The Train

by Sarah Bourne

  ‘Just a moment – Felice, isn’t it?’

  She swung round, nodded, and took a few steps towards him. Lawrence cleared his throat, looked from one to the other, and said, ‘You must both know this can’t be allowed. This relationship has to end.’ He turned to Felice who was standing next to Liam again, as if shielding him from his father. ‘Liam needs to be with his family at this time, as I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Felice is my family,’ said Liam simply.

  ‘Liam and I have made plans, Mr Kelly. You needn’t worry about him. Now, sorry, but I must go – my dad’s waiting for me.’ She kissed Liam on the cheek, said goodbye to Lawrence, and left.

  Standing in the corridor, fists clenched, Lawrence for a moment was unsure what to do. Making a decision, he said, ‘Liam, I need to talk to you. Stay here, I’ll be right back,’ and ran off after the girl.

  As he went, he heard Liam say, ‘Can’t wait.’ Lawrence heard the sarcasm in his son’s voice and considered going back to tackle him, but he actually could wait. Or he could go and talk about his feelings to one of the staff, fill their ears with more rubbish or smear a bit of paint around and call it therapy. Lawrence would talk to him about that but right now he needed to talk to the girl.

  Lawrence marched back to the hospital, fists clenched. He couldn’t believe that black man and his daughter had been so rude to him and that he’d let them put words in his mouth. He, a Queen’s Counsel, had been bettered by a bloody nigger. He smirked at his own use of the word. He secretly loved it, it was so un-PC, and yet, perfect for what it described. So he was racist. So what? At least he admitted it unlike all the politicians who wrapped themselves in knots to say the right thing, even though he knew they felt exactly the same way he did.

  There’d been a black boy at school; Pious Kawande had been the son of a minor chief in some ex-colonial African shitpile from which anyone who could afford it still sent their children to boarding school in the old country. He’d been quiet, spoke English with the same accent as Prince Philip, played cricket as well as any other boy and joined the army cadets. Lawrence had made friends with him in their first week, both small for their age, new, scared and lonely. It didn’t take long before Greenwood and Beauchamp started putting the pressure on – taking the tuck his mother sent him, calling him a nigger lover, scratching under their arms like a chimpanzee every time they walked past. Over the first term Lawrence and Pious were ostracised, never asked to dorm parties, not picked for teams in games classes. After the Christmas holidays Lawrence went back to school and ignored Pious. He was, after all, the reason Lawrence wasn’t making other friends, wasn’t included in things, and he so desperately wanted to be included. He had a father who hardly seemed to know his name and a mother who was more interested in golf than she was in her son. He had always hoped at boarding school he would be able to make a niche for himself, that it would be a place where he felt important and liked. Lawrence grew in popularity and Pious shrank into the corners. But he never said anything to Lawrence, never questioned his change of heart, showed anger or upset at his friend deserting him. And Lawrence hated him for his weakness in the way that only shame can make you hate someone.

  If he had his way immigration would be slashed. Mind you, he thought Farage and his gang were going too far. There was private opinion and there was political beat-up. It didn’t do anyone any good to incite violence and that was what concerned Lawrence about this whole Brexit circus. Britain had once been Great when it could rely on its own empire, but these days one had to be pragmatic – they needed Europe and the Europeans. If that meant having to take their share of refugees and immigrants, it was the price they had to pay. And he had to admit most of them were okay. Intelligent, hard-working, tax-paying individuals had a place in British society. Small ‘s’ society only, of course. Everyone needed a Paki shop nearby, and who else would clean the hospitals?

  Taking the steps two at a time, he entered the building again, looking for Liam. He wasn’t where he had left him, where he had told him to wait. Typical. He went into the ward and approached the nurses’ station.

  ‘My son – where is he?’ he asked, interrupting a conversation between the two staff members there. At least, he assumed they were staff. No one wore uniforms so it was hard to tell.

  ‘Your son?’ said a pimply man turning to him.

