A Familiar Stranger

A Familiar Stranger

It is the dead end of the year.

Swirling mist hangs on the air, and shifts and settles, folding itself on the night. A sharp, biting frost waits in the darkness wherein distances are immeasurable, and yet everything seems close. 

On the horizon, a faint and sickly yellowed glimmer, like a three day bruise turning ugly.

Drawn to that dull light, a large figure, tall, broad shouldered and stoop-backed, dressed in a black coat, makes its way slowly, each step steady and sure. 

The mist shifts, revealing a small signal-box alongside iron rails and the dark cut of a concrete platform ahead: a small country stop. A local station, no more than an outpost, remote and now little used. It sits on a limb that is part of an ailing body of lines that will be cut in the spring. 

Tonight, the rails are cold as death and silent. 

The mist swirls.

The figure moves slowly towards the faint sodium glow of two lamps: and the faintest tinge of red, leaking from the building.

A wound bleeding.

The mist is dark grey and nuzzles against the window panes as if expecting to be let in. Familiar, over-curious and persistent, cat-like in essence. 

The figure, moves silently. It approaches with intent, with stealth, as if stalking. 

It. 

A male walk. A male bulk. But something feline about it.

Inside the signal-box, reminiscent of the cab of a steam train, and too small for him, sits the Signalman. The room is stuffy, over hot; the dull red of the fire seeps into the night through the greasy glass of dirty windows. The Signalman is a tall man with broad shoulders, slightly stooped, and although uncomfortably perched top-heavy on a hard wooden chair, he half dozes in the heat. His face is lined with age. His hair is thinning and grey.

At his side, on a table, a stained mug of cold tea dregs, a half-empty carton of milk, a half-eaten packet of biscuits. His black leather gloves wait. He might have gone home hours ago, but he has stayed, because home holds no cheer. Home is empty: a poorly furnished bed-sit, a two-bar electric fire, a two ring cooker squeezed into a corner, draughty windows and a cold bed. His life is one of sad dull empty routine: rise, work, eat, sleep. Rise, work, eat, sleep. But in the main, work, for in his life, the station is the better place: it accepts him more readily. It functions to his touch in a way his stark bed-sit never could, for that place holds memories of all he would wish to forget; a failed marriage, empty years, a childless, loveless and lonely existence. Moreover, the detritus of a spiteful divorce, followed by serious illness; milestones marking the bitter, bleak journey of his life.

The tall figure comes out of the night, but he is part of the darkness that comes with him. His steps are slow and deliberate through the mist that parts a moment, then closes again. It clothes him.

Inside the signal-box, the large clock marks the time in its slow tick and slow tock. The Signalman shifts in the chair and settles once more, half asleep, cocooned in a warm fug.

A short sharp rap on the window pane startles him awake. 

Jeez!

Turning, he catches a face at the window. Pale forehead. Dark eyes. But the glass, blackened by the winter dark, gives a mirror image of his own face, faint, pale, almost ghost-like, looking out, pinned against the stranger’s face, looking in. For a moment, the one superimposes itself on the other. One a look of fright and surprise, of shock, even. The other, blank and emotionless. Dead pan.

The brass handle on the door rattles and the Signalman watches as it slowly turns. With a slight shudder against the frame, the door opens. In comes a tongue of mist, and in its draught, the timetable notices on the pin board lift.

The Signalman’s heart races.

Against the mist and the dark, in the dim light of the room, a stranger stands there - broad shoulders, black greatcoat, black leather gloves, black boots. Distinctive of stature, but the face is expressionless, set with dark, penetrating eyes. In that moment, the Signalman has the idea the stranger is somehow familiar, known to him: face to face, they are alike; similar in frame, similar in appearance. They might be related, brothers even. 

He dismisses the idea.

You can’t...

The Signalman stops.

Unheeding, the stranger moves in to the room, and the space available seems to shrink.

Look, I’m sorry, but...

The words die on his tongue. The Signalman half raises a hand to remonstrate, but somehow, gestures seem as futile as words. There is a silent space between them which the Signalman finds menacing - this is his domain, and the stranger an intruder. 

The stranger crosses the floor and stands before the fire and the red glow of coals colours his coat. Gloves are removed slowly and one hand warmed, then the other. The gloves are placed on the table beside the Signalman’s. Slowly, deliberately, coat buttons are undone and the stranger moves across the room to hang the coat on the spare hook: side by side, the coats are two shapeless quantities of black. In that simple gesture, he stakes his claim.

In the grate, the embers shift and rearrange themselves. A coal hisses. Tiny flames flicker as the fire begins its slow decline to ashes. Silence pervades the room and a coldness creeps in.

