The snow, however, was falling so heavily that it formed a thick blanket between him and the view. His hair was soon covered with whiteness while flakes that hit his coat were melting and sliding to the ground as water. He checked the time by the parish church clock and decided to head for the station, to miss his regular ritual of a monetary sacrifice to the abbey’s well, but to give himself time to walk through the ruins again on his way back to the gate. He turned for a final view of the storm through the vast altar windows and saw that the snow was now falling on both sides of them and he was leaving a trail of footprints in the snow that covered the aisle of the old nave.
The train was at the platform when he arrived at the railway station and, after buying an evening newspaper he joined the train. He settled comfortably into the warmth of a nonsmoking compartment and opened his newspaper. He couldn’t read it, however, because of the shadows cast by the station roof. So he folded the paper and slotted it between himself and the side of the train, leaned back in the seat, and closed his eyes.
He didn’t notice the tram’s engine start, and he didn’t feel the train edge out roughly over the poor connections at the entrance to the station. He opened his eyes as the station was disappearing round a bend and the train was set straight for its last journey of the day.
Derek looked at the view. It was a habit he had whenever he travelled by train. He wanted to see the detail of the houses, the sidings, the farmscapes that other people would normally miss. He wanted to spot the cracked windows in houses that looked otherwise architecturally perfect and well-maintained; he wanted to spot the stray growth of nettles or dock leaves in the cultivated gardens that backed on to the railway line; he wanted to spot the rogue rabbit or hare celebrating its freedom in fields normally reserved for barley or cabbages or corn. It wasn’t the view as such that attracted him; it was the flaws in the view or the eccentricities of nature that he enjoyed.
He spotted the peeling white paint on a signal box as the train hurried by and he took particular note of the red scarf with white spots that the signalman was wearing.
Five or six minutes after leaving Whitby the train pulled into Ruswarp station. The honeysuckle that clung to the station walls was light brown and lifeless with touches of snow highlighting the line and the look of the plant which, in five or six months, would be alive again with greenery and heavy perfume and the hum of bees. The lettering on the station side needed some attention; the ‘S’ was slightly askew, and that would have to be straightened before the summer and the visitors returned. The train started to pull out of Ruswarp station; on the right, a tall grey flour mill that seemed to have stood on the same spot for centuries extended its shaft of shadow protectively over the village church. Both the mill and the church benefited from the sprays of snow that clung to their roofs and windowsills, making them look cleaner, their lines more defined, their design more clear cut. They stood out defiantly against the blackness of the evening sky.
The train roared over a bridge that crossed the river Esk and Derek stared down at the ripples of water. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as he did so, and when he opened them again the train was pulling into Sleights, a small village warm and snug in a valley with rich farmland stretching up on both sides of it. The village Station Hotel backed on to the station and the hotel’s garden stretched down to the platform. The garden was used by the customers when weather was good enough, and there were lupins and roses in the flowerbeds nodding their approval to hollyhocks stretching up to mingle with the branches of the apple trees. Apples were just starting to form and there was the merry chuckle of birds gloating over the discovery of young fruit.
On the platform Derek noticed a small huddle of children and a man. The man was about thirty-five to forty and the children—three girls and a boy—ranged in age from about four to twelve years. They were all well dressed and apparently well-behaved—until the train started to pull out of the station. As it did so, the youngest of the children, a little girl in a pink print dress with a white apron, exchanged her smile for a frown and screamed. The man bent down to console her but as he did so another young child—the boy—went through a similar experience and within seconds all four of them seemed to be wailing and crying and demanding the return of their mother who, Derek imagined, had boarded the train and was leaving the rest of the family behind. As he passed the family group he saw huge tears rolling down the cheeks of the little girl in pink and heard her crying out in a high-pitched voice: “Mummy, Mummy, please don’t go.” The man, presumably the father, dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and Derek could read his lips as he explained that Mummy would only be away for a few days; she would be back very, very soon. But the little girl kept on crying and as the train got away from the station the cries of the children seemed to get louder rather than softer.
Derek smiled to himself as he remembered how his own two children could manage to cry at the least opportune times and, with the wailing still in his ears, he returned to his study of the details of the view: the branches in the trees; the birds on the branches; the feathers that made up the birds. He looked down and as he did so he saw the river rippling under a bridge, reflecting a blue sky. He sat upright, trying to check where the train was. And he recognised the views that heralded the approach of Sleights station. On his left was the booking hall and waiting room, over near the road was Sleights Station Hotel and at the back of the hotel was the garden alive with lupins and hollyhocks, stretching down to tempt train passengers at the platform. And there on the platform was the same small group of children and their father: four children—a young girl of about four in a pink print dress with a white apron, two sisters, a brother and their father. They were waving and kissing goodbye to a lady leaning from the doorway just ahead of him and as the train pulled away from the station there would be screaming, Derek told himself. The little girl would scream and then the rest would scream as well. He was right. There was a sudden wailing and weeping from the four of them as they stood on the stones of the platform; a great siren sound of crying; a great moaning that hit his eardrums like thunder; a wailing like a thousand cardinals bemoaning the death of a perfect pope.
