The Railway Station Man Read Online Free Page B

according to Mrs Doherty. She has to keep him a pan loaf twice a week when the breadman comes.’
    â€˜The Englishman or Damian Sweeney?’
    â€˜Don’t be silly. Haythorne. Hawthorne. Something like that his name is … according to Mrs Doherty. I used to have to go to tea with horrible Haythornes when I was a child. I do hope he’s not one of them. He wears a black patch over one eye, Mrs Doherty says. I like the sound of that. Pirates and things. Will you come with me?’
    â€˜Where to?’
    â€˜To spy on Mr Whatsisname.’
    â€˜No. There’s a couple of things I have to do. Anyway, it’s raining. You don’t mean to go plodding off there in the rain do you?’
    â€˜Rain’ll make my hair curl.’
    He smiled somewhat sourly.
    She poured herself another cup of tea and got up. She wanted to be on her own.
    â€˜I’m going,’ she said to him.
    â€˜Far?’
    â€˜Just out to my shed. I must work. There’s so much work I have to do.’
    â€˜Why don’t you get dressed?’
    â€˜I’ll get dressed in my own good time.’
    She picked up the cigarettes and put them into her pocket.
    â€˜You smoke too much.’
    She walked to the door and then turned around and looked at him.
    â€˜Yup,’ she said. ‘I do. I enjoy it. I just love puffing all that poison in and out of my lungs. Anything else?’
    He shook his head. She left him sitting there staring into space.
    It was about two miles uphill all the way to the station house. The road could have been better. It was years since the county council men had been along with the loose stones and the tar machine. Not much need really as the road was little used. The occasional farmer with land high on the mountain would pass that way with his sheep, either on the way up to their mountain grazing, or on their way down to the market. Sometimes tourists would come over the shoulder of the hill and stop their cars to look down at the ocean and its burden of small islands. No one, either farmer or tourist, ever gave the station house a second look; in those days, that was. Now it has become a part of the local folklore.
    The red-brick house had been built in 1903, solid, functional, tailor-made to suit the network of lines that stretched out through the hills and along the coast, opening up for the first time access to the world, for the inhabitants of the tortuous and desolate coastland.
    The house stood, squarely, facing out towards the distant sea, behind it the two platforms and the weed-filled track and then the hill, treeless, bleak. The signal box was at the right-hand end of the up platform about fifty yards from the station house. Two or three of the wooden steps had rotted away, and a couple of panes of glass were missing, but the box itself appeared to be in very good order. The white-painted words, Knappogue Road, could still be seen faintly beneath the window. The old goods shed was at the far end of the down platform, beside the unused level crossing.
    The rain had settled into a misty drizzle, but from time to time a slight breeze stirred, which soon might shift the clouds. The hedges were still filled with wet shining blackberries, and she made a note in her mind to come up with a couple of baskets the next dry day. They never tasted good if you picked them in the rain, their sweetness somehow dissipated with the damp. She and Jack could carry a basket each. She laughed at the thought. He wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t seem to have that line in his mind leading back to early days. We can’t seem to find that comfort between us, she thought. I suppose that is what parents and children should have, some form of comfort, if nothing more. It seems quite hard to achieve. She wondered why he had come down to visit her.
    A blackthorn tree marked the end of the hedge. Beyond it the road widened and the station house stood there. The right-hand half of the green door was