The Railway Station Man (22 page)

‘All right, Damian. I'll go over this evening. I'll bring some food … supper… If you think …'

‘I'd be pleased if you'd do that.'

He moved towards the door.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘That's all right. I'm glad you told me.'

He nodded and opened the door. As he stepped out into the windy morning she said after him: ‘Don't stay away, Damian. We can be friends now.'

He shut the door and went across the yard and out of the gate onto the road. It wasn't until she heard the gate click that she allowed the tears to slide from her eyes.

The wind blew up. By four o'clock in the afternoon it was tearing in from the north-west, ripping branches from the startled trees and scattering the remaining leaves from the hedges. The waves frothed like egg whites on the dull surface of the sea. More and more clouds piled up behind the horizon. Gulls, seemingly blown backwards, looked spectral against the grey sky. Everything was grey: the fields, the frenzied trees, the hedges, the distant roofs. Only the birds and the waves startled the eye.

Helen's storm had subsided. By four o'clock in the afternoon the house was filled with the safe smells of cooking and steamy bath water and she sat on the floor in front of the sitting-room fire drying the tangled wet hair that lay stretched across her shoulders. The cat, who always took a personal exception to high winds, was curled, eyes shut, but not asleep, on an armchair.

‘Why?' she said directly to the cat. Her hair steamed.

‘Wise cat. Answer no silly questions.'

The cat's ears flicked away her words.

Do I have to have a role in this, she wondered? Can't I just paint? Unravel my own mysteries?

She shook her head ferociously and drops of water sizzled into the fire.

If the poor little nameless girl had lived would things have been different? Would I have in some way been forced to face my responsibilities?

Useless now to speculate.

All he learnt from watching me was an obvious distaste for non-involvement. Perhaps that's a mark in his favour.

I thought he loved his father. I relied in a way on that mutual love to keep me guiltless.

What is the point in hashing and re-hashing tired thoughts?

No point.

Perhaps Jack really cares? That too would be a point in his favour. I doubt it somehow. There is so little caring.

A cigarette.

My death-defying gesture.

And live a coward?

A craven coward.

The tune rocked into her mind.

And live a cow… and all my days.

God damn you, Jack, for throwing this rock into the pool of my isolation.

It was just dark when she set out to walk to the station, an old-fashioned basket, into which she had tucked a hot pie and fat baked potatoes, over her arm. She was afraid that the wind might blow her and her bicycle into the ditch. She was wearing a long woollen skirt which the wind slammed back against her legs and then pulled and plucked it behind her and her hair and her coat that she held right across her breast with one clutching hand. I'm quite mad to be doing this, she thought as she closed the gate behind her so that the wind wouldn't blow it off its hinges. The cat sat in the window and watched her go, exasperated by her foolishness. He might just send me home again. Might rant, rage at her presumption, or just sit silently until she left again, defeated.

Even from here she could hear the roar of the sea as it crashed on the beach and was sucked out again dragging sand, stones, wrack, only to hurl them once again onto the shore. She thought she should join in the noise with a song, but found that with the strength of the wind in her face she was unable to open her mouth. So she sang in her head instead. Oh Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, good striding music. She imagined herself blessed with a rich contralto voice. Oh Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion diddleiddleiddle diddle diddle, Get thee up into the high mountain, from which you would be blown away into outer space this moment, Oh thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem diddleiddleiddle Arise, shine, for thy Light is come. Handel's walking in the wind music. Arise. Shine … There was no sign of light in the station house as she turned the corner and she thought rather crossly of being pushed and twirled back down the road by the wind. Undignified it would be. The cat would laugh to see her reappear, a pile of refuse in the power of the north-westerly. As she approached the house she saw the flicker of firelight from the window of the sitting room. She pushed open the station door and went across the hallway. At the door to the room she paused for a moment, suddenly realising how wild she must look, but she turned the handle and opened the door. He was sitting in a deep chair by the fire. He wasn't asleep, she could see the firelight flicker in his eye.

‘May I turn on the light?' she asked.

‘Who?' His voice was a murmur.

‘Helen.'

She reached out her hand and groped along the wall for the light switch.

They both blinked in the sudden glare.

‘Helen.' He pushed himself up out of the chair. ‘My dear Helen. I thought you were a ghost. Do come in.'

‘It's a night for ghosts. I do hope you don't mind me intruding on you like this.' She closed the door firmly behind her and then walked over and put the basket down on the table. ‘I didn't feel like eating alone so I brought some food over here for both of us. Is that all right?'

‘I'm not very good company.'

‘Neither am I. We can be gloomy together.'

They stood looking at each other in silence for a long time. Then he laughed.

‘You are the most wind-blown thing I've ever seen. Here, come over to the fire. I'll just put some more wood on it. Let me take your coat.' He stood quite still, unable to think what to do first. She picked the basket up from the table and headed for the kitchen door.

‘Before I do anything else, I'm going to put these things in the oven. I'll be right back.' She left him to recover his equilibrium.

By the time she came back he had combed his hair, put on his tweed jacket and done something miraculous to the fire. The overhead light had been switched off and two lamps lit instead. The room looked mellow.

‘Metamorphosis,' she said as she looked around.

‘It's more welcoming. I'm sorry I was a bit dazed when you arrived. I have whisky or wine. Which would you like?'

‘Oh… I…'

‘Whisky first anyway. Sit down.'

She sat down by the fire and watched him move around the room. He was amazingly deft, she thought, neat controlled movements, no fumbling.

‘I've been a bit off colour these last couple of days, so things are in a bit of a mess. I haven't been keeping things up to the mark. Here.' He handed her a glass of whisky. ‘It's good that. Scottish malt. Doesn't need water. Unless you …?'

She shook her head.

