Southern Belle

The Mardi Gras was over. A few shrivelled balloons still lolled from balconies, and in Jackson Square a solitary black man blew a few tuneless notes on a saxophone, a chilly requiem for the soul of jazz.

It was warmer on the bus. ‘It’s hot in here!’ The driver glanced nervously at the old girl on the back seats as we pulled out of the station. Nutty but harmless, her crackling voice soon became a counterpoint to the whack of vulcanised rubber on road.

Biloxi, Pascagoula, Montgomery, Alabama, for coffee and donuts at some ungodly hour of the night, then on towards an unforgiving dawn. In so far as any of us slept, I don’t think she did.

‘Where are we now?’ The Lincoln Memorial, after thirty-one hours.

At the depot she squatted by the empty baggage hold, snowflakes melting in her iron-grey hair. ‘Where’s my valise?’

Try A Streetcar Named Desire.