She seems no more than nine. He leans against her, his head on her shoulder, a strange posture for a father. He has an untidy reddish beard and wears a grey knitted hat, close-fitting. His face is slightly puffy. His eyes are closed. In the half-hour I’ve been patrolling the platform waiting for my train, passing their bench, he hasn’t opened them. The girl is staring straight ahead and doesn’t seem to register my concern.
I want to know how she feels. She’s pale, with long fair hair, wearing a red Trespass jacket. Once I saw her put a finger to her eye, to wipe away dust – or a tear? Another time her father sat up – eyes still closed – and she rested her head on hisshoulder. More natural – I can’t imagine leaning my head on my own daughter’s shoulder. Now they’re back in the previous position.
Yes, I keep passing them, restless to know what pain they’re going through. They look out of place in this coastal city with its soulless centre. The father has an ‘alternative’ look. I think they live way beyond the westernmost reach of this railway, in some commune that frowns on consumerism, with compost toilets, a wind generator, and a compulsory day a week splitting logs. Work the father hates because it leaves his mind free to dwell on the sorrow that shows on his face.
And the girl? Maybe passes the time learning to knit, pours her soul into each row, but when she looks up at lines of ash trees stripped by a nagging wind, then down at dropped stitches, her soul is stripped of its glory.
The mother? Ah, that’s why they’re here. A bus ride away is a cancer hospital. When they arrive they hardly recognise the person with the bloated face staring at nothing. Now the girl’s hands are hidden in her pockets, not because of the cold, but to hide her bitten-down nails.
Now we’ve boarded the train I thought I could forget them, but there they are four seats away, reflected in a window. He’s still asleep, head thrown back against the headrest. All I see of his daughter is her shoulder and part of her hair. A child that age should be restless, excited, but she’s as still as death.
I’m not satisfied with my theory about their visit. I think another woman is involved. A teacher in a nearby . . . No, a postmistress. The irony in the word wouldn’t be lost on him. We’re passing through sad little estuary places, mud flats glistening in the dusk, dotted with oystercatchers and godwits. Is this where she lives? Did a tremor pass over his face just now?
She was too much for him, long red hair piled up to reveal an enticing neck, her smell of Moroccan oil, the heat from her firm body, the challenge in her frank expression. And too much for his wife, who went to live in one of those blank-eyed rows above the city we’ve left. That’s where the man and his daughter have been. The atmosphere in the cramped house is stomach-churning. Blessed are the peacemakers, thinks the girl, so why am I cursed? Driven out, accused of taking her father’s side, when all she wanted . . .
I’d like to change my position, get away from them. But my own visit has exhausted me. The father is still asleep, or pretending. I’m familiar with that ruse.
The affair with the postmistress had a lot to do with furniture. Life can be that banal. Instead of cupboards in the commune built from salvage, nice ash-veneered German cabinets. Instead of the smells of damp chipboard and patchouli, beeswax polish. Instead of beanbags a green-leather couch. The green complements the pink of the postmistress’s naked limbs.
Her house is a tiny miracle, an inward-looking gem in the straggling dishonored village, among mean grey unpainted houses with empty front gardens. Outside, instead of the bowl of horizon hemming in the commune, the sea and the mud flats busy with those waders.
What’s he thinking now, eyes still closed, head against the headrest, frowning? Remembering endless fights with his wife (who insisted on the commune in the first place)? Remembering her pale hands he loved gesturing at the taxi-driver, the ‘tock’ of the rear door closing? Then she was gone, over the rim of the world, not in the city we’ve just left. So if it wasn’t her they visited, who was it?
Ah, the girl was at the hospital. She set fire to her dolls and Lego and fellow communards complained of the toxic burning plastic. She carved an H on her thigh with scissors. At today’s session the psychiatrist asked what it stands for, and she shocked her father with, ‘Fucking obvious, surely?’
Which is why he leaned on her shoulder while he dozed, exhausted. Hoping the weight of his head would keep this child who tears at his heart from diving in despair in front of a train, red meat on the shining track. Desperate to bring her back safely west, among people who try (oh how they try!) to understand.
But that’s wrong, because we’re stopping at a small market town and they’ve left their seat. Rubbing condensation from the window I see them stride along the platform in my direction. Both smiling. She looks up at him, not so much pallid as delicate, he looks down at her, less puffy-looking now, and they talk.
And carry away their feelings, which are their own, through rain and wind to some warm house with carved stone lintels and rhododendrons, where the mother waits with lasagne in the oven. Whatever their burden was, it was light, and as for the one I placed on them, they’re giving it back. Leaving me to long for my own daughter to lean her head on my shoulder one more time. Just one.
Alex Barr’s short fiction collections are ‘My Life With Eva’ (Parthian 2017) and for children, ‘Take a Look At Me-e-e!’ (Gomer 2014). His latest short fiction can be read at mironline.org and Litro. His creative nonfiction has appeared recently in The Blue Nib and Sarasvati. His two poetry collections are ‘Henry’s Bridge’ (Starborn 2006) and ‘Letting In The Carnival’ (Peterloo 1984). He lives in Fishguard. Find Alex at @AlexBar77244312 and alexmcclurebarr.blogspot.com.
Photo by William Daigneault on Unsplash.