She sipped. Smoky, potent.

‘It's lovely…'

‘I suppose Damian told you I wasn't well. Ran around and laid that burden on you.'

She felt her face go red.

‘I…'

‘He fusses like an old hen. I just get days of… I don't know what you'd call it… melancholy perhaps. Depression is what they call it now, I think. I prefer the word melancholy. It has a poetic ring about it.' He sat down and raised his glass towards her.

‘Sláinte.'

‘Sláinte. Life is butter melon cauliflower,' she said and giggled.

‘Butter melon, butter melon,' he sang, to her surprise.

‘Melon cauliflower.' She joined in.

‘Cauliflower.' Neither of them would have won a prize for singing.

‘Why didn't you stay in England and become a managing director or a barrister or something like that?'

‘Because I'm mad. Haven't I explained that to you before? I am poor mad Roger. I didn't want to be a managing director. I didn't even want to be a chairman. I didn't want anything that they expected me to want. I have been under constraint you know… in the nicest possible private homes. Shadowed night and day. Just in case I did myself some harm… I don't think even they thought I would harm anyone else. Just myself.'

‘Did you … would you …?'

‘I don't think so … not even then. Now… to spite them I'd like to live to be a hundred. A pauper of a hundred. All that money gone, dissipated. I'd like them to have to pay for my funeral.' He grinned at her. ‘You see, melancholy is followed by spleen. Soon, I will be normal again.'

‘Do they know where you are?'

He shrugged.

‘Probably. I imagine they'll leave me alone for a while though, unless I provoke them in some way. I have no desire to do that at the moment. Have another drink?'

‘Are we going to get drunk?'

He got up and came over and took the glass from her hand.

‘No. Perhaps we are going to be happy.' He poured some more whisky into both their glasses. ‘I'm hungry. Do you know I haven't really eaten since Sunday. Just picked. Poor Damian tried to tempt me with food, but he got eaten instead. I will apologise to him tomorrow.'

‘What did you think of Jack's friend?'

He grimaced. He put the glass into her hand and went and got his own.

‘Not much. It's hard to tell just like that. Not much. Why?'

‘I just wondered.'

‘He knows quite a bit about the railways. That was quite nice. Not too many people have that enthusiasm any longer.'

‘I suppose not. He's … Damian says … he's mixed up in … involved … in violent activity of some sort.'

‘Well?'

‘And Jack.'

‘Ah, yes. Jack.'

His face was quite non-committal.

The fire crackled and she suddenly was reminded of the evening she had been writing the Christmas cards. The fire at her back had crackled.

Fires in the streets.

‘You're upset? You're surprised?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. Wouldn't you be?'

‘No. At the same age, in the same situation I might well have done the same thing.' He laughed. ‘How foolish of me … I did … only I had no choice. Come come, Helen. Suppose it was the thirties and Jack had gone off to fight in the International Brigade. You'd have felt frightened for him, but a little bit proud. Wouldn't you?'

‘I don't know. Sitting here with things the way they are I can't put myself in that position. There has to be some other way.'

He was silent. The fire glowed in his eye.

She thought quite irrelevantly of the Wandering Aengus.

A fire was in my head

I went out to the hazel wood

Because …

‘Very few people have ever had the courage or the love or the commitment to lead the other way,' he smiled. ‘Only two spring to my uneducated mind. Jesus Christ and Gandhi. Look where it got them. Others have talked, preached, moved, yes a bit they've moved but they've been crushed. Viciously crushed. The crushers are always ready. Only in art, Helen, is there any approach to perfection achieved. In living there is none. There never can be. I sometimes think the man with the gun sees things more clearly than we, poor tired creatures of good will.'

‘If things had been different…'

‘You feel if you had filled him full of moral outrage, picked and plucked at his mind all through his growing years? Rubbish, Helen, rid yourself of that sort of guilt. For God's sake he might have become a chartered accountant.'

They both burst out laughing.

‘Finish up your drink,' he said. ‘We must go and eat whatever delicacy you have out there in the oven for us. What is it, by the way, so that I can open an appropriate bottle of wine?'

He held out his hand towards her and pulled her gently to her feet. ‘A raised chicken pie.'

‘My dear Helen, how scrumptious. I haven't had a raised pie since I was a boy. Come along, come along. Happiness is just around the corner.'

They asked me how I knew

My true love was true
.

I, of course, replied
,

Something here inside

Cannot be denied
.

Sweet tenor voice turned and turned.

They said some day you'll find

All who love are blind
.

When your heart's on fire

You must realise

Smoke gets in your eyes
.

They moved together in the middle of the room.

Walking shoes, she thought, are not quite the thing. I should have brought my dancing shoes, like children's parties, over my arm in a cotton bag.

‘Will we play the remembering game?' he asked close to her ear.

‘No.'

His arm held her very close. His hand was spread warm across her back.

‘I never really enjoyed those times. I was always so full of expectation.'

So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed to think they could doubt my love

And yet today my love has flown away

Turning and turning. A slight sigh as the needle gathers up the sound from so long ago.

I am without my love
.

‘I never quite knew what it was I expected… but it never happened anyway.'

‘Kisses in the dark?'

‘Even that seemed … well so run-of-the-mill…' she laughed. ‘I nept too, only you never liked to admit it.'

‘I was never much good at the slow foxtrot.'

‘I think we're doing very well, all things considered.'

So I smile and say

When a lovely flame dies

Smoke gets in your eyes
.

He moved his cheek against hers and the sudden scratch of stubble made her heart thud. Oh no God, please God, don't let anything stupid happen.

The music stopped.

‘A bit before your time, that one, I'd have thought,' he said.

‘It was my absolute favourite when I was about fourteen. I think I must have stolen it from my parents'