by Rob Grant
There were doors in the ends of both carriages, less than a metre behind me. The doors, in an astonishing coup of design innovation, actually had handles. I just had to work out a way to get to them, that's all. The problem was, it was taking just about everything I had simply to stay where I was.
I managed to work out a kind of backwards shimmy with my hands, in rhythm with the lurching carriages, while my feet did their best to keep their grip on the buffers. It was slow progress, it was uncommonly dangerous, and it hurt, but after about a quarter of an hour, I was within reaching distance of both doors. Slowly, I slid my right hand down behind me towards the handle of the foremost carriage. I felt the glorious kiss of cold metal. I braced myself and twisted it.
It didn't move.
Obviously, I hadn't got a good enough grip on it. I spent another few minutes shimmying to get into a better position. I slid my hand down towards the handle and grabbed it again. I grabbed it good this time. I gave it a firm twist, but it refused to budge. Surely it can't have been locked? What would be the point of that? Just who would they be trying to keep out of there? Did somebody truly feel it was necessary to protect the passengers from the kind of lunatics who would leap onto a charging locomotive and wedge themselves between the wagons? Surely that would be taking safety precautions too far. I mean, how often did that kind of thing come up? Was this train constantly beset by invasion attempts from deranged potential boarders who leapt between the carriages with scant regard for their own personal safety? I doubted it. I doubted that kind of incursion happened very frequently at all. The handle was probably just stuck, that's all.
I twisted at it again.
I jiggled it, in case it was just stuck, and all it needed was a light jiggle in the right direction to free it up. I jiggled it a lot. I jiggled and I twisted it. I tugged and pulled and rattled it. I jerked and yanked and wrenched it. Finally, I just out and out tried to rip the damned thing off.
There was no getting away from it. The door was locked.
I spent the next few minutes shimmying my right hand back to shoulder height. I got back to the Samson-between-the-temple-pillars position again, and hung there, trying to catch my breath.
I was going to have to try the other door. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense they might keep the passenger carriage door locked to stop the scant number of customers they actually allowed on the train from accidentally wandering through and falling onto the track. Fair enough. But the guard's van? There was no earthly way that door would be locked, too, was there? Why have a guard in a van who couldn't access the rest of the train? What would be the point of that?
I shimmied my left hand down the rear carriage door. Again, I hit cold metal. I took a deep breath, and slowly applied the twisting movement. The handle didn't seem to give. Perhaps that's because I was trying with my weaker hand. I steeled myself, and with a barbarian roar twisted the handle with everything I'd got.
I don't know why I bothered.
So both the doors were locked, then.
I shimmied back to base camp.
Surely there were people in those carriages? Surely some of those people must have noticed the door handle rattling? Was there not a single one who thought that might be an odd thing? That someone rattling the doorknob from outside a moving train was just a little bit strange? Was not one of them inquisitive enough to get off his useless backside, stroll down the carpeted carriage and take a little peek?
I had to try and attract their attention. After some painful contortions and a couple of near-death experiences, I managed to work out a way of crabbing backwards with my hands above my head, and slowly, agonizingly, I edged my head back towards the windows. It was a stretch, let me tell you. My internal organs must have been pulled into shapes that resembled amusing balloon animals. But I made it. I was bent backwards almost double, I was in considerable pain, and I had no idea if it was even possible to move back upright out of this position, but I made it.
I stretched myself just a little bit further and peeked into the window of the penultimate carriage, sideways. I did it as slowly as I dared. I didn't want people to be shocked by the sudden appearance of a horizontal head at their window.
The carriage appeared to be empty.
I watched for a while, in case there were someone at one of the window seats further down the carriage, out of my line of sight. But there was no sign of life. There was nothing.
Well, what did you expect? What did you expect from a train service that doesn't actually stop at stations? Did you expect the cars to be heaving with passengers? Did you expect them to be jammed to capacity? Did you expect passengers to be so tightly packed in there, they'd actually be climbing over each other to get to the window for some air? How could they be? Passengers couldn't even get on the train, if the train never stopped to pick them up. What a brilliant concept. Passenger-free transport. Hats off to Railouest! In a single master stroke, they'd eradicated all of the problems associated with running a rail network, by the simple expedient of eliminating the passenger from the system.
They'd obviously worked out the plan to its minutest detail. They'd even arranged for the access doors to be locked, just in case some mad reckless bastard tried to board the train, and thereby become a dreaded passenger, while the train was hurtling through a station at speeds in excess of one million kph. Superb.
I twisted my head over to the guard's carriage. The blind was pulled down over the window. Why? Who were they worried was going to spy on them from this angle? Certainly not the passengers in the adjoining carriage, because there were no passengers in the adjoining carriage, because, and I think we've already covered this, no one could get on the fucking train.
But then: a drawn blind?
Didn't that suggest occupancy?
Didn't that suggest that someone might be in the carriage?
Could Lady Luck finally be smiling on me?
If there were someone inside -- and if not, why the drawn blind? -- I had to work out some way of attracting their attention.
