| I was going against the morning rush-hour tide; everyone seemed to be headed in the opposite direction. I wasn’t used to walking in such crowds. But suddenly they started giving me space. I could see pedestrians veering away as I approached, pressing into the doorways of shops or stepping off the pavement, and they were all staring at me. Or rather, staring at something just behind me. One or two of them giggled, but most looked slightly alarmed. One passer-by began to say | 5 |
| something, then shook his
head and moved on.
I glanced over my shoulder. What I saw made me stop dead. There was a man right behind me. When I stopped, he stopped too. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have attracted much attention, though his grey suit was creased(1) and he was looking a bit wild-eyed. But the reason everyone was looking at him was that round about waist height he was clutching a Kitchen Devil. The knife |
10 |
| was so big it was absurd.
This was not a concealed weapon; you could have spotted it from a passing
747. I dismissed it. No. If some maniac was going to attack you, he didn’t
creep up like a look-behind-you villain, not with a weapon like that. Not
in broad daylight. Not in front of hundreds of witnesses. Not in
Oxford Street.
Then I saw his chin was wet with saliva. It was this, more than the knife, that made me uneasy. |
15 |
| We stood and
stared at each other. He mumbled something. I checked my watch and told
him the time. One of the onlookers tittered. The man frowned and mumbled
again.
I thought maybe he was lost and asking directions. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to speak up. I’m afraid I’m not really with it this morning.’ He seemed to make up his mind and opened his mouth and yelled. ‘Abomination!’ […] |
20 |
| I said, ‘I
think you must be mistaking me for someone else.’
He shook his head, adjusted his grip on the handle of the knife and ran at me. My life didn’t exactly flash in front of me, but I felt just the tiniest pang of regret for all those things I had given up because they were bad for my health. All that self-denial, and for nothing. Then the regret was replaced by a rather sluggish(2) survival instinct. I thought about diving into the crowd, |
25 |
| but it was too late. No
one was going to step forward and help; I was on my own here.
The blade was very big, and the steel looked very sharp and it was coming closer. It was no longer six feet away. Now it was five feet. Four feet. Three. The man emptied his lungs(3) in a saliva-splattering yell and lunged(4) forward. I didn’t see how he could possibly miss, but miss he did. He let out a sort of surprised grunt and froze like a mime artist |
30 |
| encountering an invisible
wall.
And then he did a sort of back-flip. It should have been an impossible manoeuvre, but he did it as lightly and a gracefully as any Olympic gymnast. You could tell from the look on his face that he hadn’t intended to do it, and at some point in mid-air all the lightness and grace left him and he bungled(5) the landing. He stuck out a hand to save himself, but unfortunately for him it was the hand |
35 |
| with the Kitchen Devil in
it, and he fell straight on to the blade.
© Anne BILLSON
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