Advent (4 page)

 
To his irritation, an old woman had managed to sit down in the window seat opposite, not put off by his protruding shoes. She was leaning her chin in her hand and gazing out of the window, but she caught his look reflected there and gave a very brief smile, enough to make him feel like he had to sit up and pull his legs out of the way. This was a kind of defeat, which irritated him even more. She wasn’t actually an old woman, he now saw – middle-aged (to Gavin, at fifteen, this meant anything between three and four times his age), but with old-fashioned-looking hair that was all grey, and a floppy brown jumper. The smile had been quick and sharp.

 
Better get the earphones in, he thought, and reached into his bag. The woman didn’t have a paperback or knitting or photos of her grandchildren or any of the other things Gavin imagined middle-aged ladies occupying themselves with on trains – no luggage at all, he noticed, let’s hope that means she’s not going far – so it seemed best not to leave open any possibility of conversation. He fitted the earphones, slumped in his seat again and stared out of the window, adopting the hard and indifferent face that he used on the way to and from school.

 
Used to use.

 
Nothing that might have belonged to home was in sight. No streetlights, no houses, no people. A low, dull sky lay over winter fields and stubbly hedges. As the dour landscape rolled past, he began trying to imagine how far he was from his parents. He checked his watch every half-hour or so until he guessed he’d come to the exact moment when they were being lifted off the earth, no longer attached at all to the country where he was. They’d probably be almost as relieved as him to have escaped. Mum would be worrying, but she’d never be able to say so, not for a single moment of the whole week. (‘I am
not
going to let that boy spoil our time together.’) Auntie Gwen didn’t have a computer or even a phone. She lived in one of those knobbly green fingers at the very outer limits of the map. The most his mother had been able to make him promise was to find somewhere he could get reception every day or two and leave messages back at home. He pictured her having to slip away from Dad, smuggling her mobile into a bathroom so she could ring to check them. A couple of years ago that kind of thought would have upset him. Now he just let it go, sent it away with his parents. Once he’d realised they didn’t want to know about his unhappiness, he’d stopped caring much about theirs.

 
The landscape grew rougher at the edges as the journey wore on. The track passed under hillsides where the fields ran out near the top and patches of scrubby brown rose above them. This was nothing like what his family called the countryside, which meant the bit around where his other aunt – Dad’s sister – lived, just far enough away that going there for Sunday lunch took absolutely all day, but near enough that they thought it was reasonable to keep doing it. The country around there looked as if it had been assembled out of accessories from Gav’s old train set: barn, fence, tree, cow, telephone box, placed indiscriminately over a green cloth with a few ripples in it. What Gav saw out of the window now couldn’t ever be shrunk into plastic miniatures. London felt very far away, and now, for certain, his parents were in the air and gone (he looked at his watch again to make sure, but it had stopped), and his week of freedom was properly under way.

 
After a long while they came to another station. He thought about faking sleep again, but the woman opposite had pulled a book out of her handbag by now, some sort of nature guide, and was safely absorbed in it. More people left the carriage than joined. Gavin knew from the maps that he was reaching the point where England began to taper out, thinning into the sea.

 
And there it was: the sea. It took him by surprise. It was suddenly right by the tracks. There was a narrow strand of beach, where a few well-wrapped people had stopped their walk to watch the train go past, and beyond that, nothing: a huge, calm, open plain of emptiness mirroring the underside of pencil-grey clouds. On the other side of the train, cliffs the colour of grimy brick rose like walls.

 
For the first time since he’d been on the train, he thought about having to make the return journey, in just a week’s time; having to go back to it all.

 
The train swooshed into a tunnel and, abruptly, Gavin was staring at the inside of the carriage in the window. He’d been captivated by the sea, his guard was down, and he realised too late that his eyes were accidentally directed straight at the reflection of the woman opposite, and hers, reflected, were directed back at him.

 
‘It always makes me jump,’ she said.

 
He cursed inwardly. He’d made it this far without getting trapped in some pointless conversation with a stranger and didn’t want to spoil the rest of his precious time on his own by starting one now.

 
‘Mmm.’ He didn’t know what she was talking about and didn’t care. He looked down at his lap.

 
‘It’s the best bit of the journey, though. The sea and all the tunnels. I always remember thinking that once you got past here you were properly in the southwest.’

 
‘Oh yeah?’ He made himself sound as uninterested as possible and reached across into his bag to fiddle ostentatiously with his phone, but it didn’t stop her.

 
‘I used to love those journeys on my own when I was a girl. Just watching out of the window. There was nothing worse than when some old bore opposite wanted to talk.’

 
He reddened, more angry than embarrassed. ‘Hah,’ he grunted, with a forced smile.

 
‘Are you going to Cornwall?’

 
A direct question. No way he could brush it off.

 
‘Truro, yeah.’

 
‘Ah! My stop too.’

 
Great. ‘Oh right.’ He was stuck with her the whole way. He opened a game on his phone, in the hope of demonstrating that he had better things to do than listen to her chatter, but it made no difference. She pulled a tube of mints out of her handbag and picked off the foil.

 
‘Are you on your way home, then? Polo?’

 
‘Er, no, thanks. Nah, I live in London.’ He cursed himself again. That might have been his last chance to cut this conversation off before it really got going and he’d said more than he needed to. He’d blown it.

