Stranger on a Train

by Jenny Diski

  His accent veered towards English, overlaid with a slight American twang. As pure comedy he was W.C. Fields, in the current genre he was that drunken doctor who always sits in the corner seat of the stagecoach. He was explaining the reality of the invisible world with exaggerated patience to Conal, who was sitting next to Virginia several places down the carriage. I sat down in a vacant seat opposite the troubling couple. Conal sipped his whisky and smiled scornfully.

  ‘Yah – you don’t know what you’re talking about, you drunken old fool. I’m an Irishman through and through. I know my leprechauns, by God I do, and they’re very good friends with the pixies. And there are no pixies or leprechauns on this train because pixies and leprechauns don’t travel by train. They teleport. You’re completely drunk, you are drunk as a horse’s arse and you know sweet fanny adams about the little people. You are a fraud. Where do you claim to be from in Ireland, my man?’

  ‘I do not respond to abusive attacks from the coarse and ill-educated,’ the other man said very grandly and with an even stronger English accent. ‘I was born in Ireland but educated at Cambridge University although I was unable, because of financial constraints beyond my control, to complete my degree. I have been used to a better quality of debate and a far better class of person. The sort of person and debate, sir, that you could not even imagine. You merely show up your own ignorance and rough origins by such poorly phrased linguistic attacks. You would be regarded as very uncouth in decent society. I shall speak to you no more. And the leprechaun doesn’t think highly of you, either. He’s just said so, in so many words.’

  He closed his eyes to show that the conversation was over. There were whoops and calls of ‘Right on, man’, ‘Yeah, you tell him’, ‘Bravo’, and ‘Let’s hear it for the leprechauns’ from others in the carriage, who were convulsed with laughter at the intensity of our new man’s conviction on the subject of pixies and leprechauns, as well as delighted by Conal’s evident annoyance at being dismissed as a social inferior. He was cross, though he had obviously been baiting the drunken leprechaun man for some time. He muttered to Virginia about penniless drunks not knowing their place, and then having received a look of disgust from his wife, he lurched from his seat to nudge his semi-conscious rival with his elbow.

  ‘Here, my boy, us Irish mustn’t hold grudges. Have a drink.’

  He held the bourbon towards the new man who wrenched his eyes slightly open at the disturbance. Seeing the glass, he lifted his head to squint a clearer view and reached for it with the hand that was still holding the smouldering stub of a cigarette.

  ‘That’s very decent of you. Let bygones be bygones. I’ll drink to that.’

  A man who was also new to me, sitting across the aisle, leaned forward and spoke quietly to Conal. ‘Don’t give him any more to drink. He’s had enough. Bourbon’ll finish him off.’

  ‘None of your business. This is between me and my new friend. Man to man. Have a good drink … what’s your name?’

  ‘Raymond. Thank you, perhaps I misjudged you.’ He took the beaker and had a long swig, then coughed convulsively for a moment. ‘My word that was good. You know your liquor. Very kind. Very kind indeed.’

  He coughed a little more and then sank back into semi-consciousness. The man opposite, middle-aged but smoothly handsome and gleaming like a second-string actor in a US television series, wearing neatly hemmed and pressed denims and white socks with his loafers, reached towards Raymond and took the dead cigarette stub from his fingers. Beside him were two boys in their early teens playing with a computerised fishing game, both with lank, long blond hair and blue eyes, dressed in ripped jeans and T-shirts. They had to be brothers, if not twins, and since they were too young to be legal smokers were presumably there because their father, who they called Chuck, was keeping an eye on them. They were snorting with laughter to each other at the old drunk.

  ‘It’s not funny, guys,’ Chuck said, and then spoke to Conal. ‘Hey man, don’t give him any more to drink. The conductor only let him on the train if I promised to keep an eye on him. He’s going to turn him off the train if he sees him drinking.’

  ‘What are you, his father?’ sneered Conal.

  The man shrugged. ‘Why get him kicked off the train? Let him sleep it off.’

