The Waiting Room
A series of interconnected short stories from my 2018 collection "Degrees of Separation"
The Waiting Room
(January 2017)
It was a cursory glance; the kind of sweeping, superficial look designed to absorb as much as possible in one movement, as if the most critical thing was to use one’s eyes efficiently. He established the approximate size and scale of the room, its tone, an overall sense of feeling. The walls were part-panelled and painted a shade of brown that had been abandoned with a lost generation. Above the panelling they were an uninspiring cream punctuated with blocks of colour gifted from a number of large poster-sized displays. Inset the far wall, a painted wooden door of the same cream colour with no indication as to where it might lead; in front of him a tall free-standing wire rack - the kind that rotated unevenly with a squeak - was adorned with small postcard-sized leaflets.
The warmth surprised him. Outside the bitterness of the wind had whipped through his coat, and even the extra layer he’d debated needing had proven to be not entirely adequate. He missed the source of the heat in his initial sweep, not that he was looking for it. Automatically his hand pulled the woollen beanie from his head, loosed his scarf, and eased the zip on his fleece down a little, freeing his neck.
“Are you waiting for a train?”
Her voice startled him. In a sudden moment of recalibration, his eyes scanned again. She was standing facing one of the posters, her head turned his way. Slightly panicked, he checked to see what else he had missed, and only then saw the dark, pew-like bench down to his right and the rucksack that rested there, its predominance of orange somewhat at odds with the room overall.
She was a relatively small woman, with short curly hair mainly gone to grey. Her thick coat belied a frame which - from her size - was probably slight. In that instant he placed her anywhere between fifty and mid-sixties, and guessed she was probably more healthy than most of her peers: the walking boots, the rucksack, that slightly ruddy tone to her cheeks - though that might just have been the extremes of heat and cold.
“No,” he said, still slightly off-kilter with her sudden intrusion into his reality.
Although he had been to the States a number of times, he struggled to place her accent. American it clearly was, but it lacked the harshness or distinctiveness of the more obvious locations: New York, California, the deep South. It struck him - for no obvious reason - as something of a hybrid, a mongrel of an accent that might be the result of a partially nomadic existence, within the US if not further afield. He glanced at the rucksack again. It was well-travelled.
Having not returned her gaze to the display in front of her, he sensed an expectation that she wanted more from him. And why not? This was a deserted station with infrequent trains set in the middle of miles of winter moorland. Having a voice to interact with was potentially an exotic treat.
“I’m just out for a walk,” he offered, trying to say enough to be accepted without giving anything of himself away. After all, why should he? “From a house down in the valley.”
This seemed to be enough. She turned back towards the wall.
Forcing his hat into one of his fleece pockets, he made himself move, walking slowly towards the wire racking, adopting a pace that allowed him to overlay a second swath of detail on top of his initial impressions. The pace was important, not for him but for his companion. There was an unwritten convention about these things, about how you moved in an enclosed space when confined with just one other person - especially if that person were of the opposite sex and the location was remote. He needed to accepted as unthreatening - even though that was exactly what he was by nature. As he paused before the leaflets, he wondered if his current motion was how he naturally moved in public spaces like galleries and shops, and railway station waiting rooms: quietly, modestly, invisibly almost.
Timetables, conveniently placed at eye-level, were the first things he noticed; trains to and from the ends of the branch line that included this station. He picked one up and opened it. Most trains seemed to pass through, with only a few stopping each day. He checked his watch. If she were waiting for a train - as she surely must be - then she still had time to kill: either twenty or thirty-five minutes, depending on where she was heading. Instinctively he knew a time span of that magnitude made his presence there of greater value to her. He replaced the timetable and sifted through some flimsy brochures about local tourist sites. Given it was early January, he guessed most would be closed until Easter. If she was on holiday it could only be for the walking.
“This is interesting,” she suddenly offered, turning to see where he now was in relation to her. “The history of the line here, and some of the disasters that happened in the early days. People died.”
It was a further invitation, he knew that. He also knew his decision at this precise moment was a binary one. If he chose to ignore her, then doing so would be rude - and to an international visitor, too! Not that he felt any great loyalty to where he was; after all, he was something of a recent interloper himself. But he did have, of the two of them, the greatest claim to 'locality', to belonging there. Ignoring her would be problematic, effectively driving a wedge between them, compromising them both, and forcing him to cut short this temporary respite from the wind and drive him outside almost immediately. Re-encountering the cold so soon was not a prospect which appealed to him.
