The Railway Station Man (3 page)

His voice had been filled with irritation.

‘I told her it was going to rain, but she didn't listen, she just went off down the beach with her hands in her pockets … She doesn't mind getting wet. She never has. She used to say the rain made your hair curl. I remembered laughing when he had said that. She had the world's straightest hair.

‘She gets stiff. After all she isn't twenty any longer. It's silly not to take care of yourself at her age. At any age. She's never had much sense.'

He had looked out through the leaves at the rain. Jack didn't say a word. He had really been talking to himself.

‘I sometimes wonder what would have happened to her if she hadn't married me. Drift. She'd have drifted.' He had turned to Jack and spoken almost angrily.

‘What's she up to now? Down there. Miles away on the beach. Wet. Soaking wet. What's she up to?'

‘She can't be up to very much,' Jack said.

‘In her head. Bring a friend, Molly, Jean, someone you can chat to while we play golf. Have a drink in the bar with. Company. Not a bit of it. She just laughed and said she'd be okay on her own.'

‘She likes being on her own.'

Dan had been silent for quite a long time. The rain was almost over.

‘I have given her so much. I can't damn well work out what else it is that she wants.'

‘I don't suppose she wants anything, Dad. I think you're just being a little paranoid.' It had been a new word in his life. He was rather pleased to find an opportunity to use it. Dan laughed.

‘Come on. The rain has stopped. Play can be resumed.'

That had been the end of the summer holidays before Jack had gone back to school, before his father had been killed.

‘And all is dross that is not Helen.' Christopher Marlowe, 1564–1593. Prodigy. Prodigious progidy. Political activist and poet, like Patrick Pearse, d'Annunzio. Heros. Bobby Sands. His heroism was beyond doubt but Jack didn't think that, had he lived, he would have stood up to the scrutiny of the literati.

None of them shut their eyes to keep out reality.

No time to do that if you are to become a prodigy … or even a hero.

Oh thou art fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,

Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter …

Helen.

He wondered what they thought when they had called her Helen. Had they seen all that?

‘And all is dross that is not Helen.'

Or had it been just another name?

He thought he too would like to die at twenty-nine, prodigiously full of living.

She called him for his breakfast after she returned from the village with her purchases, not just cigarettes, but also milk for his Cornflakes and the
Irish Times
. He always washed and dressed before he sat down to eat his breakfast so she had almost finished the paper and her second piece of toast when he arrived into the kitchen.

‘The tea's still hot.'

‘Mmm. Lousy day'

He poured some Cornflakes into his bowl and then some milk. He sat silently looking down at it for a while.

‘I hate Cornflakes'

The last time he had been to stay he had eaten Cornflakes several times a day. She said nothing.

‘Really hate them.'

He sighed.

‘Soggy, tasteless, cardboard. That's what they are, cardboard.'

‘Appalled, stunned, sickened, outraged,' she read the words from the paper. He got up and took his plate across the room to the sink. A grey curtain of rain hid the view from the window.

‘God what a bloody day. How can you stick it here when it's like this, mother?'

‘Five times on one page the word outrage. The whole country is outraged.'

He held the plate of Cornflakes poised over the bowl with holes in it that sat in one corner of the sink.

‘What are you doing with your Cornflakes?'

‘I'm throwing them away. I hate them.'

‘Now I'm outraged. Give them to the cat. Waste not, want not.'

‘I don't believe the cat likes them either.'

He scooped the mess into the bowl.

‘What's everybody outraged about this time?'

He put the plate in the sink and turned on the tap.

‘The usual.'

Water bounced into the plate and sprayed up at him.

‘You mean the fight for freedom continues?'

‘You're splashing water all over the floor.'

He fiddled with the tap.

‘Jack. You're making the most awful mess.'

He turned it off.

‘I don't mean any such thing. I mean a man was alive yesterday and now he's dead. That's not fighting for freedom.'

‘None of those words mean anything any more. Overworked. Demeaned. Anyway, why get worked up about a man's death? We all die. We're all here one day and gone the next.'

He clicked his fingers.

‘It's the snatching, playing God … that's what is the outrage …'

‘An overworked word. Anyway what do you care? What does anyone care? A handful of people feel sorrow, fear, pain. Something. Otherwise it's just words, news. Manipulated words. Pictures of tight-lipped people on the television screen. Not nearly as affecting as a good play. To get back to Cornflakes …'

‘Have some toast.'

‘It's cold.'

‘I'll make you some more.'

She didn't move, though. He looked at her for a moment and then sat down again.

‘Don't bother. I really don't mind cold toast.'

He began buttering.

He always put too much butter on his toast; the thought of heart disease never worries people in their twenties.

‘No home-made marmalade?' he asked, taking the lid off the jar.

‘No.'

‘You always used to make marmalade.'

‘I have no time.'

‘I'd have thought you'd have had all the time in the world.'

‘Have some tea?'

He nodded and pushed his cup across the table … she filled his cup and then poured out some more for herself.

‘How long are you staying?'

‘Just over the weekend. I really should go on Sunday evening, but I may wait till Monday morning. It all depends …'

He took a large bite of toast.

‘Depends on what?'

‘The weather. If the weather turns good, I may not be able to tear myself away. Have you any plans?'

‘I never make plans. I thought of clearing out a lot of the junk in your room. I'm sure you don't want it any longer. There's a jumble sale next week and I thought most of it could go to that.'

He laughed.

‘My precious belongings. You have a nerve.'

‘You brought everything precious to Dublin. What's in there now isn't even worthy of the name of jumble.'

‘I suppose I can't stop you.'

‘Not really.'

‘If you make a pile … several piles … I'll …'

‘Did you know that the station has been bought?'

‘No. Who …?'

