Across the Divide

by Brian Gallagher

  So far, everything had gone to plan. He had set off for school at his usual time, but as soon as he was out of sight of his house, had turned towards the station. With Broadstone depot practically on his doorstep, Liam was very familiar with its many tracks and marshalling yards. He had hidden his school-bag under a stack of ballast stones, then mounted the platform for the Sligo-bound train, coming from the direction of the goods yards and thus avoiding the ticket collector at the main concourse of the station.

  Before leaving home he had given Eileen, his eldest sister, a note for his ma. He had made Eileen promise not to hand it over until after she came home from school this afternoon. By then Liam hoped to have ridden the train to Mullingar and made his way the final eleven miles from there to Ballinacargy. In the letter he told his mother not to worry, and that he would get back to Dublin with the precious supplies as quickly as possible. Eileen tried to quiz him about what was going on, but he had insisted that she had to trust him, and that he was doing something that would mean food for the family.

  Now, as the train clattered along the tracks, Liam tried not to show any nervousness. He sat in his window seat, the carriage warm and cosy in contrast to the frozen fields that whistled by outside the glass. He caught a movement from the corner of his eye, and glancing around, felt a sudden thumping in his chest. The ticket collector had entered their carriage. Liam had deliberately chosen the middle of the carriage so that he wouldn’t be among the first to be asked for tickets. He rose, as casually as he could. He stepped into the passageway between the seats, making sure not to catch the eye of the heavy-set ticket collector, and made for the toilets.

  Liam had picked a carriage that was near to the toilets, hoping to hide in there until the ticket collector had moved on to the next carriage. He walked along the passageway now, forcing himself not to rush. He felt as though the ticket collector’s eyes were burning into his back, but he knew that was probably just his imagination and he resisted the temptation to glance behind him.

  He prayed that there wouldn’t be someone already in the toilet as he made for the sliding door at the end of the carriage. He pulled it across, closed it after himself, then anxiously tried the handle of the adjacent toilet.

  The handle swung down, and Liam felt a surge of relief. He stepped into the toilet and locked the door. It was colder here and bumpier too, and Liam had to brace himself to prevent being banged against the walls. How long should I stay here to be sure the ticket collector has moved on? Better to stay a good while rather than risk running into him, he thought. Then again, if I stay too long I might draw attention if other passengers want to use the toilet.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, his mouth dry and his pulses racing. Suddenly he was startled by a loud knocking on the door.

  ‘Ticket, please!’

  Liam felt his heart pounding wildly but he tried not to panic.

  ‘I’ll…I’ll be out in a while.’

  ‘How long are you going to be?’

  ‘A few more minutes,’ answered Liam, trying to keep his voice normal as he played for time.

  ‘I can’t be waiting that long,’ said the collector. ‘Slide your ticket under the door.’

  Liam’s mind raced as he tried to find an answer. ‘Can I … can I bring it up the carriage to you when I’m finished here?’ he suggested.

  ‘No. Open the door and show me your ticket, or slide it under the door. But I want to see a ticket – now!’

  Nora’s mind was miles away, but she managed to give the impression of paying attention as she chanted out her poetry with the other girls in English class. They were reciting Thomas Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, a poem she really liked and, knowing the verses by heart, Nora was able to call them out with the other girls while her mind was elsewhere.

  She had been upset the night before by the idea of Liam’s little sister crying because she was hungry. Upset, but frustrated too that Liam had declined her offer to go with him to Ballinacargy. Liam was only trying to protect her, of course, but she was tired of being protected.

  Just now, her teacher, Sister Regina, had tried to protect her from the imagined evils of the suffragette movement. Not surprisingly, Sister Regina was far more conservative than Miss Dillon had been, and the middle-aged nun had just read out to the class some extracts from Sir Almroth Wright’s new book, The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage. Nora had tried to argue against the author’s views, but Sister Regina had told her to sit down, and had sharply pointed out that when she wanted to conduct a debate, she would inform Nora.

  Nora was inwardly seething, but seething wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Action was the only way to change things. And there was a course of action that would make up for a lot of frustration. But had she the nerve to do it? Because, despite Liam’s views, or Sister Regina’s views, she could act here. She could pretend to go to the concert in the Mansion House tomorrow morning – but instead follow Liam to Ballinacargy and help him bring the food home. If she did it, it would be the most rebellious thing she had ever done in her life, and there would be hell to pay afterwards. Just then she looked up and saw the nun’s thin-lipped, self-satisfied face as she led the girls in the poem. And suddenly, without doubt, Nora knew that she had to rebel.

  Liam opened the toilet door to find the ticket collector standing directly before him. ‘Where’s your ticket?’ the man challenged him.

  ‘I can’t find it,’ answered Liam. ‘I put it into my trousers pocket, but it must have fallen out.’

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’ asked the ticket collector, his tone sarcastic.

  Liam concentrated on trying to sound innocent. ‘Maybe you’ve heard that before, but really, I had the ticket when I got on.’

  The man looked at him for a moment without speaking, and Liam hoped that perhaps he was winning him around.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said the ticket collector. ‘If you bought a ticket, you bought a ticket.’

