The Last Train South

I was cold and tired; like painting with numbers, I was living by numbers, one job at a time, one day at a time. Inverness Station matched my mood. It was dark and cold, its outlets long closed for the day. I spotted one platform still lit for access. The overnight sleeper for Euston, London, was getting ready for departure. I swiped my mobile at the gate and boarded. Ten minutes to go. 

The sleeper compartments were all booked, and I had no choice but to reserve a first-class aisle seat facing the direction of travel. I was at the front of the train with only a sliding door separating me from the toilet, the end of the carriage, and beyond that, the power unit that would be hauling us the six hundred miles to London. I made myself comfortable. The seats were broad, well upholstered, and able to recline a little – not quite business class on an Airbus 380 or a Dreamliner, but good enough. A narrow table separated me from the two opposite-facing seats. Five minutes to go.

The engine started up; a cheerful inspector walked the length of the carriage to check my ticket. A glance at my mobile, a cheery good night, and he went back the way he had come, looking left and right as he moved slowly along the empty carriage. I was on my own – the one unlucky passenger who hadn’t managed to book a sleeping compartment. However, I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed where I was. A neatly folded lightweight blanket, woven in the train company’s corporate colours of red and black, would help if it got cold. With luck, I would sleep. One minute to go.

The train shuddered for a moment as the brakes were released, and then on time, to the second, the platform billboards started to slip past the window. We were underway. In a few moments, the dim station lights were gone, replaced by the impenetrable darkness of a Scottish winter’s night. I closed my eyes and tried to draw myself into my inner space as a prelude to sleep. Ten hours to Euston.

The hiss of a door at the far end of the carriage opened, and a tall woman came towards me. She stopped alongside me, dropped her travel bag on the rack on the other side of the aisle and, shedding her ankle-length coat, lifted it onto the overhead rack above my head. She slipped into the window seat opposite me. We exchanged brief smiles. 

She gave me one glance. She was unquestionably beautiful, and there was something hauntingly familiar about her. She was near my age, maybe younger, but not much. A cascade of light, shoulder-length blond hair fell in curled locks, partly obscuring her features. I had noticed her long flowing cream trouser suit with high shoulders and a single item of jewellery: a band of unadorned gold around her neck. 

I closed my eyes, with the afterimage of my travel companion gently fading behind my closed eyelids. I may have dozed for a moment, but I awoke with a start, convinced she had been looking at me. But no, she appeared to be asleep. Something else was different – she had been to the toilet and changed. The suit was gone, replaced by loose joggers and a top. That was quietly done, I thought, but very practical. Something was nagging at my memory. I let the thoughts drift. I noted the time on my watch: thirty minutes gone, nine hours thirty minutes to London.

My heart leapt; she had opened her eyes. Had glancing at my watch startled her? She spoke; her soft melodious voice was asking something. My fuddled brain raced to connect with my ears. ‘Do you mind if I take the seat next to you?’ She was asking. 

‘Of course,’ I replied – too dull to ask the obvious question: why next to me when the remainder of the carriage was empty? 

‘Would you like me to swap sides with you?’ I enquired – it seemed right to offer. No, she was adamant, and so it was: an empty carriage, and this unknown but beautiful person wanted to sit next to me. A tiny wave of optimism flowed over me. It was a year ago that Jo left me. We had been together for ten years. She had left a note – she had found someone else. No explanation, and the pain had left me shattered. I had tried to find out what had gone wrong, but there were no answers. Now, I was heading home after another job in Inverness, and a woman I did not know had chosen to sit next to me. I smiled wryly to myself: it was a long time since I had slept with a woman.

We resettled ourselves, and I made myself comfortable. ‘Please’, my companion asked, ‘could I have the blanket’. I quickly gave it to her. She smiled her thank you, and it was as though the sun had risen in my heart. But she wasn’t finished; she shook it open, and before I could stop her, she draped it across us both.

Stunned, I turned and looked at her. She smiled, ‘you don’t remember me, do you?’ It was her light grey eyes that did it. More than twenty years ago, those eyes had been full of tears of embarrassment as my mother had walked in and shattered our innocence. ‘Pam? Pamela?’ I croaked, my voice and my throat in knots. The love of my childhood next to me, here, now, how could this be? I had just entered my teens at the time, and she had been a year behind. We had been separated, parents had spoken to parents, and we were forbidden to see one another again. Six months later, her family moved out of the area. My parents had broken my heart, and it never mended. Pamela had been the subject of my dreams, a face I had returned to time and time again as I sought comfort in my memories.

‘As soon as I saw you, I knew it was you, so I followed you,’ she whispered, that wicked smile I had loved so much on her face. ‘But where are you going?’ I asked, my insides doing bizarre gymnastics. ‘Home’, she replied. ‘Do you remember our riverbank?’ I did. ‘I wanted it so much; I bought a house nearby.’ She continued: ‘do you remember the last time we sat together, looking across the river?’ I did. I did. ‘You held me, and we made a promise’. 

