Anne Bennett - Till the Sun Shines Through

She brought herself up sharply. She couldn’t give in now. She was doing the only thing possible and was already halfway there. But it took every ounce of resolve inside her to set off again, every nerve in her crying out in protest.

She knew Cavan Halt was only a few miles away for she’d studied the timetable in detail and resolutely set off again. She said the rosary as she rode, the litany and familiarity comforting her for these were the prayers she’d been taught some many years before when the world was a safe and wonderful place. She implored God and the Virgin Mary to help her complete this hazardous but necessary journey

Liscooley Village was after Cavan Halt, but as she reached it, the rails deviated from the road, turning right in towards the station, while the road continued straight ahead to the centre of the village. Bridie was too wary of being seen, and possibly challenged, to ride through the main street so instead used the back roads and came upon the tracks again, just before the level crossing at the other side of the station.

She dismounted and tiptoed past the gatekeeper’s cottage. It was doubtful if he would have heard the whoosh and swish of the wheels on the wet road, for the wind was hurling itself around the whitewashed dwelling and rattling the windows, while the rain was now coming down in sheets, but she could take no chances.

With a sigh, Bridie mounted her bike again, feeling low-spirited and unnerved by this long solitary ride in the rain and the cold as she toiled on towards Castlefin Station. Suddenly Bridie realised the rails had disappeared away to the right, through dense tree and bushes that she couldn’t follow.

She didn’t know what to do other than continue on the roads and hope to catch up with them again. She shivered in fear at the thought of being lost in the dark cold night.

Maybe, she thought, that would be for the best, if she was to just let herself fall from the bike and curl up in a ditch somewhere to die. By the morning she would be stiff and though her parents might wonder what she was doing way out here on a strange road on her own, no one would say a word about it once she was dead. She’d once again be the sainted daughter and they would mourn her for the rest of their lives.

The tracks suddenly met the road again and Bridie drove these gloomy thoughts from her mind, sighing with relief. Castlefin Station loomed up before her a short while later and she dismounted, pushing her bike around the outside of it. Castlefin was the custom’s post and she wasn’t sure if it had a stationmaster’s house or not.

Clady, the next station, wasn’t far away, and though Bridie was just as wet and miserable as ever, and every push of the pedals was an effort now, the thought that she was nearly at her journey’s end spurred her on. Added to that, the road was flat and the road and track ran side by side and so she didn’t feel it was very long before she reached the station. Clady was the frontier post between the Irish Free State and the British-ruled six counties and just after the station, Urney Bridge, crossed the River Finn into Tyrone. It was manned in the daytime, but fortunately not at night, so Bridie dismounted again and pushed her bike along the gravel beside the tracks, too weary to look for the road bridge.

When she reached Strabane Station, she could have wept with relief. It had been a harder, more gruelling ride that she had ever imagined and yet she had reached it and couldn’t help feeling exhilarated.

That was until she tried to dismount and was so stiff and cold that she cried out as she tried to straighten up. Her legs shook from the unusual exertion and shooting pains ran through her fingers right up to her shoulders and she groaned aloud. She stood for a moment, not sure her legs could carry her further. Eventually, she moved off cautiously, staggering slightly as she clambered onto the station platform and looked about for a shelter of some kind.

There was a waiting room open, not a terribly welcoming place and with just basic benches around the walls, but it was out of the bad weather at least and she sank down onto a bench with a sigh of relief.

She had no idea of the time, but she was deathly tired. A sudden yawn overtook her and she leaned back and closed her eyes. Her stomach growled with emptiness and she wondered where she could get something to eat. She’d stupidly not thought to bring anything and had given the soda bread to the dogs back on the farm to quieten them. Now she’d get nothing before the morning but was almost too tired to care. She couldn’t sleep deeply though. What if, after all the effort she’d gone to, she missed the train?

She kept nodding off, her head dropping forward rousing her and eventually, in absolute weariness, she unwound her wet scarf from her neck and, using that and her saturated hat as a pillow, lay down and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

Tom Cassidy entered the station a few minutes before the rail bus pulled in from Donegal. He was glad he was leaving his home but felt as guilty as Hell at that relief.

He had stepped into the waiting room to shelter from the weather and noticed the little girl – for that’s all she looked – lying across the bench asleep. He wondered whether she was for the train to Derry like himself, or the rail bus back to Donegal, but whichever it was, if he didn’t wake her she wouldn’t catch either.

Bridie woke up bemused, cold and stiff and not sure where she was at first. She let out a cry of pain as she tried to straighten her legs that had gone into cramp while she’d slept.

‘Are you all right?’

‘My legs! I have cramp.’

Tom wanted to offer to rub them for her, but he could hardly do that. ‘If you try to stand, hold on to me and walk a little. It might ease,’ he said.

Even through her pain, Bridie thought Tom’s voice was one of the gentlest she’d ever heard and somehow trustworthy. She wished she could see his face properly, but the darkness had not lifted and although there were lights in the station, the waiting area was very dim.

But, as Tom had suggested, she struggled to her feet, holding tight to him, and he realised just how saturated her clothes were. He was about to comment on it when she suddenly cried, ‘I have no ticket. I have money, but I arrived too early to buy it.’

‘I’ll get your ticket,’ Tom offered, and Bridie rooted in her bag, unearthed the handkerchief, exposing some coins and a fair few notes as she unknotted it. ‘Where are you making for?’

‘Derry,’ Bridie told him.

‘Single or return?’

‘Oh, a single,’ she said. ‘I’m going on from there to Belfast and across on the ferry to England. I’m bound for Birmingham.’ Bridie was surprised she’d told a stranger this; she was usually more cautious. But she felt instinctively drawn to this man.

Tom’s face creased in anxiety. ‘Look, you are all right, aren’t you?’ he asked, alarmed. ‘You look very young and … well, you’re not running away or anything, are you?’

Bridie ignored the last question. Instead, she said, ‘I was eighteen last February, so I’m nearly nineteen. I’m going to my sister’s for a wee while and I’m wet because I cycled here and set out far too early because I wasn’t sure how long it would take me.’

‘Sorry,’ Tom said. ‘You just don’t look eighteen.’

‘You can’t see me any better than I can see you,’ Bridie complained. ‘You’re going on my size alone, but I’ve told you the truth.’

That seemed to satisfy Tom and he took her money and went out to the booking office just as the rail bus pulled into the station. Bridie emerged from the shelter cautiously, worried that there might be someone on board that rail bus who might recognise her. But few passengers travelled at that early hour in the depths of winter and she knew no one and so, more confidently, she followed Tom to the other platform where the train to Derry stood waiting.