The Railway Station Man (11 page)

She felt in her pocket for the packet.

‘They say nowadays that we … the smokers of the world are slowly poisoning all the rest. It's a dismal thought really. I suppose it's true too. I have tried to give up … oh ages ago, that was. My husband … late … my late husband gave it up just like that.' She clicked her fingers. ‘I tried … but … He encouraged me in every way … but … as you see I'm still at it. My character is woefully weak.'There was silence. She clicked her fingers again to disperse the silence, but it remained. She put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. The road had become very narrow, almost a track. Wet branches from the hedges scraped the sides of the car.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, after a long time. ‘I interrupted you.'

He nodded, but didn't say anything.

Maybe he is a homicidal maniac, she thought. But how efficient can you be with only one arm? One eye? Superhuman strength in his wrist, kicking, trampling feet? A rapist perhaps? I'd rather be raped than dead. No question. She looked cautiously at his face. She could only see the Picasso profile, the travesty.

How young he must have been on September the tenth, 1944.

‘I was fourteen,' she said.

There was a gate in front of them. He stopped the car. He reached into the back of the car and handed her his anorak.

‘Put this on,' he said. ‘There's something I'd like to show you. I hope you don't mind getting a bit wet.'

‘But you

‘I don't mind.'

He opened the door and got out of the car.

‘It's only a couple of minutes' walk. You see when the wind is coming from the west like this … strongly from the west.' He moved towards the gate, where he fumbled with the bolt. ‘Well … you'll see …'

She put the anorak over her shoulders and got out. The rain and the west wind battered at her. The left sleeve of the anorak was tucked neatly into the pocket. She pulled it out and shoved her hands into the sleeves. He bumped the gate open across the grassy track. She walked beside him in silence. She knew where they were going. She knew the track like the back of her hand. Round to the right, down into the slight hollow where three thorn trees tangled their branches together. The wet oozing in through the soles of her leaking shoes as she walked. I will have pneumonia tomorrow, or at least chilblains. Up a steep short hill and out through a hedge of whin bushes onto the headland.

When they reached the edge of the grey plateau of rock he stopped walking. Without saying a word he pointed to a spot half-way between where they stood and the edge which hung out over the sea. They each stood in their own silence and waited. Grey is a most dismal colour, she thought. Dismal veils of rain. Dismal wind. I could be at home in a hot bath. She shivered with sudden delight at the thought of that pleasure ahead of her. Suddenly, like fireworks erupting, a great spray of water shot high in the air from a fissure in the rock.

‘Ah,' she said with satisfaction.

‘It only happens,' he said, ‘when there is a strong west wind blowing. The water is thrust into an opening in the rocks below with such force that the only way out is up through that hole there.'

‘Yes.'

He turned and looked at her.

‘You've seen it before?'

She smiled.

‘I've lived here quite a long time, you know. Six, seven years.'

‘I'm sorry.

‘I didn't mean to sound rude. I thinks it's amazing … and it's ages since I've been here. Thank you for bringing me.'

He nodded abruptly.

‘Jack and I used to bike along here when he was … younger … a kid. It's a good place for picnics. No sand to get in the sandwiches … and a marvellous view. You need a good day. Sometimes you feel if you screw your eyes up into slits you could see America.'

Great bars of rain moved in towards them, no America today.

‘A good day,' he repeated.

‘Perhaps you'd bring me back on a good day. We could have a picnic too. I haven't been on a picnic for ages.'

The column of water spouted again. Twenty feet straight up into the air, and then melted into the rain.

‘Yes.'

He turned and set off back the way they had come at an odd jogging run. It looked as if it was quite hard for him to keep his balance. By the time Helen reached the car he was sitting inside it mopping at his face and hair with a handkerchief. She took off the dripping anorak and threw it into the back.

‘They used to tell me when I was a child that rain would make your hair curl.' She slammed the door and wriggled her shoulders to keep the stiffness temporarily at bay. ‘It never did me any good.'

