The Railway Station Man

by Jennifer Johnston

  Damian pulled the spade out of the ground and began to dig once more.

  ‘I’m sure he’d be pleased.’

  He pressed his foot down on the spade and it sliced deep into the earth. ‘If Jack wants to see me, he knows where to find me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and turned away from him. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ She walked quickly back along the platform, feeling a fool. Roger followed her. She walked through the hallway, past the window of the ticket office and out the door. She picked up her bicycle.

  ‘He was rude,’ said Roger, ‘but then you were pretty silly.’

  ‘I know. Fulsome, motherish, interfering, daft. We can’t all be perfect.’ She got onto the bike and sat, one toe on the ground looking at him. ‘People say he’s a Provo.’

  ‘People say stupid things. Invent things.’

  ‘In a small community like this, they usually know what they’re talking about.’

  ‘He never talks politics. I never talk politics. I have no politics in my head to talk. If he’s a Provo it’s his own affair.’

  ‘They kill people.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all he said.

  ‘Innocent people, children. Blow people’s arms and legs off.’ She thought for a fleeting moment of Dan. How surprised he must have been when those bullets hit him. No time for pain or anger, perhaps not even time for surprise.

  ‘Before the British dropped us fools on Arnhem, they bombed a lunatic asylum. They were told that was what it was. They were told there were no Germans there, but they bombed it just the same. Better sure than sorry, I suppose some top brass hat said. The woods were full of poor mad creatures … just wandering, crying some of them. Lost. They were dressed in white sort of pyjama things. We all kill when we think it is expedient.’

  ‘Is that true … about the lunatic asylum?’

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely true. I only found out about it years later. I always presumed that those poor white creatures were part of my dementia. Sometimes I was conscious, then I suppose I was unconscious, but I always saw those white figures. Floating. They seemed to me to be floating. Il Purgatorio. You don’t know how privileged you are never to have suffered.’

  She blushed and kicked at the pedal of her bicycle. ‘How do you know whether I’ve suffered or not?’

  ‘Don’t be angry with me. After all you said yourself you were not very well acquainted with pain.’

  ‘I’m not angry … It’s just that so many people seem to believe that unless you have been through some sort of … oh God, what word can I use … hell, torment, anguish, you’re not a whole person … you lack a whole dimension to your life. That’s a form of arrogance I can’t accept.’

  His face was delighted.

  ‘You are angry. You have such an untroubled face I thought perhaps you might never get angry. Anger is a very healthy emotion.’

  She pushed off with her foot and left him standing there, idiotic grin dragging at his mouth. At the corner she turned and saw him still standing there grinning. She flapped a hand at him.

  ‘Goodbyeee,’ he called. ‘Goodbyeee.’

  Mrs O’Sullivan was mopping round the kitchen sink when she arrived home.

  ‘My floor is only washed.’ She looked with suspicion at Helen’s feet. The veins on the backs of her hands bulged as she squeezed and bent the cloth. Helen sometimes had visions of her wringing the necks of chickens, rabbits, unwanted puppies even, her deep brown eyes quite calm as the hands moved. It wasn’t that she was unkind, savage in any way, she just had all this power inside her, was unaware of her own strength.

  ‘You’re all red. It doesn’t do to get overheated.’

  It was the wind as much as anything else, blowing in my face.’

  ‘I’ve just made the tea. Will you have a cup?’

  ‘Lovely. Thank you.’

  ‘There’s nothing like a cup of tea when you have everything red up.’ She flapped the cloth out in front of her and hung it on the rail in front of the Aga. She picked the teapot off the range and brought it over to the table.

  ‘Sit you down and rest yourself a minute. Let yourself cool off. Biking is for young ones. Not,’ she plonked two mugs on the table, ‘that young ones would give you two pence for a bicycle these days. It’s cars they want.’ Mrs O’Sullivan’s huge hand fished in the pocket of her overall for her cigarette. She always seemed to have a partially smoked one in there with a box of matches. She would have a few puffs and then carefully pinch it out and put it back in her pocket again, waiting for the next cup of tea. Then out it would come again.