I had to find some way of banging on the window.
And the only bit of me that was spare for banging was my head.
And that was going to be a problem.
The problem being: my head hurt.
It hurt a lot.
All over.
I had a bruise on the back of my skull the size, topography and rigidity of a Mr Universe contestant's left arse cheek. On the forehead above my right eye I had a mottled lump I could have painted white and used as a golf ball. My brain had, in the course of a few short seconds, taken the kind of chronic, brutal pummelling a very poor bare-fist boxer might experience over the entire span of his punishing and unsuccessful career. When I thought it over, it seemed most unlikely that I wasn't already suffering from some kind of concussion. If that were the case, I might faint dead away any minute and slip down onto the murderous tracks.
I rubbed my forehead against the window pane, trying to feel out the spot of least pain.
I selected an area just above my left eyebrow and tried a tentative knock.
The area just above my left eyebrow didn't hurt, but the rest of my head thought it was being used as a clanger in one of Notre Dame's larger bells.
I sucked in a big one, and banged my head hard against the window. And I waited.
I waited till the buzzing in my brain stopped, and banged my head against the window again. Harder, this time.
I had just about summoned up the inner strength to bang again, when I spotted a movement. The corner of the blind definitely trembled.
There was someone in the carriage. I was almost certain now.
Steeled by this faint glimmer of hope, I banged my poor head on the window again. I banged out SOS in Morse code. That's nine bangs, people. Nine. I think I must have lost consciousness, if only for an instant, because I was suddenly aware that my hands were sliding out of position. I barely managed to pull myself back in time.
The blind m
oved aside slightly and a guard in a peaked cap peered out. He saw my horizontal head and froze.
He stared at me for an uncommonly long time. I don't suppose you could blame him. I wouldn't rank as one of the more commonplace apparitions a railway guard might expect to find at his window.
I yelled at him to let me in. He probably couldn't hear me -- I couldn't hear me -- but you wouldn't have to be a gifted lip-reader to work out what I wanted.
He yelled something back at me, but I had no idea what he was saying. I tried to mime that I couldn't hear him, but that's hard to pull off when you've only got your head to work with. He yelled again, presumably louder, but it didn't help. I shook my head, and tried to convey incomprehension.
He let the blind fall back.
I assumed he was going to open the door.
I was wrong.
After a short wait that could only just be classified as a geographical era, he lifted the blind again and held up a piece of paper to the window. I craned back to read it.
In scrawly biro, the guard had written: 'You shouldn't be there.'
Well. Thank God. At last, I was working with a bona fide genius. A mastermind of such raw wit and naked acumen, he instantly and instinctively knew it was wrong to find a man wedged between two carriages of a speeding express train, and, what's more, he wasn't afraid to put his neck on the line, and come right out and say so.
When he was finally satisfied I'd read and fully digested his startlingly frank opus, he took down the paper and looked at me, waiting for my response.
I had no idea what he wanted me to do, or why he thought the situation warranted a protracted and intricate conversation. I nodded my head, to acknowledge the unassailable wisdom of his observation, and once again tried yelling for him to let me in.
He looked puzzled, then cupped his hand to his ear.
He really was a fucking Einstein when it came to nonverbal communication. I yelled again that I wanted to be let in, and added a violent nodding of my head in the direction of his carriage.
He let the blind fall again.
I was wilting badly. The prospect of relaxing my arms and slipping down to the tracks began to seem strangely beguiling.
After another short wait during which a small puddle of single-celled pond life might have evolved into a sentient species and designed its own space shuttle, he lifted the blind again, and pressed another sheet of paper to the window.
I craned my aching neck back and read it.
It said: 'What do you want me to do?'
Well, now. What did he think I wanted him to do? Did he think I wanted him to dig up whatever costumes and props he could find in the guard's van and mount a one-man amateur production of Annie Get Your Gun for my delectation?
I mimed, with hyper-exaggerated lip and jaw movements, 'Ooopeeeennn theeeeee duh-oooorroooorrrr.' Then smiled and nodded like an idiot, as if that would help.
He blinked and cupped his hand to his ear again. He really was an intellectual giant.
I tried again: the long and exaggerated idiot version of 'Open the door,' only I think I might have inadvertently inserted twenty seconds of the word 'fuuuuuuuuuckkkkk-kiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnng' somewhere around the middle of it.
He let the blind drop again.
And then someone spat on my face.
Well, what a marvellous turn of events.
I'm wedged, perilously, battered and bruised, between the two rearmost carriages of a cross-country intercity express, and some gentle soul decides that's not torment enough for dear old Harry Salt; they have to raise the ante just a little on his suffering by hacking a big green one straight into his defenceless face.
I was confused as to where the spit might have come from. Not from either of the carriages -- they were sealed tighter than a homophobe's buttocks at a gay pride parade. Not, as far as I could see, from the roofs of the carriages, either.
Had I enjoyed the gross misfortune to be hit at random by a haphazard sputal glob serendipitously hurled by some mischievous train-spotter?
