One Moment, One Morning (2 page)

‘Why can’t they be moved?’ says the man opposite eventually, breaking taboo by speaking to strangers on the train. He is tall, bespectacled, with closely shaven hair and an immaculately starched collar, a Norman Rockwell painting made manifest.

‘Perhaps whoever it is has got a spinal injury,’ says the passenger next to him, an apple-shaped elderly woman. The way she adjusts her posture to create space between the two of them as she speaks suggests she’s not travelling with him. ‘They wouldn’t be able to move the neck.’

He nods. ‘Possibly.’

Anna is not so sure. ‘Bit strange, though: how would you get a spinal injury on a train?’

‘Perhaps someone’s
died
.’ Anna turns, sees a young girl next to her. Lank black hair, facial piercings. Gothic.

‘Ooh, goodness, no,’ gasps the elderly woman, worried. ‘Surely not?

‘Could be,’ agrees Norman Rockwell. ‘Would explain why we have to stay here. They’ll have to get the police.’

‘Certify death,’ says the Goth.

Suddenly Anna’s magazine doesn’t seem quite the same. It usually provides her weekly fix of fun, fashion, style and gossip; she knows it’s shallow but reckons she deserves it, and anyway, it covers wider issues too. Then, as if to mirror her thoughts, she turns the page and sees just such an article: a picture of a young Afghan woman, whose body has been horrifically scarred by burns.

Anna shudders.

*     *     *

For Lou the sight of passengers ducking their heads as two men hoist a stretcher up and over the seats is almost farcical. The stretcher is an awkward shape, even with the crossbar and wheels removed – bigger than any suitcase – and the whole experience seems unreal, filmic, or, more precisely, like an episode of a television drama. Only TV you can turn off, whereas here she’s forced to watch – how can she not, with it all happening inches away?

For the last ten minutes, two young women – nurses, apparently on their way to work at a hospital in Haywards Heath – have been trying to resuscitate the man, with increasing desperation. They have checked if he is breathing, felt for a pulse in his neck and then, with the help of the guard, pulled him onto the floor so as to get him horizontal. All this right by Lou’s feet, before she had time to move, so she has been pinned in, witnessing the horror unfurl. They’ve taken it in turns, one nurse pumping pumping pumping with her palms flat on his chest, the movements so deliberate and assertive as to seem vicious, while the other has been breathing into his mouth, perhaps every thirty pumps or so. When the nurse pumping has tired, they’ve swapped over.

Through it all, the man’s wife stands in the aisle, helpless. She is utterly silent, her attention flipping from one nurse to the other and back to her husband, her face contorted with worry.

It all happens so fast in the end. The paramedics arrive, the nurse at his mouth stops, looks up and shakes her head – a tiny gesture but significant. No joy.

The paramedics manage to tilt the stretcher sideways, slide him onto it and swiftly propel him to the much wider space by the train doors. The few passengers standing there shift hurriedly to create room. Lou sees oxygen, a defibrillator, drugs – an injection – there’s a cry of ‘Stand clear!’ and they shock him.

Nothing.

And again.

Nothing.

Again.

Still nothing.

Everyone in the train carriage is transfixed. It is not just morbid fascination – it is an inability to comprehend what is happening, shock. What are they going to do? But the guard misinterprets the slack jaws, the wide eyes – whether out of sympathy for the man and his wife or a desire to take control, it doesn’t really matter – the upshot is the same. He barks an order, loud enough for everybody to hear: ‘Can you all please leave the carriage at once.’

So Lou gathers up her things – her mobile, her iPod, her rucksack – in many ways thankful to be given permission to move. On the adjacent table the man’s book remains; not that he will need it, now. Lou zips her coat, pulls up the hood and heads out of the doors into the rain.

Another announcement follows, this time a request over the speaker system that
all
passengers disembark from the train, and soon Lou is surrounded by people, mystified, looking in confusion for the exit at a station they do not know.