Only four steps were needed to locate him at her side. The exhibit showed three photographs that were fixed in time more by their sepia tones and fuzzy definition than the descriptive labels beneath them. In one, a small steam locomotive was off the rails, hanging perilously part way down an embankment. It seemed more motion freeze-frame than an image of its final resting place, though the text - as he read it - illuminated the event in explicit enough detail to confirm that it was indeed at such a jaunty angle that it came to rest.
“All those poor people,” she offered.
Just beyond the locomotive’s tender, the end of the first carriage could be seen pointing in a completely different direction and in such a way that the rest of the train could only be hanging further out of sight down and away from the tracks. The second coach - where all the deaths had occurred - was impossible to see. Perhaps it was better that way.
“Was it going too fast?” he asked, realising that getting her insight would be the fastest way to assimilate the story.
“The track broke,” she said.
There was a short pause as he skim-read the poster, then glanced across to its companion piece on the same wall. Her voice brought him back.
“Would you like some coffee?” Seeing his instant confusion, she clarified. “I have a flask in my rucksack and a spare cup. For the cold.”
*
“Where are you from?”
Having extracted the thermos and cups, she had placed the rucksack on the floor and they were now sitting side-by-side on the bench.
“Originally? A smallish place in Indiana. South Bend.”
“Notre Dame?”
“Yes! How do you know that?”
“I used to travel to the states with work a few years ago,” he explained. “Went to Chicago and then down to Warsaw, Columbus, Cleveland. I liked to drive rather than fly - at least while it was still a novel experience.”
She smiled.
“My dad was in the military, so he tended to move a round quite a bit,” she said. “At first just in the States, and then he was posted to England towards the back end of the war. Afterwards - once I was old enough - we had some time in Europe following him around before we went back home.”
“Whereabouts?”
“In Europe?”
“No, in England.”
“Norfolk, initially. Then down on the south coast for a while. He worked in intelligence; was one of the few Americans who could actually speak more than one language, so he was ‘useful’.” She smiled to herself.
“That must have been exciting, growing up seeing all those places?”
“I guess so, though I don’t remember that much of it.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Maybe a bit like your experience of the US; the novelty wears off after a while.”
Now that he was closer to her, could hear her speak, judge her from the gestures her body made, he guessed that she was probably in her early sixties - though she could easily have passed for a few years younger. If he were right, then she would have been born a few years after the war, which would have made her just an infant when trailing across Europe.
“After Germany, he was posted back to the UK for a few years, near Harrogate. So I went to school here for a while before we went back home.”
He smiled to himself. So that explained the accent.
“So this is, what, a coming home of sorts?”
She laughed.
“Not exactly. I haven’t been in the UK since - when? - maybe the early eighties. My dad died a while ago and I lost my husband in the middle of last year, so I decided that I’d take one last chance to revisit some those places from my childhood - places I really don’t remember. Being separated from Jim and my dad made me realise that I was separated from my childhood somehow too. I thought it was right to try and fix that while I could.”
“So that’s why you’re here.”
“A mad American woman in the Pennines - she needs to have a reason, doesn’t she?!”
They both laughed.
“I still have one or two acquaintances here. Kids I part grew up with. Of course they’re older now too, and we haven’t seen each other for years, so it’s all a bit weird. But it’s kind of cool too. And getting out to walk in the hills again is just brilliant.”
“Even if it’s a little cold?”
“Cold?” She was taking his empty cup from him. “Have you been to Chicago in the winter?”
He shook his head.
“I thought not.”
He watched her as she put the flask and cups back into her rucksack then fastened the neck of the section that housed them. She stretched briefly then checked her watch. He sensed something of the effort in her stretch; it was the movement of someone who used to find such things much easier. He thought she was going to sit back down, but evidently she decided against it.
“What about you?” she asked, rocking gently up on her toes to work her calf muscles.
“Me?”
“I’m guessing that you’re not from around here either - at least not in an everyday kind of way.”
Even though it was a question he had asked himself - and specifically asked himself before he had booked the cottage just outside of Hawes - he knew that any made-up answer, however plausible, would be somehow inadequate. He rose too and took a few steps further into the waiting room.
“Not from here, no. Well, not in the sense of living here at any rate. I’m just renting for a week.”
“A kind of holiday?”
