Waiting For a Train That Never Comes

by J A Henderson Henderson

  Bobby lost track of time. Eyes tightly shut he shook his head from side to side, trying not to throw up. There was a splintering noise near the stern.

  They were all going to die.

  WPC Arnold had the accelerator pressed to the floor. The car veered from side to side as it rocketed along the A91 and she fought for control with every turn in the road.

  She glanced in the mirror. Baba Rana flopped around in the back, held in place by the seat belt. Through the rear window, the constable saw a broiling gargantuan wave rolling across the landscape.

  “Come on!” she screamed, hunched over the steering wheel. The road began to wind into the Gauldry hills, but the tidal wave, though slowed by the camber of the land, was still travelling much faster than the car.

  “Bugger this!”

  WPC Arnold swung the steering wheel to the left. The vehicle shot off the road, ploughed through a wire fence and soared into a grassy field, landing with a jarring thud. In front of her, a gorse covered hill rose steeply to a copse of trees. With the accelerator still flat on the floor she headed up the slope.

  The car bounced and rattled up the incline, throwing great gobs of earth from its spinning wheels. The engine whined in protest and smoke began to billow from under the bonnet. The headlights exploded and a hubcap shot off and flew into the air.

  Up and up, the Panda went. The engine’s screech was now ear piercing and sparks cascaded from the underside of the car.

  Then it stalled.

  The Constable flung the door open, threw herself out and began to scramble uphill. Her heart hammered and all she could hear was the sound of her own laboured breathing as she clambered frantically up the steepest part of the incline.

  All she could hear was her own breathing.

  WPC Arnold turned round.

  The tidal wave had run its course, spent by battering itself against the Gauldry hills. Twenty yards below it had slowed to a stop. Now a great black lake, dotted with debris, covered Fife.

  Shaking all over, the Constable made her way back to the car and found a flashlight. Descending to the water’s edge, she shone the beam around.

  There was an oblong white shape wedged against a dry stone dyke, abandoned by the slowly receding water. It looked like some kind of boat. WPC Arnold made her way over to it.

  It was a boat. A lifeboat, the top covered in ragged yellow tarpaulin, puddles dotting its pitted surface.

  She could hear a faint giggling from the interior.

  The woman pulled back the ruined covering and shone the light inside.

  “Are you people all right? Is anyone hurt?”

  “Yeah. We hurt all over.” The voice coming from under the gunwale sounded deliriously happy. “But we’re alive!”

  A burst of childish laughter exploded from under a bench on the other side.

  “We’re alive! We really are!”

  “You can untie the kids now, Eddie.” The first voice spoke again. “Tempted as I am to leave them like that. Never seen them so well behaved.”

  WPC Arnold crinkled her brow.

  “Gordon Berlin? Are you effing kidding?”

  “Eh? Is that you, Joanne?” Bobby’s dad stuck his head out.. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “Chasing you, you moron.” WPC Arnold turned the flashlight on herself, face beaming with delight. “Now please step out of the lifeboat. You’re illegally parked again.”

  -49-

  Mary and Bobby stood side by side in the little cemetery next to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Puddledub. The interior of the church was still flood damaged but the stone building, set on the crest of a hill had survived the tidal wave. The chimneys of Ethylene Plant, however, had been swept away - the clear blue sky no longer sullied by its smoky pyres.

  Mary was dressed in a velvet coat and carried matching gloves in one hand. In the other, she held the flute Eddie Hall had given her. Her grandmother’s red ribbon, threaded through her corn-coloured hair, was the only splash of colour she allowed herself.

  It was two weeks since the Storegga Tsunami and Baba Rana’s funeral was finally taking place. There had been too much chaos in the aftermath of the disaster to observe normal protocol. Everyone was busy trying to house and feed a huge proportion of Scotland’s population. Hunting for missing relatives. Burying bodies.

  Because of the damage inside the church, the ceremony was held outside – not that it was much of a service. The priest spouted a few platitudes about what a good woman Rana had been but Mary barely listened. He hadn’t even known her gran. After the coffin was lowered into the ground the man muttered a few condolences, fastened his coat and hurried off to another funeral.

