The Blue Girl

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The girl’s skin was a delicate shade of blue, the color of a robin’s egg. Her white dress rippled and her outstretched arms and legs spread out over the canal’s surface, one of her hands resting on a furry pale frond of milfoil that stretched up from the bottom of the canal seeking the hidden sun.

It was a grey Sunday morning and fog had settled everywhere like dust. Even from the canal’s edge, and even through the mist, I could see that the blue girl’s eyes were open, staring up at the indifferent sky. She could not have been older than eighteen. A crew of ditchdiggers, interrupted on their way to some public project, stood nearby leaning on their shovels, their hats in their hands.

I waited on the east bank, shifting from foot to foot, dancing awkwardly with the cold. When Dr Bernard Kingsley finally arrived, pushing through the onlookers, his black bag swinging like a cudgel, I let out a sigh of relief. Kingsley paused to take the arm of a young girl who had followed him through the crowd. She nodded at him and folded back the cardboard cover of a large tablet of paper. I watched as she produced a chunk of charcoal and began sketching the scene.

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