He laughed. ‘Nor me.'

He began to manoeuvre the car around. ‘After all,' he said. ‘Curly hair is a disease. A well-known fact.'

‘You can't mean that all those millions of Africans are diseased.'

‘Every one of them. The American blacks; all those Greeks and Italians with hair like corrugated paper, all, all diseased.'

‘That just leaves you and me and Hitler.'

‘Absolutely correct.'

The car was pointing in the right direction at last.

‘That was what the last war was all about. The survival of the straight-haired. No kinks, waves, bends left on the face of the earth. Even the criminals, the perverts, the loonys, the murderers and the child rapists are to have straight hair. That's why I'm alive. I'm a straight-haired loony.'

The back wheels of the car were spinning in a puddle.

‘It's just my luck to be caught in the bloody pouring rain, miles from home with a one-eyed, one-armed, straight-haired loony in charge of a lethal weapon.'

He began to laugh. He did something with his feet and the car moved more sedately forward.

Helen blushed and then she too began to laugh.

‘I have passed a test … many tests … you know … and the machine has been adapted … at enormous expense. I'm really very safe in my machine.'

‘It just slipped out.'

‘My dear Mrs Cuffe, if I were in your position, I'm sure I'd feel the same.'

‘Please call me Helen.'

He nodded. ‘It's more helpful really when people acknowledge the disabilities of others. Mutilations, colour, madness, religion … whatever it may be. I have spent the largest part of my life among the mutilated. That for me is normal. I find the real world … I had an aunt called Helen.'

‘Oh.'

‘My father's sister. I didn't like her much. She too was crippled … by her own sanctity.'

He swung the car out onto the road.

‘Madam doormat, my father used to call her. Oh God, here comes Madam doormat, and the temperature of the house would sink several degrees. He wiped his own feet on her when it suited him and despised her at the same time. So the name Helen …'

‘Doesn't appeal to you.'

‘It has unpleasant connections. A long way back. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be influenced by such memories.'

‘I think the rain is easing.'

‘I thought perhaps I had discovered something new … a place no one had ever seen before.'

‘That would be quite a triumph nowadays.'

‘Yes.'

‘It was really nice of you to bring me to see it.'

It was strange, she thought, how between one word and another the strange face could become a mask. It was like a grotesque sleight of hand; suddenly the magician removed all life from the puppet.

‘Tobar na Diabhal it's called.'

He probably wasn't listening.

‘The Devil's Well.'

There was silence between them for a long time.

‘If you'd given me notice of your kidnap I'd have worn my gumboots. These shoes let in.'

‘I never really know these things in advance. I tend to work on impulse. Anyway, here you are at home. Soon, you can be comfortable again.'

‘Will you come in and have a cup of tea … a drink?'

He stopped the car by her gate.

‘No thank you. I would rather get on home.'

He turned his head and stared at her.

She opened the door and began to heave herself out.

Ten years ago, five even, I would have been able to skip, skedaddle, now I heave and creak, like some ancient sailing vessel. Heave, creak.

‘Are you sure …?'

He still stared at her.

‘I'm quite sure.'

‘Will you be able to manage the gramophone on your own … to get it out of the car?'

‘Yes. Thank you.'

It's like a drill, she thought, that eye, painfully penetrating. I'm so cold, drowned cold.

He nodded. He did things with his feet. She slammed the door.

‘Thank you,' she called.

The car moved off and as it turned the corner she realised that she had left the plastic bag with the pictures in it on the floor by the front seat.

‘Shit,' she shivered.

The door scraped.

Helen looked round from where she stood at the Aga, just taking the coffee off the heat.

Must mend that bloody door. Automatic, eternal thought. Useless thought. Roger stood there, the plastic bag tucked neatly under his arm.

‘Excuse me for … I saw you through the window. It seemed silly to go to the front door.'

