13
"There now, dear, what's this?"
The kindly, gently wavering voice nudged its way into the melee of Mary's thoughts. Mary turned, running a hand over her eyes and trying vainly to suppress the flood of tears still pushing to burst free.
The woman was old, very old indeed, with soft, draping skin and a mist of pure white hair peeping out from underneath her wide brimmed black hat. A worn but tidily knit scarf was knotted closely around her drooping neck and tucked neatly into her sturdy looking, if drab, overcoat. But those distinguishing factors were noted only superficially by Mary, as she blinked self-consciously into the old, wrinkled face tipped up to meet her gaze. What caught her attention were the woman's eyes, glinting out from underneath her sagging eyelids. They were the clear, cold blue of a January sky, and for a moment Mary caught the flash of keen intelligence in them; but then she was left gazing into a mass of wrinkles as the woman's eyelids crinkled together to make room for her kindly smile.
Mary managed a vaguely dignified "I'm quite all right, thank you," before finding it necessary to clamp her lips shut to avoid dissolving into a sobbing mass on the cobblestones. Oh, it was dreadful business, being so horridly emotional! Mary felt unmercifully disgusted with herself. She had always been able to maintain such perfect composure, even in the worst of circumstances – she hadn't even cried when her parents sent her away to school – and now this had to happen and ruin it all! She had really thought that she had complete control over her emotions, but all this time she had just been lying to herself. Mary laughed wetly, a choking, bitter laugh that made the old woman lean in closer, with a concerned tilt to her eyebrows.
"There, there, my dear, it will all turn out. It always does, I've found. Come, my dear, come sit." The woman pulled gently but firmly at Mary's elbow, and Mary, after a moment of prideful resistance, surrendered herself to be led to a nearby doorstep.
"Won't the inhabitants mind?" Mary asked, more out of a desire to present the illusion of composure than because she was really concerned about trespassing on someone's property.
"Oh, no, my dear, I don't think so. They've closed up shop for the night, I would think."
Mary sniffed daintily several times before giving in and blowing violently into her handkerchief. The woman beside her gazed at her with calm steadiness as she wiped her eyes and straightened her blouse, trying desperately to pull herself together. Once she had tucked the handkerchief away in her skirt, the woman sat back slightly and smiled her crinkled smile.
"There, my dear, that's better, is it not?"
Mary glanced vaguely over at her and nodded equally vaguely, afraid that if she let herself become too earnest her tears would betray the anguish that still bore down defiantly on her chest.
"Are you lost, dear?"
The kindly question almost loosed the floods, but Mary crushed down the surge of emotion with a firm swallow and answered as steadily as she could.
"No – not really, I mean."
An anticipatory silence ensued. Mary could almost feel the old woman's startling blue eyes watching her expectantly, waiting for elaboration. Well, she wouldn't get it. Mary had no intention of completely baring her soul to this complete stranger – for she was a complete stranger. She was.
But the segment of Mary's mind that felt an inexplicable kinship with this woman won out. Before she could stop herself the words forced their way out of her mouth, landing hollowly in the now-fog-enshrouded streets.
"No one remembers me. No one cares for me."
The words, rather melodramatic as they were, nonetheless rang true in Mary's heart as perhaps the most revealing words she had ever spoken, and once again the waters surged up inside of her. But now the anger was gone, the violent floods had subsided; and instead the tears emerged in calm, steady, bitter streams.
The woman sat quietly for several long minutes as the tears soaked into Mary's threadbare blouse. Around them, the life of the city was muffled behind the doors of homes, pubs and harems. It was still too light for London's nightly inhabitants to emerge, and the streets were nearly deserted but for the odd shrouded figure walking hurriedly home from a late workday. The woman never minded being out at twilight. It was a time between times, full of mysteries and possibilities. She smiled, with the ghost of a long-abandoned ruefulness on her lips. She was this girl, once.
"Well then, my dear," she said finally, with tender, smiling eyes that shed their light on Mary's rigidly upright form, "we are birds of a feather, you and I. I have my birds –" she gestured at the now empty sky "- and that is all."
Only then did Mary notice the frayed basket of bread at the woman's feet and the feathers dusting her clothes, and recognize the person she had seen every Sunday as a child when she and her family rumbled through the square in their carriage on the way to Grandmother's. Mary barely remembered Grandmother – she had only ever been a shriveled head with a wrinkled nightcap to Mary's childish eyes, and had died before Mary was old enough to understand that even shriveled heads with wrinkled nightcaps were human. But Mary never forgot the little old bird woman, and looked for her every week as they clattered past the cathedral. There she sat, always, her hands full of crumbs and her eyes full of love for the birds that covered her; and every now and then, if the square was quiet enough, Mary could catch her voice, a gentle murmur under the tumult of the crowd, tenderly pleading, "feed the birds, tuppence a bag…"
It wasn't much, the little demonstration of kindness that this solitary woman made, sitting with Mary as the fog rolled over the streets and the last rays of sun crawled sleepily behind the dim horizon, but it was enough.