Sinister: broken in the fall

[sarah cracknell]

he kept staring at me.

i looked away, but he kept on staring.

i tried glancing out of the window; pondering my feet; standing up and
pretending i saw the ticket inspector coming.  but he just sat
there...looking at me.

there was a time i was used to that. there was a time people used to stare.
i used to be famous. an international babe, an
arm-wavey-hip-swingy-maraca-shakey-type-of-girl. people looked all the time.
and i loved it. i loved them knowing who i was, standing close to me in the
crowd, smiling, making eye contact, reaching out gently with their
fingers....

not now. times have changed. i am no longer a transnational funkster...

oh yes, there's still a sarah cracknell. she sings as beautifully as she
always did, her bangles jangle, her lips pout and her position at the
cutting edge of hand-held percussion is unchallengeable.

but it isn't me any more. its a machine, just a face, just a girl put
together with kisses and bolts.

it started last year, when i got kidnapped. pete and bob responded to my
pleas for help for a while. bob said he'd rescue me in a cunning plot
involving hammond organs, french footballers and the smile of the moon.

alas, he lied. he did no such thing. for there was already a sarah in my
place. the boy that had kidnapped me dressed up every night in a slinky
number with pearls and snuck out to my gigs, where he pouted and strutted
and sang "running for cover, it looks like its going to rain" to a thousand
adoring fans who thought he was me.

i hear that fame did not offer him satisfaction, and he's back now, selling
his arse behind selly oak station. he says its a more honest profession.

in the mean time, i escaped....i ran through the streets as the drizzle
stang my face, i hitched a lift to dover on a passing donkey, and i got
kidnapped by aliens. since then....i drifted. bob and pete have a new girl.
she looks just like me. she sings just like me. i wonder if she is me.
because sarah c has gone somewhere else.

this woman who sits and looks out of train windows.... i don't know who she
is, but she isn't the girl i used to be. i've been on the train four days
now. if you hide under the seat at the terminus, the guard doesn't see you
and you can travel on and on. the guard used to look at me strangely, but
now he just walks past, like everybody else. its as if they don't notice me.

none of them stare any more.

except the man.  the man that was staring.

and he kept staring.

then he leaned forward and opened his mouth...

"you know who you look like with that moustache on?"

moustache? oh yes, my tom selleck disguise. i can't remember how it got
here, but i think i adopted it whilst in captivity. i look in the mirror of
my shoe...but i see no-one....i start to answer him.... "tt....t...tom s-"

but he jumps in before i finish

"catherine deneuve".

catherine deneuve?

another look in my shoe...the train rattles through a tunnel, and somewhere
i can hear a baby crying.

i feel a trickling on my cheek, and i realise i am smiling. for the first
time since the last time. i try and answer him...

"b...but catherine deneuve...dd.ddd....didn't have a m.mm...-"

he cuts in again.... "in the days before she was famous, of course. her
young days. the days when her beauty could destroy a man's eye at seventy
paces....that's who you look like.."

i smiled again..i tried to thank him but my throat was too full of smiles
and the words fell back inside.

he leaned forward..."i know you...i know where you've been. there's no need
to explain. take my hand, go on....."

hesitantly, i allowed my finger to fall into his palm....he winked at me

"when is now?" he asked....

"i....i..."

"now is just something we feel in our heads. you and me, we've been now. its
time to be forever".

i smiled, and shut my eyes to blink back the tear.

i opened them again.

he is gone.

i stare at the window, and i think of you. i think of how you all tried to
help me once. can you help me find myself now? can you tell me where i am?
the next time you climb on a train, look for me.

i'm hoping i'll be there.

love

silent sarah c


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