And then, as quickly as it has arrived — a moment no longer than a greeting, really, a furtive kiss, the pouring of a cup of tea — it is gone, rumbling away into the infinite darkness whence it came, leaving in its wake a strange hollow silence in which can be heard the soft fall of resettling litter, a gasp, or perhaps a sigh, steps hurrying through the underpasses. The pale swirling clouds of steam and smoke left behind obscure everything, as though insisting, at least for the moment, upon a complete erasure of all that has preceded the boat train's hurtling passage, but soon enough they dissolve and the old familiar structures reemerge, as of course (though not without their own aura of mystery) they must: the posts and girders, gates, electric lamps, hanging clock, the signs (REFRESHMENT ROOM, WAY OUT, CAPSTAN CIGARETTES, MILFORD JUNCTION), the directional signals and warning lights, anonymous sheds and towers, and here, facing each other across the gleaming rails between them like mirrored stages, the pairs of canopied platforms with their benches and railings, heavy wooden carts of stacked luggage, vending machines and hoardings, their pools of dull light and deep shadows, their incessant drama of arrival and departure.
There is more to this lively market town, to be sure, than its railway station. Indeed, the citizens of Milford do not really think of the station at Milford Junction as part of their town at all, but rather as a sort of outer gate through which flow all the people who come here from the villages around, drawn to the bustling High Street with its chemists, gift shops, cafés, cinemas, and tobacconists — on sunny days, there's even the occasional barrel organist, playing such old favorites as "Let the Great Big World Keep Turning" — to do their week's shopping, change their library books, have lunch together, perhaps go to the pictures. There are factories here and coal mines, a widely admired war memorial, even a famous hospital for the treatment of the specific form of pneumoconiosis known as anthracosis. It's all perfectly ordinary perhaps to those who live here, but quite thrilling, you know, if you're from some place like Churley or Ketchworth. Milford: it's like a magical storybook place, just waiting to be filled up, to be, for one wildly happy moment (though it can't last of course, nothing lasts, really) inhabited — - just the name alone makes you feel like laughing! It's like watching the pictures and being in them at the same time, as though one might be able somehow to eat the world with one's eyes, if that's not too idiotic. Milford! Well, it's easy to be a little foolish in a place like this. There are wonderful botanical gardens with lakes on which swans preen and small boys sail their boats, and picturesque pathways where nannies push their prams, and landing stages for rowboats and canals with funny low bridges and lovely old boathouses along the shore. With luck, after a brisk row, one can get a cup of tea from the boatman, warm up around his potbellied Ideal boiler, dry out wet clothing, if there is any, have a little chat. And just beyond Milford, there's the countryside with its stone bridges and pretty little streams and pubs and wintry hills — pleasures that are at once innocent and yet quite terrifying, as though this gentle landscape might contain dreadful precipices, dangerously alluring abysses into which one might, in a moment of utter but delicious madness, throw oneself. Well, in a manner of speaking, of course.
But at night all this vanishes and there is only the Milford Junction railway station. It's almost as though the citizens of Milford might be mistaken: as though the market town of which they're so proud might be little more than a theatrical performance put on each day for the customers giving up their tickets on arrival at the Milford Junction Station barrier, then folding up each night as the customers return, a setting as ephemeral, as phantasmal as those of the afternoon pictures down at the Palladium or the Palace. One approaches the station by way of an overpass with a rather splendid view through the tall iron fence (if one is not too preoccupied to notice) of the lights of the town, seen through the steam billowing up from the railway tracks below like fog on the moors, casting huge cloudy symbols, as it were (one thinks, if one's a poetry addict, unavoidably of Keats), and other strange illusions into the air, along with those bits of grit which sometimes get in people's eyes. A long descent follows, as though to suggest a sinking of the heart, even though it's been a lovely day and one's just had such fun — of course, that's part of the difficulty, isn't it, one so looks forward to these days in Milford, and then, hardly before they've begun, they're already over, it doesn't seem to be any time at alclass="underline" yet another reminder (as if one needed reminding!) that nothing, not even life, lasts very long. It's enough to bring tears to one's eyes, and sometimes does, never mind the grit and the rest of it.
The platforms are reached by way of the large booking hall and the ticket barrier, manned as always by Mr. Godby, and then, if one's destination so requires, by a further descent through subterranean underpasses, noted for their harsh triangulated lighting, the litter blowing through them whenever the trains rumble overhead, the couples kissing furtively in shadowy niches even as they hurry through, as though the faintly shameful atmosphere of these bowel-like passages had, however briefly, to be tasted. On the platforms themselves, silhouetted figures can be seen, dressed in ordinary macs or belted trenchcoats, leaning on posts, reading newspapers, perhaps sitting on benches, smoking pipes and cigarettes. Others walk in and out of the puddles of light cast by the dull bulbs above, umbrellas and overnight cases in their hands or purses under their arms, checking their watches, showing signs of impatience and fatigue, appearing and disappearing like actors moving on and off stage, an inexpressibly vulgar observation perhaps, yet somehow as irresistible in this peculiarly detached place as those stolen kisses in the subways below. When trains come and go, there is a sudden surge of activity as people clatter hastily through the underpasses, jump on and off trains, exchange frantic hugs and kisses and farewell glances, and then there are whistles and loud hissings, the slamming of carriage doors, shouts, the rolling of steel wheels, the extraction of last-minute promises ("Next Thursday!" "Yes, next Thursday!"), and the trains rumble out of the station, their taillights vanishing into the dark. In the ensuing silence, the remaining passengers lean once more against posts, or pace back and forth through the pools of light, while porters push carts of luggage past, and stationmasters check their watches, then cross the tracks on foot, hop up on platform number 2 and 3, and, following the pointing hand silhouetted on the sign above, enter the refreshment room for a cup of tea.
Eventually, of course, one will arrive home in Ketchworth or Churley, or wherever, to husbands and wives, a sick child perhaps, children certainly, well or ill, problems with maids, the unwrapping of packages and stories about Milford ("I meant to do it, Fred, I really meant to do it!" "Good for you!"), a bit of provincial social life or else a quiet supper at home, then the latest book from Boots perhaps, some music on the wireless, crossword puzzles or house calls (if one's a general practitioner, for example), the obligatory sewing basket from which wild horses can't seem to drag one, and finally off to bed — but, first, before boarding the homebound train, there's almost always time for a cup of tea in the refreshment room at Milford Junction Station. Indeed, a day in Milford is not quite complete without it — an overly long film at the Palladium or an encounter with gossiping acquaintances who talk and talk and talk till one wants to strangle them, then a flying last-minute dash to the station just as the train is pulling in and no time for tea, why, it simply spoils everything.