The Railway Station Man (24 page)

‘Don't you believe it. Drinks by the pool served by handsome black men with shiny teeth. No newspapers. How the other half lives. Champagne for breakfast. I have wine or whisky, which would you prefer?'

‘What are you having?'

‘I think I'll have a glass of wine, but you don't have to have the same.'

He hesitated.

‘Whisky,' she said for him.

‘Okay.'

‘Come into the other room. I see no reason why we should confine ourselves to the kitchen. Put some water in a jug, I'll just put a match to the fire.' When he followed her into the sitting room she was kneeling on the floor beside the fire. Early flames flickered through the sticks and coal. Smoke was just beginning to be drawn up into the chimney. She waved her hand towards a table in the corner of the room.

‘Help yourself, and me please. I'll have a glass of red wine. And a gasper.' She felt in the pocket of her skirt. ‘It's days since I had a proper smoke. Are you still saintly?'

‘Yes.'

There was a burst of energy in the fire and the sticks began to crackle.

‘You seem a very solitary sort of person,' she said. ‘Don't you have friends? Don't you do things with friends? Brothers? I never see you around with people of your own age.'

‘I do what pleases me.'

He crossed the room and handed her a glass of wine.

‘Thank you. Sit down. The room'll warm up quickly.'

He sat in an armchair by the fire looking down at her, his glass held awkwardly out in front of him.

‘Well,' she said. ‘Here's health.' She held up her glass and smiled. ‘Mud in your eye.' They both drank.

‘No girl friend?'

‘Girls come and go.'

‘Lots of young men of your age are married.'

‘Aye. The most of my friends. I don't feel like settling you know. I want to make my boat. You've no peace with a wife and kids.'

‘Love, comfort, companionship? What about those sort of things?'

‘I've never come across a girl yet I've felt I'd like to spend fifty years with. It's the settling worries me. There's all the time in the world for that. Later. My mother'd like to see me married. Get me off her hands.'

‘Most people rush into it too quickly. I did myself. It's hard to rush out again if it doesn't work.'

‘Another couple of weeks now and we'll start on the boat. I have enough money put by for the timber. We're going to take the electricity over to the goods shed and we can work there during the winter. Then in the spring, when the weather starts to get better we're going to lay the tracks …'

‘How do you lay tracks? You and Roger can't lay tracks. It takes a whole gang of men to lay tracks.'

‘In the spring we're going to lay the tracks,' he repeated.

She sighed.

‘I think perhaps that was when he got into trouble last time,' said Damian.

‘How do you mean?'

‘In Scotland, or wherever it was. He started to have rows then with the railway people and his family got roped into it all. It was bad trouble. I don't know why people won't just leave him alone.'

‘I suppose he annoys them.'

‘You wouldn't want to see him harmed, would you?'

‘No.'

He smiled at her.

‘I didn't think you would.'

She leaned over and put some wood on the fire.

‘Do you want to come and see the pictures?'

‘Yes. My fame.'

‘Come on then.' She pushed herself up from the floor and led him out across the yard.

The four canvases were standing against the wall. In the fourth painting the beach and the sea were empty expanses. A seagull moved across the glare of the sun and footprints displaced the sand, leading from a pile of clothes to the edge of the sea. The clothes were the only colourful objects in the four paintings. A red jersey thrown on top of faded blue jeans, a blue shirt, red and white striped runners, grey woollen socks to one side of the pile.

‘Where am I?' he asked. ‘What have you done with me?' His voice sounded slightly panic-stricken, as if she had disposed of his reality in some way.

‘You've gone.'

‘But why? Why did I have to go? Couldn't I come back again?'

She laughed.

He examined the clothes closely, stooping down to study them.

‘They're mine all right,' he said. ‘I must be going to come back. God, Helen, that's a creepy thing to do to someone. Make them disappear like that.'

He clicked his fingers.

‘Well,' she said. ‘Not quite like that. You can see from the beginning that he's going to disappear.'

‘He?'

‘You, if you like.'

He looked at each one in turn again.