 
‘Hmm. It hasn’t been home for me since I was a girl, but I suppose it is now. I’m going native, as you see.’ She tapped the cover of her book. It was called
A Field Guide to Cornwall’s Wildlife
. He didn’t understand and didn’t want to. ‘You’ve been before? Family in Truro?’

 
If she’d obviously just been making small talk, he might have kept on grunting rudely and then clammed up, but there was a patient curiosity in her questions that he couldn’t seem to escape. ‘Nah, not properly. When I was a baby, once. Think we went to a beach somewhere.’

 
‘Oh well, this is better really. Summer has its uses, but a beach is a beach is a beach. I always try to come back in autumn or winter. The wind and the rain. It’s not the holidays yet, though, is it?’

 
The possibility of a reprieve flashed in front of him. Perhaps the truth would do the trick and put her off. He met her eyes and tried to look belligerent.

 
‘Not yet. I got kicked out of school.’

 
For a moment it looked as if he’d succeeded. ‘Oh,’ she said, looking down and up quickly. Then she sat back with a huge smile. ‘How funny! Me too.’

 
He must have gawped. She leaned forward, right across the table, grinning a grin that belonged on the face of a conspiratorial teenager. ‘Never mind. I’ll shut up now. Good luck to you.’ She patted the back of his hand and, still smiling, picked up her book and sucked her mint.

 
He looked around the carriage, wondering about switching to another seat. She didn’t look like a crazy person. Quite the opposite, in fact: there was a brightness in her expression that made her look younger than the rest of her appearance suggested she was, and an air of subdued amusement that reminded him slightly of Mr Bushy, who was the cleverest person Gav knew. Maybe that was what stopped him from getting up and moving, though he told himself he was being an idiot, that she might start up again at any moment. But there weren’t lots of empty seats. He might end up stuck next to someone just as bad.

 
He’d just about managed to relax again when she blinked up from her book and looked out at the hills, frowning slightly.

 
‘We’re still a while from Plymouth, aren’t we?’ she said, apparently to herself.

 
Taking no chances, Gavin slumped right back in his seat and half closed his eyes.

 
She craned her neck to peer up and down the line. ‘I’m sure I haven’t seen Ivybridge go by . . .’

 
The train was slowing; that was what had bothered her. As it braked to a crawl, the noise of its passage grew suddenly louder, and the windows went black. They eased deeper into the tunnel and stopped.

 
A group of kids at the far end of the carriage did a mock-spooky wail, ‘Oooo-ooooo.’ Gav turned up the volume on his music.

 
He didn’t hear the details of the driver’s apologetic announcement. Something about a temporary electrical problem. The kids groaned in chorus.

 
Abruptly the lights in the carriage all went out. At the same instant the music in Gav’s ears stopped dead.

 
There was an instant of complete darkness and silence, and then the carriage filled with little shrieks and giggles and conversations starting up too loudly. There was no light at all, not the slightest glimmer. Gav felt across to his bag, wondering if his earphones had come unplugged. They hadn’t. He pulled them out of his ears. His hands felt sweaty.

 
A hideous cry erupted out of the dark.

 
Otototoi
!

 
Gavin cringed, his raised arms invisible in front of his face. The scream had been right on top of him.

 
Otototoi! Otototoi! Popoi! Popoi!

 
He was nauseous with terror. The hum of nervous chatter in the carriage continued, though the appalling shouts ought to have crushed it. He jammed his hands over his ears and cowered. At that moment someone further down the carriage switched on a torch. There was a mass
Ahhhh
as the wobbly white light appeared.

 
The woman opposite was staring at him, her face in shadow.

 
In the seat next to her another woman was sitting, and Gavin knew at once that it was Miss Grey. He knew her by the silhouette of her tangled hair and by the shape of her cloaked shoulders and her thin arms braced on the table in front of her. He knew her by something else as well, the intimacy of fifteen years; he felt her close to him like his own reflection. But he’d never seen her indoors before, and beyond his dreams he had never seen a word come out of her mouth, barely even a breath, let alone the full-throated inhuman howl of madness that she threw out again.

 
‘
Otototoi
!
’

 
Gavin couldn’t stop himself flinching. He was acutely aware of the eyes of the woman opposite. Shame burned him. He tried to shift round in his seat and fold his arms, as if all he’d been doing was getting comfortable. It was plain that no one else had heard Miss Grey’s deranged howling. No one but him was haunted; no one but him was cursed. He had no idea what he’d done to earn this new punishment, or why she now had the power to pursue him inside and scream in his ear. He glimpsed a terrible future in which she wouldn’t stop until she’d driven him out of his mind, properly crazy, as Mr Bushy obviously thought he already was.

 
He hugged himself tight and screwed his eyes shut.

 
The carriage lights came on.

 
Gavin tried to focus on his breathing. Don’t look up, don’t say anything, don’t meet anyone’s eyes. He was afraid that if the nosy woman asked him what was wrong, he might slap her.

 
‘Ladies’n’gennlmun,’ began an announcement, ‘thizzizr driver speakin, we dopologise for ’zshor’delay, uh faulznowbin fixt’n’ we’ll beyonrway veryshor’y than’you.’