What You Learn on a Station Platform

There are things that you only discover when you’re sleeping rough. And I have discovered, as I sit here in the little shelter on the platform of Lowestoft station, that even after the most sultry of summer days, nights can be chilly and a sly, sharp wind can blow. 

     But for all that, I wander out onto the platform of the most easterly station in the country, leave what shelter I have, and look at the lines that are still dimly illuminated, but will not have any trains on them for several hours yet. This is the end of the line. It is a place where trains depart and arrive, but do not pass through. I feel as if I am many miles from anyone and anything, but I am not. I have a couple of bottles of water that Jenny in the station café, who is very kind, gave me, and my throat is dry, but I dare not take more than a sip as waiting room doesn’t open until seven, so the toilets don’t either. That’s the kind of prosaic thing you discover, as well.

     I don’t know why I look upwards. I am in no particular mood for stargazing, and I have long since ceased believing that such things as looking at the night sky or watching the tide turn can bring any kind of solace. The stars are only concentrations of hot gas, billions of miles and millions of years away. I may once have been the kind of person who wrote bad poetry about the stars, but I am not that person any more.

     And that business about the music of the spheres is just nonsense, of course. Oh, that doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea of it, or at least once might have done, but it is still nonsense.

     That’s not to say that I can’t connect music and stars, and I wish I couldn’t.

It would be the oldest cliché in the book to say that it was two years ago but seems like both yesterday and an eternity. But clichés have this sneaky way of being true. And we weren’t averse to using the cliché dream honeymoon. Samuel and I were on a river cruise, and as our ship drifted up the Danube, we waltzed on deck beneath the stars, to music played by the Bratislava’s own string quartet. There was something so typical about the low-key elegance of the whole thing that the ship was called merely after its home port, and did not need to be called Queen of the River or anything fancy like that. It was not the entire embodiment of a cliché – they weren’t actually playing the Blue Danube, but I wouldn’t have been sorry if they were. 

     There is something about dancing in a confined space that is particularly intimate and evocative, especially when music is playing nearby, and by real people not some music system, and you slip past sleeping villages and half-sleeping little towns, and you are not really in a confined space at all, because looking upwards, the stars are there, silver studs on a black velvet carpet. And when you are in the arms of the man you love – well, that makes it heart-soaringly perfect, raising you to a world where calm and thrill combine. 

     “This is nice, isn’t it?” Samuel said, and said it in such a way that nice meant far, far more, than wonderful or marvellous or sublime. I nodded, and we waltzed away, alternating between gazing into each others’ eyes and upwards to the stars. We paused from our dance to drink that heady Hungarian wine that is sweet and honeyed without being cloying, but it was not inebriation, or at least, none that came from alcohol, that made the stars seem to shift from silver to the mellow gold of the wine. 

     Whilst nearly all my friends seemed to be waxing enthusiastic about the wonders of online dating, Samuel and I met in the good old-fashioned way. I was working for a publishing house (fairly low down the food chain!) and he was one of our authors. He wrote books about business management and entrepreneurship, and frankly, that wasn’t my first choice of reading matter to put it midlly, but he had a wry, self-deprecating humour and said himself they were never going to win any literary prizes, and he took what he said himself with a pinch of salt – which showed in the writing, too. 

     He was the kind of man who wore a shirt and often a tie even in his leisure time not because he was old-fashioned and formal, and certainly not because he expected others to follow (pardon the pun!) suit, but simply because he felt comfortable in them. He was inordinately proud of a tie with the characters from Minions on it that he told me his nephew Hughie had given him for his last birthday. 

     Everyone approved of him. Even those who might normally have worried about him being 15 years older than I was said that it didn’t matter in the least. Perhaps they thought that someone older might be no bad thing for me, but they were too polite to say so. But I most definitely never saw him as a father figure. He and my Dad got on very well, and Dad was chuffed to discover that he shared his love of Crown Green bowls and agreed wholeheartedly that anyone who said it was just a sport for old men on a Sunday afternoon didn’t know what they were talking about. 

