Harley5

‘When I was wee I used to sit on the bench outside with my mother and hold onto the back of her coat and watch the train coming into the station.’ Fiona was bent over, looking at the waiting room floor, with the weight of remembering. ‘I used to block my ears and try and ignore that whooshing sound and look away until the train stopped. I’d look right up and past the bridge and over the fence, at the trees in the park. I thought if I did that, if I really concentrated, the train wouldn’t suck me from the bench and under its wheels.’

‘You’re still wee.’ Mary toyed with the gold loops of her gypsy earrings and a box of Swan Vestas matches, shaking them like castanets, before rummaging through her bag for her packet of Embassy Mild, puckering up and defiantly looking about and lighting two of them at the same time. A dash of her pink lipstick embossed the tip and was casually passed on to Fiona’s less demure fire-engine coloured lips. Mary wandered over to the fag machine beside the booking office. It was bolted securely to the floor, with a steel band also securing it to the wall, but the glass in some of the cigarette compartments was broken, as if someone had tried to jemmy-out a packet of Silk Cut out of a space no bigger than a postage stamp. ‘Have you got any change?’ asked Mary, shaking her bag from side to side and checking for silver.

‘No,’ said wee Fiona, ‘get some change from the office.’

‘We’ve not got time.’ Mary looked at the clock above the office door.

A gaggle of three young boys rushed barged through the doors of the waiting room and out the other double doors and onto Platform 1.

‘Don’t worry,’ said wee Fiona, picking up her bag, ‘we’ll get some fags on the train.’

They flung themselves threw the waiting room door and onto the platform as the Bridgeton train nosed its way into the platform. Wee Fiona instinctively pulled at Mary’s sleeve until the train came to complete halt; only then did she let go. Her head jerked back like an eel in a bucket of water and she dashed back through the waiting room doors and picked up her bag, which she’d left underneath the seat.

‘Sorry,’ wee Fiona said laughing nervously, ‘I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on. I was concentrating that much on not forgetting my bag that it put me off and I forgot it.’

They paced through the non-smoking section of the train, looking for a suitable seat, in the smoking section. They settled on one near the train doors. Mary pushed her suitcase up onto the rack above their seats. Wee Fiona stood up and pushed and tried to slam-dunk her bag, like a basketball onto the same rack. Just as quickly as wee Fiona had pushed it up Mary rose up above her, worked it out of her hands and sat down, in one movement, with the black shoulder bag in her lap. Mary looked at wee Fiona and then out of the window and shook her head from side to side. Her breath came out in a whoosh, as if she’d been running. Her hands shook as she lit a fag.

‘You can’t put the bag up there.’ Mary signalled with her head to the rack above them.

The middle-aged man sitting next to wee Fiona, briefly looked up from the back pages of The Daily Record at Mary. His eyes flickered momentarily from her face to the bag above his head.

Mary mouthed and mimed, ‘because of the …’ She kept hold of Mary’s bag. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ She tried to speak matter- of -factly, because not only did loose lips sink ships, it also helped gabby trusting people get their money stolen, or in her Uncle Jordy’s case, evil twisted, bank robbers, also get taken. She blew out a puff of smoke and one of her fingers moved in a half circle and a painted nail pointed dramatically at the suitcase above wee Fiona’s head, to show that even she couldn’t be too careful: ‘From now on, that’s yours to take care of.’ She didn’t look at the suitcase, but straight at Fiona’s eyes. She covered her mouth as she finished speaking ‘and this is mine.’ Her eyes never left Fiona’s; did not stray downward toward the black shoulder bag.

‘But that’ll be too heavy for me!’ moaned wee Fiona.

‘You’ll manage.’ Mary shook her head to emphasise the point.

‘I knew you’d take care of the money,’ said wee Fiona, smiling in admiration.

The corners of the Sports’ Pages moved almost imperceptibly. Mary coughed on her fag; her hand covering her mouth. ‘C’mon,’ said Mary, picking up her shoulder bag and pulling at Fiona’s elbow.

Fiona reached up and pulled at the handle of the tartan suitcase. It’s weight falling and almost braining The Daily Record reader. ‘Sorry,’ she said, scuttling and swaying lop-sidedly away, trying to catch Mary up.

Mary was sitting, comfortably ensconced, in the window seat in the non-Smoker’s compartment waiting for her. She had the window open as a concession to railway rules and a lit cigarette in her mouth. ‘We’re all out,’ she said, to Fiona, waving the last fag about like a wand to illustrate how all out they were.

‘What did you move for?’ asked Fiona, flinging the suitcase down on the seat and flopping down beside it.