  ‘I was over at the station.’

  Mrs O’Sullivan gave a deep and somewhat bronchial laugh.

  ‘Now in the name of God what did you want to go over there for? Isn’t that cowboy half-mad? You want to mind yourself with people like that.’

  ‘I just thought I’d like to go and see what he was doing.’

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘It’s amazing. He and Damian Sweeney have done a great job. It really looks as if trains could start moving through it at any moment. All fixed up.’

  ‘Now what sort of a person would want to do a thing like that at all? Half-mad is right … or whole mad. More money than sense.’ She took a great swig of tea and swished it round inside her mouth before swallowing it. ‘I mind well the time you could go all the way to Dublin in the train. You had to change of course in Letterkenny and Strabane. All the way to Dublin. I had cousins in Omagh. God when I think of the gas we used to have on them ould trains. The buses were never the same at all. And expensive. Holy God!’

  Another little swish of tea.

  ‘My uncle Eoin, that was my father’s brother, he was signalman up there for near on thirty-two years. His heart was broke after they closed down the line. That’s what they said anyway. He was too old then for a job on the buses. Some of them got jobs on the buses but he was too old to learn the new ways. You know what I mean? He lived for the trains. Loved the trains. Six months was all he lasted after that. I remember the very day he died. We had the Emergency then and nothing would do but my auntie Bridie had to pack her bags and away over to Glasgow to live with her daughter Alice. Emergency or no Emergency, said she couldn’t face it here without Eoin. My mother and father begged her not to go. Sure as eggs is eggs, they said, you’ll be killed by the bombs. She wouldn’t pay them a blind bit of heed. She took a new lease of life over there, lived to be seventy-eight. Ah, sure you wouldn’t remember them days.’

  ‘Well, I do a bit you know.’

  Mrs O’Sullivan crimped the end of her cigarette carefully between her finger and thumb.

  ‘Maybe he’s a spy.’

  She dropped the butt into her pocket.

  ‘Who?’ asked Helen, surprised by the turn of things.

  ‘Your man above.’

  Helen exploded into laughter.

  ‘What on earth would …?’

  ‘I’m just telling you what they say. I’m not saying he is a spy. He could be a spy.’

  ‘There’s not much spying anyone could do here.’

  ‘You find them everywhere these days. Tell me why else would he be here …? Messing around with that old station? Where would he get the money to do a thing like that?’

  ‘I think he’s quite rich and he likes trains. That’s all. Obviously loves trains … like your uncle did. He’s nice I think.’

  ‘So they say. A gentleman, even an’ he’s had half his brains blown out.’ She dipped a ginger biscuit in her tea and nibbled at the damp edge. ‘Mind you what he wants to go getting mixed up with that Damian Sweeney for, I can’t think. He’s a bad lot if ever there was one.’

  ‘He works hard.’

  ‘He works when it suits him. He’s all mixed up with … you know.’

  She looked sternly at Helen, defying her to say a word.

  ‘He keeps secrets from his mother. Now, the one thing I have to say about my lot is, they never keep secrets from me. Never di
d and never will. Open.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I rared them, didn’t I? I brought them up in the fear of God and not one of them has ever set foot outside the marks; that’s the truth. Mrs Sweeney gave those kids too much liberty and look at them now. Two in America doing God knows what, and Damian. Never puts his head inside the church from one end of the year to the next. I said it to her, so I did, face to face, so I’m not speaking out of turn. Cissie, I said, you made your own bed, now you must lie on it. Too soft she was with them altogether. You know yourself.’

  She gave Helen an accusing look.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Helen.

  ‘You know yourself Mrs O’Sullivan repeated the words triumphantly.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It’s all in the raring.’

  That seemed the end of the conversation. Helen filled up her cup with hot tea and retreated across the yard to the safety of her shed.

