Kings and Queens

Kings and Queens

As Andrew swung his suitcase over the gap and stepped down onto the platform with Millie at his side he realised that, not for the first time that weekend, they had made a mistake.

The moon and stars were obscured by a veil of grey clouds, leaving the only light sources a flicking electronic timetable suspended above the platform and the weak glow of an aging floodlight on the opposite side of the station. Their platform was deserted and surrounded on three sides by a white picket fence that wouldn’t have looked out of place outside an idyllic American home. The only other objects of note were a signal at the end of the platform, behind which was a level crossing gate and a plastic information board, the notices inside masked by moss.

‘Where are we?’ Millie asked as the train doors slammed shut behind her. Her voice, which had been raised inside the train, was now little more than a confused whisper. 

'Cowford Halt apparently.' Andrew pointed to a station sign planted just behind the fence. As he spoke he felt a raindrop land on his cheek.

‘Yeah but where is that exactly?’

‘Oh, no idea. We must have missed our stop because we were… talking.’ Talking wasn’t the right word for it but he knew Millie would understand what he meant. 

The signal at the end of the platform changed to red as the train departed. Andrew watched as the lights of the carriages disappeared as they rounded a curve in the track. As they did so he realised that the darkness around the station was absolute, there wasn’t the distant glow of a street lamp from a nearby town nor any sign of civilization. The road that connected to the level crossing was bathed in darkness. It was as if the station had been situated within a void.

‘What’s that noise?’ Millie asked as she tightened her coat.

Andrew was going to joke that the sound was probably his stomach, when he heard it himself. It sounded like a low pitched bell being rung and was followed by a sound that resembled an airhorn. He peered into the darkness around the station and realised that the sounds were surrounding them. 

‘Don’t know. It could be church bells maybe? Like a distant church?’

‘At this time of night?’ Millie asked. 

As the rain started, Andrew checked his watch and saw that it had just passed ten p.m. He noticed a strange smell in the air, it reminded him of mulch and decided not to draw attention to it. ‘I’m going to work out the train times. If we go back one stop then we can then change for London Bridge. You can get your tube from there and I’ll get my bus.’ 

The screen on the timetable above continued to flicker, half of its digital display extinguished by the rain and when the National Rail app failed to load due to poor signal, Andrew resorted to studying the physical information board. He wiped away the moss with the back of his hand and glanced back at Millie to see if she had noticed his disgust at this. The station floodlight cast her a wide shadow across the concrete platform while the glare of the signal gave her silhouette a scarlet glow. Andrew studied the sad smile that played across her lips and realised that, in that moment, there were only two words to describe her. She had a melancholic beauty. Sad yet beautiful. 

As he continued to look at that smile he thought back to a line in the poem she had written for the review session yesterday. 

…We are the Kings and Queens of all our own broken dreams…

Millie looked as if her dreams had been shattered. 

‘I’ve worked out what the sound is,’ she said.

Andrew snapped back to his senses. ‘What is it?

‘Cows.’

‘Cows?’ he repeated.

She held her hand over her chest in mock offence. ‘Excuse me? What did you just call me?’

He chuckled and their smiles faded.

‘Yeah I think it’s cows,’ she continued, ‘there’s a cattle grid on the crossing, see?'

She pointed to the level crossing and Andrew saw the cattle grid within its gates. He realised that their train had taken them deeper into the countryside than he had first thought.

‘The sound we can hear is the mooing,’ she explained, ‘and the bells are the cowbells around their necks. It also explains the smell.’ She wrinkled her nose.

‘And the name,’ Andrew said, indicating back to the station sign.

Their smiles flickered and faded. 

Andrew tried to think of something funny or helpful to say, to make the situation less painful but failed to find the right words. Memories of their weekend together at the Creative Writing Retreat in The Grand Brighton Hotel flooded his mind as he returned to the timetable. Although they had been in the same room for the welcoming speeches, he hadn’t seen her until the first review session. He had returned to the hotel’s event space with his breakout group to find Millie and her group already seated. Her untitled poem, addressing the themes of nostalgia, had resonated something within him. She had seemed equally enthralled by his short story in which a passenger had been murdered inside an seemingly empty tube train.

Over dinner that evening in The Cyan Bar, he had shown her his half a dozen pieces that had found publication and she had revealed the rest of her poetry collection. By the time they had finished their main course Andrew knew how he felt about her. As Millie laughed at one of his jokes and scooped up her glass of rosé wine, her fingers outstretched, Andrew saw something glimmer. He had managed to convince himself that it was a trick of the light, where the bubbles of the wine met the side of the glass when Millie lowered her drink and he spotted her wedding ring.

‘You’re… married?’ he remembered asking. 

She had explained, almost apologetically, that she had been married for two years and had a one year old son called Tommy. The writing retreat had been a present for herself to enjoy while her husband looked after the baby. Being a full time writer, like Stephen King or Lynda La Plante she explained, was the dream and working in a cafe on the highstreet was only a stop gap to success.

Andrew had then explained that his girlfriend of five years had brought him the ticket to the retreat after his breakdown following a harsh Ofsted review of his teaching abilities. Daisy, he reflected, had never understood his writing but she did understand him and knew when he was unhappy. A gang of guilt had reverberated within him as he pictured Daisy’s smiling face, waiting for him at home.

When the bell sounded to announce closing time at the bar they shared a lingering hug before returning to their separate hotel rooms.

Mille looked down the platform at Andrew, still frantically searching the paper timetable for an answer. She remembered the same sense of alarm in Glen’s face during their facetime call, after she had returned to her hotel room. Tommy had been refusing to go to bed and had been in the middle of a tantrum when Glen had answered. 