Then another one hit me.
Right on the kisser.
Yum, yum.
Not spit at all, you see. Much, much worse than spit.
It was starting to rain.
THIRTY-TWO
The blind lifted again, and another work of astonishing astuteness was pressed against the pane. It was a piece, in my opinion, vastly superior in its scope, innovation and basic understanding of the human condition than even Sigmund Freud's acknowledged masterwork The Interpretation of Dreams. It showed a more clear-headed grasp of the fundamental nature of the universe and reality than Haw-king's A Brief History of Time. For sheer intellectual accomplishment, it easily outgunned the entire combined lifetime output of Marcel Proust, Karl Marx and Richard Dawkins.
What it said, quite simply, was: 'Do you want me to open door'.
Breathtaking.
Awesome.
Did I want him to open door?
See? He'd even saved time by omitting the definite article.
Not for this literary leviathan the predictable pedestrian prose of a lesser author. Not for him slavish obedience to the unforgiving master Grammar. He'd even managed to slash the writing time still further by entirely missing off the question mark.
Genius.
Did I want him to open door?
You bet I did. You bet I wanted him to open door.
I nodded. I smiled my idiot smile and nodded my idiot nod.
Obviously, I couldn't hope to communicate at his elevated level of sophistication, but I think he understood me. I think he did.
He dropped the blind again.
Even though it forced me into a painfully unnatural pose, and even though it allowed the thick globules of mucal rain that were gobbing down with increasing frequency to glop straight into my eyes, I strained my head back so I could see the door handle. It was surely going to twist soon, that stubborn old hunk of metal. Surely.
I was probably grinning like a kid who's been given a bicycle-shaped parcel. For all I know I was panting and slobbering like a St Bernard at walkies time.
Surely that handle would tremble soon, and turn.
Surely.
The rain was beginning to get quite annoying now. It was really starting to annoy me.
The handle didn't turn.
But the blind did get lifted up again. And another sheet of paper was thrust against it.
He was offering me yet another composition. How could he have known that was exactly what I needed right then? I didn't even know myself. I thought that all I wanted right then was for him to open the door and let me in, thereby saving my life. But no, that trifling sequence of events was as nothing compared to the lofty and enviable privilege of enjoying this, the third in a trilogy of lofty masterpieces.
I read it eagerly. I drank it in. It did not disappoint.
I reproduce it here in its glorious entirety:
'I open door if you give me you boot's.'
I admit, at first it baffled me. He open door if I give him my boot's what?
But when I grappled with his concepts further, I began to see the light. In a startling leap of creative imagination, he was toying with the whole notion of the apostrophe, in a kind of post-postmodern return to the jejune, using it not as an indicator of the possessive case, but rather as a redundant method of flagging the plural.
He coveted my boots.
In short, he was extorting me.
What choice did I have? My beloved boots, or certain death?
Believe me, I thought about it. I thought about it as long and as hard as I dared. Much longer and harder, under the circumstances, than any sane man would.
In the end, I capitulated.
I signed his Faustian pact with my trademark enthusiastic idiot nod grin.
He smiled, gave me a thumbs-up sign, and dropped the blind again.
Now, you may be thinking I was a fool to give up the boots so easily, but you would be wrong.
Because I had a plan.
I can't say it was the world's most cunning plan, but then a simple, straightforward plan is often the best, don't you find?
My plan was to dupe him into thinking I was going to go ahead and let him have my boots without even making a fuss. Thus lulled, the unsuspecting fool would open the door and admit me to the guard's van. Once safely there ensconced -- and this is the beauty part of the plan; this is the glorious ironic twist to it -- once I was safe inside, I would immediately set about kicking the bastard to death... with the very boots he craved!
I must have been feeling extremely light-headed by now, because I think I actually threw back my head and laughed like a caricature villain. I know. I know. It doesn't sound like a thing I'd normally do, but I'm pretty sure I did it.
The rain was coming down quite thickly now. I could actually hear it battering the top of my head. My fingers were beginning to slip, and it was getting more and more difficult to slide them back into position.
I watched the door handle.
I saw it move.
It moved only slightly. But it definitely moved.
The door remained closed.
The handle moved again. It rattled this time. It rattled quite long and hard, but the rattle never managed to blossom into a fully grown twist, which was, let's face it, what the situation urgently required.
Then the handle fell still.
My hands were slipping a lot now. They were slipping pretty much all the time. The rain was imbuing the surface they were supposed to be gripping with a greasy, almost soapy sheen. I had minutes left, if that.
The blind was raised again. There was yet another note.
Glory be. Just what the doctor ordered.
Though the driving rain was now slashing at my eyes and the window pane was dotted with its thick globules, I strained to read the latest instalment of Thoughts From A Mental Train Guard.
It was to be his final piece. At least as far as I was concerned. Incredibly, it not only maintained the quality of its forebears, I would say it actually surpassed them.
There were only three words, but what words! And so gloriously arranged.