The Railway Station Man (20 page)

‘Is this where your mother paints naked fellas?' Manus's voice was sour.

Jack didn't say a word.

Manus pulled a bar of Fruit and Nut from his pocket and unwrapped it. He opened the window a crack and let the blue and silver papers scatter away with the wind. He then proceeded to eat the chocolate.

‘Fucking culchies.'

He stared in hatred at the sea as he chewed.

‘I wouldn't stand there with my feet in the sea and let any woman paint me.'

‘She said it was a figment of her imagination.'

Manus laughed.

‘Figment my backside. Fig leaf.' He laughed again at his own joke. ‘Fig leaf.'

He took a handkerchief from the pocket and wiped the chocolate from his fingers.

‘I've said it again and again and you're my witness, there's no use expecting anything from the fools around the country. Fucking slíbhíns. Full of hot air. Words, talk, but try to get them to do anything and they disappear to Galway or down a rabbit hole. Doherty, Sweeney, Fehily.' He shook his head. ‘We'll not engage anyone further in this. It's only a staging post we need. You know the lay of the land.'

‘Yes,' said Jack.

Below them the wind caught the top layer of the sand and blew it along the length of the beach. Jack remembered how his bare legs used to sting as the grey and golden grit was blown against them.

‘We'll take a look at this railway shed that you were talking about. That shouldn't be any problem. This guy… the owner… sounds like a bit of a nutter.'

A war hero,' said Jack, his eyes still on the racing sand. ‘Blown apart in World War Two and then sewn together again.'

Manus smiled slightly.

‘I can't get over the thought of that fella standing down there and letting your mother draw pictures of him in his skin. Ballybofey.'

Jack turned on the engine.

‘War hero.' Manus smiled again. ‘I have a man to see in Ballybofey. You can have a drink or go for a walk.'

He was like that. Never let his right hand know what his left hand was up to. Jack backed away from the edge of the dune and then turned carefully in the caravan park. On a line at the back of one of the vans a forgotten dish cloth flapped forlornly in the wind. They bumped over the grass and out onto the road.

‘Ballybofey,' said Manus.

Jack turned left. Manus leaned forward and pressed the button of the radio. They drove, each one thinking his own thoughts, Radio Two pulping past their ears.

For some reason Helen had taken the six candlesticks out of the kitchen cupboard and unwrapped them from the yellow dusters in which they had lain comfortably for so long. She had even cleaned them and hated the way the skin on her fingers had stiffened and smelt with the ingrained pink polish. Handsome Georgian silver, not too many curlicues. Might get a few bob for them one day if the need ever arose. Candles are nice, she thought. People look so gold and secret. All faces divide quite in half, black shadows make caves and the gold is soft, malleable. Faces look medieval; that is too romantic a thought. Jack's friend has eyes like sharp bright stones.

‘What are you thinking? You've disappeared from us.'

Roger's voice.

She turned to him.

‘I'm sorry. I was just thinking how beautiful we all look by candlelight. Our warts are eliminated.'

He looked around the table.

‘I wouldn't say they were eliminated, made mysterious perhaps. You and I… our… I won't say old … our used, experienced faces are mysteriously beautiful…The two young men with smooth untouched faces merely look boring.'

‘I object,' said Jack.

‘Objection overruled,' Helen laughed. ‘For once let the young be at a disadvantage.'

‘Don't you find your mother mysterious?' asked Roger.

‘No.'

‘Oh dear. I always found my mother mysterious. Perhaps that was because she was killed before I was old enough to have looked at her realistically. And you …'

He turned to Manus, who was twiddling his glass round and round in his fingers. Candle flames danced in the wine. ‘Do you have a mother?'

‘Of course I have a mother… just a straightforward run-of-the-mill mother. No mysteries.' He looked across the table at Helen almost accusingly.

‘I don't believe in mysteries. There are conjuring tricks, but no magic, as far as I'm concerned.'

‘Ghosts?' asked Helen.

