The Railway Station Man

by Jennifer Johnston

  ‘My mother felt much the same way about Jack. I’ll say I’m sorry now. Better late than never.’

  He held out a hand towards her.

  She nodded and touched his hand briefly, then she plunged her hand into her pocket and took out the cigarettes. She opened the box and held it out towards him.

  ‘Smoke?’

  He was tempted. She could see that. He shook his head.

  ‘I’m giving them up. Trying to, anyway.’

  ‘Saint?’

  She plucked one out of the packet and put it in her mouth.

  ‘No. It just suddenly seemed a silly way to kill yourself. I think I’d rather drink myself to death, it’s more fun.’

  She lit the cigarette and took a deep pull. ‘Do you see Jack at all? I never know who his friends are these days. He doesn’t bring them home.’

  ‘I had a jar with him in the pub the other night.’

  ‘I hope …’ she began and then stopped.

  He waited for a moment. ‘You hope what?’

  She made a hopeless gesture with her hands.

  ‘Would you make some tea? Can you make tea?’

  ‘I can make tea.’

  ‘I must get dressed. I really must. If you’d …’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Will you be able to find everything?’

  ‘Sure. Sure. Run along. I’ve been making tea since the age of five. I can open tins and fry eggs and gut fish and knit … I was ill once for quite a long time and Mammy taught me to knit. I knitted a navy scarf.’ He laughed. ‘I used to hide it under the pillow when the others came home from school so they wouldn’t see it. She was the only one knew …’

  She paused by the door. ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘I have it yet. I wear it in the winter. It’s long.’

  He wound an imaginary scarf several times around his neck. ‘You go on and put your clothes on. I’ll make a great cup of tea. Three great cups of tea.’

  She nodded and left him to it.

  It was strange, she thought as she scrubbed her teeth, backwards and forwards, she had never been able to come to grips with the up and down strokes recommended by the dentist, to hear other people, total strangers when you came to think of it, taking control in your house. Down the short flight of stairs Damian clattered domestically. She bared her teeth, grimaced into the glass. Yellow horse’s teeth. If I stopped smoking perhaps? Across the yard Roger poked around through her entire private life, her being. She bared them again. Sparkling Doris Day? Too late. Yellow horse’s teeth were more suitable to her age and station. He would be really shocked at the state of her brushes. Oh God, those awful half-drunk cups of tea, the old milk shining on the surface. At least they’re my own, she thought, for the time being. One day maybe, I will have a mouth full of shiny Doris Day choppers. Keep them in a glass of gin beside the bed. But, after all, Mother didn’t have a false tooth in her head, buried with her own smile. Runs in the family that sort of thing. Fingers crossed. She gave an extra scrub for luck.

  Rinsed water round her mouth and spat.

  Damian ran water into the sink, pumped in mild green Fairy Liquid and began to wash the dishes.

  He looks nice. I wonder if he’s mixed up in all that business. I suppose you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. Nicer looking than Jack … not so buttoned up, sullen. Would sullen be the word for Jack’s face? If Dan were still alive I wonder … I wonder? My eyes were always too pale to sparkle. Washed blue stones. Jack’s eyes too, unreceptive. Are you receiving me? One two three testing. Are you receiving me, son? Silence on the air waves. A clatter of sound from downstairs. What the hell is he doing?

  She picked up her comb and began to pull the night’s tangles out of her hair. Damian turned on the radio. He really was making himself at home. Tchaikovsky’s little cygnets heavy-footed in the kitchen.

  ‘The tea’s wet,’ his voice called up the stairs.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  She heard him open the back door and call across the yard to Roger.

  The cat liked to sleep like a human being, tucked into the bed with his head on the pillow. He lay there, yellow eyes half-closed, as she tucked the clothes around him.

  ‘If you sick up a quarter of a pound of butter on my bed …’ she threatened. He wasn’t receiving her either.

  Damian had put cups and saucers on the table, milk in a jug, the fruit bowl centred neatly. No sign of debris.