     We were married within a year, and yet there seemed to be nothing hurried or impetuous about it. I was still working for Haversham and Hillsworth and he was still writing his books. I did get a promotion, but it was one I would probably have got anyway. I didn’t make anything of it when I was told that the chief non-fiction editor, Sandra Chatsworth (“as in the stately home” she always said when introducing herself, thinking she might as well get in first) said she wanted a word with me. I liked Sandra. She was a no-nonsense sort of woman, but didn’t think that “no nonsense” was a synonym for rude and lacking in patience. We exchanged a few pleasantries and she poured out a coffee for me and then she said, “Naomi, I’ve always rather despised the phrase “this is awkward” – but, well, the trouble is, this is awkward. It’s about Samuel – well, no, not really about Samuel, I’ve always got on pretty well with him, but about his books. We’re wondering if we’ve come to the end of the road.”

     “Sandra, what on earth do you mean?” I asked, indignant on his behalf and truly puzzled. “He’s one of our best sellers!”

     “Well, I’m afraid that’s the whole point, Naomi. He isn’t. His books have just had their day! The advice he’s giving is totally out of date, and he makes the same jokes every time that maybe weren’t even really that funny in the first place. They filled a niche that was there four or five years ago, and to be honest, they were a bit past their sell by date even then. And apart from that – well, nobody has gone so far as to accuse him of plagiarism, but there have been whispers that certain passages sound – a bit familiar. You do know that his own business background is – chequered. He once ran a business that went bankrupt.”

     “So did Donald Trump, and it doesn’t seem to have done him much harm,” I muttered, hypocritically, as I was anything but an admirer of his. In fact I didn’t know, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell Naomi that. And yes, it did knock me sideways. But did he know everything about my past? Of course not! “And so you want me to tell him you’re dumping him,” (it occurred to me in passing that was a word more often used about personal rather than business relationships) “because it gets you out of it?”

     “Naomi, no, I don’t mean that at all! I just thought it was a courtesy to let you know what’s going on.”

     “Well I’m going to tell him anyway. You needn’t think I’m not.”

     “That is entirely your choice! I’ve no right to nudge you either way. Naomi, you and I have always got along well, I don’t like being at odds with you!”

     I just about resisted the temptation to stick out my lower lip and mutter “tough”, so preserved some modicum of dignity. Still, I had to acknowledge that though Sandra never feared confrontation if it had to be, she certainly didn’t court it and never seemed to enjoy it. One thing I did know immediately was that if Samuel “went”, so to speak, I would go to. I had no intention of working for a company that thought my husband wasn’t good enough for them. 

     I dreaded telling Samuel the news that evening (having already tendered my resignation!) because sometimes, though he struggled not to show it, he could be hurt like a little boy. But to my amazement and relief, he gave a broad smile and said, “Well, talk about a blessing in disguise! To tell you the truth I’ve been a bit fed up with the books for a while, time to move on. Sniffy Sandra has done us a favour!” I knew he meant the word “sniffy” figuratively, to mean snobbish or disdainful, but after that I couldn’t help imagining Sandra sniffing every time I thought of her, not that I did, if I could help it. After all, I told myself, we had never really been friends.

     Samuel told me he was going to set up his own advisory service, and he was going to do it with me. It would be called Samuel And Naomi Enterprises – so of course it had the acronym SANE, and that linked in with the motto of Sanity, not Vanity. 

     He never tried to dissuade me from resigning, and I appreciated that. I thought it meant he respected me and my decisions. 

     Though I was 15 years younger than Samuel, I was still old enough to remember when setting up a website was a big deal and left to the experts, but now we got one up and running in a couple of hours. I missed some of my old colleagues at Haversham and Hillsworth, but though I had been one of those who never really embraced working from home during the lockdown, now Samuel was there and we were running our own company, it was a different matter. We didn’t expect instant success, and though of course I did take it seriously, there was still a part of me that was the little girl who liked playing shop! 

     The one fly in the ointment was that Mum and Dad weren’t as enthusiastic about it as I’d – not so much hoped, as just presumed. “We wish you well, of course we do,” Dad said, “But running your own business can be tricky.”

