Hissing and clicking like a vast iron beetle, the train rustled its way through the last of the good land ahead of the suburbs of London. Passengers sat stiffly, briefcases clutched in their cold hands as they played at avoiding one another’s eye contact. Silent. Guilty parties in the belly of the beast. A single fluorescent bulb swung on its long wire, casting a shifting darkness onto the faces of the co-conspirators. Its pallid haze reached all corners of the compartment – within the shuttered darkness, one old man moves to block the light with his hand. The cobweb wrinkles on his brow deepen. The noise. Can’t stand the cold clicking. The inhuman cogs turn, spin there, twist with cold steel… The clinical, artificial light cannot fit in with his waking dream. How could it? The cottage at the back of his mind was filled with lamplight. Bone-weary, he caressed its walls and ceiling with a tired hand. ‘Good things come to those who wait.’
People sighed as he went by, and tried not to look too carefully. It was clear enough, one lady street vendor remarked to another, that the poor old man didn’t have any idea where he was going. The other smirked into her coffee. Bewildered, ‘e is.
A rising banker, resplendent in casual conversation and a three-piece suit, noted the gentleman’s once-fine top hat, thrust askew as he shuffled past in obvious pain. The man moved to the other side of the street and tried not to think of his own father, alone in a musty flat in South London. A street poet saw his abstracted face and promptly penned his eyes into a small notebook, clucking with satisfaction. Unconscious of his audience, Charles Drake made his way little by little across Liverpool Station.
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