Waiting to be helped

Have you ever had one of those mornings when something doesn’t seem right? You know, you just have this feeling, but you can’t put your finger on it right away. That’s happening to me right now.

I’m standing on the station platform, waiting for the next train to Castleford. The sun is just creeping above the horizon. There are a few clouds in the sky. The day is already warming up.

Now, the eeriness of dawn might be affecting my mood, but something is strange. Don’t tell me what. I don’t know myself, but something feels different.

And I want to know what that something is.

Waiting with me is the usual mix of regular commuters and a couple of strangers. About eight of us in total. I look at the regulars. Nothing unusual about them. The group of four who habitually drink their coffee from the station cafe, the only place open just yet. The guy who always sits on a bench alone, enjoying a smoke. Or maybe his smoking habit has become a vice he can’t give up. Always looks miserable, especially on a Monday.

No, the regulars are like they are every weekday morning when I’m here.

There’s nothing unusual about our two “guests” either. One is a lady, mid-thirties, I guess, dressed for, I guess, a secretary’s job, maybe bank or solicitor’s. Looks like we might have got a new regular now. Yes, eager to make an impression on the first day at work.

The other stranger is far along the platform, so far, I wonder if he wants this train, but when the announcement says the train is due soon, he moves towards us. No, they might be strangers, but they’re not ones causing me to feel uneasy.

There are Janie and Leila, the two travel agency workers. I say my usual “good morning” but this morning they are so engrossed in conversation, I’m not sure if they saw me. Well, I thought, here we are standing as usual for the train. It’s that thought that triggered the realisation. We stand because there is no waiting room. No, that’s wrong. There is an old waiting room, but it’s so old it’s always locked; there’s a notice on it saying “permanently closed”. A notice that’s been there ever since I started using the station about three years ago.

Each weekday morning, I walk by that room and really don’t notice it. Just part of the furniture, like the street sign that points to where you know you’re going. It’s always there, but soon you just ignore it. Sometimes I feel like that. Always here, but always ignored.

It’s that building that concerns me. I walk up the platform towards it. But I have to be quick; the train is due. Then I saw her. In the waiting room.

I don’t know how she got in, or if she knows it isn’t safe. The puddles on the floor from last night’s downpour don’t seem to bother her.

She’s just sat on one of those seats. A smart-looking lady about forty, no more than fifty years old, dressed in a heavy warm overcoat and a green scarf that almost completely hides her hair. She has gloves on, too. Not usual dress for summer.

“There’s a woman in here. A woman in the waiting room,” I shout at the others. They ignore me. Leila looks at me and shouts: “Quickly, Thomas, the train is here.”

“A woman in the waiting room,” I tell her as I rush towards the stationary train.

Once we’re on the train and it has started going, Leila points to the old waiting room as we pass it and says:

“There’s no-one in the waiting room.”

I look. I can still see her sitting there. Waiting.

—-

It’s been a week since I last saw the woman. Each weekday last week, I looked into the waiting room. Each weekday, no-one was there. I cannot explain her presence, but despite no-one else noticing her, I am certain she existed. Perhaps, I tell myself, whether it was a train or something else, whatever she was waiting for, finally turned up.

Yet, I haven’t gone back to my previous habit of just walking by the waiting room as if it were of no significance. This Monday morning, I look in through its window again, expecting to see no-one.

But there is someone. In fact, there are three people inside. The woman is there again, in her same outfit, still sitting upright with that silent stare. And playing in front of her, without disturbing her, are two young children: a girl and a boy. They chase each other around the seats. I’m uncertain of their ages, but I’d say neither is older than 10. The girl, wearing a pinafore dress, is the taller one. The boy has very short hair and wears a blazer. It could be a school blazer, but the trousers are too light, almost white, I thought, to be a uniform.

I look at them in amazement. The woman hasn’t reacted to me, and I’m surprised that she doesn’t react to the children either. Now they see me and they react. Both look at me.

They rush to the window and both say something. Even though the glass has a crack, I can’t hear them. I try to work out the message from their mouth movements.

The train has just stopped. I must go, but I'll wait just a few more seconds.

