ARMED AND RIDICULOUS

Night Train for Maurice

a short story

by

Dedwydd Jones

The night train. Calais to Milan, stopping off at Lausanne, Switzerland. Off peak, apart from one berth, the couchettes were unoccupied. Excellent. A bit of privacy. He had always thought the couchette system was asking a lot of the finicky human. Six collapsible berths, three on either side, which could be retracted in the morning. The day seating arrangements allowed three on either side. The six were always total strangers, of either sex, and of any age. Darren travelled this way because it was much cheaper and because he was terrified of flying. Every time he looked at a jet in the sky, it inevitably disintegrated, its smoking engines spiralling earthwards, the screaming dots of passengers dropping at exactly120 mph from twenty thousand feet! If only, like him, they had taken the train! He shivered in claustrophobic, vertiginous recollection. The only time he had flown, he had drunk nearly a bottle of brandy and had become so dehydrated, he thought he was dying of thirst as well as terminal terror. And what a mess it would have been, if on landing, the undercarriage had thrust upwards into the passenger seats. He’d had to exercise all restraint to stop himself from rushing to the cabin escape hatch and leaping to safety. Darren smiled now as he studied the mundane familiarities of the train, fixed by great iron wheels to comforting mother earth. Flying was strictly for the birds.

Lucky. Only a single fellow passenger this time. He was fed up with the usual preoccupations of people with their physical functions, their own personal comforts, the perpetual jostling for position, the sleepy selfishnesses of the night. Now, the two of them could just use the top berths on either side. They could sit upright below and relax before they pulled out the bunks. In spite the proximity of his accustomed grunting, farting couchette companions, Darren always slept well. The whole train seemed to become a kind of elongated mobile child’s cradle which lulled him to sleep as the rail lines sang.

But, blast him again, his fellow traveller seemed strangely agitated. He was small, slender, middle-aged, dressed neatly in the requisite Swiss business suit and tie. Obviously getting off at Lausanne. His thin grey hair was receding. He would soon be bald. His nondescript features were drawn into tight lines of worry. Behind the heavy glasses, his eyes darted around as if trying to locate some invisible threat. He suddenly pulled out a little box, popped a pill and continued his microscopic scrutiny of the fixtures and fittings. First the plastic-covered seats, then under the seats, rattling the steelwork, then the baggage racks above. He shook the curtains and inspected the metal bin. He finally calmed down, nodding.

‘You never know,’ he said, pacing the small compartment.

‘Too true,’ said Darren, wondering.

‘Solid enough, it seems, but ‘cancelled due to mechanical failure.’ How often has that happened to me?’

He slapped the side of one of the bunks. Darren noticed his accent was French-speaking Swiss, sprinkled with English middle-class prim and proper political correctnesses.