We Passengers

Chapter 16

It's too late though. The dark's back now, closing in on me like a coffin lid being lowered and suddenly I can't breathe. Although my eyes are open, everything around me is hazy and strange like I'm looking at the world through a veil and I want to claw at my eyes but I know that it won't do any good.

'You alright love?’ I hear the voice but I can't think who it belongs to and, anyway, it doesn't matter because they can't help me. This darkness is like a living, breathing thing and it wants me to remember something but I won't, I won't, I won't! I wonder if this is what being dead is. Just this dark nothingness trapping you forever while everybody around you just goes about their business without you; going to work and getting married and having babies while you silently suffocate just inches away from them.

'Stop this now.’

This time the voice is mine and it's the one that I use with the school-kids when they're getting out of hand up on the top deck; the voice that says, “any more of that and you'll be off, the lot of you!” It does the trick though, suddenly the dark is vanishing; rushing away from me and letting the light back in and I'm on this train again, chugging through green English countryside and I gasp in a huge breath of air.

'You alright love?’ I know who it is now, it's Abigail's mother; having had her own crisis diverted, she's now moved on to mine and I nod as I reach for Trevor's hand, suddenly embarrassed at the thought that I might have caused a scene in public. Mum wouldn't like that, as you know.

'Fine, thank you,’ I say stiffly without looking at her and she doesn't bother to respond so now I worry that I was being rude and add, ‘Kind of you to ask though.’ It was really; we've all got our own troubles and, really, we should be grateful whenever anybody takes the time to think about anybody else but I'm tired of being grateful and, most of the time, just want to be left in peace. I'm feeling better now; I can smell Trevor's tobacco and it calms me, even though it normally drives me to distraction, specially when he sparks up in the house and makes Mum yell at him. I tried it once or twice but it didn't stick. Some of the girls started a couple of years back and would pose with them like they were Greta Garbo or someone but it just made me cough and made my clothes stink. The door to our carriage opens and I glance up as a young girl steps inside, her face expressionless as she looks around and then takes a seat opposite Trevor and me. Irritated, I pick up my book although I have no interest in reading it; I don't know who the girl is but surely she has her own seat in the other carriage - you can't just go and up and change seats, it's just not the way things are done. My annoyance grows as I realise that I can no longer just gaze straight ahead for fear of being accused of staring at the girl so, now, my choices are the window or my book. I'd like to say something but nobody else seems to be bothered so I don't, even though it's a bloody liberty. I read a few lines of my novel - How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn, trying to transport myself from this train to that Welsh mining village but it's no good, I can't concentrate now and, as I glance up, I see that the girl is staring at me. Sitting bolt upright and still as a stone, I can't tell whether her stare is a challenge or a plea and I look away for a moment, thinking the cheek of it, before looking back

'You alright love?’ I ask and Abigail’s mother looks up sharply but I ignore her. I've had enough of Abigail's mother and Abigail and I've had enough of this girl who won't stop staring at me. “Choose your battles,” Mum always says and I suppose she's right; I don't really want to get into a row with this girl who looks like she's probably no more than twelve or thirteen but surely somebody has told her that it's rude to stare? She doesn't reply but continues to look at me and, for a moment, I wonder if she's simple and I think this would be better as it'd mean I could feel sorry for her instead of being angry but then she smiles and it's a knowing smile, not the vacant one of somebody who doesn't know what's going on. I don't like that smile. It's a smile that says that she knows what's going on alright, that she knows about the dark and about any number of things that a kid her age has no business knowing. I glance down at my book again and a line jumps out at me, “Strange that only a little problem of your own will take your mind far from a tragedy belonging to others,” and it makes me feel guilty although I don't know why - after all, why shouldn't I be able to wallow in my own problems once in a while instead of having to worry about everyone else's? Now the book has annoyed me as well as the strange girl who I don't think has so much as blinked in all the time she's been sitting there. But now, suddenly, her gaze slowly moves beyond me to the sleeping soldier behind me and her face softens with what might be pity and I wonder if she's lost somebody; a Dad, a brother - maybe just an uncle or neighbour, it doesn't matter; at her age, any death is shocking and unsettling. As she drags her gaze away from the soldier and back to me, I really am about to say something this time when, suddenly, she stands up, smooths down what I now see is a school skirt and then leaves the carriage and, a moment later, it's like she was never there in the first place.