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ said Liam gratefully.

  ‘One last question?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What did the ticket cost?’

  Liam felt his stomach tighten. He had never bought a railway ticket; Da always did that when the family was travelling. What might it cost to travel from Dublin to Mullingar? Sixpence? Nine pence? A shilling?

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nine pence,’ answered Liam.

  ‘Lying pup!’ said the man, then he grabbed Liam roughly by the shoulder. ‘You’re off the train when we stop in Enfield. The police can deal with you.’

  ‘I have to get to my aunt’s,’ pleaded Liam, ‘it’s really important.’

  ‘Save the hard luck story. I’ve heard them all.’

  ‘I’m collecting food,’ persisted Liam, ‘my sisters are hungry.’

  ‘Then you should have bought a ticket like everyone else.’

  Liam was about to argue further but the man raised a podgy finger and pointed it threateningly in his face. ‘Shut your mouth, you little liar, or I’ll shut it for you!’

  Liam said nothing, then the man pushed him forward.

  ‘Down that way, you can wait in the guard’s van.’

  Liam stepped through the sliding door into the next carriage, followed by the ticket collector. He didn’t want the disgrace of looking like the man’s prisoner, so he kept several paces ahead of him as they made their way through the carriage. They passed through another set of sliding doors and into a third carriage and Liam felt the train beginning to slow down.

  ‘Must be approaching Enfield,’ he heard one passenger saying to another. Liam continued on down the carriage, then pulled back the next sliding door. He held it open for the ticket collector. Just before the man stepped through, Liam looked in horror back up the carriage.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he cried.

  The ticket collector looked around to see what had caused Liam’s distress. While the man was distracted, Liam quickly put his foot behind the conductor’s leg, then
suddenly pushed with all his strength against the man. Completely taken by surprise, the ticket collector fell backwards, tripping over Liam’s foot and losing his balance.

  Liam saw him falling heavily to the floor, and he swiftly pulled the sliding door shut and ran across the small vestibule to undo the catch for the outside door of the train. He pulled hard, but the catch was stiff and didn’t yield. Driven on by fear of the ticket collector, Liam pulled again at the catch. He used every ounce of his strength, and this time the catch came down and the door suddenly swung open. Liam was blown back by a freezing gust of smoke-filled wind.

  To his horror, he saw that while the train was definitely slowing down, it was still going far more quickly than he would have liked. Trying to control his fear, Liam looked out the open door of the carriage. There was an embankment alongside the track. It might have been soft and grassy in the summer, but right now it looked hard and frosty in the morning sunlight and not likely to cushion his fall very much if he jumped. Then he heard the sound of the sliding door being pulled back and he knew that it had to be the ticket collector.

  Still, the thought of jumping terrified him. He stood at the doorway, willing himself to leap. From the corner of his eye he saw the ticket collector moving towards him, his face red and angry. He had only a split second to weigh up his choices. Jump and risk being injured. Don’t jump and face the ticket collector.

  And if the man handed Liam over to the police, there was no way of bringing home the food.

  He jumped. He felt a sudden roaring of wind in his ears, then he hit the embankment and lost his balance. The force of his landing jolted him badly, but he tried to roll forward in the same direction that the train was travelling, hoping that this would help to break his fall. He found himself sliding down the frosty embankment, then he came to a stop. His shoulder was throbbing, his neck felt sprained, and his hip was sore from where it had scraped along the ground.

  Ignoring his aches for the moment, he quickly looked up to see what was happening with the train. The good news was that the ticket collector hadn’t jumped off after him and the train was continuing on its way. But it was slowing down considerably, and Liam realised that it mustn’t be too far to Enfield station. And when it stopped there the ticket collector might well report him to the police. Time to get out of here. He picked himself up gingerly and felt his shoulder and his hip. He didn’t appear to have broken anything. His clothes were wet from sliding along the frosty ground, but they hadn’t been ripped, and Liam brushed off the ice and leaves that had attached to him, then looked around to get his bearings.

  The embankment gave way to a large field, and in a corner of the field, about a hundred yards away, there was a gate, behind which Liam could see a laneway. Liam turned away from the embankment, crossed a narrow ditch into the field and began to run towards the gate.

  ‘Are you mad, Nora?’ asked Mary incredulously. ‘Your mum will kill you!’

  Nora couldn’t help but smile at the expression on her friend’s face as they made their way from one classroom to another.

  ‘She won’t if she doesn’t find out.’

  ‘How could she not find out?’

  ‘If I head for Ballinacargy first thing in the morning I could get back by tomorrow night.’

  ‘But you might never find this farm. Or suppose you can’t get a train back in time.’

  ‘Well, if that happens, that’s where you come in.’

  ‘What?’ Mary stopped in the corridor and looked quizzically at Nora.

  Nora paused, knowing that how she handled this could be really important. She had already apologised to Mary for not telling her about Liam until now, and to Mary’s credit she had scolded Nora briefly, but then grudgingly accepted Nora’s explanation about why she had kept quiet about her friendship with a working class boy.