As she spoke, she leaned forward, but the armrest between us was in the way. It could be pushed back, so I pushed it back. Unhindered, I put my arm around her the way I had done so many years before. I drew her towards me, and with a happy sigh, she came close. I could smell her fragrance; it was enflaming the passion in my heart. What could I do? What should I do? I did what I wanted to do. I kissed her, tentative at first, but then with the joy of rediscovering her.

She broke away and, laughing, lifted her right arm. ‘That’s not quite right’ she said. I remembered – I knew what she meant. I put my arm under hers. She was looking at me, the wicked smile on her face again. ‘Still not quite right’. I knew what she meant; she was daring me just like she had done years ago. I placed my hand on her breast. Not the breast of a young girl but the soft and rounded fullness of a woman. I could feel her nakedness under her top. Reaching around, she lifted her top and slipped it off her right arm. She was inviting me to go further on our adventure of discovery – an adventure so cruelly snuffed out long ago.

Curling around, I pulled her in tight, and I slipped my other hand under the loose folds of her top caressing her nakedness. Her nipple, so tiny then was now proud and stiff under my palm. She snuggled in tight, her warm breath on my neck, just like so long ago. I kissed her again and again; we couldn’t stop. It was as though we were trying to catch up on the thousands of kisses we had missed out on over the years. Covered in a train-line blanket, we held one another, we kissed, we talked, and we kissed again, oblivious to the world around us.  

Hours passed; we were undisturbed. We told of our lives and our dreams. She had studied at the Manchester School of Music and became an opera singer. She had changed her name but had never forgotten me. The train whispered to a halt at a side platform in Rugby – the lights dimmed; it would be another two hours before we would move again and complete our journey. We looked at one another, and without a word she slipped down her joggers, climbed on top of me, and in the dark and the stillness of a winter’s night, we were joined in the ultimate language of love.

Two hours later, the train pulled away and accelerated as it re-joined the high-speed line towards London. We lay together, absorbed in one another. As the train crossed into the home counties, I told her of my love, and she cried a little. She told me of hers. I cried a little too. She had dreamt of me holding her in all her challenging and difficult times. She had thought of me as she had sung of her love as the opera singer she had become. Could we be together again? I asked. With hope in her eyes, she said yes. She promised she would wait for me; I knew where she would be. Exhausted, we slept.

I was asleep when we stopped at Watford junction, but as we pulled away, the clickety-clack of the wheels crossing the points onto the commuter line woke me. I was alone; she was gone. It was as though she had never been there. When we had disentangled ourselves, she had taken the aisle seat. Without disturbing me, she must have slipped away and left the train at Watford. I was alone again. On the table, exactly where it had been when I boarded, lay the blanket, neatly folded. Just fifteen minutes to London.

Euston was crowded, so I headed for a coffee shop on Euston Square. Her glow was still on me; I was happy; I would find her; she had been quite clear about where she lived. I picked up a spare copy of The Times as I settled with my flat white. More of the political nonsense of the day. I turned the page; a heading caught my eye. My blood turned to ice. There was a photograph of her on stage at Glyndebourne. I read the words.

Cecilia, acclaimed as the greatest mezzo-soprano of our time, found dead near her North London home.

The brief report went on to say that Cecilia, Pamela’s stage name, had been found dead the previous night; a man had been arrested near the scene and was assisting the police with their enquiries.

My tears were flowing freely; people were looking. I fled outside, gasping for breath. Was it a dream? It couldn’t be. I remembered some oddities. The ticket inspector had never returned to check her ticket. I didn’t see a reflection in the glass panel of the sliding door as she came along the aisle towards me. Then there was the sudden change of clothes – it must have been a dream. 

I got back to my apartment in the East End and made for the bathroom. I sluiced my face in cold water, trying to wash away the misery. Then I looked up. Had it been a dream? It was too real to be a dream.

I stared at myself in the mirror; my tired and drawn face stared back. But what was that? I examined a knot of hair on the side of my head. It was white – this was no figment of my imagination. My hair was dark brown, almost black, no grey hairs anywhere. I looked closely; it was blond. It was the colour of her hair. I showered; I washed my hair. No change – a thick streak of hair had turned blond to its roots – she had touched me and left me a permanent mark of her presence. 

She said I knew where she would be. I attended her funeral at a quiet chapel of rest in North Watford. I recognised her mother, who came over after the brief ceremony and, without a word, kissed me before walking away. Two weeks later, I went to our place by the river. It was a frosty morning, with a light mist swirling in the low sunlight shining through the trees. On the other side was the meadow we had loved to look at, its grass receding in the far distance. 

I sat on the grassy bank and watched a riverboat go by. Suddenly it all made sense. We are what we are at the moment of our passing from this world to the next. Some providence, some ultimate arbiter between good and evil, had granted Pamela a last grace in the terror of her final seconds – the grace of a sublime moment of love to carry her into paradise. She was alongside me now. I could feel her warmth as, side by side, we gazed upon the endless river passing in front of our eyes. It wasn’t the endless river of time. For her time had ceased to be. It was the endless river of love. When my time was done, I knew where I would be and where I would find her.