  ‘You’ll make someone a good husband,’ she said.

  ‘My mother says no one will have me, so I may as well learn to look after myself.’

  She sat down at the table.

  ‘I ’m not just a pretty face,’ he said

  ‘So I see.’

  She took a loose cigarette from her pocket and tapped it on the table for a while. The young man switched off the cygnets and stood looking at her in silence. Finally as if she had come to some immense decision she put the cigarette in her mouth and struck a match.

  ‘It was really Jack made me give it up.’

  ‘Jack?’

  She wondered what he was talking about.

  He nodded towards the cigarette.

  She shook the flame dead and threw the matchstick into one of the saucers.

  ‘He’s never done anything so constructive for me.’

  ‘I don’t think he intended to be constructive. He just annoyed me.’

  She sighed.

  ‘I ’ve seen you painting.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She sounded vague.

  ‘Up on the cliffs and along the shore. I sat and watched you once for nearly an hour. I wanted to come and have a look … but I didn’t think you’d be pleased. It looked private.’

  ‘Don’t you have a job?’

  ‘On and off. I’m working for him at the minute.’

  ‘What … actually are you doing there? I mean you hear such mad rumours.’

  ‘I have the signal box in working order now. Beautiful it is. Single-line token block. Beautiful. You should have seen it before. It had to be re-floored, new handles for the levers, new steps, completely new wiring, bells replaced. It’s a gem now.’

  ‘But listen …’

  ‘The token machines …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why?’

  ‘What on earth is the point of doing up an old signal box like that?’

  ‘Station. The whole station. Soon we’ll be able to work trains through the system again.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Damian. There are no tracks. There are no trains any longer. What are you talking about? Have you gone mad too?’

  ‘He’s not mad.’

  ‘I suppose you could turn it into a museum. A railway museum. Tourists, schools, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Will I pour you a cup of tea?’

  ‘We’d better wait for …’

  Damian leaned across the table towards her and spoke, almost in a whisper.

  ‘Don’t you go saying things like that to him. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Just believe him, that’s all I ask. After all, where’s the harm?’

  He sat back again and looked at her. She put the cigarette down on the table, standing like a little pillar on its butt end. She stared at the thread of smoke, at the neat crown of ash. Oh hell, she thought, there has to be disaster, unhappiness somewhere in all this. She heard his footsteps in the yard. She picked up the cigarette and knocked the ash into the saucer. Briefly she nodded at Damian. He looked relieved.

  ‘You may pour the tea out now,’ she said.

  ‘How lucky you are.’ Roger came across the room and put his hand on her shoulder, leaned his weight for a moment on her and then sat down.

  ‘Good tea. No other brew in the world quite tastes like Irish tea. I see signs over there that you are beginning to work … to find your voice.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Your silent voice.’

  Why do you say that I’m lucky?’

  �
�Because you have eyes to see and the courage to want to use them. Maybe I should have said that you are unlucky. But I don’t think you are a person who is looking for peace of mind. I knew a man once … a boy, I should say, whose parents called him Dieudonné. Imagine that. Imagine landing your poor child with a name like that. We just called him Don.’

  ‘What happened to him? I mean how did such a stylishly named man deal with his life? With equal style I hope?’

  ‘He died young. God regretted his gift and took it back. Arnhem, seventeenth of September 1944. Poor Don had the misfortune to come in on a glider that crashed. He missed the chance of becoming a hero. Very good tea, Damian.’

  ‘I told her … Mrs …’

  ‘Helen. Please call me Helen.’

  ‘I told her she should come and see the signal box.’

  ‘Yes. You must do that. Come along any time.’

  ‘Was that a parable? Was I meant to learn something from it?’

  ‘A purely fortuitous reminiscence, I assure you. I haven’t thought of the poor chap for years. It was just the name Godgiven … slipped … into … my mind.’

