Jim stood in the vast, echoing railway station hall, suitcase in hand, feeling a fool. She hadn't turned up. He'd waited well past the appointed time, well after the train departed, well past what you might think would allow for an alarm clock not ringing or a taxi getting a flat tyre.
Except for the suitcase, Jim was virtually indistinguishable from a multitude of other forty-year-olds in the station: besuited, bespectacled and -- from the furrowed brow -- beset with the cares of the executive wage-slave. Except in Jim's case the furrows were for a plan which had seemed to have come unstuck.
The decision to run away together had been energising and thrilling; just to walk away from their lives and start anew somewhere else. Start what didn't matter. Yes, they had a few dreams and a couple of ideas but nothing you'd call plans. Best of all they simply had possibilities, more than they knew what to do with. Jim had felt more alive than he had in years.
But what Jim felt now was empty. The energising had been replaced by deflation; the thrill had been replaced by depression; the breathtaking anticipation of the uncertain adventure was replaced by having to return to the grinding certainty of the sameness of yesterday.
It was still relatively early in the morning. The freshness of the morning had matched his mood. But just as the sparkle of the morning doesn't last all day, the way he had felt earlier had evaporated. Jim felt crushed. Things could only get worse.
Not that he'd burnt his bridges. Not that he'd meant not to burn his bridges but he had not known how he was going to say goodbye, to extricate himself from his old life. He imagined all sorts of scenarios, words which would be said, tears which would be cried, recriminations which would pave a rocky path into a new life. And he could not face it. So he said nothing, intending to do it all later by remote control.
The railway station hall was big, every sound reverberating. Jim stood there feeling small and alone. Each train that arrived disgorged more people, each in their own world and collectively they surged and swirled. The crowd was merely an animated part of the scenery. Jim was too tied up in his own thoughts and feelings to think of the crowd as anything else.
There was a corner of his mind which harboured a glimmer of hope and a glimmer of doubt: they did agree, didn't they, that today was the day they'd run away? Or was it tomorrow? Perhaps she'd been taken ill, rushed to hospital. Perhaps... perhaps she'd got cold feet.
Jim took himself and his suitcase to a telephone and rang her number. It rang and rang without answer. Well, she wouldn't answer it, would she? Not now. If she was there.
The frustration of his plans for what was to be the rest of his life made him want to swing his suitcase around and around and fling it somewhere. But his dejection made him feel so weak that he felt he was barely able to carry it. Not that it would matter if he did chuck it away. There was little of value in it; they had each other, why worry about favourite jumpers or comfortable old shoes? Jim had surreptitiously packed it over a few days, keeping it well out of sight. Having a half-packed suitcase lying about the house might have given the game away, but his excitement at this Grand Adventure made him do it, made him unable to leave it until the last moment. Jim had sneaked it out of the house and into his car. And when he'd left it was as though he was going to work just like any other day.
Jim went back to the phone booth and rang his office.
"I'm running a bit late this morning," he told them, without any further explanation. If she turns up, that'll keep the lid on things for awhile. If she doesn't turn up, well... he's just running a bit late this morning.
Jim's hopes were fading. He didn't think he could ring her number again, just to hear it ring and ring, ring and ring. But his hopes weren't altogether extinguished. Jim crossed the vast expanses of the hall to the kiosk, bought a cup of dreadful coffee and -- what he needed most of all -- sat down, sitting where he could scan their agreed meeting place.
Jim tried to organise his thoughts through the waves of dejection and disappointment. He could wait here... for how long? All day? Then go home as though nothing had happened. He could run away all by himself. A moment of the elation returned, but only a moment. He really didn't want to run away by himself. There would be no point.
Jim kept scanning their meeting place but his gaze became distracted by a small crowd which had gathered a small distance away. As he peered at the group of people he saw that they were standing around a man lying on the ground. It was not obvious why he was there but Jim was disinclined to join the group. Jim guessed the man had had a heart attack. He began to imagine himself lying on the ground; it would be something rather than the nothing he felt at the moment. The wail of the ambulance began to filter into the railway station hall. Jim imagined himself being carried off in an ambulance, being made much of by the paramedics. Jim imagined himself surviving his imaginary heart attack, and he wondered who would visit him in hospital... would she come? He had been feeling, melodramatically, that she had broken his heart when she didn't show up this morning. A heart attack would be a real broken heart. The vision of him lying in the hospital bed would say, without him having to utter a word, "Look what you've done, you've broken my heart."
But the image began to dissolve as Jim recognised this as an ignoble sentiment. He disliked himself for thinking it, he disliked himself for wanting to take emotional revenge. And if he had had a heart attack, he would probably have had it had she shown up or not. He now imagined himself having a heart attack on the train, and his new partner having to cope with the situation in their first hours of being together. It was perhaps best that she had not shown up.
The crowd around the man lying on the ground had grown a little, and the paramedics from the ambulance were now bustling around. The focus of all eyes, unashamedly or surreptitiously, was now the grey-faced man on the ground. Jim stood up, and walked across the line of all gazes. "I might have a heart attack myself, any minute," he thought. It was a thought which, inexplicably, put a slight spring in his step.
Jim emerged from the railway station hall into the bright sunlight and looked around. There was still a heaviness in his heart from the morning's disappointment. But there was also something else: "I might have a heart attack myself before I manage to walk up the street; before I manage to cross the road, before I take one more step." This, Jim knew, was a kind of whistling in the dark. But if you're in the dark, you might as well whistle.
© Tim Potter 1992