‘In people's heads. Too many bloody ghosts in people's heads.'

‘Don't you find it boring to have an explanation for everything?'

‘On the contrary, I have never felt bored in my life. Boredom is quite a disease of the middle classes you know. I know what I'm doing and why and I get on and do it.'

‘May we ask?' Roger pulled at his eye-patch for a moment as he spoke.

‘Ask what you like. I don't have to answer any questions that I don't want to. This isn't Castlereagh.'

Helen balanced her cigarette on its end on her plate and watched the smoke rise thin and straight into the darkness above them.

‘I hate cross-examinations,' she said. ‘I think there are so many things inside each of us that we don't want to say, and that other people don't want to hear. We could become quite unfriendly…' Her voice trailed away like the smoke.

‘How do you mean, mother?'

‘Well… political perhaps … I'd rather not… be forced to make judgments.'

Jack laughed sharply.

‘One day, mother, your ivory tower will fall down. Then where will you be? Then you'll have to ask questions … answer questions … draw conclusions'

‘If my ivory tower, as you call it, falls down, I'll build another one.' She got up and began to move the plates from the table. ‘And I'll always prefer my mysteries to your conclusions. There's chocolate mousse. Who wants some chocolate mousse?'

They all wanted chocolate mousse.

She took it out of the fridge and put it in the middle of the table. That was for Jack anyway, she thought, as she handed each of them a plate. Chocolate mousse for Jack.

‘And miracles.' She sat down again. ‘Help yourselves.' She picked up the smoking cigarette and crushed it out onto the plate. ‘I believe in miracles. Not the bleeding heart kind.'

‘What would you consider to be a miracle, Mrs Cuffe?' Manus's voice was curious.

‘Well… I suppose the intervention of something quite outside your own experience into your… Something perhaps that permits a revelation of yourself. I think the intervention permits the miracle rather than is the miracle itself. I seem to gather thoughts, ideas in my head that I can't express in coherent words. Perhaps that's why I paint. I have to expose some truth.'

She muttered the last words to herself.

‘Give us an example,' said Jack. ‘Tell us about one of your own private and personal miracles.'

She shook her head.

‘One thing is clear to me …' Roger broke into the silence … ‘this chocolate mousse is a miracle. That's for certain sure.'

She laughed.

‘No, no, no. It's the only thing I can cook with complete conviction that it is going to turn out all right. Correct, Jack?'

‘Pretty well correct. Even Gran …'

‘Your grandmother couldn't make a chocolate mousse like mine if she lit a million candles to the patron saint of cooks or crawled seven times round the Black Church on her hands and knees. It was my single personal triumph over your grandmother.'

‘Helen tells me that you are interested in trains.'

‘That's right. My granda was a fireman in the old GNR. He has never done telling us stories. He made you believe that nothing in the world was ever like the Dublin–Belfast run.'

Jack looked towards him with admiration.

‘Steam. Of course I don't remember the steam myself… only his stories.'

‘No,' said Roger. ‘You wouldn't remember the steam. That would have been before your time.'

‘Every Sunday afternoon until just before he died he'd step off to the marshalling yards beyond Amiens Street… that's what he always called it… Amiens Street. He and several other old guys, have a bit of a rabbit about the way things used to be. It's funny the way old people always think that things are worse now instead of better. He used to rave about things when he got home, carelessness, dirt, incompetence.'

Perhaps he's talking the truth, thought Jack. I know so little about him.

‘I used to go with him sometimes. There was a lot of old stock in the sheds there never saw the light of day. I enjoyed it when I was a kid. But then … well you've heard all the old stories a thousand times, and you find you've better things to do than listening to old footplatemen trying to pretend they haven't one foot in the grave.'

‘I'd be delighted to show you the station. Delighted. When can you come over?'

‘Tomorrow. We'll be free all day until the evening. We have to set off back then. That's right isn't it, Jack … we could manage tomorrow morning?'

‘Splendid. I'll expect you then … about ten-thirty. Helen, will you come with them?'. She shook her head.