  ‘Liam Kelly.’ Lawrence drummed his fingers on the counter.

  ‘Oh, Liam. I think he’s playing table tennis in the games room.’

  A fucking games room? What was this place, a resort or a hospital? Lawrence raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Just through there.’ The man pointed across the room. A door was open and when he glanced over Lawrence could see a couple of people moving in and out of view. He left the nurses’ station without a thank you and approached the games room.

  ‘Liam,’ he said, standing at the door.

  ‘Wait.’ His son didn’t even glance over at him.

  Lawrence felt his blood pressure rise. He looked at his watch. Damn. This would have to wait. He needed to get to his chambers.

  ‘Don’t think you’re getting away with this. I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘Promises, promises.’ Liam hit a winning shot, wide down the backhand side.

  Lawrence wished his son was ten again and he could take him over his knee and give him the thrashing he needed.

  In the taxi on his way across London he decided to refer the matter of Liam back to Deidra. It was her fault he was so unruly, after all. And he would cut off his allowance so he had to move back home under their supervision. Only then could they be sure he wouldn’t do anything stupid again. And it would get Deidra off his back having her son at home again. She needed a project. Satisfied he’d worked it all out, he turned his thoughts to the afternoon ahead.

  Dyson, the clerk, greeted him as he walked into the chambers.

  ‘Mr Beauchamp was asking when you’d be in. He wanted your opinion on the Dawson case, I believe.’

  Lawrence nodded to him but didn’t stop to talk. He closed the door of his office behind him, put his briefcase next to his desk and took a deep breath. George Beauchamp had become his best friend at school, after which they’d gone to university together and were now in the same chambers. And he’d married his sister. Greenwood, their other school friend, had become an accountant. They still got together regularly for a drink. He sighed and looked around his office. He loved this room with its oak panelling and thick carpet, the mahogany desk polished daily by a cleaner whose name he should remember but didn’t, till it gleamed with a dark sheen. The latticed window looked out over the inner courtyard with its ancient oak tree, stone birdbath in the centre and the neatly-trimmed grass no one ever walked on. Here he was at home. Here he was treated with respect. Here no one told him to wait and muttered under their breath when he spoke.

  He’d talk to Beauchamp later, but now he sat and turned on his computer. After staring at the screen for a while he realised he couldn’t concentrate on work. The morning had unsettled him more than he had thought. Not only Liam. The suicide.

  He hadn’t told the guard quite the whole story earlier. It was true his grandfather had driven a train and that a man had thrown himself in front of it. What he hadn’t added was that it had been his grandfather’s own brother. The two had been close, brothers who had grown up on an isolated croft on the west coast of Ireland and had left home together in the 1920s to seek a better life in England. Lawrence’s grandfather, Conor, had found himself a job on the trains, and Sean had become a clerk in an insurance company, being better at his letters than his older brother. They’d lived together in a rooming house, looked after by the fearsome Mrs Deakin. All went well until the brothers met Dora Fairweather, and both took a shine to her. When she made it clear she favoured Sean, Conor became so jealous he wouldn’t talk to his brother anymore. He moved to another rooming house and ignored Sean’s overtures. When he heard through a mutual acquaintance that Sean had broken
off with Dora in order to make peace with him, Conor went straight round to Dora’s to offer what he could in the way of solace. Four months later Dora died on the table of a backstreet abortionist, and Sean was thrown into despair. He’d given up the girl he loved to make peace with his brother and had been betrayed by both. The only way he could think of getting back at Conor was to make his brother the agent of his death since he had nothing left to live for.

  What must it have been like, Lawrence wondered, to have been driving that train? Seeing the man on the tracks and applying the brakes. And as the train began to slow down, recognising his brother. Pulling harder on the brake, the wheels locking and even in the engine room he would have smelled the metal wheels overheating, would have seen the sparks flying. The noise would have been deafening. How would it have felt to look into his brother’s eyes at the final moment before contact? Lawrence shuddered. He couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to imagine.

