We Passengers

Chapter

It's been ten minutes and Abigail's mother is still thanking the soldier, even though it's obvious that he just wants to go back to sleep. If she's truly grateful, she should just leave him alone, I think but then, I wonder, would I? Probably not and I know that I shouldn't judge - for all I know, baby Abigail is all that she has in this world and it's just relief that's making her carry on so. Not, I think, that she should be all that relieved just yet; the baby's colour is still all wrong and, although she thankfully didn't choke to death on the button from a cheap coat, she still looks as though she may not make it to the end of this train journey. I wonder how long the screaming woman will have to wait for a train back to London and I wonder how the refugee children are getting on with meeting their new, temporary parents in the countryside.

'Always thinking too much,’ Trevor says although I don't really see how that can be a bad thing. He knew when he married me that I wasn't one of those silly girls who only thinks about frocks and hairdos and, “thank God,” he would say whenever I mentioned that. I know that, before me, Trevor stepped out for a while with a girl who works at the foreign office as a typist, Barbara her name is, and it bothered me for a while. She'd get on my bus every now and then, always dolled up to the nines with her hair in a victory roll and make-up that looked like it took forever to put on. Pretty and with a good job, the sort of job you have to go to college for, I used to worry that Trevor would decide he'd had enough of me and go back to her but he never did. The last I heard, she'd taken up with a bloke at work - a bloke whose job was so important that he wouldn't be sent overseas and this is now the only reason that I'm jealous of Barbara Logan. Spoke to her once, I did, on my bus. She was on her way to her job in town and, as she swung into a seat and bought a ticket, she asked after Trevor and I told her, curtly, that he was well even though, to be honest, I didn't even know that to be true what with him being on a beach somewhere in France. Nice enough, she seemed, although a bit stuck up with her pencil skirt and heels and I remember glumly thinking that Trevor's mum probably just loved her - probably thought she was much more Trevor's league than plain old Ginny Jones from Wilmot Street. Looking out the window, I see that there's another train coming the other way, no doubt full of people coming from where we're going and I watch as it reaches and then passes us; first the driver's cabin and then the first carriage. I'm still watching when the last carriage reaches us and I laugh out loud as a toddler with bright red hair waves at me with both hands from his own grimy window and I wave back, my laughter still echoing in the carriage which has once again become quiet and stuffy. The train's gone now and I suddenly feel self-conscious and look around me but nobody's taking any notice, everyone returning once again to their own thoughts. There was a time, I remember, when I laughed all the time - I was constantly getting in trouble for it at school when it seemed that just about anything would set me off and I try to remember when it was that things changed; when all the laughter went away. Maybe, I think it's just growing up but I don't think that's it. I think that it's war and doing without and pictures on the television of that terrifying little man with the silly moustache. There are rumours that King Edward became friends with Hitler after he abdicated but surely that can't be right. Even though he did give up the throne and marry that awful American woman, I still can't believe that he would betray us all like that and I suddenly feel sorry for Queen Elizabeth having to cope with that as well as the rumours about what her husband may or may not have been up to. Just goes to show that everyone has family problems, even royalty! Although I feel sorry for her, I don't mind admitting that it's sort of a comfort that, high and mighty as she may be, she still has to put up with some of the things that the rest of us do; “still uses the lavvy like everyone else,” Trevor always says and I suppose that's true, although it's not something I, for one, particularly want to think about! Of course she's done her bit for the war as Subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and done it well by all accounts, but, well she has to, doesn't she? Wouldn't be right otherwise, expecting everyone else to be involved while she sits there on her throne in Buck House, knowing her husband and children are safe from harm.

I sneak a glance behind me at the soldier who has finally been able to put his head back down on his kit bag and has his eyes closed although I can't tell whether he’s actually sleeping or not. I know that it's uncharitable but I think that it was probably just daft luck that he managed to save Abigail, after all it could so easily have gone the other way and then where would we be? Stuck on a train with a dead baby and a shrieking woman, that's where. It's not a pleasant thought and, I find myself getting annoyed as it makes me think of the one and only time that I ever saw a dead body.