The Train by Sarah Bourne (fiction books to read txt) 📕

it look as if his legs were bent, and the bum hung down. The curtains were drawn, making the flat gloomy and uninviting. Tim wanted to pull them back and open the windows, let the light and warmth in but it wasn’t his place. Brian led him into the kitchen and slumped into a chair.

‘Want tea?’ he asked as an afterthought.

Tim realised that if he did, he’d be making it. He filled the kettle and plugged it in, went through the cupboards to find tea, sugar, mugs. Brian stared into space, not caring or perhaps not even registering what was going on around him.

Tim put a mug of strong sweet tea in front of him.

‘Get that down you,’ he said.

Brian lifted his head and looked at him and Tim saw the shock still in his eyes, the disbelief. And something else – an edginess, fear, as if he’d been caught doing something bad and didn’t know how to make it right.

They sat in silence for a while. Now he was here, Tim didn’t know what to do.

Slowly, Brian seemed to relax. He pulled his tobacco and papers out of his pocket and took his time to roll himself a cigarette. His hand shook as he struck a match to light it and he inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. ‘What am I going to do?’

Tim shifted in his seat, unsure how to answer. Unsure exactly what the question meant. He sat, waiting.

Brian opened his eyes again. ‘I can’t drive a train again, not after that.’

Tim nodded. Not because he agreed, but because he understood that was how Brian felt right then.

‘I mean, shit – I killed a woman. It could happen again.’

‘You didn’t kill her, she killed herself. You just happened to–’

‘I saw her too late. She looked right at me. Right in the eye. And then she stepped onto the rails.’ He shuddered and closed his eyes again as if it would stop him seeing her, stop him reliving the moment when the woman took that fatal step.

They lapsed into silence again, occasionally lifting their mugs to their mouths, placing them down again quietly. Outside, a car screeched to a halt, a man shouted, a woman responded. The car drove off. Tim looked towards the sounds but Brian seemed not to hear them, caught in his own drama.

The clock ticked loudly. Tim washed the mugs, running the water for longer than necessary. When he turned round, Brian was standing.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. ‘It was good to talk.’

‘Sure,’ said Tim, feeling guilty he was so ready to leave, that Brian felt so bad and he couldn’t make it better for him.

At the door, Tim squeezed Brian’s shoulder and was surprised when Brian pulled him into a hug. Tim felt the shuddering of his friend’s body as he wept and held on to him. When Brian stepped away he couldn’t look Tim in the eye.

‘Thanks again,’ he muttered, opening the door.

On the Tube Tim sat picking at the skin around his thumb. He’d become a nail-biter after his mother left, a difficult habit to break but he’d managed to get it down to this one finger. He was proud of his willpower. His gran had always said he should count not only his blessings but also his good points, because no one else would count them for him. Sometimes it made him feel big-headed and other times he was hard-pressed to find anything positive about himself at all, but he thought that overall it was a good thing to do.

He was worried about Brian but didn’t know what more he could do. He felt unsettled and wasn’t ready to go home and be on his own with all the thoughts whizzing through his head. He’d moved out of the boarding house the hospital social worker had found for him into a bedsit. He liked having his own place, not having to answer to anyone, but it was lonely. At the boarding house there’d always been someone to talk to, even if half of them were mad and the other half hardly spoke any English. Never a dull moment, he’d thought when he counted his blessings there. He changed onto the Circle line at Notting Hill Gate and sat in a corner going round and round the loop, trying not to think, until his stomach rumbled and reminded him he hadn’t eaten since five in the morning. He waited until the train got to Euston again and took the escalator to the concourse.

Euston was familiar. He knew the cafés and pubs, the hum of the station, the lay of the land. He could have gone to the staffroom to hang out but he didn’t want to talk to anyone. So he stood and watched the indicator board announcing the train departures for a few minutes, soothed by the normality of it, then got himself a coffee and a sandwich and sat watching the people going about their lives. He found himself wondering about the woman who had killed herself. What did she look like, how did she spend her time, did somebody love her? What would make someone feel so bad they wanted to be dead? Tim had had his share of difficulties but he had never wanted to top himself. He’d always believed that problems could be worked out, and even though he’d lost the two people in his life who’d meant the most, he thanked them daily for the influence they’d had on his life. He felt lucky to have known them. Of course, he’d prefer it if they were still around, but there was nothing he could do about it. He wondered if clever people were more likely to kill themselves because they tortured themselves with options and possibilities. Perhaps people like him saw things more simply and were happier for it. Or not. He liked the fact he had thoughts like that. Big Ideas his gran had called them and called him her clever boy. But