Train

He sat on the train and stared at reflec­tion stacked upon reflec­tion in the win­dow at his side. So fra­gile, a trick of the light. Everything was so fra­gile. It seemed to him that the car­riage was a world of its own, a gold­fish bowl for human­ity. It wasn’t full, but it was busy. Bust­ling. People from all walks of life united only by a des­tin­a­tion. Stu­dents, sit­ting at their laptops, furi­ously pre­tend­ing to work; foot­ball fans, elated, stead­ily drain­ing the train’s lim­ited bar; busi­ness­men with loosened ties and crumpled shirts slumped into the worn seats after another day in the city. How could they not see that it was all so fra­gile?

Each group of people exis­ted in its own world, with its own lan­guage, its own cul­ture; and here they clashed. The busi­ness­man looked over with irrit­a­tion at the self-righteous lazi­ness of the stu­dents. The stu­dent sneered at the foot­ball fans’ lack of formal edu­ca­tion. The foot­ball fan laughed at the ‘suits’, tied in to the mono­tony of their prof­it­able careers. He felt noth­ing for any of them, no empathy, no sim­il­ar­ity, no dis­gust. For him, they simply exis­ted, sep­ar­ate and set apart. He didn’t con­sider him­self above them, so much as along­side, observing, detached.

He sat, watch­ing, con­sid­er­ing. He spent much of his time lost in thought, although rarely about him­self. See­ing no use for intro­spec­tion, he pre­ferred to exam­ine the outer work­ings of soci­ety, rather than the inner work­ings of his own mind. Had he taken time to plunge the depths of his own psyche, he would have found that his sense of detach­ment was partly due to a lack of con­fid­ence, the feel­ing of never belong­ing. Instead, he ana­lysed the minu­tiae of daily life, the unnoticed mach­in­a­tions of mod­ern soci­ety. It appeared to him that nobody else was aware of the sud­den mag­nitude of every­day, split-second choices, the irre­vers­ible mech­an­isms of thought, the impossib­il­ity of mak­ing a right or wrong decision. Once we have acted, he assures him­self, the altern­at­ives simply cease to exist, and yet he won­ders if this opin­ion of which he is so self-importantly proud is really just pom­pously post-modern.

* * *

Why did he keep star­ing at her? She hated the train. It was always like this, full of fuck­ing weirdoes, louts and bald­ing, middle-aged office-jockeys. They were the worst in a way, so urbane and con­des­cend­ing when they handed out their cards. Shit. He was star­ing again. If he kept this up she’d have to fuck­ing move. And this was her seat! She’d reserved it, hadn’t she? She’d already had a stand-up row with some fat bitch who seemed to think that being old meant that you didn’t have to book a seat like every­one else. She screwed her head­phones fur­ther into her ears. Sal­va­tion in ste­reo. Nobody tries to talk to you when you’re wear­ing head­phones. Unless some prick actu­ally taps you on the shoulder. She fuck­ing hated that.

If she stopped look­ing at him he might stop star­ing. Or she wouldn’t know. Either way, it was bet­ter than eye-contact with that freak. She looked out of the win­dow. Fields, fields, fields. She hated going home. She’d forged her inde­pend­ence, but only for eight months a year. She wished she could stay in Lon­don through the hol­i­days, but she couldn’t afford the rent. And her par­ents were so fuck­ing incon­sid­er­ate. They wouldn’t even help her out. “Get a job” they said. She had a job. They should try get­ting well-paid work in Lon­don without a fuck­ing degree. And her tutor was always on her back about put­ting more time into the course. They didn’t have a clue about how hard it was for stu­dents now. “When I was at uni­ver­sity…” seemed to start every sen­tence. Who cares? Uni­ver­sity twenty years ago might as well have not existed.

Field. Cow. Field. Cow. Field. Why did her par­ents live in such a bor­ing place? There was never any­thing to do, no bars, no night­life. There wasn’t even a cinema. Had he stopped star­ing yet? No, she could see him in the win­dow. For fuck’s sake, what did this prick want? Weirdoes like him always seemed to pick her out. She closed her eyes. Another three months until she was back in Lon­don. Fuck.

* * *

He had noticed her just before Birm­ing­ham. He didn’t make an effort not to stare; he had never held much stock in the belief that star­ing was rude. She was an inter­est­ing study, so youth­ful, viol­ent in her man­ner; so angry that she seemed almost serene, cer­tain in her con­dem­na­tion of all around her.  He was sure that he would be the focal point of her rage simply for look­ing, but this did not faze him. Indeed, he rev­elled in the glow of such strong emo­tion; emo­tion that he him­self had never man­aged to rep­lic­ate. He smiled as she force­fully twis­ted the head­phones of her Walk­man, a subtle out­pour­ing of the dis­com­fort that he sup­posed his atten­tion was caus­ing her.

