Platform Seven

by Louise Doughty

  And yet I know, immediately, that something is wrong – even more wrong than when he sat and had a cry in the Pumpkin Cafe. His expression is similar to the one he had last week but deeper, more serious, the lines in his face more clearly etched – it isn’t just the way the artificial light falls, I’m sure of that. His face is set. He is hurrying through the barriers as if approaching the station at a normal pace will allow him to baulk. He has decided to barrel on through, like a horse and rider making one last effort at a fence they have stumbled at before. His expression is so rigid that I think, oh no, he really is ill.

  Instinctively, I move aside to let him pass. He turns right and heads for the stairs but trips. One knee comes down and almost strikes the step – he saves himself by grabbing at the handrail. It is such an unexpected stumble that he stops dead for a moment, frozen in that position, like a semi-kneeling sculpture, a Michelangelo, or something. There is a man immediately behind him in a large wool coat, also hurrying up the stairs, who has to bring himself up short in order not to crash into Caleb from behind. The man in the wool coat is much bigger and would probably have knocked Caleb forward if he hadn’t managed to stop himself in time – he rolls his eyes as he steps round him. Caleb is an obstacle.

  I get ahead of Caleb so I can see his face close up and what I see there horrifies me: it is ravaged. At least during our last encounter his distress was mixed with resignation, even a little humour. There was the talk on the telephone, the animation of a human exchange. Even when he wept, it was with brief, calm grief. This is something altogether different: real and distracted distress.

  He stays half kneeling for a moment, swaying almost imperceptibly, as if in the backdraught of the rest of humanity rushing by. It’s not a movement anyone else could detect but I can see it, perceive it might be a better word, his thoughts swooshing to and fro inside his skull like water in a moving bucket. My dear. The phrase comes to me. He is dear to me. What’s wrong? Then he pushes himself up and carries on up the steps, up to the covered walkway, walking more slowly, almost unwillingly, and a coldness comes over me that I can’t describe. I know where he is going. He’s heading to Platform Seven.

  Don’t. I think that one word, clear and hard, as I follow him, cursing my inability to communicate: no, not you Caleb. This explains everything: how sad he was the other day, why he was frightened to enter the station. He knew what fate awaited him if he did. He wasn’t skiving off work. He was saving his own life. No, please, don’t, Caleb, just don’t.

  But as I follow him, a thought occurs to me, so large, so dark, I swell with it. If Caleb goes off the edge of Platform Seven, I will have company at last. If I don’t prevent this, his body will be gone and then, perhaps, he could be mine.

  I imagine him being like me. I imagine eternity. I imagine how pure our love would be if we no longer existed and belonged only to each other.

  But then who knows what will happen if Caleb dies in the next few minutes? I don’t know why I’m trapped here rather than just dead. Who knows if he would join me or not? He might disappear forever. I might never see him again. Which would I rather – take the risk, and hope that he is mine? Or keep him alive and know that however fleeting his commutes through the station, at least I’ll see him from time to time?

  What would real love do? What does real love feel like? If you love someone, let them go. Whoever wrote that line was never trapped on Peterborough Railway Station.

  He traverses the walkway with his head down, not particularly fast but with a certain determined evenness in his stride. He won’t be deflected – and even if I had the power to try, well, I did my best a week ago, and look how that turned out. As he turns to descend the stairs the full force of a Fen wind hits him and blows him back a little, hair lifting. I hope it will be a dose of reality, like icy water, but he lowers his head and keeps going.

  When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he walks to the far end of the platform, to the solitary metal bench. That bench, beneath the godlike eye of the CCTV camera – it is as if it is a magnet for the lonely, the desperate. I can’t believe it, my beloved, my fair-haired young man, the only beautiful thing on sodding unbeautiful Peterborough Station – he is heading for the netherworld, the world of darkness and pain and misery for all those you leave behind. How much pain do you have to be in to ruin the life of everyone who loves you, forever? Don’t. I’d be screaming it now, if I could. Those who care for you will never, never recover.

