A Man Died on the Train Today

A man died on the train today. I have never wanted to see a dead body, or to ease the passing of someone so close to the angels. I know how to do CPR, but I am wary of performing such an intimate and selfless act in the service of another.

He was in the opposite aisle, one seat down and facing me. These are the people you study the most on a train, because to observe someone directly opposite you is so boldly confrontational. I have seen him before because we both favour the same carriage, although it’s ridiculous, because they’re all alike.

I suffer the pulse of anxiety whenever this train pulls up at the station. I want carriage F, but the odds on F wheezing to a stop directly in front of me are, much like roulette, statistically small. So I have to make a run for it and hope that I am at the front of the queue for the door. Myself and the dead man used to exchange self-deprecating nods at our pointless foible, and occasionally passed a ‘good morning’ or two by way of breaking the ice. 

This morning he was with a woman I assumed to be his wife. She was disappointing. Perhaps she was pretty once, but her wrinkled rouge, lacquer and gravid jowls spoke, most pathetically, of a woman gone to seed. When she was settling herself by the window, filling the carriage with sweated cheap perfume, he passed a glance at me before looking away. I understand. I am very attractive whilst the wife is not. She is probably the jealous type, and has every reason to be. Nothing has happened between myself and her husband, but I think we would both be amenable if the opportunity presented.

I don’t look out the window so much any more. The view rarely changes. The same old socks flap on the sagging lines. Small patches of what’s left of the countryside reveal no meteor strikes or abandoned horses in need of rescue. 

I was reading a book. With my head down, my eyes were free to glance at the man and his wife. They appeared to be celebrating something, although he was ill at ease, loosening his tie and patting the sweat from his brow. I believe he worked in advertising. Probably going up to London to collect an award for penning the last word in spreadable butter. 

It was the male trolley-dolly who once told me that all trains go up to London, regardless of the direction of travel. It is an old railway custom in honour of the capital. So we are travelling southwards but going up. Up to the big smoke. 

The male trolley-dolly entered our carriage just past Tamworth. I can’t like him for some reason. His pronounced Adam’s apple makes me queasy and he is always in a good mood, singing in falsetto like a Vatican choir eunuch. I bet he goes home and beats his wife. 

But I will have a drink, thank you very much. I order two of those little bottles of wine that come with a plastic beaker. I like drinking on the train. The dead man liked it too, between taking swigs from his hip flask. I suppose he gets that from watching Mad Men. He ordered a can of Stella and the wife had white wine. Of course she did. 

He did not look well, which is understandable given what was about to happen and how much he appeared to be drinking of late. In fact, he was not quite the eye-catcher he was just a few months ago. Congestive heart failure would be my guess. Very ageing, I think. 

We were half an hour off London when it happened. At first, his face went a cherry red, as though all the blood in his body had rushed upwards, like the train. He made ghastly, panicked noises while his wife flapped and whimpered by his side. I thought I should do the sensible thing and call out for a doctor, but it would appear that even they work from home these days, for none came. 

I was going to pull the cord but the eunuch stopped me because the paramedics would not be able to access the train, so we had to endure his death throes while discoloured socks still flapped on sagging lines, and the buildings got bigger, marching towards their denouement, as the man marched towards his. 

When the paramedics came aboard at the next station, we were made to stay seated while they hauled him onto the gangway and worked away with increasing desperation. It’s disconcerting to have a dead man’s polished shoe banging against your ankles. By this time, his wife had settled into a stupor of shock. She sat, almost dispassionately, drinking the white wine before facing towards the back of the carriage and asking the hesitant eunuch for more. I suspected that before long there would be a loud, keening wail when they eventually had to give up and pronounce him dead. I wasn’t wrong. All her suspended breath came out in a primordial bellow of unrestrained frenzy.

He was body-bagged and manhandled onto a stretcher. The wife followed, unsteady on her feet. It must be curious to wake up married and excited and for it to end like this. 

I watched her move off with her husband’s body. People on the concourse were respectful. One man even doffed his baseball cap, a habit which was once so common but is now touching in its rarity. Her face was now completely white, and the effect of lipstick and rouge against the garish backdrop leant her the look of a ventriloquists’s doll. 

She caught me gazing at her and she stopped, looking puzzled, as if she recognised me. She came up to the window and slammed her palm against the glass, mouthing some obscenity at me. I cannot imagine why. 

And then we had to endure the police, taking down names and addresses. We would all be contacted, they said, although it is hard to know how a commuter can contribute anything illuminating about a middle-aged man having a heart attack on a train. I was even asked if I’d known the man, and when I denied it, they gave me a curious look. No doubt it will come up in the phone conversation they have with me later. 

I haven’t done anything wrong. Yes, I know where he lives and where he works. I know quite a lot about him, but they don’t need to know that. Just some old broad’s word against mine that I’ve been standing outside their house for some months now. I shall just deny it. They don’t have a doorcam, and I wear a precautionary wig. 

I moved carriages when the train finally rolled out. I am tired of F. The dead man has tainted it by association.

There is a man in the opposite aisle, one seat down and facing me. He acknowledges me with a brief smile and gets back to his phone. The smile on my face stays longer. At Euston, he lets me exit first. He smells of something woodsy. The man checks his watch and walks away, late and in a hurry. 

Since I now have nothing better to do, I follow him.