The Railway Station Man (14 page)

He said the words quite unselfconsciously and held out his hand towards her. ‘You are most welcome.'

‘I felt I needed a change of scene … so I came up to talk to …'

‘That's nice.'

‘Have a chat. I had to get out.'

‘That's good. I'm pleased you came. Come in, come in. We'll have a cup of coffee.'

‘I don't want anything.'

She passed him and went into the room.

‘A drink?'

‘Oh no thank you.'

‘You must have something. I might get offended if you didn't have something.'

‘Very well. Coffee would be lovely … at least … I'm not fussy, whatever's easiest.'

He moved the prie-dieu from the centre of the room, pulling it awkwardly across the floor to stand against the wall by the window.

‘It was my mother's,' he explained. ‘I'll just put on the kettle.'

He left the room and she could hear him moving in what she supposed to be the kitchen. Each sound came to her as if through an echoing cave. He struck a match. She wondered how he managed to do a simple thing like that. The gas popped. Water ran into a kettle, for a moment musical and then just broad splashing. He had hung her pictures on the wall. One above the fireplace, the other above a small Victorian desk piled with papers. They both looked new and unexpected to her in their somewhat prim wooden frames. His feet shuffled on the stone floor. The tin lid scraped on the kettle. She moved closer to the picture over the fireplace, to rediscover it in its new condition.

‘You see,' he said behind her. ‘They're good. I told you they were good. One day I'll bring them up to Dublin and have them properly mounted and framed. Damian made those frames.'

‘Damian?'

‘He has a great way with his hands.'

‘I like them. I think you should leave them like that.'

He put two mugs and a bowl of sugar lumps on the table.

‘I t came as quite a shock seeing them there. I had resigned myself to never seeing them again. I don't quite know why.'

He opened a drawer in the table and took out two silver teaspoons. He put each one down carefully and exactly beside each mug. An obsession with symmetry was also one of the symptoms of madness.

‘I have only instant coffee, I find. Would you rather have tea?'

‘No. That's all right.'

He went back into the kitchen. She crossed the room towards the other picture. The wet weight of the sheep's fleece seemed to burden it into the earth. It's okay, she thought. I thought it might just turn out like an illustration, but it does have an identity of its own. A little substance.

‘Black or white?' he called from the kitchen.

‘Black, please.'

She moved away from the picture feeling slightly guilty. ‘Did your mother do the tapestry on the prie-dieu? It's beautiful.'

Old muted greens and blues. A unicorn gaily pranced through spring flowers. A girl sat under a formal oak tree plaiting her long golden hair.

He came back into the room with a jug and poured coffee into both the mugs. ‘No, no. It's very old. It was her grandmother's, but it goes back a long way. French. She always had it in her room. I remember it all my life. It stood right in the middle of the room … bravely somehow. She believed greatly in prayer. Help yourself to sugar.'

She pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. She picked two lumps of sugar from the bowl and dropped them into her cup.

‘She used to talk to God.'

‘Do you do that?'

He was looking down at his coffee with a certain distaste. She thought he wasn't going to answer.

‘No,' he said at last. ‘I can't do that. She believed in miracles.' He laughed. He took a drink of his coffee. ‘Oh, God, I hate that stuff. We should have had tea. She truly believed that I lived because she prayed. I'm glad to say she died before she … well …' He waved his hand towards himself. ‘She died. Maybe that was the miracle. You can never tell with God. He has his own way of doing things.'

‘Why do you pray then? I mean, if you're not talking to God …? What? What are you asking him for?'

He pulled for a moment at the patch over his eye.

‘I used to pray that I would die. I learnt however after a long time that I wasn't going to be given that … gift. My gift was going to be life. So … now … I ask for strength … grace …' He looked across the table at her. ‘Comfort. I pray a lot for comfort. It's no dialogue though. I batter his ears.' He laughed. ‘You look quite bewildered. You shouldn't ask people such questions.'

She clasped her hands and looked up at the ceiling.

‘From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us. Amen. A very important prayer.'

‘I went to Sunday school and all that, but I think we were politely informed that all lines of communication to God were through them … you know … the authorities. Be good and we'll see you through. Don't bother God, he has a lot on his mind. Later … I suppose about fourteen I became sceptical about the whole thing and then indifferent. I go to church from time to time, for a sort of silly reason perhaps. I think the poor old Church of Ireland is a bit beleaguered at the moment. I don't suppose my occasional presence helps them much. I must say I prefer empty churches to full ones … silence is more appealing to me than hymns. What happened to your mother?'

‘She was killed. Just at the end of the war. She had been to visit me in the hospital and a buzz bomb just came out of the sky.' He snapped his fingers. ‘Like that. Somewhere near Victoria station. She was dead. Straight away. They didn't tell me for months. I couldn't understand why she wasn't coming to visit me. All the silly excuses they made. I knew they were lies, you know. Then when I was being shifted to the skin-graft unit my father came in and told me. Very casually … one of those joke English scenes. By the way, your mother was killed six months ago, by a buzz bomb.'

He picked up his spoon and tapped it three times against the side of his mug. Three sort of exorcising taps.

‘I laughed.'

‘You shouldn't have done that.'

‘What else was there to do but laugh? In another age I would have been able to cry. Now I would be able to cry, but then, I wouldn't have been allowed. It wouldn't have done.'

‘Presumably your father was trying to save you pain.'

‘Pain.'

He threw back his head and laughed heartily.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I'm not very well acquainted with pain. My life has been filled with minor complications and confusions, but very little pain. I think that might make me a little insensitive.'

‘When your husband …?'

She shook her head most vigorously, but didn't say anything. He looked at her for a moment or two.

‘I hope you are going to paint.'

‘Yes.'

