Peter May - Runaway

Dave and Maurie kicked open the door of the waiting room and we all trooped inside out of the rain. There was a damp, fusty smell in here, the odour of neglect. All the fittings had been stripped out of it, the ticket office window boarded up from the other side, the floor strewn with rubble and covered in a layer of dust.

I laid down my bag, leaned my guitar against the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor, drawing breath for the first time and feeling a pall of depression settle over me as the adrenaline that had fuelled us in these last few hours ebbed away.

It had been almost blind black when we arrived, but now a break in the clouds let a little moonlight through to race across the land, and we cast shadows for the first time over the dusty floor as light fell in through the open door.

Rachel stood, hesitant and painfully alone somehow, in the middle of the room as we all found our spots and settled down to while away the next few hours.

I slipped my arms out of my big furry coat, holding it open, and said, ‘It’s big enough to share.’

She didn’t need a second invitation and I felt, more than saw, Maurie glaring at me across the room. She sat down beside me, and I put the coat around both our shoulders. I liked how she leaned into me, her head resting against my shoulder, and I slipped an arm around her waist to pull her closer.

I was almost overwhelmed just by the softness and warmth of her body. She smelled earthy, musky, and I felt the first stirrings of desire. I laid my cheek on top of her head and closed my eyes, waves of fatigue surging through me.

Then out of the silence that had settled in the waiting room, Jeff suddenly said, ‘What’s the Beeching cuts?’

For a moment, no one responded.

Then Luke lit a cigarette, his face briefly illuminated by the flame of his lighter, and he said, ‘Beeching’s a guy commissioned by the government to make the railways pay.’

‘What, you mean, they’re losing money? Any train I’ve ever been on is standing room only.’ Dave’s face, too, was momentarily illuminated as he lit a No. 6.

‘They’re losing millions,’ Luke said. ‘So Dr Beeching’s solution is to cut all the branch lines that are turning in a loss. Like this one, presumably.’

‘How’d you know all that?’ Jeff said.

I heard the amusement in Luke’s voice. ‘Modern studies, Jeff. Our history teacher takes the classes. You’ve had him too, I think, Jack.’

‘What? Mr Shed?’

‘Yeah. You should hear him on Beeching. Thinks the guy’s an idiot.’

‘Why?’ Maurie this time.

I saw him lighting his cigarette from the end of Jeff’s, and the smell of cigarette smoke in this cold, empty place was oddly comforting. Like the conversation we were having that failed to address any of the real issues that confronted us.

‘Because he says that Beeching’s ruining the best rail network in the world. Reckons by the time he’s had his way and closed half of it down we’ll probably end up with the worst.’

‘Well, he’s had his way here,’ I said. And for a moment I had the strangest sense of witnessing the end of something. An era, maybe. A turning point in the history of our country. The dreams of a nation described by an abandoned railway station and torn-up rails. A track from the past leading to nowhere in an uncertain future. A track that we would follow ourselves sometime in the next few hours without any idea of where it would take us.

‘I suppose we’ll be in big trouble now,’ Jeff said. A reality check.

I lifted my head from Rachel’s. ‘Because of running the cops off the road?’

‘Well... that, too.’

‘What else?

Silence.

‘What else, Jeff?’ Luke said.

‘Well, I’d always figured we’d get the van back before anyone noticed it was missing. You know, get ourselves sorted in London, then I’d drive it back up to Glasgow.’

The tension in the waiting room positively crackled in the dark.

‘You stole it?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

‘I borrowed it. It was a trade-in at the garage. I’m responsible for stocktaking, so it wouldn’t have been missed for weeks.’

‘Jesus!’

Another first. I’d never heard Luke blaspheme before.

‘So now we’re car thieves as well. Thanks, Jeff.’

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene at the gate of the church. Residents gathered around the wreck of the van. The blue flashing lights of one or more police cars. All our gear abandoned in the back of it. The crackle of a police radio. Perhaps the registration number of the Thames being radioed back to base. How long before they discovered it was stolen? Hours? Days? Weeks? We were in more trouble now than I could ever have imagined.

I laid my cheek again on Rachel’s head and breathed in the scent of her. For some reason it lifted my depression.

I must have dozed off, because when I came to I realized that everyone else was asleep. The one-time waiting room itself seemed to be breathing, filled with the soft sounds of sleep. Someone was snoring, but I couldn’t tell who.

My left arm, extended around Rachel’s waist to draw her closer, had gone to sleep as well. I could feel pins and needles in my hand, but I was reluctant to move in case I disturbed her. The gentle purr of her breathing was muffled by my chest where she had turned her head to rest against me. I reached across to feel the shape of it through soft hair, and stroked her, filled with a strange tenderness. I wondered what it was about her that had this effect on me, but I guess there is no way to ever understand these things.

She stirred, and I felt her head turning up, so that she was looking at me. I could barely see her. My voice was the faintest whisper in the night.

‘Why did you come to Leeds with him?’

I sensed her tension.

‘I made a mistake.’

‘Quite a mistake.’

I felt her nodding.

‘Sometimes you can’t see the real person for the person they want you to see. Andy was... well, he made me laugh. He was funny, and quite charming in his own way. He treated me with respect. I felt wanted.’

Her head lifted again, as if she desperately wanted to meet my eyes. But I couldn’t really see hers.

‘You can’t know how good it is to feel wanted, when you never have been your whole life.’

I finally moved my arm out from behind her and stretched it to get the blood flowing. ‘Who didn’t want you?’

‘My parents for a start.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘Oh, it is. Ask Mo. They wanted a boy. Someone to take on the family business. But there were birth complications and, after me, they couldn’t have any more kids. I always felt kind of resented. All I was good for was marrying and having kids to carry on the Jewish line.’ She pulled herself more upright. ‘You got a fag?’

I lit one, then another from mine, and handed it to her.

‘Not that they ever treated me badly. I got everything I ever wanted. Just to shut me up, really, while they got on with their own lives.’ I heard her ironic little laugh. ‘Poor little rich kid.’ She paused. ‘I was so unhappy, Jack. Andy rode into my life like a knight in shining armour. He was older than me. Had money, a car. Dead corny, I know, but he swept me off my feet.’

‘I remember Maurie telling us about how you ran away with him.’

A tiny laugh shook her. ‘Must have been the talk of the steamie.’

‘So when did you know you’d made a mistake?’

‘Almost immediately. You saw what Quarry Hills is like. And the flat. It was pretty much that way when we got there. From a posh villa in Whitecraigs to a tip of a council flat in Leeds. Could hardly have fallen further. And Andy... well, it was like he just became someone else. The real Andy. The one he’d been hiding behind all that crap.’