  He sits down on the bench and turns away from the other passengers at the far end of the platform in a hunched kind of way, as if he is cold, which he probably is. After a moment or two, he reaches into his coat pocket and withdraws a packet of cigarettes.

  What, he smokes? I feel as if he has been deceiving me. If you’re determined to kill yourself why do it in a way that takes so long and makes you smell disgusting? Also, it’s illegal. Fifty-pound on-the-spot fine. Breaking the law is the least of his concerns right now, clearly. Still hunched, he lifts a disposable lighter and sparks it up.

  Despite my disapproval, this gives me a small amount of hope. It’s an act of delay on his part, surely? Does it suggest hesitation, a desire to think things through? Or is it just a last one before he goes? Either way, his smoking will be spotted very quickly and draw attention – whoever is in the DTL office will see it on the CCTV or the smell of it will drift down the platform and alert some goody two-shoes at the other end.

  Then, all at once, after a few moments of sucking hard and when he is only halfway through the cigarette, he drops it and grinds it beneath his shoe – it’s all over so quickly that nobody has noticed.

  He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out his phone and I think, yes, yes, this is good. He’s going to call someone – maybe he had a massive row with them earlier today and he’s going to apologise, or demand an apology – either way, he’s going to make a move to fix it, this thing that has been the last straw and brought him to this place. Or maybe, when you’re in his state, all you need is the sound of another human voice, even a voicemail, the sound of your mum saying, ‘We’re not able to come to the phone right now but please leave a message after the tone.’ Maybe that’s enough to stop someone doing the thing they genuinely believe themselves about to do that they really don’t want to do at all.

  He doesn’t make the call, not that call or any call. He looks at the phone’s screen, a blank, incurious glance, then slips the phone back into his pocket and I have a sudden, horrible image of the detective sergeant who will hold the phone and flick through his messages and the call register – that’s if it survives the wheels of the train. Don’t. That’s what I would text him, if I could. Please please don’t.

  Or do. And you will be mine.

  It comes to me then, the possibility that his fate is mine to decide. Perhaps – who knows? – that’s what I’m here for. Maybe that’s the way it works. This must be illusory – surely I don’t have that power – but I can’t shake the thought. People who attempt suicide and fail sometimes report hearing voices just beforehand, urging them on. Do it, stupid, you’ll never amount to anything. The world would be a better place without you in it. If I really want Caleb, or want to stand a chance of him, I could lean down now and whisper in his ear, just like I did to the woman queuing for her ticket last week. I’m sure she heard me.

  I hover in front of him. Do I want him to live or die? If I let him live, he will go on to have a life – marry, perhaps, if he isn’t married already, have children, work, play, grow old. He will do all that without me … he won’t even think of me because he’ll never even know that I exist. Go on, Caleb, go on … why not? One moment and it will all be over. They won’t miss you. They don’t care. One moment, that’s all it will take.

  Platform Seven is very quiet. It is cold and the waiting room is still open so most of the people waiting are in there, that’s what it’s for. There are only three people standing outside. I can see a middle-aged woman a little nearer than the other two,
looking this way with what I think is a small frown of disapproval. Perhaps she noticed the smoking, or the smell has drifted down the platform. I think, for God’s sake, don’t be so bloody English, go and complain. But there is no one around to complain to, the train isn’t due yet, and she turns away. She can’t be bothered because he’s a young man breaking a rule and is no doubt thinking to herself, a young man being a horrible young man and not a young man in distress.

  And then I hear it, in the distance: thunder and rumble. It’s coming towards us in the dark – a freight train, getting nearer by the second, the growing and portentous sound of it. This one is slower than the one that killed the man a week ago – I can hear a high-pitched screeching, an orchestral note along with the rumble and thunder – but I can still see the two bright yellow headlights, just like before, distant and disembodied, the edges wavery but the centre of them solid, heading towards us.

