I used to travel from Euston to the Elephant and Castle often enough that it became routine. You know what that means, nothing about the journey sticks in your mind, one trip is the same as the next. There’s no anxiety about missing the stop, no worry about being overcrowded and hassled because you know exactly how long you have to put up with the crowd. Because it is all so familiar it is possible to think about other things, read the papers for a meeting, read a novel, whatever. Maybe that’s why I remember her.
I was walking down the platform towards the exit, the train had pulled away a half a minute ago. I was carrying my briefcase, full of so many papers that it was heavy and I had a raincoat over my other arm and an umbrella. I was weighed down enough that I was walking slowly, lagging behind to let the crowd clear in front of me; aiming for an easy walk up the stairs and through the barriers without being jostled and dropping something.
I was twenty yards from the exit and by now the platform was almost empty. A woman emerged from the exit, running down the last few steps and slowing as she saw the empty platform; the only sign of the train being a rumble in the distance. It was probably that noise that made her run.
Disappointment was etched on her face as she stopped, clearly just a little annoyed, feet planted eighteen inches apart, hips thrust slightly forward. She was wearing pale slacks; hard to say the exact colour for sure in the dim light at the end of an underground platform. She had a green T-shirt. A kind of olive green, again the light probably didn’t do it justice. I think in the sun it would have been a lively colour but even down here it had some charisma, a look that had been chosen, not just thrown on.
She was breathing hard, so her shoulders were high and thrown back, giving her lungs a chance to catch up from running down the stairs and that pushed her tits forward maybe a little more than she would normally carry them.
The fabric of the T-shirt looked expensive, the way it draped showed off her breasts, by which I mean she was not wearing a bra and in the right circumstances you could imagine a queue of classical sculpture artists begging her to pose. Through that fabric I could see two nipple rings. I guess they must have been twice the size of her actual nipples, which were prominent enough, but the rings were something else.
I was just walking by, so I had maybe six steps between me and her before she was behind me. It’s rude to stare, so I guess for one of those steps I had to look away, just for civility sake. On the other hand someone who has gone to so much trouble to look awesome deserves some appreciation, so I looked.
My guess is that the rings were about ten gauge, thick enough to be in no doubt that they were thick. For one of my six steps I had to look at her face because she might have given the slightest hint that it would be worth stopping to talk to her. There wasn’t any hint. She looked completely sure of herself, not arrogant or haughty, just sure, and she was probably five years older than me, so although I was an adult, married with two children by then, for that moment I was a kid and she was out of reach. I used my remaining four steps to look at those rings and forty years later I still remember them like yesterday.
I still wish I’d spoken to her, just to say how great she looked. Since then I’ve complimented countless women and they always smile and maybe it makes their day. If I made any of those women feel good about themselves they would probably be shocked to know that they owe their compliment to a pair of nipple rings glimpsed in dim light through a T-shirt on the Northern Line forty years ago.
