She was a woman sitting on the train between Durham and Newcastle and she was whispering to her self. I didn’t notice her when I got on, she may have been there already. She must have been in her early thirties, perhaps a bit older but her already greying hair was scraped back into a bun and her steel rimmed glasses lent her an air of gentility or even seriousness. She was in seat eleven in the last carriage, facing forward, upright and she was recounting something, retelling her self a story it seemed, over and over again. Her lips were moving, forming vowels and consonants and words and sentences that were playing in her head and only the odd syllable would hiss form her mouth, a string of esses like a mouse behind the skirting board scratching away.
Her hands were moving, adding weight to her words and emphasis where it was required. I had no idea what it was that she was saying but perhaps it was a speech or a monologue, a soliloquy that she was recounting and revisiting. Perhaps it was her part in a play that she was rehearsing, playing out her role and interacting with the other characters on a stage set only in her mind.
After a while she went quiet, or rather her lips had stopped and she raised her right hand and held it wrist out straight and fingers hanging loosely down, poised as if to play a piano and then her hand came down, crashing down against an imaginary keyboard and playing the notes that rang out in silence. But only her right hand played, its fingers dancing on the keys forming chords, moving up and down the scales, arpeggios while her left hand clutched her red bag tightly to her lap. And all the time she was facing forward, upright while her lips kept moving, telling a tale or singing a song that only she could hear.
I read my book, not looking at her but aware of her whispering until the train eventually pulled into Newcastle station and came to a stop. I stood up to get off. I let her out of her seat into the corridor in front of me and she said ‘sorry’ but for what I was not sure and then later I passed her on the platform, she had put on a beige raincoat and her lips were still moving and I could still hear the faintest of hisses but her hand had stopped, her fingers were no longer moving and the music had come to an end.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 