‘Yes, I suppose you can.'

‘You just have to forget that it's you, Damian. If it upsets you.'

He nodded.

‘What are you going to call them?'

‘Rather boring really. “Man on a Beach”.'

‘That's all?'

‘1, 2, 3, 4.'

‘Helen.'

Roger's voice called across the yard.

‘Here,' she called back.

‘Man on a Beach, Man in the Sea, Man Swimming and A Pile of Lonely Clothes would be better names,' suggested Damian.

Roger's lurching steps crossed the yard.

‘Man on a Beach. Like it or lump it,' said Helen.

The door opened and Roger came in.

‘I've finished.'

‘The Short Story of Disappearing Damian.'

‘Pay no attention to him,' said Helen.

Roger looked at the pictures in silence. Helen watched his face for a while and then turned away and began to tidy up things on the table. Pencils, brushes, into neat rows, smallest to the left. She scraped at the clotted paint on the blade of a knife with her finger nail.

‘Yes,' he said at last. ‘It's finished.'

She put the knife down on the table.

‘I… well… what do you think?'

‘I think you are a most remarkable woman.'

‘The painting …'

‘To have held all that inside you for so long, without driving yourself into some state of insanity. Looking at that, one would think you'd been painting for years.'

‘I have. In my head.'

He took her hand and kissed it.

‘Hey,' said Damian. ‘She's made me disappear and you kiss her hand. That's my fame there and look what she does to me.'

She linked her arm through his.

‘I'll paint you building your boat. How will that be?'

‘No more disappearing?'

‘No. Solid as a rock.'

‘Okay.'

‘Let's go. Let's have a happy time.'

They crossed the yard to the house, linked together not merely with their arms, but by an exuberant peacefulness.

Three people are happy, she thought, as she pulled the curtains tight almost as if to keep out the world's unhappiness. That's a crazy sentimental thought if there ever was one. She wondered if she could have ever felt this way with Dan and Jack. There had been too much judging. How strange. I was happy when I started to pull the curtains and now here I am, as I finish that act, melancholy once more. A passing melancholy, that's all I intend it to be.

‘What's the cat's name?'

‘Sorry.'

She turned from the curtains and looked towards them. Damian was leaning over the back of the sofa scratching the cat's stretched orange stomach.

‘I've brought some champagne,' said Roger. ‘But it's the one thing I can't manage. It's in the kitchen. I'll just…' He went out of the room.

‘He doesn't have a name.'

‘Why not? I've never heard of a pet before without a name.'

‘Dogs, yes. A dog without a name would be a lost soul, but cats are different. “I am the cat who walked by myself and all places are alike to me.” I think you diminish a cat by calling it Tommy or Smudge or something … anyway they come if you call puss, puss, so why bend your mind any further than that. He's puss puss at meal times and bloody cat when I'm angry with him.' The cat twitched his ears at the familiar words.

‘You win,' said Damian. ‘I'll never call a cat Tommy or Smudge.'

Roger came back with one bottle in his hand and another tucked awkwardly under his arm.

‘Oh what a beautiful sight,' said Helen. ‘I don't think I have the right glasses. I hope you don't mind.'

‘I've never tasted champagne,' said Damian.

‘The great cure-all. Here.' Roger put one bottle on the table and handed Damian the other one. ‘The doctors' surgeries would be empty if only more people were aware of its magic qualities. Glasses at the ready, Helen? Lesson number one. Take off the paper and then unscrew the wire. Right. Hold it carefully and then with both thumbs ease the cork. The right hand over the top. That's it. Feel it coming?'

Damian nodded.

‘Glass, Helen. It shouldn't pop too hard. A well-pulled champagne cork should just jump quietly into your hand. That's it. Great.'

Helen caught the bubbles as the cork came away. Damian filled three glasses.

‘Man on a Beach.' Roger raised his glass.

‘Man on a Beach.'

‘Me,' said Damian.

They drank.

‘That's lovely. You didn't get that down in Mr Hasson's hotel.'