‘I think not, thank you. Have some more chocolate mousse.'

‘I must say, you've done a great job. I'd like the granda to have seen that box. He wasn't into this narrow-gauge stuff being a city man, but he'd have really appreciated that box.'

‘Thank you,' said Roger. He looked as if he hadn't slept all night. His eye was fretful, his face pale and without much life.

‘What are you working on at the moment?'

‘The crossing gates. Damian is replacing a lot of the timbers. They were badly rotted. That shouldn't take too long. They'll have to remain manual for a while, but we hope to automate them before too long. It's a nuisance that, in bad weather, but it can't be helped.'

‘How about the track?'

Manus walked along the edge of the platform and looked down at the weeds.

‘We'll clear that. All that mess will die back when the winter comes. Until I see the state of the track I can't say how long that will take. I may have to call in some outside help if we need to re-lay any sleepers.'

‘What's that shed over there?'

‘I think this was mainly a goods stop. Stuff must have been stored there for local farmers to come and collect. I have been surprised myself at its size. I don't use it. It's quite a decent piece of railway architecture though, I'd hate to pull it down. No doubt we'll find a use for it some day.'

‘No doubt. Mind if I go and have a look?'

‘By all means. Excuse me if I don't come with you. Sometimes I feel quite unwell.'

‘Is there anything we can do?' asked Jack. ‘I could run over to the doctor for you.'

‘No. I just like to be left alone. There isn't anything anyone can do …' He turned away from them and walked towards the house slowly. At the door he stopped. ‘Go ahead,' he said. ‘It's not locked … just the bolt.'

Without even saying goodbye he went into the house.

They walked in silence to the end of the platform and then across the tracks. The shed had a wooden door in surprisingly good condition, held closed by a large iron bolt. It had been oiled at some stage and slid back without fuss. Inside, dust, cobwebs and dead flies veiling the small windows and a large empty space.

‘It's one of your mother's miracles,' said Manus.

Jack pushed the door shut behind them and looked around.

‘I think it's a crazy idea.'

‘Why?' Manus's voice was shrill. ‘What's crazy about it? They don't use it… don't touch it. There's no one else for miles around. No nosey kids even.'

‘You wouldn't know what he'd do, for God's sake … or Damian. How will you get the stuff in and out of here without him finding out?'

‘Leave it to me, why don't you? You just do what you're told. Have I ever let anyone down? Answer me that. Have I bungled? Hey? Have I?'

‘No. But…'

‘But fucking nothing.'

‘I think you're as mad as he is.'

Manus ignored that. He stared around the shed, his eyes glittering with excitement. He put his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a bar of chocolate. He unwrapped it and shoved the paper back into his pocket.

‘The trouble is,' he began to munch at the bar, ‘with people like yourself, you've no imagination.'

‘As far as the set-up is concerned, I've too much imagination.'

‘Always picking. I don't know why I'm lumbered with you.'

‘You know well why you're lumbered with me … you sent me down to talk to Damian. You needed to use my car. That's why. You have a marginal, menial use for me.'

‘That's right. Now that you have it clear in your mind can we drop the subject?'

He finished the chocolate in silence.

‘I simply feel,' said Jack, ‘that I could be used in some more constructive way. I am, after all…'

‘You're not an active-service guy.'

‘I…'

‘You're not. You can take it from me. You are most usefully employed in helping to produce a back-up service.'

‘I…'

‘People like you faint at the sight of blood.'

‘You haven't the faintest idea whether I faint at the sight of blood or not. You've never given me the chance to find out.'

‘I know what I'm talking about. If you want to stay with us … be useful… very useful. For God's sake what do you want… the whole organisation to fall apart without you? Be your age. If you want to be useful then do what you're told. Okay.'

Jack nodded.

‘We'll win you know. Then you'll probably be quite glad I didn't allow you to get up to anything… You can never tell when the bourgeois conscience will begin to prick. There aren't really too many of us who have the clear eye.' He laughed. And a steady hand.'