  Next morning she walked to the northern tip of the beach. No one ever came here at all. Rocks grew up through the sand, grey lumps of granite. The odd cow wandered down from time to time from the unfenced fields on the hill. Sea birds lazed and strutted, hardly concerned by her presence. In the winter storms the sea lashed right up to the edge of the sloping dunes, but now the sand was still dry and bright with a tiny powdering of shells. She spread her towel beside a rock and sat down. She unwrapped her sketch book and began to draw, examining for her own edification the objects she saw around her: the strands of acid-green weed clinging to a broken razor shell, piles of discarded sand thrust up by some burrowing worms, the angle of a beak probing for food, the tight, delicate mechanism of a poised leg, the curve of rolling swell and the exact moment the spray burst. Page after page she filled. Behind her the rock still held the remains of summer warmth. She remembered having seen some notebooks of Leonardo, the explicit studies of a hand, fingers crooked, ridges of muscles running into the wrist; a bent leg full of power, the angles between jaw and neck, the tensions created even in stillness. After a long time her eyes were hurting, the fingers of her right hand felt as if someone had held them in a vice. She put the book and pencils down by the towel.

  She stood up and pulled off her jersey and shirt and then her jeans and her pants and ran across the sand into the sea. She waded out over the breaking line of waves and then, falling forward onto the water, she swam straight out to sea, something that she normally wouldn’t dream of doing, fear always keeping her within scrabbling distance of the land. She swam for a good six or seven minutes, thinking of nothing but the movement of her body through the water, the soft cleaving of arm after arm, the rhythm of her stretched legs beating, then suddenly frightened by her own courage she turned and swam back towards the shore. The rhythm was lost and her limbs felt the strain. She faltered, splashed, gulped mouthfuls of water. She moved from her kind of crawl to a more staid breast stroke. She turned over on her back and lay resting for a few moments, her eyes closed, her feet moving only enough to keep her steadily afloat. Having got back her nerve she began to swim again, feeling rather foolish. The tide was with her and she found she was moving quickly and calmly towards the beach. Once she found herself inside the arm of the bay she relaxed and began to enjoy again the motion of swimming, the weightlessness. What a life mermaids must lead, she thought. She shook the water from her face and eyes and looked towards the shore. A tall figure was standing beside her clothes. A hand went up to greet her. It was Damian Sweeney.

  Bugger.

  Oh God, she whispered a quick prayer up to the sky where he might or might not be watching over her well-being … don’t let there be any hassle. No demoralising happening … Please God, I promise I’ll buy some bathing togs. I promise I’ll wear them, if that’s what you really want … but oh bugger … Dear God, why isn’t he digging flower-beds or turning table legs. The ground was under her feet now. She stood and began to walk slowly through the breaking sea. He bent down and picked up her towel from the sand. He shook it, both hands cracking it into the breeze, then he walked down to the water’s edge to meet her. She stopped when the water was about knee-high and, catching her hair in her hands, twisted it into a rope, wringing the wetness out of it.

  ‘It looks freezing,’ he shouted to her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I thought you were never going to come back. You don’t swim well enough to go away out there. Were you not frightened?’

  ‘A bit.’

  She stepped onto the dry sand and took the towel from his hand. She wrapped it tightly round herself. It was cold now. She rubbed at her running nose with the back of her hand.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘You ought to try it yourself.’

  ‘I’ve more sense.’

  She sniffed and laughed.

  ‘I’ve no sense. It’s a well-known fact.’

  She picked up her shirt and jumper and pulled them, still attached, together over her head. She rubbed at her legs with the towel, thumping at herself with her fists to keep the circulation speeding. She turned round towards him. He was jogging naked towards the edge of the sea. I hope to God he doesn’t catch pneumonia, she thought. I bet he hasn’t been in there for years.

  Scrawny.

  She dropped down on her knees and picked up her sketch book. Stringy. Jack wasn’t like that.

  He loitered on the edge of the water, his energy dissipated by the cold. His shoulders were hunched, his arms wrapped round his chest.