“Kind of.” ‘Holiday’ didn’t seem the right word to use.
“A break, maybe,” she suggested, sensing his difficulty and trying to help him out.
“That might be better.” He paused for a second. “I know Yorkshire well enough; Yorkshire and Cumbria. I’ve had lots of holidays here over the years so I suppose the whole area has a special resonance for me. Familiarity, if nothing else.”
“But why now?” She asked, checking her watch again. “Taking a break in freezing January?”
He looked up from his own watch. He sensed from her lack of urgency that she was catching the later of the two trains - so up to Carlisle, then. Had she not been doing so, surely she would have been hoisting her bag to her shoulder and making her way out onto the platform for the Leeds train that was perhaps just a minute or two away.
“What was the word you used? Separation? That resonates with me a little bit. Maybe, like you, I’m trying to get reconnected.”
Her laugh surprised him.
“But you’re not like me at all!” she said, her accent momentarily broadening. “You’re still young; still have things to connect to afresh, surely. Things to look forward to.”
The notion that he still possessed 'youth' made him smile. From his side it felt a little like a stupid grin, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“I’m not sure about the young bit,” he said, “but of course you’re right about having things in front of me, ahead as it were. Both known and unknown.”
“And doesn’t that make life exciting?”
“The unknown?”
“Absolutely!”
From many other people that might have been interpreted as a trite ‘typically American’ shallow observation; a paper-thin sliver of truth stolen from the inside of a cheap Christmas cracker. Yet even after just twenty minutes or so, he knew she didn’t mean it like that. She was a sincere and honest woman. He was surprised to find himself thinking that it would have been good to know her longer, to have been acquainted with her before.
“But what about your ‘reconnections’?” she asked, bringing him back. “To what?”
“I don’t know.”
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“OK. Well, maybe I do,” he said hesitantly.
“And?”
“It’s difficult to put into words really.” He hesitated; it was. “And it sounds corny, trite. A bit pathetic actually.”
“Try me, hon.”
The casual appellation was not lost on him.
“Myself, really. I’ve been busy, you know. And there’s been a lot of other ‘stuff’ going on. It takes all your time, I suppose. You get absorbed by it.”
“You lose yourself a little bit, don’t you?” she offered, sensing his struggle. He nodded. “I know what that feels like. Crappy isn’t it? My dad was ill for ages before he passed. Without mom there, it all fell to me really; the looking after, the fixing things. I became an offshoot of him in a way, rather than my own person. I didn’t see it until it was too late. Jim saw it. He warned me. But I was too stubborn.”
She paused, then bent towards her bag. He had been wrong about her taking the later Carlisle train. Somewhere a bell sounded.
“I lost Jim before I lost my pop. And then I lost Jim again. And then I suppose I realised that somewhere along the way, I’d gotten lost too. Separated. Good word, isn’t it?”
Suddenly she had shouldered her bag then took a step towards him, placing her hand on his arm.
“I need to git,” she said, winking slyly. “You take care of yourself.”
He leant forwards and kissed her cheek. It was a gesture as foreign to him as anything he could imagine, and yet it seemed perfect under the circumstances.
Her smile broadened. As she placed her hand on the door knob, she turned.
“Now you just be careful young man, or I might just be coming back here to see you again.”
And with that she and her laugh were absorbed by the sudden arrival of the Leeds train which, just a minute or so later had whisked her invisibly away and out of the station.
He found himself alone. Now the waiting room was indeed how he had first perceived it: the panelling, the door, the wire rack, the outmoded cream walls, the emptiness. Glancing to the left of the exit, the long dark wooden bench was unladen. No flash of orange; no sign that there had ever been a rucksack there, a rucksack with a thermos of coffee and two cups inside.
Outside the wind had yet to relent. After the warmth of the waiting room, it bit into him remorselessly. Hoping it might make a difference, he pulled his beanie a little lower, and tugged his scarf up a shade. Out from the Carlisle-end of the platform he could see the spot where the engine had fallen, and in the mid-distance, just visible, the beginnings of the viaduct wall. Just five minutes ago another train had crossed there, rounded the corner safely, and come to rest at the platform.
Turning, he could see the tracks bending away towards the big hills that rose in the distance beyond, a feint trace of whiteness about their uppermost reaches. Yes, it was cold; but suddenly it was also good to be there in January.
He blew ineffectually on his gloves, then started back.
For links on where to buy Degrees of Separation, click here.