Having nothing better to do, I thought that I would post another short story. This was written a while ago before everyone had broadband and mobile phones.
Wake of Disaster
Laura could never feel that buzz of excitement which seemed to permeate through the city as Friday afternoon drew towards five o’clock. Even as a girl talk of night-clubs and dances had passed over her, and now all that Friday evening meant was an hour or so in a crowded supermarket picking up things which on other evenings would be rammed into the microwave and eaten sometime during the mad scramble that was the children’s homework and their interminable round of evening engagements.
In the past Friday had been a family evening: Donald had picked up the children from Mrs. Eldon, who minded them after school, and brought them to meet her and pack the shopping in the boot of the car, before they all went out for fish and chips or a Chinese. Now the children made their own way home and wouldn’t be seen dead out with their parents on a Friday evening, and somehow the leisurely meal had become a hurried snack in the supermarket cafeteria, rather than the romantic dinner a deux she had so fondly imagined would develop as the children flew the nest. Afterwards Don could hardly do more than dump the numerous bags in the hall before rushing off to his mates at the Coach and Horses, leaving her alone to create order out of the chaos of carriers.
Friday afternoon, on the other hand was a little oasis of calm before the frenzy of Friday evening. At one o’clock Mr. Lewis would say, as though he had never asked such a thing of her before, “Can you hold the fort all right on your own this afternoon? There’s nothing in my diary and I thought it might be as well to make an early start for the cottage this weekend.”, and Laura would reply as she did every week what a good idea it was, and that she was sure that she could manage for once. As soon as he was gone she undid the safety catches on the windows and threw them open so that the air - not truly fresh, but as fresh as any in the capital - could dispel the week’s accumulation of stale tobacco fumes as the state of the art air conditioning never could, and settled down, coat around her shoulders at this time of the year, to enjoy her sandwich and a cup of tea made from her special hoard, angling her chair to a position where she could just see the Thames through the space between the two buildings opposite.
She took no liberties; this was her designated lunch hour, usually taken with her boss who shared her son’s unaccountable liking for pot noodles with their smelly, synthetic curry sauces which could pervade the atmosphere for twenty-four hours or more, so it seemed. But on Friday she was alone with her thoughts, and the weekly tedium of compiling her shopping list. Then there was the routine tidying up both of the loose ends of the week’s work, and of the office, before leaving to bank the petty cash and sort out her own finances for the ensuing week.
Today a very minor crisis delayed her no more than ten minutes while she untangled a very junior office junior’s muddle with the computer’s stock-taking and re-ordering programme, before she had to queue marginally longer than usual at the bank. The result was that she missed her customary train by a matter of seconds, which was irritating to say the least.
Had she known what the future held her irritation would have turned to rejoicing that she was one on whom fate had smiled that day, but being blessed with no gift of precognition she swore quietly under her breath, and settled impatiently to wait the half hour before the next through train to her particular Surrey suburb. All her life Laura had been a reader and never went anywhere without the wherewithal to satisfy her addiction. Today’s fix was an improbable tale of a coal miner’s daughter at the end of the nineteenth century who in the course of four hundred pages managed to acquire (in order) a baby, a broken heart, an education, a fortune and the heir to a dukedom, all without once losing her homely northern common sense. It wasn’t the best read of Laura’s life, but it was a good deal more engrossing than her shopping list - the only available alternative. It therefore took several repetitions of the announcement over the station PA system for her to emerge from the dark streets of Victorian Newcastle to the starker realities surrounding her in the over-polished, over-crowded, over-lit station concourse.
Something terrible had happened. An accident up the line. Fire in a tunnel. Dozens - hundreds dead. Everyone knew the magnitude of the disaster which grew with every repetition, but nobody knew the details although plenty were willing to speculate.
The voice on the PA continued nasally to promise buses in the not too distant future, while uniformed officials of the rail company scurried around advising commuters on alternative and more circuitous train routes. Not for the first time Laura bemoaned her lack of a mobile and went in search of a payphone. All those on the station were occupied with ever lengthening queues building up as anxious travellers sought to reassure waiting families and friends that they were safe.
Laura waited, only to find that her home number was engaged - children ensconced on the internet for the evening - and Donald’s mobile switched off. The people behind made it impossible for her to waste time hunting for further numbers, so she made her way out of the station in search of peace and coffee.
She found both in a pub with hardly any customers. A television in the corner was tuned to the early evening news where the disaster she had so narrowly missed was unfolding minute by minute. Already ‘experts’ were pontificating about the probable cause, while ghoulish statisticians declared it to be the worst rail disaster ever. Helicopter shots showed the wreckage of one train while flames and smoke billowed from another in a tunnel. There could be no survivors of the inferno.
She tried to phone again but with the same result as before. The children she could understand, but where was Donald? He should have heard by now, and be desperate to know if she was safe, not blithely enjoying a pre-shopping drink or snack.
Laura put out her hand to dial a neighbour who might just be at home and willing to pass on a message when deep within her a voice seemed to say, “Do it. Do it now. You’ll never have such a good opportunity again. Walk out. Leave your unsatisfactory marriage and your ungrateful children. Be dead.”
Walk out. Start again. The bliss of it.
Walk out?
Start again?
At forty-three? With no pension plan? No National Insurance contributions? No passport? No driving licence? No identity? No family? No past?
Walk out?
Yes.
But not forever.
Just for one evening. Let them suffer. Let them not take her for granted for once before “Darling! You must have been so worried! I’ve been trying to get hold of you all evening. Of course I’m safe. I missed the train.”
