I have always liked trains. The old ones were best, of course, their soot-black engines venting bursts of steam and chuffing links of stylised white smoke, and the carriages rattling and yawing and the wheels violently clanging—so much might and effort, yet producing such a gay and toy-like effect. And then the way the landscape seemed to rotate like a vast, slow wheel, or to keep opening like a fan, and the telegraph wires dipped and slid, and birds flew past the window backwards, slowly, effortfully, like so many discarded bits of black rag.
How broad and flat the silence is that spreads along a station platform in summer when the train pulls out. I was the only one who had got off. The fat-necked station master in his peaked cap and navy-blue coat spat on the line and ambled off, that hoop thing he had got from the driver—was it? or from the guard in the guard’s van?—dangling on his shoulder. Parched grass on the far side of the track made ticking noises in the sun. A crow was perched on a post. I went through the little green gate up to the road. Dimly I saw, with a sort of inward undulation like that of a heavy black curtain stirring in a cold wind, how mad a thing it was to have come here like this; but still, no, I did not care, I would not care. I was too far gone to go back, and anyway there would not be an up train for hours. I took out of my pocket the packet of sandwiches my mother had made for me and hurled it across the track into the grass, as a pledge of my commitment, I suppose, of my determination not to be daunted. The crow on the post gave a put-upon squawk and unwrapped its wings of black crape and with a few lazy flaps flew down inexpectantly to investigate. All this had happened before somewhere.
The Beach Hotel, where the Grays were staying, a long, low, one-storeyed establishment with a glassed-in veranda, was a hotel in name only, being hardly more than a boarding-house, though a distinct cut above the shabby place my mother kept. I flitted past, not daring even to glance in the direction of those many sky-reflecting panes. What if Billy or, more calamitously, Kitty, were to come out and see me there? How would I account for myself? I did not have the necessary props to support an alibi, not even swimming trunks or a towel. I went on down the road, and presently came to a gap between a café and a shop that led on to the beach. The morning was hot, and I thought of buying the ice cream my mother had given me the money for, but decided to wait, since I did not know how long this day might last. I was already regretting the sandwiches I had so profligately thrown away.
I went and sat on the beach, and made a funnel of my fist and let sand pour through it while I gazed dolefully out to sea. The water with the sun on it was a broad sheet of rapidly bobbing sharp metallic flakes, old-gold, silver, chrome. People were out walking their dogs, and there were a few swimmers in the sea already, splashing and squealing. I was sure that all eyes were on me, that I was the centre of attention. What if that old boy with the bulldog, for instance, or that skinny woman with the sprig of lilac in the band of her straw hat, what if one of them were to become suspicious and challenge me—what defence of my idle presence would I be able to offer? And Mrs Gray, what would she say when she saw me, what would she do? There were times when she was for me only another adult, just as preoccupied and unpredictable and prone to outbursts of unreasoning anger; just as unlike me, that is, as all the rest of the grown-up world.
I stayed squatting there miserably in the sand for what seemed at least an hour but which when I checked by the clock on the bell-tower of the Protestant church behind the beach turned out to have been not a full ten minutes. I got up and brushed myself down and set off to walk through the village, to see what might be seen, which was only the usuaclass="underline" holiday-makers in wide shorts and silly hats, shops with clusters of beach balls in the doorways and ice-cream machines that whirred and thumped, golfers on the golf course in sleeveless yellow pullovers and big shoes with frilled wings. Sunlight glanced on passing windscreens and made sharp shadows in gateways. I stopped to watch a dog fight between three dogs but it was quickly over. As I was going by the galvanised-iron church I thought I spotted Kitty approaching on a bike and hid behind a hedge, my heart a hot lump struggling in my chest like a cat in a sack.
In those echoless caverns of empty time, being unobserved, unnoticed, I became increasingly detached from myself, increasingly disembodied. At moments I seemed to have become a phantom, and felt that I might walk up to people and pass straight through them and they would not even register a breath. At midday I bought a bun and a bar of chocolate and ate them sitting on a bench outside Myler’s grocery shop. Boredom and the beating sun were making me feel slightly sick. In desperation I began to devise stratagems so that I could call at the Beach Hotel and ask for Mrs Gray. I had got on the Rossmore train by mistake and was stranded here and needed to borrow the fare home; there had been an attempted break-in at their house on the square and I had rushed down to tell them of it; Mr Gray had thrown himself out of the carriage on the way up because Miss Flushing had threatened to jilt him, and they were still searching along the tracks for his mangled body—what did it matter? I was ready to say anything. But still I wandered, agitated and desolate, and the time went slower and slower.
I did encounter Billy. It was the most peculiar thing. I turned a corner and ran smack into him. He was coming from the public tennis courts, along with three or four other fellows, none of whom I knew. We faltered, Billy and I, then stopped, and stared. Stanley and Livingstone could not have been more startled. Billy was in tennis whites, a cream-coloured jumper with a blue band tied by the arms around his waist, and carried a racket—no, two rackets, I see them, both of them in shiny new wooden presses. He blushed, and I am sure I did, too, in the exquisite awkwardness of the moment. We both began to say something at the same time, and stopped. This was not supposed to have happened, we were not supposed to meet here like this—what did I mean by being here, anyway? And what was to be done? Billy was trying to hide those two rackets in their ostentatious presses, holding them down at his side with a show of negligence. The others had gone on a little way but now they paused, and looked back at us with not much curiosity. Mark, I was not thinking of Mrs Gray or my purpose in being there, that was not what was making for this discomfiting sensation, this hot mixture of embarrassment, dull dread and sharp annoyance. Then what was? Just the surprise, I suppose, the being caught off-guard. It was as if we had both become unfairly entangled in something shaming and could not think how to extricate ourselves; in a moment it seemed we would be snarling at each other, like two beasts halted snout to snout on a jungle path. Then everything suddenly relaxed, and Billy did his lopsided and faintly apologetic smile, ducking his head to one side—for a moment he was his mother—and with eyes downcast stepped past me, in a gingerly sinuous fashion, as if he were negotiating a barbed and bristling obstacle that had risen in his way. He spoke a word, too, that I did not catch, and went on to join his new seaside friends, who by now were grinning in ignorant enjoyment of what they had seen and had not understood. I could make out clearly the still reddened back of Billy’s neck. One of them clapped him on the shoulder, as if he had come valiant and safe through some tricky trial, and then they went on together, laughing, and a second one of them put an arm around Billy’s shoulders and glanced back at me with spiteful scorn. It all was done with so quickly that as I walked on it was as if it had not happened at all, and with a calm that surprised me I resumed my wanderings.
It was eerie how often that day I seemed to see—no, how often I saw Mrs Gray appear out of the throngs of summer people. She was everywhere, a tantalising brightness flitting among so many featureless shades. It was exhausting, coping with these surges of joyful recognition that no sooner rose up in me than they were dashed down again. It was like being teased by a mischievous and cruel-hearted sprite playing hide-and-seek with me among the drifting crowd. The more often I spied her and immediately lost her again the more maddened with longing for her I became, until I thought I should faint, or lose my reason, if the real she did not soon appear. Yet when she did, I had seen so many imaginary versions of her that I did not at first believe my eyes.