  The discussion was interrupted by the entrance of a boy who, having slid back the door, stood for a moment and looked carefully at everyone in the carriage. He was about fifteen, short and stocky with high, tight shoulders, a mop of thick, jet-black hair and the broad features of a Mexican Indian. But something wasn’t right with him. He breathed in shallow pants as if catching the air was difficult. He was immaculately neat and clean in a checked shirt, ironed jeans and new-looking trainers, his longish hair carefully brushed back off his face, but his eyes, too wide, overtly staring at people, and with something bland and unknowing in them, suggested a young child trying to take in the world, not an adolescent in full possession of it.

  ‘Hi,’ he said in a deep, slow voice.

  People in the smoking coach acknowledged him.

  ‘Bit young to smoke, aren’t you?’ Conal asked.

  The boy took a couple of steps into the carriage, and stopped.

  ‘Hi,’ he said again. ‘I’m John.’

  The voice was too slow, the speech slightly slurred, the general invitation to greet him too open. There was something wrong with John. Born wrong or an accident. He walked up to a young woman in her mid-twenties with blonde hair and stood squarely in front of her.

  ‘Hi, I’m John.’ He waited.

  ‘Hi John,’ she said with a smile that showed she understood John had difficulty.

  John grinned hugely and stuck out his hand. He shook hands with the girl vigorously.

  ‘John, I’m John. Hi.’

  He went around the coach, stood in front of each of us, introduced himself, waited for each of us to say ‘Hi, John’, and then chuckled happily as he shook our hands. He returned to the first girl.

  ‘Hi, I’m John.’

  ‘I know,’ she said with a jokey impatience, but his eyes widened and his nodding face urged her to play her part. ‘OK. Hi, John.’ She held out her hand again to have it shaken.

  John took the hand and held on to it.

  ‘Can I hear you breathe?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I listen to you breathe? Can I? Please.’

  The girl looked mystified. John moved up close to her so that their knees touched, and bent down to rest the side of his face and one ear against her chest between her left breast and shoulder. She stiffened.

  ‘Breathe. Please breathe. Like this,’ John pleaded, and panted exaggeratedly to show her what to do. ‘Like that. Do it. Please. Do it.’

  The girl threw a look of helpless what-the-hell around the coach and panted a little, while we smiled at the comedy and at her willingness to do something for the unfortunate John. What the hell?

  ‘Don’t stop. More. Breathe harder,’ said John hunched over.

  She panted a little more and then stopped, taking John gently by the shoulders and lifting his face off her chest.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  John stood up and grinned hugely.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  Then it was my turn. John rested his head against my chest and I did a bit of panting. Virginia and a couple of other women declined to perform, but gently, with smiles. Bet agreed and did a quick pant. Then one of the men, all of whom had been looking on amazed, as much by our letting John put his head on our breast and panting for him as by the oddness of John’s wishes, said, ‘OK, that’s enough, John. I expect your parents are wondering where you are.’ The children’s hour was up.

  John grinned his understanding that his period with the grown-ups was over. All children know they are on borrowed time when adults indulge them. ‘OK. Bye,’ he called amiably and waved to everyone at the door.

  ‘Bye, John,’ we called.

  We laughed a little nervously when he left
and speculated about what was the matter with him. The men were uncertain.

  ‘Do you think it’s all right, him going around like that? Doing that stuff? Where are his parents?’

  ‘Having a well-earned break, probably,’ I said. ‘He’s harmless. It must feel good and safe having his ear against someone’s heart and hearing their breath.’ One of my cats does much the same thing.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Conal. ‘I bet. Can I have a go, Miss British?’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Virginia rasped. ‘You’re the wrong kind of retard.’

  A small spark of hatred lit up between them and then died.

  The women in the coach, even those who had refused to join in John’s game, conceded the weirdness of John’s public behaviour but recognised his infantile condition and his unconcealed needs. The men were disturbed and suspicious. Poor John, stopped in his emotional and intellectual tracks by something, was getting away with behaviour that they were forbidden. He was somehow cheating, and like older brothers no longer permitted the breast, they were battling with and failing to conceal their jealousy. Maybe, even, he was perfectly all right, but putting it on to get what he wanted: a cunning perve. Men knew about these things. And if he was a genuine retard, then who knew what he would do if he lost control. Desire without control was a terrifying prospect. Men knew about these things.