He con­tin­ued to stare, but was now dis­trac­ted by the words fall­ing all around him, pat­ter­ing like rain­drops, boun­cing between the train’s tubu­lar walls. He was not listen­ing to any con­ver­sa­tion in par­tic­u­lar, but rather absorb­ing what he saw as a sub­lime sym­phony of syl­lables, The unique tone and col­our of every voice added to the sump­tu­ous tex­ture of this aural can­vas, which had a kind of ghostly timbre, not exactly haunt­ing, but some­how eth­er­eal, the absence of a single chain of com­mu­nic­a­tion des­troy­ing any sense of real­ity. If the words’ com­mu­nic­at­ive sense was lost, were they still words? Could they still be seen as lan­guage, or were they simply noise, a caco­phony of… unmeaning.

She had stopped look­ing at him, obvi­ously she had decided that her con­front­a­tional glare would not work, and had moved on to ignor­ing him, pre­tend­ing he wasn’t there. That was one way around it. But such a weak one, he couldn’t help think­ing, and in that weak­ness some of his admir­a­tion for the girl was lost. He con­sidered him­self a thinker; a renais­sance man, he sup­posed the ste­reo­type was. But to be a renais­sance man was to be stuck in the past, and he believed him­self to be very much in the present. Still he was fix­ated on the girl. What was it about her that made her so compelling?

* * *

Turn on. Tune in. Drop out. They said she was part of the iPod gen­er­a­tion. What the fuck did that mean? What, so because she listened to music she was some­how inferior? A ‘hoody’; an ‘asbo’? The kind of big­oted gen­er­al­isa­tions that made her cringe every time some middle-aged Daily Mail reader reeled them off. Cret­ins. And what did they sug­gest as an altern­at­ive: Garden­ing? Golf? Fuck that. She con­tin­ued to glare out of the win­dow. Who­ever had said that thing about art gal­ler­ies in the North  being point­less was right. There was no fuck­ing life up here, let alone cul­ture. Sheep. Field. Sheep. Field. Sheep. Nothing.

And her par­ents would be unbear­able. It was always the same, paraded in front of auntie this and uncle that. Isn’t she grown up? Isn’t she pretty? Isn’t she stand­ing right fuck­ing there? They were com­ing up through Derby now. The begin­ning of the end. That sta­tion summed up what was com­ing. A series of green ply­wood boxes with yel­low stripes sur­roun­ded the pil­lars, rem­nants of some half-finished build­ing pro­ject doomed by budget cuts to become a per­man­ent fea­ture. They’d been build­ing it ever since the rail­way was inven­ted. She fuck­ing hated that sta­tion. Birm­ing­ham, the end of the South, the last rem­nant of cul­tured soci­ety, had receded. And here she was in fuck­ing Derby. She fol­ded down her table and bur­ied her head in her arms.

The minute she shut her eyes she was back in Lon­don. South Bank. Cam­den Town. Eel Pie Island. She missed it already. It was like a dif­fer­ent world. Fuck. This was going to be a drag. She wasn’t even sure she’d get on with her old friends any more. What if they were just like before? Would they even have changed one little bit? Even think­ing about them annoyed her. But then again think­ing about her old self annoyed her just as much. She used to be such a fuck­ing bump­kin.  The south­ern­ers laughed at her when she arrived in Lon­don. But she soon showed them that she could stick up for her­self. She was a fighter. Lon­don was a war. She felt like one of those sol­diers she’d read about com­ing home after world war two: No sense of pur­pose. Everything up here was so much less alive.

* * *

Wake­field. It was get­ting close to his stop. He had to change at York for Har­rog­ate. The thought of leav­ing this train, step­ping out of its atmo­sphere and burst­ing back into real­ity saddened him slightly. In the quo­tidian bustle of the city, there was no time for him to sit and watch; to exam­ine, extract, extra­pol­ate. His thoughts bounced back to the girl. Where was she get­ting off, he wondered? He resumed his vigil, try­ing to work out from her demean­our where she was going. He was cer­tain she was a Lon­don girl; she had the air of stroppy self-confidence that per­vaded the inhab­it­ants of that pom­pous city. Although some­how it seemed false, put on. His mind worked to unravel her identity.

Why was she dis­tract­ing him so much? He was usu­ally able to dis­trib­ute his time equally between his stud­ies, watch­ing each one, weigh­ing them up against one another. This time, he was com­pletely taken by the girl, but why? He didn’t have a daugh­ter or a sis­ter to relate her to, and she was far too young for him to find her attract­ive. He aban­doned his abort­ive moment of self-examination, and plunged him­self back into obser­va­tion. He needed to divert his atten­tion and regain his com­pos­ure. He looked again at the reflec­tions in the win­dow, and noted his five o’ clock shadow. He wondered if other people watched like he did. Where would they put him, in what cat­egory would he reside; exec­ut­ive, aris­to­crat, banker? He didn’t sup­pose that self-taught intel­lec­tual was a cat­egory that was on many people’s lists.