*     *     *

Anna has to fight to create the space to raise her umbrella. The platform is heaving, but she is damned if she’s going to get her hair wet as well as everything else – she hates it when it goes even slightly wavy, which it will if she is not careful. Today it would be especially galling as she got up early, whilst it was still pitch black outside, to wash and blow-dry it for a meeting. Thankfully, Anna is tall and her brolly has one of those automatic buttons that makes it open with an efficient ‘poof!’ She raises it safely above the throng and bingo, she is sheltered from the worst.

Next to her is the rotund elderly woman and inching along just in front is Norman Rockwell.

‘What the devil are we supposed to do now?’ he asks.

‘They’ll lay on buses,’ says the elderly woman.

Anna doesn’t know how the woman knows – it is not as if this sort of thing happens every day – but takes her word for it. ‘Where on earth will they get enough buses for everyone?’ Her mind is only just catching up with events.

‘I guess they’ll have to bring them from Brighton,’ says Norman.

‘Fuck that,’ says a fourth voice – it is the Goth girl, wedged behind Anna. ‘They’ll be hours. I give up. I’m going home.’

I can’t
, thinks Anna. If only she could. But she has clients coming in for a presentation, plus if she doesn’t make it into the office, she simply doesn’t get paid, and she is the main breadwinner.

Regardless of whether they are heading for the buses or back to Brighton, they all have to shuffle the same way. The exit and the opposite platform are beyond the covered area of the platform with its worn walls and peeling advertisements, down some steps at the far end of the station. Shoulders jostle and elbows nudge – some people insist on talking and texting on their mobiles, which only slows matters further, so it seems to take an age before they are down the stairs, past the ticket office, and outside.

Here Anna pauses for a moment to take stock. It is an incongruous sight – several hundred people in so small a space. The place is tiny – there is not even a proper station building, just a little ticket office halfway down the stairs. Although there are probably a thousand stations like it up and down the country, it is hardly designed for the mass exodus of all bar two of the passengers from a packed tencarriage commuter train. There is not even a proper car park. And no bus stop that Anna can see, let alone any buses.

Shit.

But at that very moment, with a swoosh through the puddles, a white Ford Mondeo pulls up and stops beside her. A taxi. For a brief moment, Anna thinks, impressed: blimey, someone’s ordered that, how organized, before she realizes that maybe no one has, that this is a station, albeit a small one, so there might well be taxis anyway. The light on its roof is on; it is for hire. The crowd lurches forward – competition is fierce. But the back passenger door is right at her side – it is now or never. She opens it, leans in, and asks the driver: ‘Are you free?’

The opposite door opens simultaneously. She sees a furtrimmed hood, an anxious face. ‘Haywards Heath?’ asks the other woman.

‘I’m happy to share,’ suggests Anna.

‘Whatever,’ the taxi driver grunts in approbation. It’s all in a morning’s work for him. A fare is a fare.

Before he has time to renege on the offer, the two women get in.

Anna exhales, ‘Phew.’

Rain is thundering on the car roof, as if to underline their good fortune.

‘That was a stroke of luck,’ says the woman in the parka, pushing down her hood and wriggling out of her rucksack. She is compactly built and supple and seems practised at the manoeuvre. ‘That poor guy,’ she says, sitting back.

‘What was it?’ asks Anna.

‘Heart attack,’ says the parka woman.

‘Did he die, do you think?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Oh, Lord.’

‘I know, awful. He was travelling with his wife, too.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I was sitting next to them. The other side of the aisle.’

‘Gosh. That must have been a horrible thing to witness.’

‘Yes,’ nods the parka woman.

And there I was, complaining that all this was just inconvenient, Anna castigates herself. The Goth was obviously right. What does it matter, really, if I’m a bit late for work? She voices her thoughts: ‘It’s not exactly how you’d choose to go, is it? You’d rather die flying a kite with your grandchildren, or at a great party or something. Not on the seven forty-four.’

‘Oi, ladies,’ the driver interrupts before she has a chance to continue. He is listening to a crackling and distorted voice over his radio. ‘No point going to Haywards Heath. Apparently the trains from there are at a standstill. Whole lot’s buggered.’