I’m afraid…

Ignoring him, the stranger gazes into the flames. The Signalman tries again.

I was…

The stranger’s face is dead-pan.

I’m just about to lock up and go…

He glances at the clock, as if to reinforce his words: it counts slowly: each second is struck with a dull blow. It is twelve past twelve: the red second hand reaches the top of the dial and begins its slow descent. 

In the room, there is that settling of everything into one hard chiseled and concentrated moment; there is a chilling calm that is the blood pumping deep in the veins, the sweet tightening of muscles beneath the skin. A timelessness snuggles itself like a cat between the two men: in a terrifying flutter of panic somewhere deep inside, the Signalman thinks this might be the prelude to a fierce argument, a struggle, a bloody fight.

A cold stare. 

Above them, a moth flaps around the light bulb burning in the centre of the ceiling. It touches and beats itself away, touches again and beats itself away again: locked in a struggle it must lose. 

The stranger stands before him well balanced, shoulders squared, boots akimbo. Eyes dead and intent. The jaw set hard. 

The Signalman knows the signs: he has done some boxing in his youth, pushed into it by teachers, mainly because of his size, but nothing ever came of it. He has never been a violent man. He has never been a fighter like that, never had the inclination to harm another. You’re too soft for this game, his coach once said. You don’t have the killer instinct. 

True: he did not.

True, he has always lacked real fight: over a painful two year period he watched his wife grow away from him and still he put up no fight to speak of. There were times he felt she was waiting for him to show what he was made of, but he couldn’t, and months before she left, he was already resigned to losing her. Already resigned to her being gone. Already accepting that he had lost her for good. Or for bad.

Three years later, confronted by cancer, stunned senseless by the shock, he came to understand that the chemotherapy was the real battle he faced. And he tried, tried his best. He lay there, weak and sick, month after month, apparently resigned to it, but in truth, struggling against it in his own, so very passive a way. With inner resolve, rather than outward aggression. With resistance, rather than attack. 

For months.

And then, out of the blue, so to speak, came remission, and with it, overwhelming relief. You’re clear, the consultant had said, with a smile that looked empty. And at the same time, he experienced a feeling, deep within himself, that he was not clear, that this fight was unfinished, and would always be unfinished. Unfinished and inside, waiting its time to strike again.

That was three months ago.

Now, looking hard at the stranger, he feels the chill of the room. It is as though winter has been invited in. He shivers. At the same time, he feels a cold trickle of sweat run down his spine. He swallows hard and, with effort, controls his breathing. 

Of a sudden, in the distance, the piercing shrill of a distant train’s whistle splits the silence and tears the darkness in two. 

The Signalman freezes. His breath is caught in his throat. His heart leaps. He shoots a look at the clock: it is thirteen minutes past twelve. There is no train due. Not until tomorrow.

What..?

The stranger stands stone still. Then, with a glance to the clock, he turns towards the two overcoats hanging on their hooks.

A log on the fire falls in a whisper. Like a shallow breath caught. Golden sparks rise briefly, then are gone. The red glow dulls.

Outside, out of the fog, but closer now, a low rumbling sound gathers. The silent rails now hum. They tremble. Like a storm approaching; like thunder rolling in fast, the sound builds and builds until the tap-dancing clackety-clack rhythm shakes the panes of glass in the windows.

What the…?

Out of the night, out of the shroud of mist, as if summoned, comes a train. An engine and a single carriage, dimly lit. The lights in the carriage are dim, sodium-yellow and cold. The brakes hiss, the wheels screech, complaining, and the train slows to a juddering halt.  

Empty.

The log at the back of the fire sinks in resignation.

The moth finally singes itself on the light-bulb and falls to the floor.

In the room, one figure takes down a black coat. One figure slowly shrugs its broad shoulders into the coat. One figure picks up the leather gloves from the table and pulls them on, flexing  fingers for a tight fit. 

One figure claps its hands together in a dull thud.

One figure slumps to the floor. 

The clock stops.

One figure goes to the door, turns the brass handle and steps outside into the dark. The figure, tall, broadly built, stoop-backed and wearing a great coat of black, steps into the carriage and takes its seat.

With a slow hiss of brakes released, and a squeal of steel wheels, the train pulls away from the platform. The wheels turn slowly, and then quicken, gathering momentum with every revolution, picking up a steady rhythm. Like a heart-beat.

The fog swirls in its wake. The sound of its going is smothered so soon, so totally, the carriage lights fade and the train becomes one with the darkness.

The mist rolls and twists and tumbles over on itself.

In the signal-box, the coals collapse in an exhausted puff of sparks and the last flame flickers in the hearth.

Darkness closes in.