‘I didn’t trust that guy, the way he was looking at us.’ Mary screwed up her nose. ‘He was looking at us funny,’ she added as the final say on that matter. ‘Besides we’re safer in here with them.’ She nodded toward the three young guys that they’d seen earlier. ‘They’re trying to dodge the train and if anybody gets on, or off, they look up right away.’

‘But they’re looking at us. They’re looking at you,’ said Fiona.

‘Exactly,’ replied Mary, ‘they’re looking at us. That way we’re safe. And they’re not looking at us. They’re looking at you. I think that big gawky one fancies you!’

‘Don’t be so daft.’ Fiona quickly peeked over, her face reddening and looking away, ‘Besides, he’s not that gawky.’

The train slowed coming into Partick station and the boys faces were pressed against the window, as if that got them nearer to the station platform and further away from the uniformed ticket inspector. They rushed down the train like frightened children and when the doors opened and the inspector stepped on, they jumped off, screaming and shouting, running away from the bogey ticket man.

‘I’m dying for a fag and I’m bursting for a pee,’ said Fiona.

Mary took a last puff and dropped the cigarette out of the train window, as the ticket inspector strolled over. He practiced movement from side to side with the train, swinging from one hand rest to another, was chimp-like.

He loomed over them. ‘This is a no-smoking carriage,’ he said, pointedly looking at the big no smoking sign plastered directly above Mary’s head.

‘We weren’t,’ said Mary.

‘Well maybe just a wee bit.’ Fiona said, at almost the same time, batting the lingering smoke away with her hands.

‘Tickets,’ he said, shaking his head in I’ve seen it all before world weary way.

Mary handed him their tickets. He looked at the tickets then at Fiona, then back again. ‘This ticket is a half, for children,’ he said, frowning. He hadn’t seen that coming.

‘I know.’ Mary looked up at him and waited and waited. Ma had always taught her to be polite to adults and honest when she could be, so she wanted to let him finish.

‘And she’s not a child,’ the ticket inspector looked down at wee Fiona.

‘She’s only fifteen,’ said Mary, speaking for Fiona, who didn’t seem to know that and was going red in the face again.

‘A child is fourteen,’ said the ticket inspector, leaning further over them to give his words extra bite.

‘Well, that’s ok then,’ Mary snatched the train tickets out of his big hairy paw and, as if in slow motion, with Fiona’s face blinking out red and redder by the second, tucking them safely in her pocket and patting them, before looking up and adding, ‘because she’s fourteen. I just forgot. Aren’t you?’ She looked at Fiona.

‘Yes,’ lisped Fiona, her head weighted down, looking at the lined yellow patterns on the seats, the used ticket on the floor, an old cigarette packet, anything but the inspector, her face comet red.

‘What’s your date of birth then?’ said the inspector.

‘I can’t remember,’ said Fiona.

‘See,’ said Mary, ‘she’s too young to remember her date of brith. And this is our stop.’

Mary lifted the suitcase from the rack and tucked the shoulder bag over her arm and stood up.

‘Hang on,’ said the ticket inspector.

But he was too late they were already brushing past him as the train slowed down coming into Charing Cross Station.

‘You’re getting off at the wrong station,’ shouted the ticket inspector to them as the door closed. ‘You’ll never make your connection.’

‘If we hurry we will.’ Mary ran up the stairs and out into the snarl of traffic at Charing Cross Station. ‘Run,’ she said, her long legs picking up speed. ‘It’s only about a mile.’

‘Can’t we get a bus,’ shouted Fiona, falling behind her, ‘or a taxi, or a train.’ She stopped, doubled over with effort. ‘I can’t run anymore, just go on without me. I need a fag. And I think I’m going to wee myself.’
Mary ran back, pulling at Fiona’s elbow like a dog with a leash. ‘We can make it. We’ve got ten minutes. That’s time enough. C’mon we can make that train.’

‘No, we can’t,’ said Fiona, but she let herself be cajoled and pulled forward. She lifted her head when they got to George’s Square.

‘We can do it. We can do it.’ Mary’s words coached Fiona into the station and up the escalator.

They looked at the departure board and watched it change, as the train on Platform 18 left the station. ‘That’s our train.’ said Fiona, sounding dejected, but just as quickly there was the glimmer of a smile, and her voice sounded optimistic, ‘at least we tried. We’ll need to go home and come back tomorrow.

‘That’ll be right,’ said Mary, ‘we’ll get a train to Waverly and another on to London from there.’

‘But I need the toilet,’ cried Fiona.