‘They can’t do that, surely?’ asks Anna.

‘Ooh, they can, believe me,’ says the driver. ‘You know what it’s like on the Brighton line – it’s a single track each way from Haywards Heath to the coast. Only takes one train to scupper it.’

The two women look at each other.

The driver chivvies, ‘So where do you want me to take you?’

‘Home?’ suggests the parka woman.

‘Where’s home?’ asks the other.

‘Brighton,’ says the parka woman, then clarifies, ‘Kemptown.’

Anna’s mind whirrs. Anorak, boyish face, cropped and gelled hair, no make-up, jeans, rucksack, Kemptown address: she’s gay. Kemptown is not that far from Anna’s house: it’s
so
tempting, but – ‘I can’t,’ she explains. ‘I have to get to London.’

‘I guess I should go too,’ agrees the parka woman. ‘Just quite nice to have an excuse for once.’

‘I’ve got a meeting,’ says Anna.

‘What time’s it at?’

‘Ten.’

Anna looks at her watch. It’s eight thirty-five now. ‘Typical, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Normally the seven forty-four gets me to work fine.’

‘But they’ll understand, won’t they?’ says the parka woman. ‘Someone has just died on board.’ She laughs, but it doesn’t seem unkind; rather it is a comment on the ludicrousness of their situation. She pauses, assessing. ‘Can’t you just ring and explain you’ll be late?’

Anna imagines the bulldog stance of her boss in reception and isn’t so sure.

‘Ladies,’ the driver cuts in again. They are approaching traffic lights at a crossroads. ‘I need a decision. Where are you going?’

Anna catches his eye in the mirror. She is sure he is smirking, enjoying this. ‘I really need to get to London,’ she reiterates. She doesn’t want to leave her colleagues in the lurch. Not to make it would compel one of them to present in her place – no fun at short notice, Anna knows. She leans forward, close to his ear. ‘How much to take us there?’

‘Depends where.’

She wonders: where would suit her and hopefully the other woman, and not be too difficult in terms of rush hour traffic? ‘Clapham Junction?’

‘Where’s your meeting?’ asks the parka woman.

‘Cheyne Walk off the King’s Road – I can get lots of buses from the station.’

‘Fine by me,’ agrees the parka woman. ‘I’ll get a train from Clapham up to Victoria.’

‘I’ll do it for seventy quid,’ says the driver. They’re stopped at traffic lights.

Anna does a rapid calculation. It’s not unreasonable for sixty miles or so. On her daily rate it is worth it – she will lose much more than that if she doesn’t show. She glances at the parka woman. She looks hesitant – Anna is aware that not everyone earns as much as she does.

‘I’m happy to pay fifty quid of it,’ she offers. ‘I really do need to get there.’

‘Oh, that wouldn’t be fair.’

‘I get paid by the day,’ she explains. ‘So I’m fine to, honestly.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Um . . .’

‘Really, it’s fine. I’d be paying it on my own otherwise.’

‘OK then. Thank you,’ the parka woman smiles, appreciative.

‘Great.’ Anna leans forward to the driver again. ‘Do it.’

So he flicks up the indicator, turns left and heads towards the motorway

*     *     *

‘I guess I might as well introduce myself. I’m Lou.’ Lou turns to face the other woman and thrusts out her hand.

Her fellow passenger is not conventionally pretty, but she is striking nonetheless. She must be in her early forties – whereas Lou is ten years younger – and she has a strong, angular face with Cleopatra dark hair, styled poker-straight. Her make-up is bold: a gash of lipstick, dark shadow that makes no apology for deliberately intensifying brown eyes. It signals confidence, an effect compounded by her height and long limbs. She is slim and well dressed, in a smart navy trench coat, and her large snakeskin handbag looks expensive. The overall effect is of someone intelligent yet daunting.

‘I’m Anna,’ she returns. Her hand is cold, bony; her grasp assured and firm. But she is generous and empathetic, Lou has noticed already; clearly she is not
that
hard.