‘Everyone seemed to like my poetry,’ she explained. She stressed the word seemed and waited for a compliment, she knew would never come. ‘But they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ she added at last.

‘Is the teacher a published writer?’ Glen asked as Tommy uttered another ear piercing shriek. This has been his main concern when she had explained about the retreat.

‘Yes. There isn’t just one teacher, there are several of them but yes they’re all published. You can buy their books in WHSmiths and Waterstones.’

‘So it’s not a con then? Good.’ 

Glen was obsessed with money and finances, understandable for an insurance broker and his fears weren't completely unfounded. Babies were expensive. 

When she ended the call twenty minutes later she was glad she hadn’t mentioned Andrew. She found herself wondering how her life would have turned out if she was single and childless rather than married and a mother of one. Then she felt guilty for thinking such things. She was happy with Glen. Despite his flaws, he was a wonderful husband and dad.

‘The next train back is in twenty minutes,’ Andrew announced and pointed in the direction they had arrived in, ‘we should cross over.’

‘Yeah,’ Millie said, it was the only word she was able to muster and followed Andrew to the level crossing.

Carrying her suitcase in one hand she stumbled over the cattle grid, ignored his outstretched arms and uttered a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t chosen to wear heels. After she had staggered up the station ramp, using the white fence for support as though it were a handrail, she looked at Andrew through the increasing rain as he headed towards a shelter.

‘Do you… want to talk about it?’ she asked, remembering their half finished conversation on the train.

For a moment, the only reply was the raindrops striking the platform. Then Andrew said, ‘I… don’t know what to say. I’m… not good at actually saying words, you know? I’m much better at writing them. But it is something, isn’t it?’ he added. 

‘Yeah,’ she breathed. If she had been younger and both of them single she knew she would have kissed him there and then. 

‘I don’t think…’ Andrew said slowly, ‘that there much point talking about it, is there?’

‘Well, what do you want to do till the next train comes?’

He shrugged and the desire to kiss him became a sudden desire to slap him. 

‘Do you want to stand here in silence?’

‘No, obviously not.’

‘Well then.’

A white light washed over the station. Millie turned to see a goods train barrelling towards her. Before she could react she felt Andrew put his arms around her waist and drag her away from the edge as the turbulence swept through the platform. Her coat and skirt tugged at her skin and for a split second she imagined she looked like Marilyn Monroe. She couldn’t remember the name of the famous film where her skirt had blown upwards but laughed as the train disappeared into the darkness. 

‘What’s so funny?’ Andrew asked. He was still holding her.

‘Nothing,’ she lied. Then she said, ‘this would be the ideal setting for one of your murder stories, wouldn’t it?’

‘I suppose it would, yeah.’ His smile returned. 

‘No witnesses,’ Millie continued, ‘and the cows could eat my body.’

‘No, you’re thinking of pigs,' he said, ‘they eat everything, including human bones. Although cows can kill you I suppose. More people are killed by cows than by pigs.’

‘I thought more people were killed by vending machines falling on them than cows?’ 

‘Maybe but you’re not going to find a vending machine in the middle of a field, are you?’

‘There could be one in the station somewhere,’ Millie whispered and made a point of looking down the platform in pretend horror although she knew that a vending machine was unlikely.

‘I don’t know-’ Andrew laughed, ‘- what the hierarchy is between pigs, cows and vending machines. Anyway, this station is ideal for one of your poems. With the night and the moon and the… stuff.’

She laughed. 

‘Like I said, poetry isn’t my forte. The rain’s picking up, do you want to get under that shelter?’

Millie scurried to the shelter, which could only be described as flimsy, as the rain increased. The shelter was the same size as a phone box and, like the notice board on the other platform, contained an alarming amount of moss. As Andrew stepped in beside her, the warmth of his body radiating from him, Millie thought of another word to describe the shelter. Intimate. She pushed her suitcase against the far wall, beside Andrew’s. 

‘What do you want to do?’ she asked him.

‘Spend time with you.’

‘Same.’ She shivered and held him close.

‘But we can’t do that,’ he said, ‘we’re both…’

‘Seeing people. That we.... lo-' she stumbled over the word.

‘We don’t… write fantasies,’ he said with half a laugh.

‘I’ve been thinking about it though.’ She looked at him for approval or acceptance.

‘Same,’ he repeated. 

She could picture living with him. Somewhere trendy like Brighton. They could take the dog, a cockapoo maybe, for walks along the beach every day.

‘But it wouldn’t be fair,’ she said, thinking of Glen and Tommy, 

‘For either of us,’ he added. 

The pause that followed lasted several minutes until a light pierced through the darkness. Millie turned to see an approaching passenger train. The rain had stopped and the lights of the carriages offered an alluring promise of warmth. 

‘We can still keep in touch though,’ she said, stepping onto the platform, ‘I want to read your story when it’s finished. And your other published bits and pieces.’

‘Yeah, for sure,’ Andrew said, ‘I have your number and I’ve seen your social media accounts. I’ll read your poetry too, if you want me to. We can swap them. Exchange.’

‘Yeah,’ she said as the train began to slow. Then she chuckled. ‘This would be perfect for one of your stories, wouldn’t it? This whole…. situation.’

‘Yeah,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I might write it down.’

‘So long as there isn’t a murder,’ Millie added, glancing at the wheels of the train. 

The train stopped and the doors hissed open. 

Millie grabbed her suitcase. ‘Happy?' she asked as she swung her case onboard. 

‘Happy,’ Andrew smiled and stepped up behind her. 

The train doors closed with a thud.

Neither of them were happy.