‘Not just mess about.'

‘Yes. I intend to take a portfolio to Dublin and see what happens then. There's so little time left. I've no one but myself to blame for that.'

He stretched across the table and put his hand for a moment over hers. He wore a gold signet ring on his little finger and the weight of it pressed painfully into her flesh. When he took his hand away she saw that he had left a red mark on her skin.

‘Drink up your disgusting coffee,' he pushed back his chair and stood up, ‘and come and see my signal box.'

‘Have you a cigarette? I've left mine at home.'

‘No cigarettes. You smoke too much.'

She drank some of the coffee. He was right, it was disgusting.

‘Everyone says that to me.'

‘You should stop.' His voice had a faintly schoolmasterly tone. He moved towards the door as he spoke.

‘That's easy to say. I say it to myself all the time … when I wake up in the morning and feel like hell … when I look at the brown stains on my fingers … each time I cough. I'll stop on Monday I say … and then next Monday … after Christmas … I gave it up for Lent once, but I thought I was going to die after about a week so I started again. I have very little strength of purpose.'

He laughed. ‘So I see.'

They walked along the platform. Most of the grass and weeds that had pushed their way up between the flagstones had been removed. The broken panes in the windows of the station buildings had been replaced and the doors and window frames had been painted green. Between the platform and the white wooden fence that ran down towards the signal box a newly dug flower-bed was waiting for the spring. A new sign on the fence was neatly lettered in black, Knappogue Road. ‘We're going to plant bulbs in there. Just for a start. Red and yellow dwarf tulips. They'll flower quite late in the spring. We'll have to work out what to do after that. I like a station to have bedding plants, but it's an awful lot of work. Damian's digging another bed up by the level crossing. I've always loved those stations that had their names written in flowers. That's probably a bit too flamboyant for us. I expect we'll end up with something like heaths … perhaps even dwarf conifers. What do you think?'

‘I don't know a thing about gardens. Dan never let me near the flowerbeds because he said I pulled up the plants and left the weeds. I was relegated to cutting the grass and burning the rubbish. I must say you have it all looking very nice.'

‘Yes. It's coming along nicely. We should be ready for traffic in the NewYear.'

She didn't say anything. She gave him a false bright smile and for a moment was afraid of his sharp eye.

‘I'll go up first.'

They had reached the steps leading up to the box.

She climbed up after him. He pushed open the door and went in. She stood for a moment on the platform and looked towards the village roofs below them. Beyond the dunes a huge front of cloud was boiling up into the sky. Tremors of wind were starting to shake the empty branches of the trees.

‘Everything is spick and span. First-rate,' she heard him say. She followed him into the box. There was a smell of new paint and brass polish.

‘Have you ever been in a signal box before?'

She shook her head.

‘This works on the electric token-block system. There is only a single line here, as you presumably know, so the important thing is to stop there being more than one train in the section at any time.'

He looked at her to see if she understood.

She nodded. So far so good.

‘The driver of each train has to carry a token … in some cases it's a staff. That's the most common … You've probably come across them. But in this line it's a small metal disc. Look, it fits into this box.'

He showed her the slot in the polished box on the wall.

‘When I put the token into that box it locks the section that the train is just leaving. No other train can go into that section without having that token. Then, this box, here, holds the token for the next section … understand?'

‘Mmm.'

‘When I take it out of the box, the signal levers for the next section are unlocked. Then I check with the next station that the line is clear. The bell … There is a whole series of signals and replies. Listen.'

He pressed the bell twice. The two beats sounded quite clearly. She looked startled.

‘It works.'

He ignored her comment.

‘Train entering section,' he said. He moved to the signal handles. ‘This one comes off danger now and then this. After she has moved into the new section, you put the signals back to danger again. It's absolutely foolproof. Of course, we have the level crossing here on the up side. That will have to be hand-operated, I'm afraid. We're a little behind the times here. Basic … but very simple to operate.'

‘You might forget all these signals'

‘It's all written down very carefully in the rule book and I have the bell signals up on the wall there. If you are in any doubt at all you just refer to the book. Anyone could do it you know. There are never too many crises in a station of this size. The odd cow on the line, only minor problems like that. It's a good life. My station in Scotland was very similar.'

‘You had a station in Scotland?'

‘Yes, for four years.'

‘Why did you …? What happened?'

‘I had family problems.' He laughed abruptly. ‘They wanted me to go and live in a home of some sort. Put quite a lot of pressure on me. They are strongly convinced that I can't look after myself.' He smiled. ‘It's all to do with money really. I've never bothered them, you know. Tried to keep out of their hair. We haven't much in common. I'd been there about four years … yes … and they all descended one day without warning. A whole regiment of them. Brothers, sisters, their appendages, lawyers, doctors, all rabbit's friends and relations. They wanted me to sign things … to come quietly.'

He looked out of the window towards the distant sea.

‘I never did them any harm.'

‘What happened?'

‘Well … I played them along for a bit and then did a bunk. I came over here. Out of the jurisdiction so to speak. It's much more difficult for them to get hold of me over here. I'm not really as much of a fool as they think. My lawyer's an old pal. School … all that … army rubbish. A good chap. He keeps them at bay. It took me over a year to find this place. It's good. I like it here. This is where I'll stay. They'll never dig me out of this place.' He turned towards her. His eye stared into her face.

‘I never did them any harm.'

‘I'm sure you didn't.'

‘My mother left me a lot of money. That's the crux of it all. It enables me to live the way I want. After all that's why she left it to me. She changed her will shortly after … She didn't know how things would work out for me. She told me that. She wanted me to be able to make my own decisions. It upsets them a lot. I do have to say that I get a certain amount of amusement out of upsetting them. Know what I mean?'