All That Glisters Is Not Gold

Cold, hard tile beneath her fingers. She grits her teeth. A air whips across her back as the next tube arrives. A steady murmur of feet and voices.

She has black permanent ink on her hands, gripping the pen too tightly. She feels people looking at her, not sure what to think. Probably they frown. Though she hopes some of them smile a little bit.

The wind skims her back again as the tube leaves. The platform is quietened. Never empty, never absolutely desolate. Tubes come and go within seconds of each other. The carriages stop briefly, swallow commuters in slippery grey fabric and spiky heels, and then continue. Speeding through the tunnels like bullets.

She takes a few steps back to admire her work.

Her foot catches the edge of the platform and trips. Lying with her back on the tracks, her limbs flail wildly. A delayed reaction. She can see faces; mouths hanging open like flytraps, hands outstretched. A sharp pain somewhere in her neck, something pressing, cutting into skin.

And slanted slightly, above the heads of the people, her words. Her work. Scrawled in marker pen across the wall of Leister Square tube station.

All that glisters is not gold.

The mouths are moving. The lips slap together over and over again. The hands wave. Point.

She feels a gush of wind skimming her face as the next tube arrives.

Then nothing.

***

‘A girl died last night.’

‘Oh?’

He watches her face, the swoop of her jaw line as she bites down on the croissant. The way her collarbone juts out through pale skin. He loves collarbones: hers especially. He should paint it. Entitle it Gentle Architecture. Or maybe just Collarbone.

‘You’re not listening.’

‘I am,’ he protests. This painting would be black and white. Capture the shadows more. In thick oil paint. Contrast between subject and material. Critics would say ‘a perfect juxtaposition between delicacy and weight’.

‘No you’re not. I give up.’

She stands up, chair scraping against the kitchen floor. She slams the door behind her. Her plate and mug still on the table, tea steaming.

The door opens.

‘Aren’t you even going to call me back in?’ she asks, gesturing with her left hand, ‘aren’t you even going to apologise?’

He shrugs, ‘you came back in yourself. I didn’t need to.’

When she’s angry her collarbone is all the more prominent.

‘Matt, I give up. I give up.’

***

It probably would have been easy to get rid of the message on the station wall. It might not have come off with soap and water, but how hard is it to replace a couple of tiles?

All that glisters is not gold.

‘What does it mean, daddy?’ the little boy asks his father. He wears a Spiderman suit. He’ll be inseparable from it, for probably another year or so. And then he’ll learn that it draws unwanted attention. And that girls aren’t attracted to foam six packs.

‘It’s Shakespeare.’

The daddy is English, and very typically so. He is also a father, and very typically so. He wears shirts – with a tie on workdays, and with two buttons undone on weekends – and trousers. He carries a black rucksack, for sandwiches and wet wipes. He likes watching football on Sundays.

‘But what does it mean?’

‘That’s something people still debate, Freddie,’ the older boy cuts in, ‘because no one really knows. Some people think it was like an act of defiance against the media – ’

‘Kurt, can you not – ’

The boy ignores his father’s comment and continues, ‘but some people think it was just some girl who liked Shakespeare and got drunk or high or whatever – ’

‘Kurt – ’

‘And some people think it’s a suicide note.’

The little boy looks at his big brother. He doesn’t understand the words, but he understands the look on his fathers face.

‘What’s suicide?’ he asks quietly.

***

She walks quickly, so he can’t catch up with her. She wants home. She wants her mother’s arms and probing questions. She walks faster.

The pen he gave her is heavy in her pocket.

The conversation rings heavy in her ears.

‘You don’t understand,’ she had said, ‘I’m breaking up with you because you don’t understand. I don’t want money and stability and ignorance.’

‘Well, what do you want?’

‘I want my name on the world. I want my message in everyone’s lives.’

‘You want fame.’

‘Not fame,’ she traced lines on the pavement with her feet, ‘not fame. Recognition.’

He pulled something out of his pocket and thrust it into her lap.

‘Well there you go,’ he spat, ‘go and get your bloody recognition. Write your message on the world and when you get arrested for it, don’t blame me.’

She walks even faster.

***

The woman heard about it on the news. The girl had been an ex-student of hers. The woman had taught her English. Shakespeare. The Merchant Of Venice.

All that glisters is not gold.

‘Can someone tell me what this quote means?’ the woman had asked, sitting on her desk. Back when she was what they called a ‘trendy’ teacher. Before blonde hair dye grew out and wrinkles grew in.

‘It means that not everything that looks precious at first turns out to be precious,’ the girl had explained to oblivious class mates, ‘it means that first impressions don’t count for everything.’

***

All that glisters is not gold. They replaced the tiles eventually, when the speculation died down. The five words caused more havoc than she ever imagined. They broke up a marriage, drew tears from little boys, provoked guilt and anger and death. But maybe that’s what she wanted. She had her name on the world, stamped into flimsy newsprint paper. And she had her message in everyone’s ears, tinged with nostalgia and sadness and realisation. She had perhaps known all along that the reality of recognition was not pretty.

After all, all that glisters is not gold.