  ‘Did you become a hero?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Alas. By the evening of the eighteenth of September I was just one of a rather large number of embarrassing reminders that God is not necessarily on the side of the British. We were all so convinced that He was. I’m not loving and forgiving, you know. I hate quite a lot of people … and I mourn the needless dead. You see, you haven’t acquired a very cheerful neighbour.’ Damian got up and went round the table. Gently he put a hand on Roger’s shoulder.

  ‘I think it’s time we went home. We have all the down platform to clear. Remember? We said we’d do that today if the weather was good. Remember?’

  ‘Good man, quite right.’ He stood up and bowed formally to Helen. ‘We burst upon you …’ he said. ‘I do apologise.’

  ‘I just take a long time to get myself together … well, socially … in the morning. I’m glad you came.’

  He moved slowly towards the door. A nerve twitched in the left-hand hollow of his neck. She could see it struggling from where she sat.

  All the needless dead.’ He gave a helpless tug at the door. Damian stepped past him and pulled it open. He bent down to examine the bottom of the door.

  ‘That’s some big task you’ve taken on,’ said Helen. ‘Hating the living and mourning the dead. I don’t know when you’re going to have time to play all those gramophone records.’

  Damian stood up. ‘I ’ll come round one day and take a piece off the bottom of that door for you.’

  ‘Oh, I …’

  ‘Dead easy job. No bother. Slán.’ As he stepped outside he called back, ‘Helen.’ Just trying it for size.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be rude,’ she said to Roger.

  ‘I am aware of that. I think you should get together a portfolio of your work and bring it up to Dublin. If I could be of any help …’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’ll come and see the box? Soon. Come and visit us soon.’

  He went out.

  The days drifted past. The storms blew themselves out and the trees and the hedges glowed in the autumnal air. The evenings had a frosty sharpness and the glitter of the sun was tarnished by blue streaks of mist. After the hours of euphoria Helen felt a little bleak, insecure. The weather called her out of the house and she pedalled several times to the Devil’s Well. It took almost an hour each way … Soon, she thought, without too much hope, I will be fit and svelte.

  She made sketches of the flat pre-historic rocks and the reflecting pools. Neolithic is such a good word, she thought, probably quite incorrectly nudging its way into my mind. It gives that feeling of grey unproductive rocks, existing eternally in spite of their unproductivity. The pools, large puddles really, quite still only reflect the glitter of the sky … Lethargic birds stand, also still, waiting for a moment of lifting air, caring neither whether they stand or drift.

  The house stank of size. She had to heat it in the kitchen and in spite of open doors and windows the smell was everywhere. She stretched and painted the canvas and cried with the smell and the reeking in her eyes. The canvas was beautiful. She stood looking at it, a delight of anticipation filling her. Then she went and had a bath and washed her hair, scrubbed the smell from every centimetre of her body.

  She poured herself a glass of wine and went out to the porch to watch the last gasp of the sun. She rubbed at a geranium leaf and the smell burst out from between her fingers. The sea had that enamelled look she loved. How can anyone bear to live facing to the East? Miss every evening this … in one shape or another … dramatic death.

  The telephone rang.

  Blinking miracles of modern science.

  ‘Mum … mother.’

  ‘Darling, hello.’

  ‘Hello there.’

  ‘Is everything all right?

  He rang so seldom.

  ‘Fine. How are things with you?’

  ‘Just the same as ever. Beautiful weather. No news at all really.’

  ‘I thought I might come down again for a couple of days. End of next week, perhaps. If that suited you.’

  ‘Darling, of course it suits me. It would be lovely.’

  ‘I have a friend I might … could he have a bed for a couple of nights? There’s that old camp bed in my room. Would you mind? He’s never seen …’ Crackle of some sort got mixed in with his words.

  ‘Lovely,’ she shouted. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I’ll be in touch before then. Let you know whether it will be Friday or Saturday.’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t have a name.’

  Oh hell, she thought, why can’t you keep your mouth shut. He’ll hate that.

