Pauline (contains a few rude words)

A piece submitted, and published in, the Revivals issue of The Edge Magazine 2019

Pauline placed the noose over her head and around her neck, pulling gently to feel it cut sharp against her skin. It should not have felt this heavy. Gravity, it was all gravity.

She faced the tinted, automatic door - sufficient surface lighting to provide an adequate full-length mirror. Her shoulders hunched. Gravity pulling them down. There was no life in the woman who had once graced the talc-covered sprung dancefloors of Northern Soul all-nighters up and down the North of England. Gravity couldn’t pull them south in those days. It was all about the North.

She’d once owned a scooter, a Vespa Primavera 50. The bike was registered as a 50cc engine, but with a re-mod 125cc fitted; this allowed her to drive without learner plates. She’d worn a long faded green Parka, with badges of the clubs she rode with. She created some memories at those rallies, that she couldn’t remember. Brighton, Blackpool, Tynemouth and as far away as Cornwall. She was cool, she still had the Parka.

Pauline had been the cool girl, well, one of them. She had all of the best moves back then. She sported short-cropped dark hair and dresses that could have sold for fortunes in Covent Garden boutiques. The dresses she had sewn herself from market bought cotton destined to become curtains. She remembered them flaring up as she spun and spun, helicoptering across those wooden floors. In those days, there was no gravity, no weight, no worry.

Pauline had taken many lovers during these years, until gravity began. The gravity of responsibility had forced a settling down. She’d made a success of it though, it was money which weighed her pockets down. Down-payments on properties, deposits down. Down quilts, for her and the kids. Pulled muscles after football, pulled them out of the shit many times. But the kids were gone, pulled south by university and work; their own responsibilities. Down with the kids, in many ways - his young bride, lived south, near her kids.

Glancing up at the door, she barely recognised the woman staring back at her. Gravity, pulling her down. A tired, grey image, barely reminiscent of the girl she had once been. When had gravity had so much influence on her face? ‘My cheeks, oh god, my cheeks, I look like Droopy the Basset Hound’ she thought. ‘That makesh me maaaad’.

Raising her hands, Pauline pulled back her skin just below the ear lobe, then let go. “I’m melllltinnnng” she sniggered as she tightened her cheeks once again. ‘Old, young, old young, old.’

Pauline could feel gravity pulling at her sleepy eyes. The sandy sting of a late wake up pulled against her lashes as she rubbed away the dust. She could feel them carrying an evening of broken sleep and worry. Three lines under each dark bag, clearly visible in the makeshift mirror. The wrinkled life-map of tears and laughter impossible to hide, even with the majority of Dorothy’s Avon catalogue. ‘A lottery win and I’m having those filled’ she thought. The pursed lip-lines from forty years of twenty Lambert a day though, well she knew they were her own doing.

Jim had asked if she was unwell, saying she “looked shattered”. She was indeed shattered but what did he expect? Jim was the part cause of the problem anyway. Jim would miss her when she was gone. Pauline would show him how much of his weight she carried. Pauline would show him gravity, show him what he made her carry.

“Anyway, you’re late again,” barked Jim. His bulging red face reminding her of twenty years of waste. “Badge on show or you’re not getting in!”

Pauline placed the noose over her head and around her neck, pulling gently to feel it cut sharp against her skin. It should not have felt this heavy. The years with this noose chipping away at her life, slowly killing her. But, it was not gravity which broke the safety catch. It was not gravity which thrust the lanyard to the floor. It was Pauline. She looked at the badge lying cracked, face-up on the concrete. She lifted her head, her chest and pushed her shoulders back, straightening her body.

“Fuck you Jim” she said. “And fuck your job.”

She turned, smiling, back to find that long-lost coat.