‘Oh, hello.'

She still looked quite scrubbed after her bath. Her hair straight and very clean spread out from her head as she moved. Some nights after she had washed her hair it would be filled with static electricity and crackle and spark when she brushed it.

‘Do come in. You're just in time for a cup of coffee.'

‘You've washed your hair.'

‘I had a boiling bath. You have to push that door quite hard to shut it. One day …' She fetched another mug from the dresser and put it on the table, pushing the debris of plates, dishes and a few books up to the far end. ‘Sit down. It's good coffee. Bewleys. A major extravagance. Instant makes me feel sick.'

Before sitting down, Roger put the bag carefully on the table. ‘I thought you might be worried about your pictures.' He sat down. ‘Yes … I'd love some coffee. I hope I'm not disturbing you.'

‘Black or white?'

‘Black, please.'

His hand lay quite still and heavy on the plastic bag, as if he were protecting it against some surprise attack.

‘Sugar?'

She put the cup down in front of him.

He shook his head. ‘I used to take sugar, but too many people wanted to help me … I don't know why … scoop it in, stir, take away the spoon just in case I dropped it on the floor, look at me with sympathy and concern. One day I just gave up sugar. Life seemed easier after that.'

Helen burst out laughing.

‘How unkind of you.'

‘Hardly that … self-protective.'

‘Would you like a glass of whiskey? Or some red wine? That's all I've got. Do have a whiskey. I'd love one myself?

‘That would be very nice. You're very cosy here.'

He watched her move to the cupboard, the sink.

‘Everything at hand.'

Then back to the table with glasses, the bottle, water in a jug.

‘Shipshape.'

She laughed. ‘I wouldn't say that. I am famous for my lack of organisation. They wouldn't have me on a ship. Do you take water? Help yourself if you do.'

‘A little water.'

She sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette. She flicked the match into a saucer already filled with butts and dead matches. ‘How's your house coming on?'

Her fingers fiddled nervously with the cigarette. A thin string of smoke was caught in the light.

‘The essentials for living are there. Your health.' He lifted the glass.

‘Sláinte.'

‘Damian has the box in working order. It won't be too long before we're ready. Then it will be up to CIE. I think we'll have to operate the level-crossing gates manually to begin with, but I hope that after a while we will be able to tie them in to the box.'

‘It was very good of you to bring that back for me. It was so stupid of me to leave it behind. The rain …'

‘I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of looking … I hope that doesn't annoy you … your private parcel …?'

‘No … of course not.'

‘Your work?'

She nodded.

‘You didn't tell me you were a painter.'

‘We haven't really had that sort of conversation … anyway I'm …'

‘You're a painter.'

She stretched her hand out across the table for the bag. But he replaced his hand, heavily, where it had been before.

‘I would like to buy them.'

‘Don't be silly.'

‘After all, you were prepared to sell them at that terrible jumble sale. Why not to me?'

‘It wasn't a jumble sale.'

‘Next best thing. Why not to me?'

She shook her head.

‘My walls are as good as the next man's. Better perhaps. Bare white walls crying out for pictures.'

‘I would like you to give them back to me. I'd like to consider. You've taken me by surprise. I don't like that.'

‘I took the precaution of writing a cheque before I came here.' He pulled the bag over to his side of the table and felt in his pocket. He took out the folded piece of paper and pushed it over the table towards her. ‘I hope you'll forgive me and I hope you'll accept it.'

She stared down at it.

‘Please.' His voice was very gentle.

She picked up the cheque.

‘Why?'

‘As I said this afternoon, I work on impulse. I like your watercolours. I want to hang them on my walls. For me that is quite simple.'

She unfolded the cheque and looked at it.

‘A hundred pounds. I can't accept this. You're out of your mind.'

‘So they tell me.'

He pulled the bag off the table onto his knee.

‘I didn't mean … you can't possibly give me a hundred pounds.'