  ‘Don’t go to any trouble. We’ll be out most of the time. He wants to see … We’ll amuse ourselves. Sure that’s okay? Thanks a lot, mother. See you.’ He was gone and by the time she got back to the porch the sun had set.

  She got up with the light and worked for a couple of hours before becoming restless. She walked around the shed, avoiding looking at the canvas that lay on the floor. She had painted a layer of white into it with a short stubby brush then scrubbed at the wet paint with a cloth, dragging it across the canvas, clothing the bareness with a ragged substance. But, now, to her the white space was no longer inviting, she longed again for the naked canvas. She lit a cigarette and wandered across the room to look at her sketches pinned on the wall. She opened the end window to let in some air. She put the cigarette in a saucer and crouched down again by the canvas. She picked up the cloth and began to rub, harder and harder until in places the canvas began to show through the paint, faintly transformed in colour, but yet its own textured self.

  ‘That is more like it.’

  The sound of her own voice almost made her jump in the silence of the room. The cigarette had smouldered out. She lit another one.

  ‘The first sign of madness.’

  Again the voice startled her.

  That was what she had always been told as a child. Talking to yourself again, Helen? The first sign of … you know … knowing wagging finger.

  Helen loves the sound of her own voice.

  If you can’t think of anything interesting to say, Helen, it’s better not to say anything at all.

  My voice is too loud in this room. Keep the words internal.

  Inspiration is a bugger.

  Rising with the light was a rotten idea. Here I am, mind a blank and it’s only ten o’clock in the morning.

  Air.

  My mind is blank, bleak like the scrubbed canvas.

  How the hell do other, perhaps more mature people, manage to pin down the elusive bugger inspiration? Dan always said I was undisciplined.

  Dan was always right.

  She stubbed out the new cigarette.

  God, how I hate the taste of them.

  ‘One day … one day … one day …’

  She went out into t
he air.

  In the house fat Mrs O’Sullivan was running the hoover over the sitting-room floor. She wore old tennis shoes without laces as she worked, to ease the pressure on her bunions. Helen put her head round the door.

  ‘I’m just going out for a while, Mrs O’Sullivan’ she shouted

  The woman switched off the machine. It whined into silence.

  ‘I feel like some fresh air.’

  ‘It’ll likely rain.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It looks gorgeous.’

  ‘You should bring your mac. The man on the wireless said it was going to rain. Rain spreading from the west was what he said. I took my mac with me. No point in getting soaked through. Our Mary said I was foolish to take the mac on a day like this. Cloudless. A cloudless day. I said to her you never can tell and did you not hear what the man on the wireless is after saying? After all he’s paid to know. Isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s not always right though.’

  ‘That’s what our Mary said. Better safe than sorry was what I thought. I suppose you’ll be taking the bike? They say that a regular spin on the bike is good for the muscles.’ She switched on the hoover again. No point in carrying on fruitless conversation when there was work to be done.

  Helen cycled along the upper road towards the old station.

  The wheels snapped and crackled over scattered twigs.

  Bones dem dry bones, she sang in her head.

  Soon the furnishings of the earth would be gone, leaving only dry bones and stones, no clutter.

  Hear de word of de Lord.

  Someone had swept the dead leaves into a pile to the right of the station house. Smoke drifted casually up from the pile and there was a sharp smell of burning. She propped the bike beside the door and went into the hall. She walked over to the window of the booking office and looked into the room beyond. He was kneeling at a tapestry prie-dieu in the centre of the room, his head bent over his loosely clenched hand. She drew back quickly from the window, embarrassed to find him at such private practice. She moved as quietly as she could back across the hall to the door. A mist of smoke now gave the air substance. She hadn’t really thought of him as a man who might pray. She had in fact never known anyone who had prayed with conviction. Prayer had always seemed polite acknowledgment of God’s existence, quite formal. How do you do … goodbye … thank you so much for a lovely evening … see you next week. She moved out into the smoke and then, caught by its bitterness, she sneezed.