At 4.13
Henry showed his season ticket to the porter and climbed into the railway car.
He nodded politely to Miss Burge, the teacher at the kindergarten, who sat in
her corner seat knitting the green jumper she had started last month; and to
the district nurse in her black pork-pie hat, her professional bag tucked
warmly against her stomach. They both smiled back-nothing said, never anything
said-and he went to his usual place at the far end of the car. He filled his
pipe while waiting for the train to start, and then put it back into his
pocket.
Back and
fore, back and fore, like a shuttle, workwards each morning, homewards each
night, ra-ta-ta, ra-ta-ta, the train's travelling beat - how many times have I
done this journey, these last five years? If I put the journeys end to end it
would stretch a long way - right into Tibet perhaps, along the Turk-Sib among
the moujiks ... Oh dear! Henry yawned and gazed indifferently at the row of
slatternly back gardens and flapping clothes lines past which the train ran.
Twice a day for five years, Bank holidays excepted, those drab hotchpotch backs
where the wives riddled yesterday's ashes an the children sat on the steps
eating bread and jam. It was so depressing to see those streets every day, always
the same, and the people always the same - how many of them knew they had been
condemned to serve a lifer?
And then,
with a rattle and a wrench, the open country; the hills swooping like swallows.
Below the embankment the black river swirled, wandering down from the coal
mines at the head of the valley. And the train rattled over the bridge that
spanned the river; Henry felt the drop under the bridge, sheer and empty in the
pit of his stomach, like a bird flashing through a hollow cave. And on, accelerando,
through the cutting. What shall I do tonight, the tired voice asked in his
head. Pictures? Or a nap and a stroll down to the billiard hall? I
don't know what to do, I can never make up my mind. I know what'll happen -
I'll stand by my bedroom window looking down into the empty street. And in the
end I won't go out, I'll waste the
night, as usual. As I waste everything. I ought to decide to do something, to
get on ... One day I will do something, to justify all this waste, something grand, careless … I
must …
I wonder
what's for dinner this evening. Mother will have it all ready, whatever it is,
warmed up and waiting; and she'll sit opposite me while I eat it, watching me
wolf it; and at the end she'll have a cup of tea with me ... Doctor said she's
alright. But often I dream she is dead, and I wake up sweating.
Halt number
one. The schoolgirl comes in and sits where she always sits, and takes a book
out of her satchel, a different book this week She has grown a lot in the last
five years. She used to be a scrimpy, flat-chested little thing, her head
always poked out of the window; now she sits absorbed in her book and there is
a difference about everything she does. She must be about sixteen; she hardly
looks it, with her mouse-bitten fringe and her black stockings. She's got a
strange face; those who don't know her would never call it pretty. They'd only
see her prominent top teeth, her weak chin, her flat cheekbones. They'd miss the secret quality, the look she has when
she turns from her book to look out through the window. She's pulling on her
woollen gloves; she gets out at the next halt. I wish I knew where she lives -
in the semi-detached red-roofed houses on the right, or the huddle of slums on
the left? Not that it matters really; the train always starts off before she's
left the platform. Sometimes, if she hasn't finished her chapter before the
train stops, she walks along the platform with her book open ...
The little
woman who only travels on Thursdays is snoring; she always puts her feet up and
snoozes. Her head hangs forward, her oak-apple nose nearly dropping into her
shopping basket, her pink umbrella laid across her lap. Her shoes need soling.
Oh, curse it and curse it. It's always the same, daunting you properly. Makes
you want to smash the window, pull the
communication cord, scream. And instead you swallow the scream; you can hear
it struggling inside you, battering at the door of your throat. And you sit
still, and look at the old lady's brown hat, and Miss Burge knitting, and her
reading. It's been lovely, really, watching her grow up, wondering about her,
her name and what she thinks when she's reading and what Life will do to her,
and feeling sorry for her, somehow ...
The train
stopped with a shudder that rattled all the windows. The red roofs and the
biscuit facades of the new houses waited faithfully outside. The girl closed
her book and obediently went out.
And then,
all of a sudden, Henry got up and walked down the car, past Miss Burge and the
district nurse, who stared at him in astonishment. The blood was beating like a
steel hammer behind his eyes. He fumbled and tugged at the carriage door. But
he got out, and was standing on the ash platform, for the first time, ever. She
was a few yards ahead of him, finishing her chapter, walking slowly, unaware.
He stepped forward. The porter shouted “O.K.” to the guard. The engine-driver
leaned over the footplate. Henry stood stock still, looking at the girl, at the
railings, at the yellow advertisement of Duck, Son and Pinker's pianos. The
guard shouted “What are you getting off here for?” The green flag and the
engine's hoot … Henry scrambled back into the carriage, the guard shouted at
him and a porter blasphemed. He shut the door with quivering hands and slouched
back to his seat. Miss Burge and the nurse stared at him and at each other. He
didn't notice anything. He just slumped into his seat and clenched his hands,
squeezing them between his knees. After a couple of minutes he blew his nose
hard and rubbed some smuts out of his
eyes. The train crashed into the black mouth of the tunnel with a shriek. It
woke the old lady. She opened her eyes and tidied her collar, as if it were the
most natural thing in the world to open one's eyes, after they have been
closed.
The train came
out of the tunnel and stopped. The old lady picked up her basket and her pink
umbrella, Miss Burge rolled up her knitting, the nurse fingered the silver
hatpin that skewered her porkpie hat. Henry followed them out onto the platform
and slunk past the guard like a criminal.