Sands of Time

Day Trip

This story is true. Well, more or less. But you must look away, gentle reader, if rude words offend you, for this story can only be told as it happened, with the real dialogue. Asterisks just will not do! It happened one day in autumn.

As Caroline pocketed her car keys and made her way onto the platform her heart sank. It was a small station; often she was the only person to board the train here, especially when she left for London mid-morning, but today the worst happened. There was another passenger waiting as the train drew in – James Campbell, the owner of the huge, immaculate house at the end of the winding lane where Caroline’s cottage stood in its quarter acre of wild garden. There was no time to walk to the other end of the platform. The train was stopping. He was already opening a door, smiling at her with that cold superior smile of his, and bowing slightly to indicate she should enter the carriage ahead of him.

It is hard to incline one’s head graciously while carrying a shoulder bag, a heavy tapestry portmanteau and an A1 black plastic portfolio, especially while dressed in a long flapping skirt which threatened to tangle with her sexy high-heeled boots, but she managed it. With a creditable attempt at dignity she walked to the only set of empty seats and sat down, facing what used in days of old to be called the engine. If he had any tact at all, any discretion, any sense of decency and good manners he would move to the other end of the carriage.

He didn’t. He came and sat down opposite her.

She wasn’t sure quite when her antagonism for this man had begun to develop. The day she moved into the cottage probably. Independence meant an enormous amount to her. This was her first real home and no one, but no one, was going to interfere in the way she decorated it. Or lived her life in it.

She had had an idyllic childhood in her parents’ home. She would be the first to admit that she really had no grounds for complaint at all. No abuse. No deprivation. But she had not at any time been allowed to express her own personality in the decoration of her room. Her nursery, her bedroom, her teenage den – the same room, different incarnations – had all been decorated and furnished to her domineering mother’s taste. Which was attractive. Stylish even. In anyone else’s home she would have admired it. In her own it represented oppression of her individuality and her spirit. Her marriage had been to an interior designer. Perhaps inevitably, given her longing to create her own environment, it had been a disaster. In the house she shared with him she wasn’t even allowed to choose the colour of her own toothbrush. The marriage lasted no time at all.

And then at last she was free. Her mother, her father and even, for heaven’s sake, her ex-husband offered to help her house hunt. When she found the cottage all three felt she had made a mistake. Her mother thought it too twee for words, her father felt it was hopelessly impractical and a bad investment and Phil, her ex, had just one word for the thatch, the honeysuckle, the small leaded windows. Naf.

Undeterred (in fact, if truth were known, greatly encouraged), she embarked on an orgy of do-it-yourself. Decorating, embellishing, improving. Rejecting the share of tasteful furniture due to her as the marital home was divided she settled instead for a dollop of wonderful cash and began to haunt antique shops and car boot sales, country craft fairs and rural art galleries. That was when she discovered she could paint – and, to her astonishment, sell – the wild colourful amazing tangles of flowers which rampaged round her garden.

The first and, to be honest, only dampener on her exuberance outside her own family had been: James Campbell.

‘I trust you intend to do something about those thistles, Mrs Evans.’ His patrician profile had appeared over her gate one day as she was sitting, her face shaded by a broad-brimmed straw hat, sketching the offending plants. He had spotted her and them from his Range Rover and stopped especially to speak to her. No, hello; no, I hope you’re settling in OK; no, welcome to the neighbourhood. Just instant criticism followed by a curt nod before he turned back to his barouche.

Seething, she planned to make a midnight visit to his own regimented acres at dead of night later in the summer. With pockets full of thistle down.

Their relationship from that moment on had steadily deteriorated, his only remarks on the rare occasions they met were patronising and critical and on one occasion were actually conveyed via a formal complaint about her flowering hedges to the Parish Council. Apparently her blackthorn and her holly, her roses and her honeysuckle were scratching the barouche as he drove past.

The train stopped at the next station and several more people boarded. To her relief James Campbell did not look up. He had immediately on sitting down opened his Financial Times. She was spared the horror of having to make polite conversation with him as she produced her own reading – a rather shabby copy of Mrs Leyel’s Herbal Delights. His refusal to further acknowledge her presence was perhaps intended as a slight. If it was it sadly misfired. She was intensely relieved.

Some raucous laughter from the seats across the gangway caught her attention and she gave a quick glance across at their neighbours. Two young men had boarded the train at the last stop, dressed in combat trousers and tee-shirts with huge black boots, their hair cropped short. Perhaps squaddies from the local barracks? They were very young, teenagers even, fresh-faced, wide-eyed but, once the thick layer of acne had run its natural course, would both be quite good-looking.

She bent her head to Mrs Leyel once more, whilst straining to decipher their accents. Scottish. That much was easy. East coast probably rather than west as she felt her ears throb to the barrage of strangulated glottal stops. Not dangerous young men. Not hostile. Just loud.