  Caleb rises from the bench. He walks towards the edge of the platform quite calmly, there is no inching forward like the older man – he has more courage, perhaps, is even more resolute. I am suspended above him and half of me is screaming no and half of me is thinking yes … yes! The freight train continues its rumbling advance. It’s a long one, a great monster of dirty white, dark ochre, moss-green MAERSK containers in an endless screeching train. Yes, it’s slower, but it is vast and hard and doesn’t need to be going quickly to do its job.

  Caleb is right on the edge of the platform now. He leans forward.

  Freight trains happen in three acts. In Act One, they are distant, barely audible, then in Act Two they fill the air with metal and sound, with the ineluctability of themselves. Act Three, they are gone, the rear end of the final carriage is postage-stamp-sized in the distance and there is only the metallic tang in your nostrils, an echo of noise.

  It is Act Two. The train rushes in, faster than I thought – at this proximity it is huge and deafening.

  As the train thunders past the side of it almost brushes Caleb’s nose. All that hard metal, rushing – and Caleb, so soft and human, flesh and bone, his hair blasted back by the draught, his pale face brutally exposed, eyes wide, nostrils flared and reddened: it is a shocked face, unclothed by expression and so vulnerable, so dear in all its nakedness, and that is when I realise: I love him. I have fallen in love with a real human being, alive and corporeal, and I would do anything to protect him. I don’t care that he will never know me if he lives. I want him to leave me here alone, as long as he will be okay, that’s fine. I would never have him hurt just so that I could have him. That isn’t what love is.

  The train is vanished now. There is nothing but empty space around him, just the air, the cold night air, as if the freight train never existed, as if death itself did not exist.

  Caleb sways, almost imperceptibly, then stands rock still, as if frozen in shock at the irreversibility of what he almost did. This very minute, the one he is experiencing now, could have been the first minute in which he was no longer in the world. He turns away from the edge, towards the stairs. He traipses back along the platform, past the waiting room, past the disapproving woman, who doesn’t even look at him. I feel as exhausted as he looks. It is as if I have been pouring all my thoughts, my energies, into dissuading him or – if I am honest – into the internal battle between whether I dissuaded him or not. Was it me that stopped him? I know I can’t move physical objects but can I enter minds without knowing it? Do I have that power, now?

  His face looks as ravaged as before, just more tired. I don’t think it was me. He doesn’t look like a man who has had an epiphany – just a man who couldn’t quite go through with it.

  He walks along the covered walkway. A woman pushing a double buggy gives him a weary smile. One of her small charges – twin boys – is asleep. The other is arching his back against the curve of the buggy seat, straining the straps, and howling, face bulging with the desire to be free. The woman pushing the buggy looks at Caleb and has that smiling expression that women have when their children are behaving badly, I know, but what can you do? Her expression drops as Caleb fails to respond.

  And maybe it is because of this small non-exchange that I realise what is special about Caleb. The woman with the buggy made an attempt at human interaction but when she saw the look on Caleb’s face, she faltered. Not because he was rude or hostile – his expression was a blank – but because in that instant it became obvious to her that she had failed to read him. It was only a tiny moment – she will have forgotten it by the time she has pressed the button to call the lift – but it has made me realise that I, too, have failed to read Caleb. I have been watching him with more intensity than I have lavished on any of the many other human beings I have been observing, and yet his thoughts remain a mystery to me.

  I think about this for a while and the more I think about it the more true and obvious it feels. Most of the time, I know what people are thinking, or can at least make a guess. It’s not that I can read their minds – hundreds of people pass through this station every day, just imagine the clamour if I could. But when I look at PC Lockhart, I know what is troubling him. When I see Tom, it’s obvious to me that he is thinking with some degree of envy about Inspector Barker’s new ukulele and wondering when he’s going to get a look at it. Melissa is so bright, so ambitious, her face radiates it. I know for a fact she is thinking about applying for Area Management and worrying that it will mean a lot of time away from home and how that will be for her mum. And Dalmar, Dalmar is suffused with a quality possessed only by people who have suffered and survived long enough to put their suffering aside: an overwhelming sadness coupled with an ability to keep on, day by day. Dalmar has seen some terrible things done to human beings by other human beings, yet he has escaped and knows himself to be safe. He is still immersed in something, though, a certain and specific sort of sadness, like backache but in the brain.