  ‘I need you to be a friend to me tomorrow, Mary.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘If I don’t get back in time, I want you to give a letter to my parents. I don’t want them worried sick. It will just explain where I’m gone in case I get held up.’

  ‘I’ll be killed for getting involved,’ said Mary.

  ‘You won’t.’ Nora laid her hand reassuringly on her friend’s arm. ‘If I get back in time, I’ll telephone you, and you can tear up the letter. If I don’t, you just push the letter under our door and no one will know who I got to deliver it.’

  ‘They’ll know it was one of your friends.’

  ‘They won’t know which one. And I’m never going to tell.’

  Mary looked dubious. ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘There are girls like us going hungry, Mary. Liam’s little sister, Peg, is only three. She was crying at night because they haven’t enough food.’

  ‘God!’

  ‘Remember what Miss Dillon told us? That we can change the world? But that they’ll try to stop us, just because we’re girls? Well this is our chance to prove them wrong. To do something for once.’

  Nora could see that Mary was swayed, but still her friend said nothing.

  ‘I’m doing this for Liam and his family,’ said Nora. ‘But I’m doing it for Miss Dillon too. I hate what the school did to her. And if Miss Dillon was a girl like us she’d take action. Well I’m going to now, in her honour. So, will you do it?’

  Mary looked at her, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. Then she nodded more vigorously. ‘Yes, I will!’

  Liam walked quickly, trying to keep himself warm. The sun that had made the frost sparkle had now been replaced by heavy clouds, and the first traces of snow were starting to fall in feathery wisps. Normally Liam loved snowy weather – it meant snowball fights and the chance of school being closed due to burst pipes – but as he strode along the canal towpath heading west, a snow-covered route was the last thing he needed.

  Liam didn’t know how far he was from Mullingar, and after he had earlier made his way across the field beside the embankment, he had had to fight back a feeling of despair at being stranded. But despairing would get him nowhere, and he had told himself that the family was relying on him, and that he had to pull himself together. Somehow he had to get to Ballinacargy, and he decided that his best bet was to continue west along the canal towpath.

  He carefully skirted the small town of Enfield, giving the train station a wide berth, then found his way back to the Royal Canal, which he knew went all the way to the River Shannon. He had once heard his da saying that the railway had been built on land that originally belonged to the canal company, which was why the rail line and the canal had run side by side since the train had left Dublin.

  By following the towpath, he reasoned that sooner or later he had to reach a town with a train station, and he would try to jump a train there that would take him on to Mullingar.

  It wasn’t a great plan. The next town could be many miles away. The train mightn’t stop there. And even if it did, it mightn’t be easy to board unseen at a country station. But there was no point worrying about any of those things right now. Whatever it took, he simply had to reach Aunt Molly’s farm. He put thoughts of failure from his mind and walked faster along the towpath as the temperature dipped and the snow got steadily heavier.

  Nora glanced around anxiously to make sure that no one in the school locker room was watching, then she emptied her hockey clothes out of her sports bag and pushed the hockey gear to the back of her locker. She folded up the canvas sports bag as tightly as she could, then slipped it into her schoolbag. Tomorrow she would bring it with her when she made for Ballinacargy, where she could fill it with some of the food that Liam needed to bring back to Dublin.

  She walked out of the locker room without anybody having seen her taking the sports bag, and she headed back towards her classroom, nervous at what she was taking on, but excited too, and satisfied that at last she was acting instead of talking.

  The rest of her plans were all in place. She had already written the letter that she hoped would never have to be
delivered to her parents, and given it to Mary. When she got home this afternoon she would empty her piggy bank so that she would have enough money for the train tomorrow. She would eat a big breakfast in the morning to give her energy, wear warm clothes, and bring a pair of strong, comfortable shoes in case she had to do a lot of walking.

  Was there anything she was overlooking? If there was, she couldn’t think of what it might be. Besides, with a journey into the unknown you couldn’t plan everything in advance, you had to let a certain amount just happen. Satisfied that she had prepared as much as she could, she dismissed her worries, dropped off the schoolbag at her classroom, then made for the canteen with a spring in her step.

  Liam marched through the snow, which was deeper now and covering the countryside in a blanket of white. It crunched underfoot as he walked along the towpath, but otherwise all was quiet, as though the falling snow was not only covering the landscape but silencing it as well.

  Despite moving at a brisk pace, Liam’s hands, face and legs felt cold from their exposure to the icy air. He found himself wishing that he was a year or two older, when he would have made the move from short to long trousers. As the snow settled in his hair he wished too that he had worn his school cap, but he had hidden the cap in his schoolbag back at Broadstone station, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he was a schoolboy who should have been at classes today.

  He strode along the towpath, impressed, despite all his problems, with the vista unfolding before him. This was a particularly broad and stately stretch of canal, with tall trees bounding the waterway on both sides, their branches covered in snow and stretching towards the sky like spindly white arms.

  He tried to figure out how much ground he had covered. It must have been over an hour now since he had jumped from the train. Allowing for skirting the town of Enfield, and then walking quickly, he reckoned that he should have travelled between three and four miles.