Then the boy picks up a bag, a satchel in fact, and takes out an exercise book and a pen. I must go, but I must see the message too. They’ll be no time to read it so, as he turns to a blank page, writes a message and places the page to the window, I take out my phone and take a picture. Then rush to the train. Just in time.

Leila is on her own today. She is sitting at a table. I sit opposite her, take out my phone, and open the pictures app.

The latest picture shows the children at the waiting room window, revealing the message at that window, the plea the boy has written. Three words asking for help: SAVE OUR HOME.

I hand the photo over to Leila. “Tell me what you see, please.”

She picks it up and looks at the pic.

“It’s the abandoned waiting room at the station,” she says.

“And in it?”

“Not a woman. You want me to see the woman? I still can’t see her, Thomas.”

“What about the children?“

“There’s children too. I can’t see anyone, just a crack in the window, and the empty seats, Thomas.”

I expect what the answer to this question will be, but I feel I must ask anyway.

‘Can you read the notice?’

It wasn’t exactly “no” but “are you talking about the permanently closed one? That won’t be in the picture because the door’s not in the picture, Thomas” was a sort of “no”.

I take the phone back and look again at the picture.

The woman is there.

The children are there.

The message is there.

“SAVE OUR HOME.’

——-

“Hi, Dan. I’m interested in that building.” I point to a notice pinned under the section ‘City Notices’. Dan can’t read the notice from the counter he’s sat behind, but he knows what it says.

“The waiting room at the station,” the librarian replies. “Notice of demolishment. Any day soon.”

It’s my monthly visit to the city library. The first Saturday. I haven’t seen anyone in the waiting room since Monday, and the unease of the message made me want to know more.

“Know anything about it?” I ask.

“Only that the station was built in 1929 and rebuilt in 1974, except for the waiting room. The room’s condemned, I know that too.”

Another customer approaches him with a question, but as he deals with her, Dan says to me, “try the city records, next floor up,”

I know that the department is on the second floor, even though I haven’t been in there for years. I ask the clerk, a young woman, and she not only gets the volume I need but finds the correct page..

The entry is headed APPROVAL FOR DEMOLITION AND REBUILD OF THE CITY RAILWAY STATION. The record showed that approval for demolition had been granted, but with an exception: not for the waiting room until what it said was an outstanding matter had been resolved. That matter was that the wife of the mayor insisted that “two children used the shelter as a home” although "no evidence of this has been found, but the investigation continues.”

So, no-one believed her.

Something like that must have been reported in our local newspaper. Down the stairs, back to Dan.

“Dan, have you the volume of the Chronicle for the first quarter of 1979?”

Dan handed me the bound volume of the Northern Chronicle papers. The date on the city record was January 20, so I started searching the newspaper at January 25. It was (still is) a weekly.

Nothing in that issue, but I found the story in the next issue.

“MAYOR’S WIFE PLEA” said the headline.

There’s a photo. The mayor’s wife standing in front of the shelter. Something excites me. That woman is the very double of the woman I saw in the shelter. Even her clothes are the same. The dark, thick overcoat and the scarf. Then I look closer at the picture. I look at the waiting room’s shelter. The big crack isn’t there, but they are there. I can see them. The children. Both of them. Looking the same as they do now.

Yet, the paper’s story says no-one can see them. Except for the mayor’s wife.

But she just stands there, just staring, as she did in the waiting room, staring this time at the camera, and in this picture, as in the waiting room, ignoring the children she said she had seen.

I hand the open paper to Dan.

“Do you see the children in the waiting room?” I point to the picture.

“No, sir.”

The deadline for objections has passed. But I decide to object, anyway. Saying that the spirits of the children and the woman live in there.

———-

I didn’t get a reply to the objection, and now a new waiting room is on the site of the old one. It’s a rainy October Monday and the regulars, there are no strangers today, sit in the new building for the first time. Except for the smoker, he still sits alone on what is practically his bench, smoking in the rain.

We chat about how good the new waiting room looks.

I look into a corner and say: “Hello, welcome to your home.”

“Who are you talking to?” Asks Leila.

“Probably a spider,” says Janie.

Only I see them smile. Only I see the children.

‘They’re safe,” I whisper to the woman sitting next to me; the Mayor’s wife.

“And happy” she replies.

And only I say ‘goodbye’ to her as we leave for the train for only I can see her.

ENDS