tongued stor­ies. Their appet­ites would be well and truly sated, and their eyes would gleam as they real­ised they were about to make their mark.

They looked into the white light, sank into the white lined.

Strange, then, that I should now wish to shoo them away, to stand in front of them and shake my fists in a scare­crow scat­ter­ing. I haven’t missed my late night guests. I noted their absence, but never once quer­ied their where­abouts, assum­ing that they had found some bed for the night.

I looked into the white light, warmed myself in the white heat.

I stared into the rising sun and saw half a face. Screwed up my eyes against the fierce glare and soaked up the shad­owy pro­file. Yet that was all I needed. That was more than enough. I listened through the door, and not a single shuff­ling foot­step or nervous cough could be heard. Inside, life went on.

They’ll be back, when the hun­ger grips them. When they need feed­ing. When they’re seized by the insa­ti­able desire to let loose, scream, shout, stamp their feet and demand atten­tion. When they can no longer res­ist the lure of the bright, bright white.