  Mary hooked her arm through Bobby’s and looked around. Gordon Berlin was talking quietly to WPC Arnold. She was dressed in a full length leather coat, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Pinned to her lapel was a small medal. Gordon looked smitten.

  Eddie Hall was here too, holding his daughter’s hand.

  Only six people at my grandmother’s funeral, the girl thought. And half of them hadn’t even known her.

  She couldn’t bring herself to dwell on that.

  “How are you getting on with your dad?” she asked Bobby.

  The two of them hadn’t had much chance to talk in the last fortnight. Bobby was living with his mother’s relatives while Gordon helped the police in their investigation of Secron Oil. Mary was staying with an old friend of her father’s until the authorities found somewhere permanent to put her.

  She couldn’t bear to think about that either.

  “Not too bad, I suppose.” Bobby glanced over at his father. “He doesn’t remember being Dodd Pollen, which is a shame, in a way. I think that weekend we were as close to each other as we’re ever going to get.”

  Mary gave his arm a squeeze.

  “He’s trying though,” Bobby said hopefully. “I think he’s changed a bit.”

  “I think we all have.”

  “Mary,” Bobby said shyly. “Why don’t I ask my dad if you can come and live with us? If you want to, that is.”

  “I would love it. And I’ll never forget that you asked.” She patted the boy’s shoulder. “But if your dad picks up another kid at a funeral he’ll probably have a permanent breakdown.”

  They both stared out over the hills of Fife, neither wanting to mention the reason they were here.

  “It’s strange, but I feel sort of empty now.” Bobby scuffed at the waterlogged grass with his feet. “The weekend of the flood, I felt I was really doing something. I felt more, I saw more. It’s hard to explain.” He sniffed and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I lived more.”

  “Me too, though I can’t say I enjoyed it at the time.” She smiled across at WPC Arnold. “Same with my gran, apparently.”

  Bobby nodded and hung his head.

  “There are so many people in this world who don’t fully live.” Mary glanced across at Bobby’s father. “Some are waiting for a train that never comes. Others dreading that one will derail their lives.”

  She put on her gloves and pulled them tight.

  “I’ve decided I want to see a bit of the world. I can leave school in a year. Going to get a job that lets me travel.” She gave the boy a nudge. “What about you?”

  “College, I suppose. I don’t really know.” A haunted expression slid across Bobby’s face. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you around.”

  “Then, one day, you’ll have to come find me.”

  Mary walked over to her grandmother’s open grave and untied the ribbon from her hair.

  Bobby shot her a quizzical look.

  “It’s an old Romany custom.” The girl answered his unspoken question. “You put something in the grave you think might be important to the departed.” She glanced down at the flute. “These are the only possessions of hers I have left.”

  “At least you know your gran was a real Gypsy.”

  “A small consolation given the ci
rcumstances.” Mary prepared to drop the ribbon into the grave.

  “No!” WPC Arnold ran over to stop her. “Put in the flute.”

  “This thing’s been through hell and high water to get to me,” Mary protested. “Literally.”

  “Put in the flute.” WPC Arnold laid a hand purposefully on the teenager’s arm. “Trust me on that.”

  The teenager hesitated. Then she dropped the whistle into the dark hole and retreated from the grave.

  “What difference does it make?” Gordon had caught up with his companion. “Shouldn’t we have let the girl choose for herself?”

  “Did I ever tell you about the biggest bust I was ever part of? We caught a boat smuggling diamonds into the country a couple of years back.” WPC Arnold gave the man a sly smile. “Being a woman, I spent a long time admiring the contraband.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Long enough to know those aren’t glass beads decorating Mary’s ribbon.” The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Those Nazis weren’t after the damned flute.”

  Gordon’s mouth dropped open. Mary looked at the ribbon in astonishment.

  “Diamonds?’

  “Yup. Worth an absolute fortune, I’d say.”

