Incident at a Railway Station

'For sure, that heart shall ne'er know peace'
Which on another's does depend.'
(Anne, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)

Two men, lovers no longer, stood on a railway station in eastern Scotland a little before the afternoon train was due. One was a fisherman from a village not far distant. He was young and hard-looking, and wore his peaked fisherman's cap like a soldier. The other man was an outsider, retired to the town.

The little station lay in a defile under a road bridge, from which a path, fringed with flower-beds, led down to the platform. Through the bridge, a gang of workmen laboured on the track, most of them stripped to the waist, for the air was warm, despite a hint of mist, summer not being far enough advanced to rout utterly the sea haar.

The men had taken up positions at opposite ends of the platform. The older stood by the bridge, his washed denim contrasting sharply with its sooty stone. He was a pallid man, with fading hair offset by dense black tufts on wrists and hands. From a distance he seemed less a human figure than a man-shaped gap in the blackened masonry, framing the sky beyond.

The man had two passions. One was for the poets; the other, felt with comparable ferocity, was for young men. Of the poets, he loved them all, and all at once, but it was Lady Winchelsea’s impassioned, disciplined couplets that most perfectly expressed his hopes and dreads, contained and made biddable by her verse’s formal rigour. Thus he would wish for:

A partner, suited to my mind,
Solitary, pleased, and kind;
Who, partially, may something see
Preferred to all the world in me

Young men he did not love all at once, but, despite the warnings of experience, made each successively the burning focus of his whole desire. He fed, clothed, and tended them, sought to inculcate love of literature and good malt whisky, asking in return only that their passion for him be as singly intense as his for them. And afterwards he would reflect wryly that Anne Winchelsea too had backed a loser, she having remained loyal to the deposed King James II.

The man began a slow march towards the distant seated figure. His pace was hesitant and uneasy. Every few yards he stopped as if contemplating the advertisements on the platform fence, his clothes thrown into relief by the dark mass of bridge behind. In the pool of shadow under the station awning, he paused at the waiting-room entrance and went in,.

The waiting-room was spare and spotless. His footsteps on the bare boards echoed on the green and yellow walls. On one side a large mirror hung above a fire grate, reflecting the two posters on the wall opposite. One showed a coastal village - a narrow street falling steeply to a yacht-flecked bay, the other a ruined castle by a lake among mountains. The last wall was given wholly to windows, flung open to the wind, the chirp of grasshoppers, the far groan of sea.

There was a slight movement. He spun, caught his breath. A dark figure in peaked cap filled the doorway. The man's throat tightened, then eased.

'Good afternoon, sir,’ the stationmaster said, 'it's a fine day.'

He laid a bucket by the fireplace. The man backed fumbling behind for the window cill, which he gripped, knuckles white through the black pelt sprouting from his hands.

'Yes,' he said presently, 'it's a fine day."

'You travelling far?’ asked the stationmaster. The man shook his head. There was a pause. 'Ah well,' the old stationmaster said, 'Your train will be along soon.'

He shuffled back to his office. The man heard him close the door. He walked out to the platform. The fisherman sat hunched on his distant bench. The man walked along the platform’s edge, crunching ashes in its grooves, passing with averted eyes the seated figure. At the ramp, where the track careered into the distance beside drunken telegraph poles, he halted. Two signals stood back to back; scrawny heraldic vultures marking the gateway to beyond.

The sun had gone in. He heard the fisherman stir, but did not turn. The wind whipped his clothes - he listened to its din in his ears and breathed deeply the sharp air, marvelling that, whilst it was warm, he still trembled. In his pockets, his nails bit through the fabric into his thighs.

When finally he turned, the fisherman's eyes were on him. He approached the seated figure, noting the salt-stained jeans, worn gumboots, rough, taut hands. Below the peak of his cap the young man's eyes scanned him. Behind sunglasses, his own prickled with tears, angry and afraid.

He drew closer then paused. Words rose and fell in his throat - of love, parting, hate - but they would not be said; no way could he utter them. Tears trickled under his sunglasses and down his face.

'In vain I ask it of your eyes,
'Which subtly would my fears control.’

He began down the platform, stumbling slightly on the loose surface. After a few steps turned to face the mocking eyes.

'Why?’ he said, 'why, why why?’

The fisherman did not change his expression, but remained staring for an instant before speaking.

'It's over, Granddad,’ he said, 'Curtains, kaput, finito. Get it?'