     I told myself he was just being over-cautious because his own father’s experiences as a sub-postmaster hadn’t been entirely happy. This was a different thing altogether.

     Before long Samuel was, he told me, invited to give a motivational speech to the local Chamber of Commerce. I looked forward to it even more than he did, and was in the audience. But it didn’t go well. Oh, they were scrupulously polite, but even so, some of the questions and comments did suggest that they’d tried the methods and “little tips and tricks” in his books and not with unqualified success. “The thing is, Sam,” a trader said (I could have told him he hated being called Sam) “When you read it, you chuckle, and think, that’ll do it, but in real life – customers tend to be a bit cynical and not so easily taken in.”

     “Sir, I hope you’re not suggesting I encourage subterfuge or deception,” Samuel said, in a voice that was too smooth. The questioner hastened to assure him he did not.

     When we got home, I said, “Samuel, you know I back you up, but I can’t help wondering if it’s wise to keep harking back to the books. You said yourself it was time to move on!” He had also said that he valued my views. 

     But he turned a face on me that I had never seen before. “Naomi, I expect loyalty from you of all people, and not questioning what I say and do. Please don’t do it again.”

     I supposed we might be having our first row. My realistic side said we’d done very well to manage so long without one. 

     The next day he was all charm and kindness and said he’d been in a foul mood the previous night and I wasn’t to read anything into it. He said “Let’s forget all about the business for a day and go out for a drive in the countryside!” We did, and it was lovely.

     When and how do we first realise or first acknowledge that things are not as they should be, in any way, shape, or form? The first time Samuel answered my mobile and said, “I’m sorry, but Naomi doesn’t want to talk to you,” he said he was sparing me hassle from idiots. The first time he asked me to put a large chunk of my savings, some earned and some inherited from an Auntie who had a soft spot for me, into the business I thought it was only right and natural that I contributed my fair share. The first time he suggested that it was time I cut the apron strings I could see his point. After all (as he said) I was far too emotionally dependent on my parents for a woman my age.

     The first time he struck me I told myself anyone could crack under pressure and it could easily have been the other way round. He was tearful after and swore it would never, ever, happen again.

     And after all those first times, after a couple of months I was estranged from my parents, had no savings of my own, and was not allowed to answer my own phone.

     He did strike me again, but rarely. I had no bruises. He was far more subtle than that. 

     I don’t know to this day if I did what I did in a moment of clarity or a moment of confusion. Samuel had been careless and not locked me in for half an hour or so. I had no compunction about taking the £200 that was in his wallet. It was my money anyway – not that it would have bothered me if it wasn’t! He had taken to having only hard cash of late and evidently still trusted me – or thought I was too cowed to do a single thing about my situation.

     But what I did wasn’t sensible. I took a bus to a nearby seaside town and booked into a guest house for a couple of nights. But I just HAD to have a couple of days’ illusion of normality and being like other people and pretending to pretend I was on holiday. I told myself I could get a temporary job – I wasn’t fussy, I could wash dishes or wait at table. It was easy at the seaside in summer, wasn’t it? It wasn’t. And the last £5 I spent on Lottery scratchcards (and I had never been a gambler) only yielded £1. 

     The lady at the Beach Buddies guest house was kind but of course she couldn’t keep me on without my paying for a room. They took me in for a couple of nights at a local hostel and seemed to be kind but then told me I couldn’t stay as it was only for local people and when I tried to smuggle myself back in to sleep on a couch they threatened to call the police. So they had betrayed me too, when I thought I was safe. 

     So now, here I am, standing on the platform at Lowestoft station and looking up at the stars, already beginning to fade into the East Coast early summer morning.

     But, suddenly, insidiously, frail and defiant, courage stirs and hope flickers.  Jenny in the café will let me use her phone. I will build bridges with my parents again. I will never let anyone control me again. I will never be as I was, but perhaps that is no bad thing. 

     The stars are fading. But soon the dawn will be breaking.