The Ghost Train

The Ghost Train

It’s been almost a year since I was in Climpton. In fact, I haven’t spent any real time here since December fifty-six, the month I moved away. But what I need to do today won’t wait for this year’s anniversary. I need to say my final goodbyes. And tie up some loose ends.

 

The first time I came here I’d only been out of the Army for six months. I caught the train from Waterloo with a friend: a day on the beach, that’s what we had planned. A few beers and a couple of local girls, if we got really lucky.

 

That day it was a proper train. Steam - none of these characterless, electric things. Real slam-door carriages and proper compartments, with luggage racks and comfortable seats.

Elsie was in the buffet car. A full silver-service meal laid out in front of her, but she hadn’t touched it. She was crying – or had been crying: spidered mascara crawling on her cheeks, black stains on the lace handkerchief in her hand.

I asked her if I could sit down and she nodded. ‘Are you alright?’ I said. This time she shook her head. So I brought her a drink and let her talk. She told me she was on her way home, to her parents’ house. She said that they had both been killed that week in a car accident. And she had to go home to sort everything out, but she didn’t know where to start.

 

So I spent the day with her. Looked after her. Made her smile again. And helped her get through that terrible time.

 

Her father had been a diamond importer, from  Johannesburg mainly. He was big in Hatton Garden. The family had property in Climpton and Berkshire. And a villa in Monte Carlo.

 

And that was how it started. On a train out of Waterloo. Two years later and we were married.

 

We were so happy. We lived in Elsie’s parents’ house, here in Climpton, and we had each other: what more could we ask for?

 

But then, in 1956, Elsie died. I was inconsolable. Nothing was worth anything anymore.

 

So I moved away and for all those years I’ve only come back for the anniversary of her death. But today? Today I’ve come back because my doctors tell me that I may not be around in December.

 

Cancer apparently. In my spine and my liver.

 

The village hasn’t changed much: the cemetery is still kept nicely by the Friends of St Mary’s Church. I left a bunch of roses on Elsie’s grave, still in their wrapping paper. Against the Friends’ rules, of course, but it’s too late to worry about all of that.

 

Just one last thing to do.

 

The pale blue doors swing open into a foyer of glass and posters. The uniformed young woman behind the counter looks up at me and smiles.

 

I smile back.

 

‘Officer,’ I say. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’ve killed my wife.’


John Allen (Harlow Writer's Workshop) 

© copyright 2007

Spread The Word