  But Caleb? No idea. I watch him. I guess what he is thinking or about to do from his actions but with no more insight than an ordinary mortal. There is something about him that defeats my powers of insight.

  Is this what has attracted me to him? I thought it was the slightly hawkish nose, the air of watchfulness – that’s something I share, of course. I thought it might be the way that, when he got warm in the cafe, he pushed at his jacket sleeves a little, a futile gesture because it’s not like pushing at a hoodie or jumper that you could concertina to the elbow. The jacket just slipped down again, but before it did, I had a brief but distinct glimpse of his wrists: the bones, the hairs on his arms, medium brown, the hands that seem a little too large to match his compact frame. His wrists; Caleb’s wrists. Men’s wrists are an underrated element of their attractiveness, in my opinion. I had assumed, in other words, that Caleb’s attractiveness to me was pretty much the same sort of attractiveness I would have responded to when I was a living, breathing human being, a body. But now I know it is much more than that.

  I trail after him as he crosses the covered walkway. I think perhaps it was this: when I stared at Caleb, when I listened to him on the phone, when I watched his expression, I thought I knew him – but actually, I had no idea what he was thinking, and that was what drew me to him, what created my desire.

  And then a heart-sinking thought occurs to me. The last person I couldn’t read was the man who threw himself from Platform Seven at 4 a.m. a week ago, the man in a donkey jacket with his face half covered by a scarf, who stood and swayed and stared with his watery eyes. Perhaps what links him and Caleb, what makes them both unreadable, is the depth of their own particular sort of misery. I don’t want to believe that. It implies that Caleb will be back, back to Platform Seven.

  *

  The exit barriers are open. Caleb walks through, for all the world like a man who is just leaving a railway station. Outside the station, he pauses for a minute, then puts his hand on his heart. Is this a moment of reflection? There is a small frown on his face. It’s just the phone in his breast pocket vibrating again. He doesn’t
even extract it from the pocket this time. He sets off down the road, crosses the mini roundabout and heads down into the underpass. There are a lot of underpasses around the station and women don’t walk them alone after dark. This one is the first – the route towards it has the multi-storey car park on one side and the railings that demarcate the station on the other, then the path takes a sharp nosedive down to the low-ceilinged walkway. The cheery paint and the graffiti can’t disguise the gloom, the smell of urine.

  There is the huddled shape of a homeless person in a sleeping bag tucked along one wall. Caleb ignores the shape as he walks past. I float behind him. When I was alive, I hated this underpass even in daylight, the lowness of it, the rumble of traffic overhead, the echoing sound of droplets of damp dripping off the walls. Caleb walks along it seemingly oblivious, lost in thought.

  It is only as he comes to the steps that lead up to Cowgate that I realise what is happening. I am following him, watching him, keen to see if, at some point, his step will lighten a little as he appreciates that he is still alive and that that fact alone is a wonderful thing. I am wondering where he lives – that’s assuming he is on his way back home, of course. I think about the surrounding area. Lots of young professionals have moved out of Peterborough, to the suburbs or the surrounding villages – Peterborough isn’t really a city so much as a group of townships joined by ring roads – but if he has a daily commute from the station then maybe he’s walking distance, one of those streets between the Parkway and the Back River. He takes a right down Priestgate and as he turns the corner, I see some dog shit on the pavement that he also notices and avoids. I feel a rush of gladness that he didn’t step in it – that really would have put the lid on a terrible day, after all – and then it comes to me, the thing I should have noticed straight away if I had not been so distracted by watching Caleb’s progress through the underpass and up the steps and the speculation on where he might live. For the first time since I died, I have left the station.