  ‘Well,’ Raymond’s defender, Chuck, said. ‘He ought to be supervised. You never know with these people.’

  There were masculine murmurs of agreement, even from the younger men. The women glanced at each other knowingly, I thought, and let it go. I assumed that what the women knew was not just about male anxiety, but also what I had noticed when John had his head on my chest and I looked down into the well between us: that he accompanied the pleasurable smile at the sound and vibration of another’s breath and heartbeat with rapid light movements of his hand on his penis under his jeans. It was more like vague flapping at himself than considered stroking. If it was masturbation, it was half-hearted, not designed to achieve an orgasm, almost an absent-minded accompaniment to his delight. He hadn’t touched any part of anyone’s body apart from with his cheek and ear. I presumed the other women had seen this, as I had, and concluded that it would be better if the men didn’t know.

  * * *

  Raymond slept through most of this, but the next time I looked at him, he was staring hard at me.

  ‘You’re an English lady,’ he told me. ‘Speak to me in your lovely English accent. Come over here and talk to me.’

  I sat next to him and told him where I came from in London.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know Hampstead. The Heath. Ah, you remind me of my past. I had a happy childhood. Now…’

  There was a rambling story of a privileged childhood in Ireland and England, of ex-wives, of money made and lost through carelessness and alimony, of a daughter who would have nothing to do with him, who had refused to take his call when he had phoned. He couldn’t remember what he had been doing in New Orleans. He lived in Los Angeles. Chuck, sitting opposite with the two boys, had found him (he himself had no recollection of anything until he was on the train) unconscious on the floor of the station concourse. People had stepped around him fastidiously, taking him for a drunken sleeping bum. In fact, although he was paralytic with drink, he had actually been knocked unconscious and mugged by some kids who had taken all his cash but who, in their hurry to get away in the busy station, had left his gold chain bracelet, expensive watch, credit cards and a return ticket for the Sunset Limited to LA. Thus he was penniless but his credit was good so he could buy drinks and cigarettes from the guy in the bar. Chuck had poured some coffee down him, taken him to the train after Raymond had refused to go to hospital or have anything to do with the cops, and battled with the conductor to allow Raymond to make the journey. Eventually, the conductor agreed on condition that Chuck remained responsible for him and with the proviso that if he caught Raymond drinking he would be thrown off the train at the next station. Chuck, who was listening to Raymond’s slurred and halting story, raised his eyebrows in a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture when I looked at him.

  ‘It’s the booze, you see,’ Raymond sighed, explaining everything. ‘But when you’ve lost everything because of the booze, you only have the booze left to comfort you.’

  We were in a different genre now. Raymond was one of those remorseful, hopeless, sentimental drunks that Hollywood did so well. James Mason in A Star is Born, Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. A bit of a gent who had had something to lose and who had lost it, all except the ghost of a bit of class, real or imagined. I have a soft spot for remorseful, hopeless, sentimental drunks. Raymond had trailed off and was asleep. I took the can of beer from his hand and put it on the table.

  ‘I can’t make him eat anything,’ Chuck said. ‘I got the bartender to refuse to sell him any more drink, but people keep buying him beer.’

  The two boys had left the carriage to get sandwiches.

  ‘It’s good of you to look out for him. And you’ve got your sons.’

  He shook his head and laughed a bit. ‘They’re not mine. They latched on to me at the station. Going to LA, back to their mother. They were in trouble with the police, just petty theft, kids’ stuff. I got the police to put them in my care until we get to LA. They’re good kids. Just a bit messed up.’

  Chuck was an all-purpose Samaritan. Maybe he travelled the rails doing good wherever it was needed. Perhaps the boys were the ones who had rolled Raymond, and Chuck had scooped the whole damn lot of them into his care. Or maybe Chuck was a railroad Fagin who still had his eyes on Raymond’s bracelet and watch. Or the Pied Piper. Anything was possible. Everything was a raw component in a story that had not been finalised. We were on a train, out of the way of our lives, any of us could tell any story we liked. We were, for the time being, just the story we told.