  Jack was well covered, no sign of the framework.

  He stepped cautiously like one of the wading birds across the first ripple of the waves.

  Jack was pale. He took a sudden plunge across the waves and was down under the water. His arms worked for a few moments and then he stood up again and began to move back towards the shore. Suddenly in a great explosion of energy he rolled into the foam and leapt up into the air again. He twirled round, his arms high above his head and then down he went again, rolling again. Up he came and ran through the shallow water kicking great sparkling fountains up ahead of him as he ran. He ran towards her, shaking the water from his body as a dog does after a swim.

  ‘Can I have a borrow of your towel, missus?’ He put on a whiny child’s voice.

  She handed it up to him. ‘You’re all covered in sand. You should go in and wash it off?

  ‘Do you want to kill me?’ He walked back to where his clothes lay, rubbing at himself savagely. She continued to draw as he dressed himself, as he rubbed hopelessly at the sand clinging to his legs and arms. He turned his back to her and stood on one leg and then the other, pulling on his pants and then his trousers. When he was dressed save for his shoes and socks he came back and dropped the towel beside her.

  ‘What are you drawing?’

  ‘You.’

  He blushed suddenly and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked away from her out towards the horizon.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. Here, do you want to look?’

  He squatted down beside her and she handed him the book.

  ‘They’re only sketches, but you can look if you want to.’

  He looked carefully at each page. The trials and errors, scorings, shadings, heavy lines, light, almost invisible, wisps of grey. Stones, sand, wings, claws, beaks, sea, an arm, a leg, movement, stillness. After he had finished he handed her back the book.

  ‘It looks like you’re trying to teach yourself something. It’s like a school book.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do I look like that?’

  ‘More or less. I haven’t drawn a human figure for years. It was great to have you there miraculously … when I was in the mood.’

  ‘I was up there.’ He pointed up towards the hill. ‘I couldn’t think what you were drawing. There didn’t seem to be anything to draw. I watched you for a long time.’

  ‘You must have.’

  ‘When you went in to swim I thought I’d better come down. I felt …’ he blushed again ‘… if I’d stayed up
there, it would have been like spying on you. So I came down.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Thank you for coming down.’

  ‘What will you do with those now?’ He nodded towards the book.

  ‘I have a plan in my head for a series of shorescapes. It’s just an idea at the moment … a wriggling germ, but I hope it will grow when I start to paint. I know it will.’

  ‘Will you put me in it?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see. I’ll have to wait and see.’

  He leaned forward and began to draw on the sand with his finger. He made deep grooves in the sand and then swept away the scattered grains as they got in his way. A small high-bowed boat, plain, heavy-looking, sitting squatly down into the sea. A long bowsprit and one mast. His finger drew tiny waves and a mainsail filling with wind.

  ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘It looks a bit like a hooker. I’m not much good on boats, but they’re very recognisable.’

  ‘You’re next best to right. A gleoiteog. That’s what I’m going to build myself. I have a model made at home. Sails and all. To scale you know. I’ll bring it round to show you some time.’ He scrubbed the picture out with his hand. ‘If you’re interested, that is. You mightn’t be interested. About this size.’ He held his hands up to show her. ‘A perfect model. I just thought you might …’

  ‘Yes. I’d like to see it very much.’

  ‘I was rude yesterday.’

  ‘Oh no, that’s all right. I was a bit silly. Motherish. I forget sometimes that everyone grows up. That sort of thing can become so boring.’

  ‘My mother’s boring,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought you were.’

  ‘Jack thinks I am.’

  ‘She’s nice, mind you. I didn’t mean anything like that … but boring. She knits for the sweater people. The sweated-labour people, I tell her she should call them. Sometimes I want to throw something at those clicking needles. I restrain myself. Jack’s coming home, you said?’

  ‘Yes. Next weekend.’

  ‘Bringing a friend?’

  ‘So he said. I thought at first it might be a girl. I got all motherly and excited again.’

  ‘But it’s not a girl.’