The major­ity of the foot­ball fans had left at Wake­field, and the train was a good deal quieter now. He noted that without the camaraderie of their peers, the few remain­ing sup­port­ers had calmed down sig­ni­fic­antly. The psy­cho­logy of group dynam­ics in action: no belong­ing, no con­fid­ence. The girl seemed more relaxed now that the louder fans had gone. In fact she seemed to be sleep­ing, with her head on the table in front of her. The dif­fer­ence between her defi­ant, aggress­ive man­ner only a few minutes ago and her cur­rent com­plete tran­quil­ity was staggering.

* * *

She had never been able to sleep on trains. She was too ter­ri­fied of miss­ing her stop, and of who might sit next to her. She wasn’t afraid to fake it though, when it suited her. Like when the ticket inspector (or ‘Train Man­ager’ – what a joke that was) was wad­dling past. Or like now, for those inva­sions of pri­vacy that even the power of the ipod doesn’t stop. It gave you time to think, an excuse to free your­self from the restric­tions of polite­ness and man­ners, to exempt your­self from banal con­ver­sa­tion with strangers.

One more stop and she would be off this train and back into the real world. Thank fuck for that. This train was get­ting too much for her, shoe­horned in with all these people who she didn’t care about. Who she couldn’t care about. Because who the fuck were they any­way? A load of people all going to the same place, with noth­ing in com­mon. She was glad she couldn’t see them any more, that she didn’t have to think about them. It was such a waste of time won­der­ing about people that she would never see again. What use could that pos­sibly have? She wouldn’t remem­ber a single face from this train. She never did. They meant noth­ing to her.

She peeped through a crack between her elbow and her hand. How long would it be before he got bored and stopped look­ing? She knew she would be smudging her mas­cara, but it would be worth it if he would just stop fuck­ing star­ing. He was prob­ably some kind of head case. She remembered that time in Italy when some old man in a rain­coat sat next to her on a park bench and star­ted to tug him­self off. That was fuck­ing weird. I mean, what do they get out of that any­way? He’d be bet­ter off just pay­ing a hooker to do it for him. The freak was still watch­ing. Only one more stop until she got off. And not a moment too soon. She ima­gined him with a huge hard-on under­neath his scruffy, worn suit. What a fuck­ing pervert.

* * *

He observed her slyly as she lif­ted her head and rustled her things. Leeds then. She seemed uncom­fort­able, it was obvi­ous that she dis­liked trav­el­ling. She had smudged her make-up in her sleep, but seemed not to have noticed as she hur­riedly stuffed her pos­ses­sions into her duffel bag. It was at least another quarter of an hour until Leeds. Only her Walk­man lay unpacked, he noticed, her bar­rier between her­self and the out­side world remains. It would be a shame to lose her, such an inter­est­ing sub­ject. He had spent nearly the whole jour­ney watch­ing her, and had become some­what attached. Not to her, as such, but to the occu­pa­tion of study­ing her, and of extract­ing (or per­haps cre­at­ing, he had to admit) her story from her manner.

She sat back down, ready to leave a full ten minutes before the train arrived at the sta­tion. Such nervous trav­el­lers never failed to amuse him, rush­ing and push­ing, always on their feet for so long before they have a chance to escape. They queued as the minutes passed, so typ­ic­ally Eng­lish. It was the same with the people who queued at air­port gates, seem­ing to ima­gine that there are more pas­sen­gers than seats. He gazed again out of the win­dow, watch­ing the view refash­ion itself, fields giv­ing way to con­crete and steel. He real­ised that he was almost angry at her for leav­ing, unreas­on­able though that was. Per­haps he was a little angry at him­self for being so pass­ive. Could he ever work up the nerve to talk to her? He silently chas­tised him­self for lack­ing the cour­age to approach someone who so com­pletely cap­tiv­ated him.

As the train slowed past the plat­forms, the panic intens­i­fied. People were grabbing for bags, suit­cases tum­bling from lug­gage racks upset by frantic pas­sen­gers. The girl had ended up stood next to him, and he couldn’t help but stare. Was there beauty, he wondered, in her insolence? Maybe he was jeal­ous of her self-certainty, of a rebel­li­ous con­fid­ence that he had never felt. But it was too late now, she was about to leave, and there was noth­ing for him to do.

* * *

How the fuck had she ended up stood next to the one per­son she wanted to be fur­thest away from. And her ipod had just run out of bat­tery. That really took the piss. You could never count on tech­no­logy, it always bit you in the arse when you needed it most. She grabbed the ipod and shook it in anger. It wouldn’t do any­thing, but it made her feel bet­ter. At last it was time to get off. She stuffed the ipod in her pocket and star­ted to shuffle forward.

* * *

They were all get­ting off now, and as she angrily shoved her walk­man into her pocket, he noticed that her head­phones were trail­ing along the floor. This was it. His moment to reach out to her in banal, imper­sonal con­ver­sa­tion, with the excuse of good­will to back him up. Excite­ment mingled with fear. He touched her arm, and as she whipped her head round he saw the glint of rage in her eyes.

“Ex… Excuse me”, he stammered.

“Prick”, she snapped, as she dis­ap­peared through the train’s slid­ing door, her head­phones trail­ing behind her.

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