  Conor never drove a locomotive again but went back to the railway as an apprentice engineer, vowing to find a way to make the brakes more effective. Too late to save Sean. Too late to save himself. A few years later he invented the gadget that started him on the road to fortune. He’d become very wealthy but he’d been driven by his grief and anger. Too many nights he was carried to bed so drunk he couldn’t get there himself, too many days he spent alone, wandering his estate, shouting at the trees, the sky, the universe, shooting wildly at noises in the woods, riding his horses into the ground. Lawrence had been terrified of him as a child, and scornful of him as an adolescent. By the time he died, he hadn’t seen him for over a year.

  He shook his head to rid himself of the thoughts. Enough was enough. It was old news, and nothing could be done about it anymore.

  He buzzed Dyson.

  ‘I need to see Paula. Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kelly. She was in court this morning, but she should be back soon. I’ll send her in directly when she returns.’

  Lawrence spent the time until Paula arrived looking out the window. A sparrow played in the birdbath, pecking at the water and shaking its head, spreading its feathers and puffing out its chest to ward off the starling that approached. The bigger bird wasn’t intimidated, though, and the sparrow flew off and perched on the branch of the oak tree. Lawrence could almost hear it muttering to itself about the injustice.

  A knock at the door brought him back. He never daydreamed. He was concerned about himself. What a waste of time.

  ‘Ah, Paula,’ he greeted his pupil. ‘Come in.’

  Paula was tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned. She had an armful of files which she put on the desk and stood waiting for Lawrence to tell her what he wanted.

  Lawrence was struck by her beauty, as he always was when he saw her. By the sheer elegance of her. She’d danced as a child, she’d told him when he commented on her poise but told him nothing more about herself. She was a mystery he often found himself puzzling over. She spoke well, but her CV told him she’d been to a state school. She’d topped her year at university but taken a year out to work in an orphanage in Africa somewhere. He would have thought she would have gone in for humanitarian law after something like that but here she was, a pupil of criminal law under his supervision.

  ‘Sit.’ He gestured to the sofa against the back wall of his office, away from the window.

  Paula sat with her knees together, hands clasped in her lap. She couldn’t know what a turn-on Lawrence found the demure maiden posture. He felt his cock stir.

  ‘How was court this morning?’ he asked.

  Paula gave him a detailed rundown of the case they were working on. It was at a stage of the proceedings where he wasn’t required to be there – Alasdair, one of his juniors, was well enough equipped to deal with the mundane stuff and Paula, as a pupil, was lucky to be able to shadow him in court. Still, he thought, he would have preferred to be there next to her than in that bloody case conference.

  Paula shifted her position and Lawrence realised he’d been staring at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Lot on my mind today.’

  ‘Anything I can help with?’

  Lawrence turned the question over in his mind. If only his son would choose a girl like her – not that she’d give him a second look, of course. But if Liam aimed higher perhaps he’d start making something of himself. But then he wouldn’t be able to have her himself. And he wanted her.

  ‘What are your ambitions?’ he asked.

  Paula looked taken aback at the abrupt change of topic.

  ‘I want to take silk, eventually.’

  Lawrence nodded, rubbed his chin. ‘Takes a long time, a few showcase trials and a lot of help from your superiors.’ He shook his head as if he was sad to have to impart this information to her. As if, if he had his way, things would be different.

  ‘I’m prepared to work hard, you know that.’ Paula looked him in the eye.

  ‘Oh, I have no doubt about that but it takes more than just hard work. I don’t admit this to many people, but there is an element of luck in it too.’ He held his hands up in front of him to stop her from interrupting. ‘I know what you’re going to say – it should be based purely on merit and I agree, it should. It really should. But that’s not how it is.’

  He glanced at his pupil who was looking at him from her place on the sofa. He unbuttoned his jacket and sat beside her.

  ‘I can help you, Paula. I’m willing to help you.’

