The Railway Station Man (6 page)

The side of the room in which he lived was neat. His bed was carefully made, the notebooks and papers on his desk in ordered piles. A small portable typewriter was covered with a blue cloth. That desire for visible order he had inherited from his father. She had never cared for neatness. Along the wall at the other end of the room were stacked two trunks and several teachests all protected from the dust by a couple of pairs of old curtains. She opened the first trunk. Two old blazers, some distorted shoes, a tennis racquet, a Maxply, grip unwinding: Jack had played quite well, probably still did, a good strong forehand drive and an accurate service, also inherited from his father. Posters, rolled neatly and pushed down the back of the trunk. The usual Che Guevara, Mick Jagger, Monroe, Chaplin and a copy of the Proclamation. A box of snapshots that he had taken himself with the Kodak Instamatic that she had given him for his tenth birthday. They showed no great signs of originality. A few books, none of them interesting, Alistair Maclean, Agatha Christie, the rest had gone to Dublin; a few more books that had been hers when she was a child,
Alice
, the
Crimson Fairy
book,
Just So Stories
, her name carefully written on the first page in large unjoined letters,
Treasure Island, The Black Arrow
, Kingsley's
The Heroes
. She gathered them into a pile and brought them out and put them on the kitchen table. The pages of the
Crimson Fairy
book had golden edges. The cat had been eating the butter and crouched beside the empty dish daring her to hit him. She took away the smeared dish and washed it and lit the gas under the remains of Jacks breakfast coffee.

‘Bloody awful cat,' she said. ‘If you dare get sick in the house I will hit you.' He flicked her words away from around his ears and went asleep.

It's strange how one person's words sound so loud in an empty room. They resound, unlike a conversation which seems to become absorbed by the surrounding objects.

She liked from time to time to confront herself with the sound of her own voice. Oral images can be as exciting, as mind-stirring as visual ones. The spoken words echo, flicker with their own resonances in your head.

The coffee was disgusting. She left it after two sips and went back to Jack's room.

The gramophone was in the second trunk, underneath a carefully padded and packed pile of old shellac records. It was awkward to lift and quite heavy. She got it onto the desk and gave the lid a rub with the sleeve of her jersey. A large mahogany box with little shutters in the front. Her father had given it to her for her birthday one year … it must have been round about the end of the war. She turned the knob at the side and the shutters opened. She lifted the lid. The handle was slotted into its place and there was even a box of needles. She took the handle out and fitted it into the hole in the side and turned it. It creaked slightly as it turned. It had always done that right from the first day she got it. She recognised the sound, and the slight resistance as she pushed the handle round. Having wound it up fully, she carefully began to unpack the records.

At the far end of the hedge a gate led through onto the platform just beside the signal box. Someone was whistling; no formal tune, just a high rather breathless sound. Jack walked towards the gate. The base of the signal box was red brick, about eight feet high. A flight of wooden steps went up from the end of the platform to the glass door of the box itself. Damian was crouched sandpapering the newel post at the bottom of the hand rail. One hand moved round and round scouring, the other followed feeling the wood for lumps and harshnesses. A fine dust scattered in the slight breeze. He whistled. He wore a black knitted hat pulled well down over his ears. Jack stood just outside the gate and watched for a few moments. Damian scoured and whistled. The whistling might almost have been a scouring of his head.

‘Damian.' He pushed the gate open and went onto the platform. Tufts of grass and groundsel grew up through cracks in the surface. Where once the tracks had been was now a mess of brambles and scrub.

Damian stopped work and after a moment stopped whistling as he looked up at Jack. One hand marginally moved the position of the black hat.

‘Ah yes,' he said. ‘We don't see much of you about, these days.'

‘Work. Exams. You know the way it is.'

‘Oh, aye.'

He turned away. He ran his left hand over the top of the newel post and then down the length of it, feeling the smoothness, then he began his scouring once more.

‘Ever heard tell of Manus Dempsey?' Jack asked at last.

‘Uh huh.'