The voice was cold, hostile. Desire, rage, and bitterness swelled in the older man. He tried to compose a phrase - an accusation, a charm, a talisman against betrayal, but the efforts dashed themselves on the hot boulder in his throat.

'Can't we,' he said, 'Can't we try just once more?.' The other began ostentatiously to shuffle and look bored. 'Can't we..?’

'You're past it,' came the reply.

Raw anger surged in the older man.

'I am not past it,' he said, ‘and this is a very different tune from those I've been hearing these last months.’

'You used to always go on about Shakespeare,' rejoindered the other. 'You know “Crabbed age and youth, cannot live together” and all that crap. Well,’ the fisherman snapped his fingers, 'just for once the old fart had a point. They can’t - you’ve proved it.'

'You were always happy to take my money,’ the older man said.

'You were always happy to take my prick,' retorted the fisherman.

The older man buried his face in his hands for an instant. 'Look,' he said, 'Look, this is doing neither of us any good. I know I said some harsh things, maybe didn't always try. as I should to see things from your angle but ... I – I - in spite of all that's happened… in spite of everything, still I ... I’ His voice rose to a cry, 'I still ... love you.'

The young fisherman swung himself to his feet. ‘Just go fuck someone your own age,' he said scornfully, 'You old queens make me heave.’

With a cry, the other flung himself upon him. They fought wildly, in frenzied outrage like hurt children. Their bodies tangled and rolled in the ash, and the older, strengthened by fury and anguish, prevailed, forcing the younger to the platform edge, driving his head down over the rim. Again and again he strove to break the fisherman's neck, all the while choking and sobbing and gashing with his teeth his adversary’s exposed chest. Their bitter cries echoed across the rails and mingled with the keening of gulls.

Strong hands wrenched at his shoulders, tearing his clothes. For an instant, he held the fisherman's body the more tightly, but his anger, which had blazed like petrol on dying embers, sank as fast as it had risen. He let himself be dragged upright, sagging in the old stationmaster's harsh grip.

'You will leave my station this instant', the old man thundered, 'or the police will be called.’

The fisherman struggled to his feet. 'Aye, call them, and tell them he assaulted a minor,’ He began to button his shirt, noticing for the first time blood where the other's teeth had struck, and his voice coarsened. 'Hey, the cunt's bit me!' he said.

'Do you wish to bring charges?' demanded the stationmaster.

The fisherman stared at the other man for a moment, spat, and shook his head, 'No, pal,' he said, 'he's no' worth it.’

‘Then go!’ the stationmaster commanded the other, 'Go, and go now.'

He stood in his dark uniform with arm raised, pointing down the platform to the distant exit. The man limped towards it, pain and outrage glowing dully within him. He burned and smarted at the betrayal and humiliation, and at himself who might have foreseen it, cursing with loathing his mounting years and waning looks. The permanent-way gang, alerted by the commotion, stood watching. Like a prisoner paraded for public mockery, he returned their stares, viewing with savage yearning their naked muscles and trousers bulging with manhood and contempt. The world seemed filled with young men, distant and unattainable, like rocks on whose secure hardness a drowning swimmer, could he but reach them, might find refuge from the yielding treachery of sea. Glancing back, he saw the old man with arm still upraised, a vengeful angel barring the gates of paradise for ever.

On the bridge the wind caught him. It teased and clutched at him, nuzzling his body, wrapping his garments tightly round him like a sucked shroud. He paused, hearing its moaning in the telegraph wires and saw over the parapet the train arrive and, after a brief halt, leave. As he crossed the road, it passed below him, out of sight into the cutting. He re-crossed and looked down at the empty platform. The signal clanked back to danger as he stood.

The brisk wind, muted in the dank grotto of the station, had shaken the last traces of haze from the air. The sun came out and the gulls soared to greet it. Adamson the Baker's van clattered up from the town, young Adamson's radio blaring from the cab. Yes, the forecast was right, fine weather was general all over Scotland, but the cheering rays that warmed the mountains only confirmed for him the vanity of hope. After the sun would come cloud; after day, night; after trust, betrayal. He strode, stiffly upright, back into the town, beside which the sea stretched, pitiless and vast, wave upon wave upon wave.


	[Jim Scott] [A Boy A Book A Story] [Darkness] [Pat from Lancashire] [The Quaker Oats Man] [A Matter of Conscience] [Picnic] [Incident at a Railway Station] [Cauld Comfort Kail] [Moral Uplift] [The Soldier] [Madonna] [Hero of the Revolution] [The Messenger] [Tramlines] [Innocents] [Unlucky Dip]