Coral's tight, crossed arms made me realise the weight burdening her chest as she finally shared the dreadful Sydney train disaster experience.
I listened as a friend should listen, and her words tuned me in to share her mind and temporarily ignore her stunning exterior.
I knew the context in a sketchy way. A holidaying Coral, visiting a friend of her mother's, Jan, in Paramatta. She decided to go shopping in the city. She nearly missed the train—collecting a takeaway coffee. She rushed and beat the closing doors to the last carriage.
"The carnage," she started, her head down.
"I mean, I heard it before I felt it. An excessive grinding. Then it mixes in my head. I recall a compressed, unnatural, sustained bang with reverberation. Like one bang collided into many bangs. So shockingly loud!"
Her voice rose as her account unfolded.
"Next, everything unsecured in the carriage whiplashed forward, including me. My body snapped back. For a strange second, it seemed silent. Suddenly, indistinguishable noises surrounded me. It frightened me!"
Her voice dipped.
"My coffee spilled over my dress. I couldn't understand why my ear and the back of my neck felt wet!"
Her voice cracked.
"Do you want a coffee? I could get it."
I pressed, concerned. Her voice sounded dry.
"Or a glass of wine?"
"In a while, thanks, it's time I told you. I haven't told anyone this, not my mum. I tried to stand amongst the panicked others. One of my shoe heels buckled. So dusty and murky. I heard groans. I saw people hurt and distressed, while heroic others stayed calm in the chaos and helped."
I caught either a conscious or unconscious act from the corner of my eye. Coral removed one of her shoes. It lay sideways beneath the gallery bench.
"I plunged into shame after it because I fussed initially over a blooming snapped heel rather than broken or lost lives."
She chewed her bottom lip.
"Eighty-three people died! Eighty-three! And there I stood, alive, holding my dangling shoe, feeling sorry for myself. How pathetic, how selfish!"
One of Coral's hands drifted to her ear and the back of her neck.
She continued, "Dazed, I held my heel, 'till a sticky substance trickling down my neck redirected my thoughts. My left hand felt it. I brought my fingers back to my face, and they were blood-smeared! I couldn't understand why I felt no pain. I turned and recognised in alarm the blood wasn't mine. The poor old dude behind me nursed a broken, swollen nose. He apologised in a muffled way to me for the bloody mess."
She wiped the corners of her eyes.
"I'll get you a tissue."
I wanted to hold her.
"No, I'm fine. I'm not. I remember I wiped my ear and neck using my palm. His blood caked dark; it clotted here and there. It reminded me of mulberry pulp."
We exchanged the weakest of smiles.
"Shock hit, and I didn't move. Some guy took my arm and led me to the nearest carriage door. I can picture his hand. I never got to his face. I recall his silver wedding band like my dad's. It comforted me."
She wiped under her nose.
"Holding my shoe, I walked unevenly. Next to the track, I saw the unthinkable ahead. The front of the train derailed and crushed."
I glanced at Coral's cheeks, which reddened and puffed. I refocused on her account of the tragedy.
"As a group, a guy in a rail uniform instructed us to get away from the train. I hobbled along the track and slumped on a small embankment. I looked down the track. Part of the train remained on the tracks; the front part skewed off the track and mashed under piled concrete."
Her chest heaved.
"The crash exposed the train's skeleton: cracked, broken and protruding steel ribs. The awful reality hit— there were people in the unholy mess."
I tried to build an image of the crash based on Coral's description. Plus, what I remembered from newspaper photos and television footage.
"With flagging bodies and heads bowed, we were shocked, silent survivors. I got irritated by the wheezy yaffle of a line of starlings on a concrete wall. Their empty, meaningless warble irritated me. I realised I clutched my broken heel."
She pushed around her removed shoe with her foot under the bench.
"I took off my unbroken heel. I tossed the pair behind me along the embankment. A pair of shoes I wish to forget."
Her bare foot under the bench searched and pushed her white shoe.
"The rest: police, firemen, emergency services, and ambulances arriving."
Coral spoke faster, like she had finished in her head, and only continued to fill me in.
Her succinct end, "A doctor checked me. Luckily, I did not have a concussion. Medical personnel released me into Jan's care. 'Dear, don't talk about it, she said, then it won't come back.' I wished forever that was true!"
Coral sighed.
She re-heeled and stood in the gallery's centre.
Then she continued, "I read the newspapers in the days after. I scrutinised the grainy black-and-white photos. I followed the nightly news coverage. I searched for meaning as I followed a panning TV camera. Nothing came to me. It didn't look how I experienced it."
She wrung her hands.
"Images captured the scene of the wreck. I felt still in it, inside the train."
Her body shook.
"The mash of normal organised objects and materials struck me at the time and later. Everything jarred wrong! The displacement marred and removed too many lives."
I needed a drink and hoped Coral was ready for a glass of wine. She took a step, stopped and stepped back.
"I gripped self-shame. I fussed over a broken heel as wondrous lives bled out and others confronted a future, shattered or maimed - so wrong."
I felt moved, yet I didn't want to stop her outpouring, long overdue. I thought Coral would appreciate a drink before she divulged more.
"Let's share a drink."
"Yes," she agreed and moved out of the gallery.
She forgot her purse and catalogue.
I gathered them and escorted my best friend.
Perched on a high bar stool, I urged my bestie to relax. I suggested a glass of white. Coral swivelled her stool a tad and agreed.
Awaiting drinks, she fidgeted nervously. Her fingers flicked the catalogue, dog-earring the edge.
A bible verse dawned on me: The Lord saves crushed spirits.
Coral was washed out, a crushed and doubting spirit every time Granville replayed in her mind. The train, I grasped, never left her psyche alone. It crashed persistently in her life, day or night, without warning. And she would self-flagellate her quintessence over a broken heel.
Our drinks were served. Coral sipped the sweet sauterne. The wine swirled golden in her glass. Her eyes braced, moored in brooding rumination.
"Granville," she intoned, it steady.
Her wine rippled in wavelets to the rim of her glass. Her inner scar revealed unstitched, I hoped, one day, mendable.
"Am I a better person enduring the unendurable?"
Her question was directed at herself, yet she sought a response.
I wanted to say that she was an individual caught in an unfair life situation. As will for all time, every individual, lost or travelling on the Granville train.
Then, Coral was, at heart, enduringly principled.