Karin Slaughter - Like A Charm

Rosemary, the lady I met on the train, was like the girls in the Black and White Minstrel Show. They all wear sparkly dresses and twinkling top hats and smile all the time. They are called the Television Toppers and I think they are all six foot tall, the same height as me. But this lady was much smaller than that, although she was very pretty with that kind of yellow hair, all fluffed up, like Marilyn Monroe before she killed herself.

Her jumper was very tight for a lady. It was pink. She also wore a tight skirt and had a shiny patent leather handbag. She was in a compartment without any men, which was why I went and sat with her, although I wish I had not. After the guard took our tickets I saw that we were both going to Salisbury. I had been up to Vauxhall, which is a good station for trainspotting as all the trains coming out of Waterloo go through it. I saw quite a few Q1s. The Q1 locomotive weighs 51 tons and 5 cwt and its driving wheel is 5 foot 1 inch in diameter. But mainly I saw diesels and electrics, which are not much fun. Electrics don't even look as though there is a locomotive, just a row of boring passenger cars. Soon I believe there will be no more steam trains and that will be the beginning of the end for the railways. And a man called Doctor Beeching is planning to give many stations and branch lines the axe. In my opinion doctors should stick to looking after people, and not waste their time fiddling about with our trains.

After Basingstoke (shed number 70D, Southern Region) nearly everyone got off the train. We were travelling on 80031, a standard 2-6-4, 88 ton 10 cwt locomotive with a 5 foot 8 inch driving wheel. When I boarded the train at Waterloo I went to the buffet and treated myself to a sandwich and a cup of tea. I like the tea on trains, but most people do not.

When I was finished I moved along and sat in a crowded second class slide-door compartment. But at Woking all the ladies in the compartment got out, and I was left on my own with two men in bowler hats, so I moved along and found one near the back of the train with only two women in it.

Rosemary, in the pink pullover, was reading a magazine about pop music. Every time she turned the page her gold bracelet jangled. I couldn't take my eyes off the bracelet because it was all gold charms, and one of them was a wonderful train. It was a very early locomotive, maybe even a model of Stephenson's Rocket. There were other charms on the bracelet but I wanted to look closely at Rocket. One day I will go to the Science Museum in London and see Rocket, maybe even touch it if there is not a fence in the way.

The woman Rosemary sighed when she saw me watching her and pulled at her jumper, so I looked down at my lap. I had bought myself a copy of The Eagle at Waterloo, and read that, trying to sneak glimpses at the charm over the top of the comic. Dan Dare, pilot of the future, was as usual in a good adventure, fighting the Mekon.

The lady who was sitting beside me on the window side started to make a noise like tch tch. She was quite old, probably about thirty-five, and fat, and wore a tweed suit like Daddy's secretary wears, but Daddy's secretary is even older and fatter than this woman. The fat lady was staring at The Eagle, so I thought maybe she wanted to look at it. I held it out to her and said: 'Perhaps, madam, you would like to read it when I am finished.' But she made a noise like a steam locomotive when it comes to a station stop, and turned her back to me. Rosemary giggled when the fat lady made this noise and gave me a wink, so I winked back and pulled a face to show I knew I was in trouble with the fat lady. Rosemary rolled her eyes in a conspiratorial kind of way, and then returned to reading her pop magazine.

I did not think that Rosemary would turn out in the end to be so horrible. If anyone was going to be unpleasant I would have thought it was the fat lady, but the fat lady got out at Basingstoke.

I think Rosemary is what Mummy would call a common little tart.

As the train pulled out of Basingstoke station it started to rain. The windows were grimy, and the water came down in clean lines cutting a diagonal pattern in the dirt.

I shuffled along into the fat woman's place near the window and started to look out. Sometimes at Basingstoke there are some good locomotives waiting in the sidings, sometimes even rows of Pullman cars.

'Perhaps you'll let me read your comic,' said Rosemary, out of the blue. I handed it to her.

'I like the train on your bracelet,' I said. 'Is it articulated?'

She pulled her sleeve down again, almost as though my mentioning the bracelet made her feel she had to hide it. Perhaps, I thought, she took me for a jewel thief or a robber who would overpower her, rip the bracelet from her petite wrist and leap from the train with my ill-gained booty.

She turned the comic over and started to read the back page. It was a special cut-out article on the TSR2. She seemed to be very interested.

'Do you like planes?' I asked. 'I live near Boscombe Down.'

'My boyfriend is a pilot there,' she said. 'He's been working on this plane.'

'So does my daddy.' I clapped my hands together with excitement. 'Do the wheels on the train move?'

'I should bloody hope so,' said Rosemary, 'or we'll never get home before Late Night Line Up.'

I laughed and she smiled as she fiddled again with the bracelet. I think Late Night Line Up is a boring programme, and after it the TV shuts down for the night so I am usually in bed anyway.

'It's pretty, isn't it?' She rolled her fingertips along the wheels and I could see them moving, but I could not see whether the wheels pushed the connecting rod in and out.

'Did you buy it?' I couldn't take my eyes off the wheels. I wanted to touch them too.

'My boyfriend gave it to me,' she said. 'He was stationed up north during the war. Leeds. He found it while they were clearing up after some Nazi bomb which almost blew up the flat he lived in. No one claimed it so he hung on to it.' She pulled up her sleeve, held her arm out and jangled the bracelet. 'He used to keep it in the cockpits with him as a lucky mascot, but when these new planes came in, reaching such high speeds, he said it was a liability. He was frightened it would fly off the hook and knock his eye out, so then he kept it in the flight office. Until he gave it to me, anyhow.' She handed The Eagle back to me, then pulled her sleeve down, folded her arms and edged nearer to the window. 'How quickly it gets dark now. It'll be Christmas before we know it.' She chewed the inside of her cheek.

The sky was dark grey with rain clouds and the sun had dipped below the horizon. You could see little cream coloured lights in people's houses, and parallel lines of yellow street lamps as we passed through Overton. We were on the fast train so we didn't stop at the station.

'Perhaps your boyfriend knows my dad.' I called him Dad because I didn't want her to turn all funny like Daddy does on me sometimes when I am with him and he meets people who work at the base and I call him Daddy. 'He's a test pilot. He specializes in down in the dirt manoeuvring. Low flight, you know. Down and dirty. He's very brave. He's got medals.'

'Maybe.' She didn't seem interested and went on staring out into the dark. 'What's his name?'

So I told her, and I remembered to say Wing Commander. Mummy does this in shops and then people are very nice to her and start bowing and scraping. I said Bill, too, rather than William. I wanted Rosemary to think I was very casual with Daddy, as though we go down to the Red Lion for drinks together every weekend.

'What's your name, then?' She had knotted her eyebrows together and was peering at my face.

'Tommy,' I said. 'Tommy Birkenshaw.'

'Tommy?' She pursed her lips, her eyes went sort of slitty and she crossed her legs, one over the other. 'You're rather good looking.' She sounded surprised. 'I thought…' Her voice drifted off, and she suddenly clicked open her handbag and pulled out a compact and lipstick. 'What's your mummy like, then?' She was swiping the lipstick back and forth across her lips as she spoke. It was a pale coral pink, like a peeled shrimp.