Their laughter isn’t loud. It is a lovely, moving event. They are gone quickly.
There’s an attractive man in the carriage of the train next to mine, stopped like mine. We’re both waiting to move in opposite directions out of a station, away from each other. I am willing my train to move. Maybe he’s doing the same with his. I want him to move away, silently, rapidly and definitely because I don’t want to fall in love.
I am no longer appreciative of love.
I lived for many years with a man who I loved and who loved me back. Our relationship was equitable and beautiful. It feels so long ago now.
He died in the summer.
In the middle of the summer after a long illness. He died at home because that’s what he wanted and because we could afford it. Strange that. We could afford not to have him die in a hospital.
He died facing the window that looked across the apple and pear trees in the orchard. Full branches reaching up and hanging down. It seemed right.
He died in the morning as the sun was coming up in a clear sky over those trees. An already warm morning like the morning we first met.
At a train station.
He really did die. This is not one of those stories in which I pretend that the fact that he stopped loving me means that he died. No, not that. He actually died. It was terrible. I cried violently at his funeral. I still cry about him.
I wore one of his coats to his funeral, he would have liked that. It was an elegant, beautiful black coat. Classy. Classier than anything I owned or had the taste to want to own. I was lucky to wear it. It was so comforting, a quality I needed so badly.
The day after the funeral I gave his coat to a suitable charity because that is also what he would have done if he’d had to mourn my passing.
I have myself regularly checked despite my caution about the illness. Not because I want to check. I don’t want an answer but I do it because he asked me to.
Surely it’s time for my train or his train to move on. The attractive man is gazing back at me. Of course, he might just be gazing at his own reflection, it’s a bright day after all. A bright summer’s day. Anyway, his gaze is making me feel uncomfortable. He looks to be in his late forties but it’s difficult to tell through the filthy windows on both our trains.
His train is moving, at last.
“The two standard class passengers who approached me outside the dining car, can they kindly and immediately join me in the dining car.”
This is an order masquerading as a request from the voice of authority on my train. The guard.
Two young people walk past me. They’re laughing and trying to hold hands despite the narrowness of the passage between the seats. The taller one is in front. Their laughter isn’t loud. It is a lovely, moving event. They are gone quickly. I like them immensely.
The southbound train stops before it can exit the station. Something must have gone wrong. I can’t see the attractive man now. There’s another man in the same spot relative to me but further back on that southbound train. He is in First Class. He is looking at a tablet computer. From what I can make out, he is grey haired, square jawed and well dressed.
I’m attracted to conventionally attractive people. It’s just the way I am. Shallow I suppose. Normal.
“You were late. You were fucking late and you have all this foreign money and it’s all bullshit and I’m sick of it,” says a woman on a phone somewhere in my carriage.
“I don’t care if it’s Euros or Francs or Dollars,” she continues. A smell of synthetically fresh flowers drifts down the carriage and reaches me.
“Thank you so very much,” she says, sarcastically.
Another woman in my carriage is dozing, I can hear her mumbling and snoring.
The man across the table from me is full of a sandwich made with a regularly squared brown bread: cost-effective, artisan-made and sustainably grown according to the packet. It smells of nothing except synthetic flowers now.
I am on this train to travel from one airport to another and to a new place to live. The idea is to fly, stop over in Singapore, buy things, fly again, land, relax, start afresh. I don’t really consider this train to be part of that larger journey.
I’d like the authority to turn the heating down. There’s no need for it. I feel like I might start to doze but I don’t want to in case I make the same noises as that woman. People will become aware of me.
The southbound train with the grey-fox man and the attractive man on it pulls away. I can see the southbound platform. It’s full of people keeping their distance from each other.
There is an excited family of two parents and three children all talking to each other and pushing and pulling each other and laughing. I think the sight of them and all their kinetic and emotional energy should make me feel immensely sad at my own loss. Instead I feel joy.
He would have wanted that. He asked me to try and feel reformed after the decimation of his death. He held my hand as tightly as he could and asked me calmly.
I had broken a nail and I was worried that its sharp ragged edge might hurt him. He told me not to change the subject. We smiled at each other. All his energy went into my muscles. He smiled and I smiled. Soon I had to hold onto his hand because he was unable to hold onto mine any more.
I am going to read my newspaper now.
My train moves on. My memory of our love moves on and stays with me. I am still in love no matter what goes on around me. After all, love lives in the freedom from the need for love.
