Fawkesy Ladies

This is going to be a long story, really a series of three vignettes about eccentric women on and under the streets of London – uninformative, but intriguing.

Today is Guy Fawkes day, when the British celebrate the day his plan to blow up parliament was found out and thwarted. Very peculiar to name the day after the antagonist. It would be like calling the 4th of July "British Monarchy Day" or Martin Luther King Day "KKK Day." See how nonsensical it is? To celebebrate they light bon fires and blow up lots of fire works, also a counter-intuitive way to celebrate the day an arsonist and explosives terrorist nearly burned down the Palace of Westminster. At any rate it’s wild bacchanalia around here and people where in unusually jovial spirits. I had a lovely day with family, old friends, and was en route to meet a new friend for a drink near Angel. On my way out of the tube there were a couple of very loud women laughing uproariously in the tube and as I passed by with a hundred others who alighted at the same stop they singled me out to take a photo of them. They explained they wanted to mimic the poster on the wall – a picture of a male ballet dancer lifting a woman upside down, legs spread in the splits. I advised them against it due to their apparent levels of intoxication and thus the potential danger to ones person, but before I could say Guy Fawkes the first woman was doing a split hand stand up against the poster wall, and the second was holding her shirt up… or down, or whatever direction it is when you’re upside down. I just stood sheepishly as stoic faces streamed past the three of us. After a few moments of confused thrashing about they told me to just snap the picture as it was –the second women useless and shamed by the ability of the first, just stuck here head between the other legs and lifted one leg in a Plié. By now I’ve joined in the laughter at this outrageous antic, snapped the photo and politely declined the offer to go drinking at their flat. It wasn’t until I was half way up the escalator I realized what a fool I was. If not for my own delight, then for yours I should have taken a photo myself, so I promptly ran down the wrong direction of the escalator to request the picture on text. Sadly, they were nowhere to be found. So I turned back with nothing to show for the ridiculous incident but a goofy grin on my face.

I was late meeting my friend, but she was later – due to the predictable train delays in this wonderful city. So I people watched. But after a short while I realized I was being watched myself. Standing under the florescent lights of the tube awning I noticed a very intriguing woman standing a few meters away. I do sometimes notice women, but this one I noticed in a very different sort of way, and she was very much noticing me. She held a tabloid close to her face, covering most of it save her eyes. She wore high red boots, a long black skirt, trench coat with the sleeves pushed up and black leather gloves with lace arm warmers. She had large black hair and when she lowered her paper it revealed dark lipstick, over-applied on oversized lips. There was something very Carmen San Diego about her. And then she did the most unbritish thing one could image. She made eye contact. But not just eye contact – she gazed. I know what you’re likely to be thinking about her possible vocation, but I don’t think its so. For one, I’ve had that look – and this was not it. Also, she looked concerned or afraid, but more in an overstated 1920’s silent film melodrama sort of way. She then raised her eyebrows, not to say “well hello there” but something more like “good, you’ve noted my presence” and then before I knew it she was mouthing words – not bad words, like it was a code or message that I should have been expecting. And then just as I was finally turned conspicuously facing toward her with a bewildered look on my face – she looked straight up, as if someone was listening from above, dropped her tabloid, turned and ran away down a dark alley and again I was left to ponder the exchange as the loud sound of her stiletto heals faded into the night.

Finally, my friend arrived, and saved me from these surreptitious women of the night. It was nice, but not nearly so interesting as the other meetings. After our dinner I was seeing my friend off at her stop, and was mid hug when another woman approached us. My friend stepped off the train and abandoned me to my fate with yet another curious woman. This one, though less hilarious or mysterious, but still strange, as the all the trains had been rerouted, and the woman that approached was pointing at a map and rambling on in Portuguese. I apologized for not speaking Portuguese and asked (5 or 6 times) where she was going. “Blah Blah la la la blah Blah blahsito blamino, Clapham North” – she said… my tube stop – but we were both going the opposite direction – coincidence? I think not. I think she was sent by the women in the leather gloves. I offered to escort her home, keeping a wary eye on her at all times. When she sat down, she sat next to me and stared at me intently, body turned fully around in the train seat, but if I looked up she would quickly pivot back to a forward facing position. When we stopped to change trains she followed me one step behind, despite my effort to just walk next to her. She looked nervous and anxious and kept looking over her shoulder, and held onto the strap of my bag as we walked, as though letting go would mean being lost in the dark passages of the underground. Onlookers gave quizzical looks at me with and the Brazilian woman attached to my bag. With no English words and a lot of sign language I learned her name (though I suspect it was a spy alias), occupation, purpose for visit, that she was from Brazil, had been in London for two months and is leaving on Tuesday. I guarded my information more closely. I made sure she got off, as she was snoring loudly in a matter of two minutes lull in our conversation (again, an obvious dramatization). She followed me out and walked the same way home, about fifty meters behind me until I was inside my house. Now lying in bed I wonder if I might have dreamt it, but think I was very awake and also that these intriguing women would make very good characters in the next Woody Allen movie.