Derek blinked and then stared hard at nothing. It was the second time he had seen the same view. The second time he had seen the same happening, from the same train. The same people. The same station. The same journey. It was impossible. Impossible for time to hiccough like that and give him a repeat performance of a ridiculous domestic scene.
He looked round to confirm his beliefs with fellow passengers, but the Whitby to Middlesbrough line is not a tremendously popular excursion in the middle of winter; there was no-one else in his no-smoking compartment. He stood up and saw there was nobody in the rest of the carriage. He slid the door of his compartment open and ambled through into the adjoining carriage in the hope of seeing the lady who was the cause of all the tears on Sleights station and to amuse her with the tricks that his brain was playing upon him. But that carriage was empty as well. He passed through it into the third and last carriage of the train; there was no-one in the second class area of the carriage and he felt his throat going dry as he looked into the first class compartment, knowing before he looked that the compartment too, was going to be empty. It was. Not even a ticket collector.
For a second or two he stood totally frozen, staring at the empty blue seats; then he turned and walked the length of the three carriages to check that he had not missed anyone. He hadn’t. He sat down, trying hard to come up with a reasonable explanation and was suddenly struck by the idea that the lady in question could be at the lavatory. That would account for her not being in any of the seats; he had only looked at the seats. She could have put whatever luggage she had on a rack and then gone straight to the lavatory: hence the empty seats. Simple explanation. That was why he hadn’t seen her. He would give her a couple of minutes and then take another walk down the train. It wasn’t all that unusual for the train to be empty; that was one of the reasons w
hy Dr Beeching had tried to close the line down in the early 1960s. But this was one line that had escaped the Beeching axe.
Derek leaned back in his seat with his eyes dosed as the train ground to a halt. He kept his eyes closed. For some reason he could not explain he did not want to open them to check that this station was Grosmont, the third on the line towards Middlesbrough. He kept his eyes dosed and ran over the list of orders in his mind that he had taken that morning. He thought about his lunch, about his climb up the one hundred and ninety-nine steps to the abbey; he remembered the snow that he had watched swathing the North Sea in cotton wool. He remembered the snow. The whiteness of snow. He opened his eyes and saw the garden of the Station Hotel at Sleights full of blue and crimson lupins, of lush green grass, and multicoloured hollyhocks, poppies, roses and cornflowers. And there, less than a carriage-length away from him were the four children and their father going through the rituals of their goodbyes to their mother, to be followed by their sirens of remorse and their loud symphony of sadness. The train was pulling out; it was so soon after the goodbyes that there was not enough time for the woman to have settled her luggage and headed for the lavatory. Derek jumped from his seat and raced through the carriages, checking the seats, the signs on the lavatory doors, the luggage racks as he sped along the walkways. There was no-one there. No sign of anyone, either. No luggage; no engaged signs.
Finally he reached the first class compartment at the end of the train. He knew again that this time—like the first—it was going to be empty. It was. But as he stared at the twelve empty seats he suddenly gulped and found it difficult to breathe. The train was moving; there was scenery passing on each side of it, but there was no-one in the driver’s cab. Nobody was driving the train. Nobody was guiding the train that insisted on calling at the same station time after time after time. He was the only person on the mad moving train. Then there was movement again in his body; he checked the driver’s compartment a second time and then hurried back to his seat. The evening newspaper was still there, and his briefcase was exactly where he had left it. He put the newspaper inside the briefcase, strode out of the no-smoking area, and stood next to a door, fingering the catch and not totally sure of what was going to happen next. As he looked through the door window, the platform of a station came into view running alongside the door before coming to a stop as the train braked and halted. Derek cleared his throat and looked out.
It was Sleights. Again. The same pub was there, the same garden, the same station, the same four children, the same cries. The train shuddered as it prepared to leave again. Derek’s hand flashed to the door. His fingers fumbled with the catch which refused to budge. He dropped his briefcase on to the floor as he did battle with the lock. Finally, growing more and more frightened, he flung himself at the door in his frenzied battle to get out. He landed with a thump on the station’s cold stone platform.
“Hey, are you all right?” asked a gruff Yorkshire voice as a plump porter (the same man who acted as ticket collector—when there were any tickets to be collected—at Whitby station) bent down to check he was not hurt. “You came out of that door at a devil of a rush; it’s a wonder you didn’t break something. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Derek stood up and straightened his coat.
“No. I’m fine,” he said. “But where am I?”
“Where are yer?” repeated the porter. “Yer exactly where you were a couple of minutes ago—at Whitby.”
“Whitby?”
“Where else?” asked the porter with a touch of suspicion.
Derek shrugged his shoulders and muttered that he wasn’t feeling quite himself and willingly took up an offer from the porter of a cup of tea. In the porter’s room Derek told what had happened on his train journey to Sleights.
“That’s a very odd story you’re telling,” said the porter when Derek had reached his account of his escape from the train. “Very odd.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’ll tell yer if yer really want to know.”
Derek nodded.