  “Excuse me!” Eddie Hall said loudly. They turned to see him heading purposefully toward the graveyard gate, his daughter in tow. “Sorry, but there’s a funeral going on here.”

  A small group of men and women had appeared by the cemetery wall. They were an oddly dressed bunch - the females all in red skirts and the men sporting red or white armbands. One or two were wearing hats with white bands round them.

  A broad shouldered man with a short black beard stepped through the gate.

  “My apologies.” He turned towards the grave and crossed himself. “This is the ceremony for Rana Szeresewska?”

  Gordon and WPC Arnold hurried over to join Eddie.

  “I’m sorry.” Bobby’s father asked. “Did you know her?”

  The man shook his head regretfully. WPC Arnold moved Gordon gently out of the way and held out her hand.

  “I’m Joanne Arnold. The person who contacted you.”

  Gordon looked puzzled.

  “And I am grateful.” The bearded man shook hands with her and nodded towards Mary. “This is the girl?”

  “That’s her.”

  He left the group, strode towards Mary and bowed curtly when he reached her. He looked up at the girl from under long dark lashes.

  “My name is Petsha Andree,” he said. His voice had a European lilt. “Your grandmother and my grandmother were cousins.”

  He put his hand solemnly on his heart.

  “My family did not know Rana had survived. They thought she died as a child. During the war.”

  Mary glanced across at WPC Arnold, her mouth open.

  “I did some checking,” the woman said. “Didn’t think it was right for a proper Gypsy to go this way.”

  “I formally ask you,” Petsha Andree straightened up proudly. “May we Romany pay our last respects?”

  Mary nodded, too astounded to speak.

  The bearded man turned to the group waiting at the church gate. There seemed to be twice as many now. He beckoned to them and they slowly entered. Their heads were lowered and many cried softly as they began to file past the grave. As each mourner reached the hole in the ground, they threw in a coin or a small trinket. Some scooped up handfuls of dirt and let the earth trickle through their fingers.

  And still more Romany came. Cars drew up outside the graveyard and men and women began to get out. Over the brow of the hill two painted caravans appeared, drawn by horses.

  “We waited.” Petsha Andree said. “We did not want to intrude without permission.”

  Mary covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

  The line of mourners now stretched from the grave through the gate and out of sight down the hill. Eddie Hall and his daughter were looking on in amazement. Gordon Put his arm round WPC Arnold’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

  Bobby came up behind his friend and squeezed her shoulder.

  “I think your train is here.”

  Mary reached up and held onto his hand, watching the great line of Romany who had come to honour her grandmother. Through a mist of tears she glimpsed a movement near the wall.

  There were two Gypsy children flitting through the broken and twisted trees behind the graveyard, heading towards where the Ethylene plant once stood. The boy was slight and dark and the girl wore a red ribbon in her straw coloured hair.

  Mary glanced round at Bobby. Knew he was thinking the same thing.

  From the back, the children looked just like them.

  Epilogue

  A trawler found at the bottom of the North Sea may have been sunk by a massive and very sudden release of methane gas.

  - BBC News

  A gigantic tidal wave, triggered by North Sea gas drilling, could wash the region away, scientists fear. A natural disaster, known as a mega-Tsunami, wiped out most of the North East 7,000 years ago and experts fear another could happen. Top British scientists are investigating the risks of sinking gas wells in an area of the North Sea which once triggered a massive wave which flooded 250 miles of our coast. Some experts say if gas firms get exploration wrong another wave could wipe out the entire North East, killing millions.

  Evening Chronicle

  Shell has chosen subsea compression as a concept for the third phase of the Ormen Lange field development, located 140 kilometres north-west of Kristiansund, in the Norwegian Sea.

  OffshoreEnergyToday.com 2019

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jan-Andrew Henderson (J.A. Henderson) is the author of 24 teenage, YA and non-fiction books. Published in the UK, USA, Germany and the Czech Republic, he has been shortlisted for twelve literary awards and is the winner of the Doncaster Book Prize and Royal Mail Award. Subscribe to his website for regular free books, stories, news and advice

  www.janandrewhenderson.com