‘A couple of months ago. Some Englishman. I haven't come across him yet. I thought I might walk over this afternoon and say hello. He's doing the place up. He has one of the Sweeney boys working full time.'

He was buttering another piece of cold toast.

‘Damian Sweeney.'

‘There are so many Sweeneys. I never know which is which. He won't eat sliced bread according to Mrs Doherty. She has to keep him a pan loaf twice a week when the breadman comes.'

‘The Englishman or Damian Sweeney?'

‘Don't be silly. Haythorne. Hawthorne. Something like that his name is … according to Mrs Doherty. I used to have to go to tea with horrible Haythornes when I was a child. I do hope he's not one of them. He wears a black patch over one eye, Mrs Doherty says. I like the sound of that. Pirates and things. Will you come with me?'

‘Where to?'

‘To spy on Mr Whatsisname.'

‘No. There's a couple of things I have to do. Anyway, it's raining. You don't mean to go plodding off there in the rain do you?'

‘Rain'll make my hair curl.'

He smiled somewhat sourly.

She poured herself another cup of tea and got up. She wanted to be on her own.

‘I'm going,' she said to him.

‘Far?'

‘Just out to my shed. I must work. There's so much work I have to do.'

‘Why don't you get dressed?'

‘I'll get dressed in my own good time.'

She picked up the cigarettes and put them into her pocket.

‘You smoke too much.'

She walked to the door and then turned around and looked at him.

‘Yup,' she said. ‘I do. I enjoy it. I just love puffing all that poison in and out of my lungs. Anything else?'

He shook his head. She left him sitting there staring into space.

It was about two miles uphill all the way to the station house. The road could have been better. It was years since the county council men had been along with the loose stones and the tar machine. Not much need really as the road was little used. The occasional farmer with land high on the mountain would pass that way with his sheep, either on the way up to their mountain grazing, or on their way down to the market. Sometimes tourists would come over the shoulder of the hill and stop their cars to look down at the ocean and its burden of small islands. No one, either farmer or tourist, ever gave the station house a second look; in those days, that was. Now it has become a part of the local folklore.

The red-brick house had been built in 1903, solid, functional, tailor-made to suit the network of lines that stretched out through the hills and along the coast, opening up for the first time access to the world, for the inhabitants of the tortuous and desolate coastland.

The house stood, squarely, facing out towards the distant sea, behind it the two platforms and the weed-filled track and then the hill, treeless, bleak. The signal box was at the right-hand end of the up platform about fifty yards from the station house. Two or three of the wooden steps had rotted away, and a couple of panes of glass were missing, but the box itself appeared to be in very good order. The white-painted words, Knappogue Road, could still be seen faintly beneath the window. The old goods shed was at the far end of the down platform, beside the unused level crossing.

The rain had settled into a misty drizzle, but from time to time a slight breeze stirred, which soon might shift the clouds. The hedges were still filled with wet shining blackberries, and she made a note in her mind to come up with a couple of baskets the next dry day. They never tasted good if you picked them in the rain, their sweetness somehow dissipated with the damp. She and Jack could carry a basket each. She laughed at the thought. He wouldn't do that. He doesn't seem to have that line in his mind leading back to early days. We can't seem to find that comfort between us, she thought. I suppose that is what parents and children should have, some form of comfort, if nothing more. It seems quite hard to achieve. She wondered why he had come down to visit her.

A blackthorn tree marked the end of the hedge. Beyond it the road widened and the station house stood there. The right-hand half of the green door was open and she walked across the road, up one step and into the flagged hallway. The air was musty and damp; over twenty years of dead mice and spiders. Even though it had all been scrubbed out and the walls painted white, the smell remained. The door onto the platform was open, letting a draught run through the hall. She walked over and peered through the window into the ticket office. A cheerful fire was burning in the small fireplace. A gate-legged table and a couple of chairs were piled with books. A duffel coat hung on the door that led out on to the platform. She could hear the sound of someone sawing wood.

‘Yes?'

The voice came from behind her. She jumped.

‘Can I help you?'

‘I didn't hear you coming.'

A tall man with a patch over his left eye was standing in the middle of the hall. His empty left sleeve was tucked neatly into the pocket of his tweed jacket. He was altogether very neat, apart from the fact that he was wearing old tennis shoes, in the front of both of which his toes had made small jagged holes. Or perhaps the mice, she thought. Unlikely. He didn't look the sort of man who would let the mice at his shoes.

His voice was neat too, when he spoke again.

‘If you're enquiring about trains …'

She began to laugh.

‘It will be a while yet before they will be running.'

She stopped laughing.

‘There's still a lot of work to be done before we're operational.'

‘I …'

‘As you can see.'

His voice was dour, unwelcoming.

‘Where did you want to go?'

She didn't know what to say.

‘I believe there is a reasonable bus service. You can get without too much trouble to Letterkenny and Donegal town. After that …' He shrugged. ‘There are connections.'

She laughed again, because she wasn't sure what else to do. A little nervous laugh.

‘Oh no. It wasn't that. I live here. I just came to see … to … Someone told me your name was Haythorne. I wondered … I used to know Haythornes back in Dublin. Ages ago. I thought perhaps …'

‘Hawthorne,' he said, and left it at that.

‘Oh.'

After a moment she held out her hand towards him.

‘Mr Hawthorne. I'm Helen Cuffe.'

He didn't move.

‘I live in the cottage down the road. Just before you get to the village.'

There was silence except for the sound of the saw somewhere out along the platform.

‘I just thought I'd come up and see if there was anything you … It must be difficult to manage here. If you'd like a meal … or something.'

She felt her face going red.

‘I am quite good at managing, thank you.'

Two puckered scars ran from the eye patch down to his chin, pulling his mouth very slightly to one side.