‘I did not. What do you think, Damian? As good as a pint of Smithwicks?'

‘I think I could learn to love it, given a bit of practise.'

‘That's good. Mind you, you can get ghastly stuff. Sweet, like sparkling eau de cologne. Knappogue Road.' He drank again.

‘Knappogue Road,' said Helen. Might as well, she thought, it's his champagne.

‘Aye,' said Damian. ‘The station.'

‘I suppose we should eat,' said Helen about an hour later. ‘I think I may only have eggs.'

‘I love eggs,' said Roger.

Damian stood up.

‘I'd better be going.'

‘Don't be silly. Why would you go? Sit down, Damian. We're all going to eat eggs …'

‘My mother'll have saved my tea.'

‘It will be disgusting now.'

‘I think …'

‘If you really want to.'

‘Yes.'

Roger groped in his pocket and took out his keys. He held them out to Damian.

‘Here. Take the car. I'm going to be in no fit state to drive. Just mind it. Mind yourself.'

Damian took the keys.

‘Thank you. Yes. Thank you.'

He did a little bow to each of them in turn.

‘Tomorrow.'

He went out jingling the keys in his hand.

‘Well,' said Helen after a moment.

‘Well what?'

‘A trifle high-handed perhaps?'

‘Not at all. I simply thought I didn't want to give the postman, nice as he is, the fun of seeing my car outside your door at eight o'clock in the morning.'

‘You're making assumptions … Anyhow I never get any post.'

‘Am I?'

‘Omelettes,' she said, standing up. ‘Scrambled, poached, boiled …'

‘Am I, Helen?'

‘Fried, coddled …'

‘Helen.'

‘Take your pick. Yes. You're making assumptions … but they're correct. I expected you to stay the night. Even if you hadn't brought the champagne I'd have expected you to stay the night. I'll even go so far as to say that I want you to stay the night.'

He smiled.

‘What's a coddled egg? That's a new one on me.'

He got up and followed her into the kitchen.

‘Good heavens, did you never have coddled eggs when you were a child?' She took a bowl of eggs from the top of the refrigerator and put them on the table.

‘Almost hard-boiled and then broken into a cup and sort of mushed around with lots of butter and pepper and salt. Then you eat it with fingers of toast. Maybe it wouldn't be nice now. Oh dear, that's a really nostalgic memory. Nursery tea, and our pyjamas warming on the guard in front of the fire. How peaceful and safe it seemed.'

‘I don't think we'll have our eggs coddled. Apart from the fact that you would obviously drown in sentimentality, I've brought a nice bottle of claret. An omelette would be the most suitable dish on offer.'

‘You seem to have a bottomless well of wine up there.'

‘I see no reason to deprive myself of the good things of life, just because I choose to live separately.'

She took a bowl from the dresser and began to crack eggs into it.

‘What would you have done, Roger, if… if… things had been different? If Arnhem hadn't happened?'

‘I think the Bar and then perhaps politics was what they had in mind for me.'

‘What did you have in mind for yourself?'

‘I did not have time to find out. Those last couple of years at school I actually didn't care who won as long as the war ended before I had to get out there and fight. My head was full of such patriotic thoughts,' he laughed. ‘I remember saying that to my father one night. I thought he was going to kill me on the spot. After that I kept my nasty thoughts to myself and just used to pray that I would be killed quickly. So you see I didn't have much time to work out what I wanted to do with my life.'

‘To be serious…'

She mixed the eggs together with a knife, tilting the bowl sideways as she worked.

‘Oh I suppose I'd have liked to have been a writer, a painter, a poet, but I didn't have the gift. Nothing else ever seemed worthwhile to me. That's serious, Helen. I have left no footmark on the world. Three railway stations and a whole lot of angry relations … a great legacy.'

‘Lay the table for me. You're starting to sound sorry for yourself.'

‘No. I promise you, not that. I have enjoyed my railway stations and I'm embarrassed to say I've also enjoyed teasing my family… and I look forward to death. So… no sorrow. No happiness either. Just equilibrium.'