  She edged away from him so she was sitting right against the arm of the sofa. ‘Thank you.’ She smoothed her skirt over her knees. ‘I should get on – unless you wanted to go through the court documents I brought?’ She indicated the pile of files on the desk.

  Lawrence didn’t even look at them. ‘Another time.’ He placed his hand on her thigh. ‘I want to help you, Paula.’

  She stood abruptly. ‘Thank you, but I’m not going to have sex with you to get ahead. If that’s the kind of help you’re offering, I’m not interested.’

  Lawrence also stood, facing her, too close. ‘No, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’ He stroked her arm, looked into her eyes. ‘I just want to give you every opportunity, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m going now. I propose we forget this conversation ever happened.’ She took her files and left.

  Fuck, thought Lawrence. Fuck her. None of his pupils had turned him down before. What made her think she was so bloody special? Trashy little bitch. And now what was he going to do? He hated to admit it, but being rejected by her had given him a massive hard-on. He sat behind his desk and buzzed Dyson again. ‘Send Margot in, would you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Margot didn’t have the intelligence of Paula, nor the looks, but she was savvy. She knew how to get on in the world. She’d practically launched herself at him from the first day she arrived in his chambers.

  She smiled as she entered. ‘What can I do for you, Lawrence?’

  ‘I’ve had a bloody awful morning and I need to take my mind off it somehow.’

  She walked round behind him and started massaging his shoulders. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. She wore a heavy, musky scent that sent him into a fantasy about a voluptuous whore lying amongst silk cushions, legs spread wide, begging him to fuck her. He turned and lifted her skirt. Margot tensed but didn’t stop him as he pulled her tights and knickers down, still with his eyes closed, still enjoying the image of the whore. He slid a hand between her thighs. She gasped and moved round to straddle him but he took her arm and stopped her. Nodding towards the couch on the other side of the room, he said, ‘On your knees. Please.’

  She looked momentarily surprised and then did as he said, her forearms resting on the sofa. He knelt behind her, stroking her buttocks, enjoying the smooth roundness of them, then unzipped himself.

  He thought of Paula as he reached round and under her shirt to fondle her breasts, as he kissed her neck, as he thrust deep inside her. She braced herself against the sofa as he plunged deepe
r and deeper and then she started rolling her hips and moaning. With a grunt, he came and eased back onto his heels, pulling her with him, so she was sitting on him. He was still inside her but he’d lost interest already. Margot leant back against him momentarily, but it felt too intimate a gesture and Lawrence pushed her upright again.

  ‘How’s the case?’ he asked.

  ‘Going well, I think. We weren’t in court today, but we’re getting ready for the summing up at the moment. The defence was exactly what we expected, so we had it all covered.’

  ‘Good. Better get back to it.’ He lifted her off him and she pulled her knickers up, pulled her skirt down, looked at her reflection in the window, smoothed her hair down and left.

  Lawrence took his laundered handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped himself, zipped his trousers, and went to his computer. He’d decide what to do about Paula later but one thing was for sure – she wouldn’t get admitted to the Bar if he had anything to do with it, let alone make silk.

  Lawrence was in a foul mood. Nothing had gone his way all day, through no fault of his own. He’d considered staying in town at his flat in Camden but decided he couldn’t face a solitary dinner and the call to Deidra to tell her he wouldn’t be home. She didn’t like him staying in town at the best of times and hated it now she was incapacitated. She expected him to come home every night to bring the world to her since she couldn’t go out to embrace its wonders.

  And then, having made the effort to go home some bloody woman mutters something under her breath when he accidentally bumps into her at the station. Well, sorry, love – you asked for it, standing there like a stuffed rabbit in the middle of a busy concourse.

  He fished his keys out of his pocket as he headed for the car park. He’d had to park further away than usual because Deidra had been talking at him as he was leaving that morning and delayed his departure by a critical two or three minutes. He peeled off his coat and threw it and his briefcase onto the passenger seat of the Merc and got in.