His hand never stopped moving round and round. Tiny particles of dust flew from under his fingers and floated to the ground.

Jack walked right over to him.

‘Manus said he thought we ought to get acquainted.'

The hand slowed down. Damian looked up and smiled slightly.

‘Haven't we been acquainted for years. Did you not tell Manus Dempsey that?' He laughed.

‘Did you not tell Manus Dempsey I gave you a bloody nose?'

‘It didn't seem very relevant.'

‘Anyway I don't care very much for the same fella. A bit big for his boots. A Dublin swank. Maybe you're a bit of a Dublin swank yourself?'

‘No. I don't think so.'

‘Good. Otherwise I might have to give you another bloody nose.'

‘You haven't changed much.'

‘Nobody changes much. From the cradle to the grave. You learn to walk and talk and fight your corner. That's about it.'

‘He says you're a real craftsman.'

Damian started to rub vigorously once more.

‘Manus Dempsey wouldn't know a craftsman from an undertaker.'

Jack laughed. ‘Not Manus. Him. The Englishman, Hawthorne or whatever his name is.'

Damian looked pleased. ‘Did he say that?'

‘Yup. A real craftsman.'

Damian put the sandpaper down on one of the steps and ran his hands down the full length of the post. Gently he did it, as if he were touching a human being. ‘Feel that,' he said.

Jack moved over beside him and touched the wood. It was smooth all right.

‘Like a baby's bottom,' said Damian. ‘A few coats of paint now and they'll be first-class.'

A bit of wood was always just a bit of wood to Jack, but the whole job certainly looked most professional. ‘It's a pity you have to paint it. It looks great like that.'

Damian fished a cigarette packet out of the pocket of his overall.

‘First-class,' Jack said encouragingly.

Damian held the packet out towards him without a word.

‘No thanks. I don't'

‘The first today.' He took a cigarette out of the packet and stuck it in his mouth. ‘I don't know why I do it really. I'm not wild about them. I could give it up tomorrow.'

‘That's what everybody says.'

‘I mean it. That's the difference between me and everybody else. I mean what I say.'

‘Everybody says that too.'

Damian took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it away into the brambles on the railway line. Then he took the packet out of his pocket and threw it after the cigarette. He took a box of matches out of the same pocket and looked at it for a moment. He put it back into his pocket again. ‘I'll keep that,' he said. ‘In case I want to set fire to you.'

He sat down on the bottom step and took off his hat. His hair was quite long. Soft red-brown curls, rather like a girl. He wiped his face with his hat and then put it down on the step beside him.

‘What do you want?'

‘I only came to say hello.'

‘Manus sent you all the way from Dublin to say hello?'

‘Something like that.'

He stared past Jack over the hedge, over the sloping fields towards the sea. ‘Want to see the box?' he asked after a long silence. He jerked his head as he spoke, upwards towards the door.

‘Okay.'

‘I'll call him.'

‘Couldn't you …?'

‘It's his box.'

‘What on earth are you doing working for a loony like him? He is a loony, isn't he?'

‘He's okay,' said Damian. ‘I like him. He pays well.' He laughed. ‘I like him even and he is a Brit. There's something about him that I like. He knows when a person does something well. That's good. There aren't too many people round who care if you do things well. They want you to do them fast. That's what matters. Get on with it. Get fucking on with it and cut the crap.'

Jack didn't say a word, just stood and looked at Damian sitting there staring out at the sea. Play it by ear, Manus had said, he may need reactivation.

‘I want to build a boat one day.'

‘Oh.'

‘I have her in my mind's eye. A beautiful wooden hull. A sailing boat.'

‘A sailing boat?'

‘Yeah. I've spent too much of my life on those dirty, noisy fishing boats. Engines, oil, fumes. I want to be able to go out there on my own, with the silence. Ever seen a hooker?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's a beautiful boat. Something like a hooker. Smaller of course. Down round Achill they make this … oh, about a twenty-footer. A yawl, one big sail. I've thought it might be more practical, but I prefer the hooker. So.' He looked up at Jack suddenly and grinned.