  ‘Do you live in LA?’

  ‘No. Just making a visit.’ He had no more to say about himself. The two boys came back carrying cans. ‘Hey, guys, I said no beer. You’re underage.’

  They moaned a little but handed the cans over. It seemed they wanted to be in someone’s charge.

  Raymond snorted awake. He turned to look at me, and sighed. More like Alice’s White Knight than James Mason. He sloped towards me, partly leaning against my shoulder for support, partly speaking confidentially close to my ear. He stroked my upper arm gently with his fingertips.

  ‘You’ve got such silky skin. And the way you speak. If only I had met you a few years ago. I could have offered you … You could have loved me and I’d never have got into this mess…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Raymond. I’m not very good at relationships.’

  I wasn’t keen on the notion that it was only an accident of timing that had kept us apart; not for either of us. I didn’t think it would help him much to have something else to mourn, and I didn’t like his appropriation of my alternative past. That story was mine to play with. I resented the twinge of guilt I had to suppress at not having turned up in time to prevent Raymond sliding into alcoholism. Still, I spoke gently, because what else do hopeless drunks have but their recollection of pasts that never happened? He wasn’t listening. He’d shifted to a present which suddenly had become to him as tractable as his own history.

  ‘Come and live with me in North Beach. I’ve got enough money to take care of you. You wouldn’t want for anything, I swear. I’d stop drinking if I had you, I know I would. I wouldn’t need to drink, I’d have everything I wanted. I’d cherish you. We’d be so good together. There’s culture in LA. We’d go to the theatre and read books, and walk by the sea. What do you say? I mean it. We could be happy.’

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t think it was my place. He wasn’t really talking to me. He was merely musing on how life was supposed to have turned out. It was all very simple, how could it have gone so complicatedly wrong? He gazed into the how-it-might-have-been.

  ‘All I want … all I want is to wake up in the m
orning next to you still asleep with your leg flung over my thigh. Is that too much to ask?’ he murmured, and then turned to me directly. ‘To feel the weight of your sweet silken leg stretched out across my thigh when I wake in the morning. Is that too much to ask?’

  Well, yes, it was. I was quite sorry that it was, because as wishes go it didn’t seem unreasonable, but it was, in fact, too much to ask, or at any rate more than was going to happen. My leg had other places to be. My own plans and daydreams didn’t reside in Long Beach with a recovering alcoholic. But for a fleeting second it didn’t seem too much to ask as I caught the image of our two bodies, entangled from the exertions of love, drifted into sleep … The morning sun glows through the bedroom curtains and Raymond wakes, filled with a new life and a love that cleared away the mess to reveal quiet joy and contentment. I wake, we smile, sip coffee. Beneath his sloughed off self-destructive shell I’ve discovered layers of knowledge and being that astonish me with their understanding and grace. His drunken intuition was right. We are matched: companions and lovers, settled into a gentle, long-term alliance, two halves come together, at last easy. We kiss good morning and there are no more battles to be fought. Is it really too much to ask? Couldn’t an act of will, a leap of faith, make it possible? Why not an accident of timing not missed and regretted, but presented and taken right now in the present? Why shouldn’t people make good things happen? Just ordinary good things, love, contentment. Is that too much to ask? Why not take a random encounter and a sentimental fantasy and make them into a fact? Say yes to Raymond. Follow the fleeting whim. Take a risk, turn life upside-down and head for North Beach. What’s to stop this story from being the one where she gets on a train, takes an unnecessary journey, meets a drunk and turns it deliberately into a happily-ever-after? Make it happen. Why shouldn’t happiness (whatever that is) be made to happen; we make unhappiness happen all the time? It’s true I’m not unhappy in my real life, that it is very close to precisely how I want it to be. And it’s true that the rescue fantasies of drunks are invariably built on sand. I also know that the chances of my being content with anyone who wears a gold bracelet are very slim. But to what extent is what someone else needs more important than what I want? What if I could be just plain useful to Raymond’s life? What do I ever do for other people? Isn’t my life good because I please myself? Why should I have it so easy? Why not make the effort to be with someone who is light years from my heart and mind? Who the hell do I think I am?