It still isn’t raining. For three days now the sky has been sagging, like a week-old bruise, that unpalatable combination of yellow and reddish-purple.
By 7:10 the train station car park is full. After some creative parking, fervently hoping that it will be ignored by the powers that be in the person of the meter maid (to be fair, it usually is), I make my way to the packed platform. Men in suits and backpacks; women in suits and comfortable shoes, to be exchanged for foot-mangling office-wear at their destinations. Everyone is crowded by the platform’s edge, looking at the tracks, willing the train to come in and finish the awkward closeness. British do not as much like a lot of personal space as become acutely uncomfortable with the lack of it.
A slight girl in a severe pinstripe suit and pink snickers walks onto the platform. She looks around without much interest, then suddenly smiles, walks behind a tall young man, stands on tiptoes and taps him on the shoulder. He turns around sharply, composed, ready to respond to a sudden threat. Then his face slowly lights up with an open, child-like smile of recognition.
The announcer unreliably informs us that the 7:18 is due at 7:25. It arrives at 7:27 and is instantly stuffed, people from the platform squeezed in, like sausage meat in a gut casting. The similarity is emphasised by the segmented shape of the train. The straing of paussages? No, sounds awkward. The nearly empty platform rustles quietly with sandwich wrappers under the sickly sky. Oh, for a tumbleweed to fall through a wormhole and roll along the platform, surrounded by butterfly wings of sandwich paper! But things like that never happen in suburban England. That’s why I prefer cartoons.
My train is the 7:27. It is due at 7:29, according to the departure board. Amazingly, it is here at 7:29. The few remaining passengers, unprepared for this turn of events, hastily stuff their phones, newspapers and half-eaten sandwiches (depending on their age as well as the length and purpose of the trip) into their bags and themselves into the carriages.
The train takes off, gliding shakily through the implausible kaleidoscope of ruralish England. Green pastures dotted with maudlin sheep are replaced by rubbish-filled car parks, which, in turn, give way to crowded flats separated from the train track by blackened brick walls covered in monotonous graffiti endlessly repeating several tags. They could at least use some colour – the washing flapping in the wind on the balconies above looks more exciting! It’s the light, the bruised sky lets very little light through to the landscape, and the colours are pale, greyish, even the green pastures as washed out as dusty-brown parking lots. The painfully neon orange of rail-worker’s high-vis jacket only emphasises the greyness of the surrounding landscape.
A peevish female voice behind me responds to the phone, ‘No, we won’t make it before 9. Can’t you wait? No way, I am not waiting there until 10. I don’t care. We don’t have to accommodate your plans anymore.’ She hangs up. I turn around, pretending to look in my bag, trying to sneak a surreptitious glance at the woman. Instead, I meet the tear-filled gaze of a small girl sitting next to her and quickly turn around. Back to my notepad.
All of a sudden, a mournful wail rips through the train. People around look away from their phones, laptops and newspapers, startled into curiosity, heads turned, unaware of their expressions ranging from frightened to disapproving. It is a young man in a wheelchair, distorted mouth wide open, constricted hands flailing wildly. An exasperated woman in black is bending over him, murmuring hopeless admonitions. Mistery solved, the passengers go back to their devices. The wailing repeats. Again and again. The woman gives up and just stands there, her shoulders hunched, her face expressionless.
I wish it would rain.