“Well,” said the porter, “there are three or four minutes before the train leaves, so we’re all right for time if I’m quick about it.” He pushed his empty tea mug away from him. “It was last summer ... it was very hot ... that Mrs Martin from Aislaby Great Lodge had to go off to Middlesbrough to see her mother or someone who had taken ill. It was right in the middle of the summer holidays, so all her family was at home and it meant that Mr Martin had to stay behind to look after things. He called himself a farmer, but really he just used to sit at home and tell his men what to do. A Gentleman farmer.
“Anyhow, Mrs Martin caught an early afternoon train from Sleights—it would have been the 14.14, I think. Sleights station is just below Aislaby and after seeing her off Mr Martin was taking the children to Whitby Abbey because the eldest boy was writing something about it for a school project or something ... it was all in the papers afterwards.
“Well, according to my mate at Sleights, the train arrived on time and left on time, but the children created all hell on the platform because they suddenly decided that they didn’t want Mrs Martin to leave them. When the train pulled out there was much crying and screaming and scolding and slapping before they were all quiet. When they did settle down, Mr Martin’s car is packed up with children and he pulls up the road, round over the big bridge and then up Sleights bank—it looked as though he was heading for the Guisborough to Whitby road. He could have gone through Ruswarp and up Ruswarp bank, but he didn’t.
“On Sleights bank something went wrong with the car. And the next thing my mate knows is that the screaming and crying has started all over again, but this time from nowhere. Then the car skids all the way down the hill—backwards, and hits the bridge with such a bang that it’s thrown up into the air and over into the river. All dead.”
Derek gulped.
“And Mrs Martin?”
“Well,” said the porter, “the people at the farm didn’t really know where she was. They knew that she had gone home, but they didn’t really know where home was. So it was late at night—after she had been to the theatre at Billingham—that the police finally got in touch with her and told her what had happened. And she took it very badly.
“How,” asked Derek. “How badly?”
“Well,” said the porter, “she never came back here again. She had to be looked after by her family and she was in such a state that she couldn’t get back here for the funeral. Mr Martin’s people were here, and the men from the farm, but not Mrs Martin. And after the funeral she took ill; really ill. She was so ill that she couldn’t even get to Whitby for the inquest—she was represented by a solicitor. She went into hospital and she’s been there ever since. Doesn’t know anybody now.”
“Mad?”
The porter nodded sullenly. “And according to my mate from Sleights all she keeps talking about is saying goodbye to the children on the railway station, and then she hears them screaming and screaming—someone from the Great Lodge told him that.”
Derek shuddered and asked the porter about the possibility of catching a bus to Middlesbrough, but when he was told he would have to wait an hour and the journey would be much longer than by train, he decided he had been merely subjected to a bad dream, strode back on to the train, buried himself in the Evening Gazette (which he could read because there were lights on the train) and determined that he would forget all about the happenings at Sleights station the previous summer. There were four or five people in the carriage including an elderly lady in a black silk dress and old fur coat who was laden with shopping and who shared the nosmoking compartment with him. She smiled as he settled himself into his seat, and he threw a smile back at her plus a comment about the coldness of the weather.
Five or six minutes after leaving Whitby the train was pushing into Ruswarp station. The honeysuckle that clung to the station walls was light brown and lifeless with touches of snow highlighting the line and the look of the plant which,
in five or six months, would be alive again with greenery and heavy perfume and the hum of bees. The lady in black dress and fur coat smiled her goodbyes as she gathered her bags and parcels together. Derek opened the compartment door for her, then, noticing actually how much shopping she was carrying, opened the carriage door as well and helped her out. He stood at the door for a second or two, watching her heading for the gate, and then returned to the no-smoking compartment and the shelter of his evening paper.
He checked the landmarks as they passed: the flour mill, the parish church, the bridge, the beginning of Sleights station. As he looked up to take in a full view of the station Derek saw that the whole carriage was empty, and although he remembered the train being warm at Whitby, it had now turned cold, terribly cold. He dropped his newspaper to the floor and listened to himself breathing deeply and felt sweat forming on his brow. He knew he was afraid, and was even afraid of admitting the reason for his fear. And then he gave a long, low, hollow, bewildered moan as he saw the garden of the Station Hotel come into view: it was lush green, with summer flowers tossing their heads to a summer sky. Derek leaped to his feet, grabbing his briefcase as he did so, bounded through the compartment and tried to open the carriage door which had been so easy to open only a few minutes earlier when he was playing gentleman to the old lady in the black silk dress and old fur coat.
As he touched the door the wailing began—like all the lost souls in hell demanding the attention of man. Derek’s fingers started to bleed as he fought a losing battle with the lock on the door; he scratched and clawed at the window as he tried to pull it down to give him the chance of either opening the door from the outside or of leaping out. But by then the train had started again and was pulling away, past the children and their father. This time there was something unnatural about the four youngsters: they seemed to be grotesque plastic models, nothing real at all, with glycerine tears rolling down their cheeks and recorded screams coming from their mouths. It was an awful tableau that was infinitely more frightening than four young children simply crying after someone they loved. As he drew abreast of the group, all the faces turned in his direction, pressed their plastic noses against the moving window and screamed with horror directly at him, celebrating the fear they were creating in him. He drew back and covered his eyes and the train pulled out of Sleights station.
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