‘We'll get this station into working order. And then we'll start on my boat. We have it worked out. A gleoiteog.That more or less is the same shape as the hooker, only small.'

‘You mean …?'

‘You see the goods shed up at the far end of the platform. He says we can build it there. There'll never be any goods for storing here. It's ideal. We'll be able to run the station between us and build the boat. No problems.'

‘You've gone loony too. It must be infectious.'

‘Where's the harm? I thought about it for a while when he asked me to work for him. I thought then … I have to believe in him. I turned it over in my mind for several days. Where's the harm in believing? That's what I thought. I like him.'

Jack laughed.

Damian put his hat on and stood up.

‘You can laugh all you want,' he said. ‘I'll go and get him. He can show you the box.'

He strolled away from Jack along the platform.

He may need re-activation, Jack heard Manus's voice in his ear. Reactivation … hell. He needed dumping.

He sat down on the step to wait. The warm smell of the sawdust tickled in his nose.

What would Manus do?

His methods were quite direct. That was one of the things Jack admired about him. I suffer from some kind of middle-class furtiveness, he thought, scratching his nose. The groundwork has been done there, sonny Jim, Manus had said. All you have to do is re-activate …

Ah shit,' Jack said aloud.

Those Donegal guys are a bunch of lazy bums. They'll do what they're told but they have no drive. You have to keep behind them the whole time. Nag. Get up there, Jack old son, and nag.

What he hadn't figured on though was the loony factor. ‘Shit,' he said again.

Damian came out of the house and walked towards him.

‘He's not up to it.'

Jack stood up. ‘What's the matter with him?'

Damian shook his head.

‘Sometimes he just lays there with his eyes shut. Tell him to go away and come back another time, he said. He doesn't mean any harm. He'll maybe at himself again in an hour, ten minutes, tomorrow. Come back tomorrow … and bring your mother.'

‘My mother?'

‘Yeah. He said bring your mother.'

Jack laughed. ‘Like hell I will.'

‘Suit yourself. I'm just telling you what he said.'

‘Listen here, Damian, you know damn well I didn't come here to see him or his signal box. Manus said to contact you.'

Damian looked at him without speaking. After a moment or two he pulled his hat off again. The wind moved his hair.

‘I'm going to make him a cup of coffee,' he said. ‘I'll see you round.'

He turned back towards the house.

‘What sort of a boat was it you said you were going to build?'

He kept walking. ‘A gleoiteog.'

He reached the door into the house before he spoke again. ‘I'll be in Kelly's Bar at eight.' He waved his hat at Jack and went into the house.

When Jack got back to the house, Helen was standing in the yard, outside the kitchen door winding up the old gramophone. He knew she must have been messing around in his room.

‘Hello,' she said as he came in the gate.

The handle creaked as she turned it.

‘What are you doing with that old thing?'

‘Mary Heron rang about an hour ago to remind me that I'm supposed to be helping her with the white elephant stall at the ICA jumble sale next week. I had forgotten. Oh God, I forget so much. Even if I write things down, I forget to look. I'd forgotten all about this until I found it in your room.'

‘Well that's a white elephant all right. No one's going to buy that.'

‘Someone without electricity might love it.'

‘Don't be daft, mother. Everyone's got electricity.'

She took a record out of a cardboard box on the table beside the machine and put it on the turntable. She pushed a switch and slowly the black disc began to revolve. Carefully she placed the needle in its shiny metal pickup on the edge of the record. For a moment there was a whining and then, slightly harsh but rhythmic, the sound of a dance band. She stood quite still and listened.

Why do you whisper green grass
– gravel voice –
why tell the trees
–

‘Someone will buy it. You'll see. Lots of records and two boxes of needles. I wonder if you can buy those needles nowadays.'

What ain't so
–

– ‘Look.' She twiddled a knob on the side of the machine. ‘Those little shutters make it louder and softer. Listen.'

Whispering grass
– the sound rose –
the trees don't
– and fell –
need to know
.