The coffee trolley was approaching down the carriage, inching its way between anxious mothers with restless children, Jaeger dressed ladies going to town to lunch with old school friends, business men – not the dawn rising kind, the older more leisurely breed – students and tourists. And people like her. One offs. In her case, visiting a magazine with some newly commissioned illustrations. The trolley was doing good business – tea, coffee, Cokes, orange drinks, Kit-Kats and flapjacks. It stopped alongside them and James Campbell lowered his paper for a fraction of a second to shake his head curtly at the girl. Caroline too declined but with a smile. The two young men sat forward eagerly. The girl obviously instantly tuned to their speech and had no difficulty in interpreting an order for two cans of lager each, but firmly declined the suggestion that a third, to keep in reserve, might be even better. She pocketed their change, handed over the drinks and then to Caroline’s delight wagged – actually wagged – her finger at the boys. ‘Now, no nonsense, you two. Behave yourselves, you hear me?’ she admonished loudly. ‘And put the empties in the bin!’ How did she do it? How did she escape with her life? She must have brothers, Caroline thought, to give her that ease of communication with them. Or was she just a natural leader of men? Far from being angry, they beamed at her and sat back to enjoy themselves as she trundled on her way.

Caroline realised suddenly that James Campbell had folded his paper in half. He was still reading, but the slightest glance enabled him now to see across it to their neighbours. And her. She frowned, trying to concentrate on the words on the page in front of her, but it was hard. The voices of the young men were growing louder and she discovered suddenly that her ear had grown accustomed to the lilt and staccato of their speech in spite of the impression that they were talking through mouthfuls of marbles. They were discussing a night on the town which they had both enjoyed. And they had, she suddenly realised, only a limited vocabulary when it came to description. The more baby-faced of the two tipped back his head and drained his can. He then stood up and obedient to instructions carefully tucked it into the litter bin behind his seat. He reseated himself and produced the second can with a flourish.

‘Och it was a fucking guid night!’ The expression of contented reminiscence reached her clearly. ‘I like watching fuitball; I like clubbing.’ He beamed across at his companion. ‘But not as much as I like fucking and brawling.’ He paused. ‘But, oh fuck, I like brawling best!’

Caroline bit her lip tightly to keep her face straight. She had seen the expression on the face of the woman in the next row of seats. It was scandalised. Her eyebrows had hit her hairline. Beside her, two more travellers were staring hard at their feet. Caroline glanced up at James Campbell. The Financial Times was trembling slightly. She could see his knuckles white against the pink paper. She frowned. No doubt he would take it upon himself to throw them off the train at the next stop.

The boys’ conversation had changed tack slightly, but not in any adjectival sense. ‘It’s fucking impossible to get back tae Edinburgh,’ – so that is where they came from – ‘and down tae fucking Colchester in that space of fucking time!’ The second can was neatly disposed of in the bin. They were oblivious to the other passengers, intent now on travel plans. ‘It’s fucking scandalous. If you like fucking brawling, you should do something about it! Go and have a fucking brawl with the fucking train arrangers!’

The Financial Times slipped a little and just for a second Caroline caught a glimpse of James Campbell’s face. It was very red. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth held in a tight-lipped grimace. Tears of laughter were streaming down his face. She stared, still trying to hold back her own mirth, and suddenly he looked up and caught her eye. His mouth twitched. He reached for the newspaper supplement which he had discarded on the seat next to him and held it out to her with a shaking hand. ‘You’d better borrow this!’ Already he had disappeared once more behind his own screen.

Caroline opened the paper hastily, aware that one of the boys was staring at her suddenly. But he wasn’t angry. There was no cry of ‘What are you looking at then?’ On the contrary, his huge blue eyes were full of sympathy and understanding. ‘Are you OK, hen?’ he asked gently. ‘Fucking hayfever!’

As the train drew into London Caroline refolded the paper and handed it back to its owner with a smile. ‘Thank you.’

The boys had been first off the train, not a can, not a crisp packet to be seen, the seat where they had been sitting spotless. ‘I don’t think I could have coped with that without your help.’ His face had returned to normal except that his eyes were no longer cold and critical. ‘I hope you’re not going to report them to their f -’ she stuttered. She had almost said it. ‘To their commanding officer!’

He shook his head. ‘I haven’t enjoyed a train journey so much in a long time. Did you see the faces of those women?’

They were making their way out onto the platform now and somehow he was carrying her portfolio as well as his briefcase. He glanced across at her and she realised suddenly that not only were his eyes not cold, they were a startlingly bright blue. ‘You haven’t got time for a coffee, I suppose? To help compose ourselves before we are launched into the metropolis?’

And, gentle reader, do you know, against her better judgement, she agreed!