Chapter 13: The Journey

(1) Canonbury

Veronica had just settled herself against the side of the next carriage, having fled from the taunts of a group of unpleasant youths, when the train started to slow down. Soon the doors opened to let in a bunch of new passengers as the train reached Canonbury. Two of the more disapproving of the passengers got out, not without giving our heroine a final withering glare in which the outrage of the righteous and morally upright was plain for her to see. Beneath this magisterial, if unspoken, rebuke, she cowered visibly. It must have been obvious to all that there was nothing of the brazen exhibitionist about her, merely shame of the very deepest kind.

One of the two people who boarded was a man attired in a saffron robe and bare feet. His head was shaved and there were signs that the razor had slipped several times. His eyes had the glazed look of one who is under the influence of a mood changing and possibly illegal substance. In happier times, Veronica would have considered this person an obvious nut case. She would have silently rued the way the capital city seemed to be more full by the day with such irritating eccentrics. Tonight, though, it was she who was standing out from the crowd - and how!

Something of the same reaction must have taken place in the young man's mind, for he glared at Veronica as if resentful that her own extraordinary attire (or lack of it!) was taking away from him the scandalised condemnation that was properly his. He shuffled off down the aisle and took a seat, facing away from the thong-clad Veronica whose perky breasts resumed their elastic and graceful upwards and downwards motion as the train got under way again.

She looked down at her feet, partly in order to avoid the stares of her fellow travellers. Bit by bit, she was getting to like that toenail varnish! It least it WAS covering of a sort, and she was getting in increasingly short supply of that! The more she looked down at those fine unblemished feet, the more she remembered her childhood, when they had been uncovered from one year's end to the next. Why had she become so inhibited these past few years?

After today with all its adventures, some of them pleasing and others excruciatingly awful, she was beginning to feel a little more at ease with her body and the admiration it had drawn from so many. She called back to mind that experience in the hailstorm earlier on when she had been stung all over by the wicked bombardment. This memory caused her head to jerk back up and her back to straighten once again. She had only a few more stops to go on this train and, after a quick walk to the address she had been given, all this would be over! Taking courage from this thought, her spirits began to lift and she heard again Gwendolyn's words. "You must be awfully brave and really jolly tough, even to think about doing a thing like this!"

"YES! I am brave and tough. More than I would ever have given myself credit for!" she thought proudly. Now that she was defiantly returning the stares of the other passengers, they looked embarrassed themselves and lowered their eyes.

(2) Highbury and Islington

At the next station, a lot of people got off and a similar number got on. One of the new passengers was a short and rather elderly man, dapper and sharp faced with keen, blue, though slightly bloodshot eyes. Despite the unsteadiness of his gait, the result of an evening spent imbibing, if the reek of whisky were anything to go by, he did not make for a seat, but stood opposite Veronica and surveyed her closely and with obvious approval, for a second or two before speaking.

"Saints preserve us! But it is a soight for sore eyes that ye are - indeed it is by the blessed Holy Mother and the heavenly angel hosts!"

Veronica was no Catholic, having been brought up an Anglican (Episcopalian) herself, but she felt somehow, that any mention of the Blessed Virgin in connection with herself in her present state of near total nudity, with her scarlet painted toe and finger nails and vermilion lips, verged on the profane. Accordingly, she tried at first to ignore the fellow. But he was obviously a loquacious and convivial chap - not one to be deterred by Veronica's disapproving and affronted silence.

"Ah but 'tis a cold and windy noight for that fair and tender flesh to be exposed quivering and shivering to the elements, and to tink that it is all for the delectation and entertainment of these good people - and all of them looking as if they wanted to be anywhere but where they are, pretending all of them they haven't seen you in all your celestial glory - shame on their rotten souls. Have none of you Philistines an appreciation of Beauty when you see it!" and here he looked around at the rest of the carriage, waving an arm in a dismissive and contemptuous gesture, at the same time staggering somewhat under the combined impact of his own rhetoric and the drink he had taken on board earlier. Veronica, afraid he might fall, instinctively put out a hand to steady him. Within her, mirth was struggling with embarrassment and beginning to prevail.

He thanked her and clasped her shoulder to steady himself. Veronica was neither surprised nor particularly offended when he seemed reluctant to withdraw his hand once he had resumed a more or less stable and vertical equilibrium. She did not mind when he gently massaged her shoulder and moved his hand a little way down towards her breast, although stopping well short of that delectable protuberance. He was harmless enough and rather charming in his bibulous way!

"Ah, but 'tis a soft and warm shoulder that ye have to be sure to be sure! May the blessed saints in heaven be praised! And I have to go home to my hard and cruel woife later on - Saints preserve us! Never mind my love! I'll go away home now and die a happy man - sure I will."

"You don't look about to die just yet!" laughed Veronica, "And it would be a terrible waste of a lovely man if you did. Don't even think such things or say them even in fun! It's been such a pleasure meeting you. Take care, now!"

The train had arrived at the next stop by this time and the little man raised one of her hands to his lips and kissed it in a courtly manner. Veronica blushed and giggled. She bent down and lightly kissed his cheek. After administering a valedictory and lingering caress to her bottom, the man staggered out of the train, presumably to return to his long-suffering wife. "I hope she's not too hard on him for coming home drunk" she prayed silently.

It might or might not have been his intent, but he had done a lot to make her journey less of an ordeal. She looked across at the rest of the people in the carriage and smiled in their direction. A few of them smiled back. How amazing what one pleasantly cheery eccentric can do to break the ice!