All

2009

Hannah was running late. This was a rare thing for her, she was usually very organized and cool about travelling. But just as she had been doing her final check around the flat for any plugs left on, Roddy had arrived on her doorstep. He’d proffered a Christmas present. At first she’d thought it was for her; but no, he wanted her to take it down to his sister Suzie and her girls. She’d sighed and made space for it between the clothes, shoes and presents she had carefully folded and arranged in her canvas holdall. Roddy had offered Hannah a lift to Waverley but she’d refused, for reasons she couldn’t quite place in her mind. So now she was hoofing up the steep incline from Stockbridge to Princes Street with sweat pricking her armpits and beading on her upper lip despite the dark and the cold of this late December evening.

Melissa and Indie Wilde squeezed back and forth around each other, settling in to their compartment. Cormac had offered to take the bed in the next compartment along, which meant he’d be in with a stranger, but he didn’t mind that, he’d just plug into his ipod and browse his selection of music mags until he slept. He peered through his wee window and watched as a chubby, shambolic bloke lurched along the platform engulfed in an improbable number of bags and boxes tied with string. The man appeared to be Pied Piper to a bunch of kids. Cormac tried to count them but they ducked and dodged and all looked so similar: it was tough. He gave up and flopped onto the lower bunk.

In the lounge car Rora and As were having a blast despite the mixed reception of their fellow travellers. They’d set up camp at a table with four seats around it, pulled out their fiddles and started playing their very own rather irreverent versions of a selection of Christmas carols. They played fast and furious for a while then lightened up, slowed and softened, chucked in some alternative rhythms, sang along and generally had a laugh. At some point the guard had came along and said, “no busking” with a sniff. As had pointed out that they weren’t asking for money, they were just providing a bit of free Christmas spirit. The guard sniffed again but seemingly couldn’t think of an answer to that, so he’d stalked off. As an afterthought he’d thrown, “boots off the table!” over his hunched shoulder. 

Without missing a beat Rora and As had slipped off their chunky, knarled leather boots, but kept their feet up. They were entirely used to this kind of reaction to their presence in public places. Although they didn’t mean to rock any boats, the pair couldn’t seem to help it. Some folk just seemed wary of them and uncomfortable with having to share their space. They looked so different, with their long wild hair, hers so oil slick black, his so polar bear white, and their swarthy complexions (the effects of a decade of island life) and their carefree, tatty clothing infused with that sharp tang of the sea. A growing number of folk, of course, loved them; those who had had the pleasure of hearing their music.

Hannah scooted left to go down the final hill into Waverley Station and had to body swerve to avoid collision with a petite redhead. She looked back to check that she hadn’t entirely knocked the waif over and saw a young face, teenage for sure, framed by a mass of curling dark red hair and dominated by almost unnaturally sea-green eyes. A stunning, Pre-Raphaelite beauty, the girl had instinctively placed both hands on her neat round bulge of belly. She must be about five months pregnant, Hannah hazarded. “Oh sorry, you OK?” she called and received a reassuring smile and thumbs-up. 

Phew; Hannah strode on down and headed straight for the platform with the London bound Caledonian Sleeper. She knew her way to the platform, knew her way to her carriage and knew her way to her compartment like the back of her hand. She’d been making this journey for so many years now, ever since she was a wee, shorn-haired bairn bundled in to a bunk with at least two of her five sisters. Over those years there had been changes, not least to the cost of the sleeper ticket, but she still loved it: the whole joy of falling asleep to the low rumble of the train along the rails, waking in the night to peer out at stretches of lonesome countryside, disembarking into the bustle of a London morning. It was a holiday in itself.

The station clock struck 23.30 as Catriona emerged from her taxi into the endlessly milling humans of Waverley Station’s hub. Ten minutes to find the right train; that should be OK. Still, she could feel panic rising in her throat. She had never done much travelling. As she scanned the huge electronic departures board a man rose from one of the bench seats below it and strode toward her. He was young and rather dashing, in a long flow of a cashmere coat, and he appeared to be heading straight for her with wild excitement in his eyes. Catriona plonked her bag down at her feet and smoothed her newly bobbed and darkened hair. But the man suddenly shouted, “Fife!” and strode on past. How odd! Did the daft man actually think he could summons a train to Fife just by shouting the word? Was he living in Harry Potter land?

Cormac had his eyes closed and was emitting small, half-breathed singing sounds when he was rudely interrupted by the door to his compartment being whipped open. A tween glared at him with fierce blue eyes, and then stumbled over the threshold, pushed from behind by the big bloke Cormac had last seen lurching along the platform under bags. 

“Hi there, this is my son Patrick. He’s in with you tonight, err…?” The man seemed to be asking for Cormac’s name, so he gave it, and added a small nod of a hello at the boy.

“Call me Paddy, Dad” hissed the boy. He looked about thirteen, with that awkward mix of hot defiance and excruciating shyness that has to be endured through those early teen years. Cormac, only sixteen himself, remembered it well. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll look after him” he heard himself say and wondered when he’d gotten so damn grown up and responsible.

“I’m right next door on the left with Rory and Fion, OK?” the man had turned his attention back to Patrick. Paddy. “The twins are in the compartment two doors to the right of here. You’ll be OK?” it was a parental mix of question, command and reassurance. Cormac knew it well, although in his case it usually came from his Mum. His Dad had taken a one-way trip to America when Cormac was three, and he hadn’t ever gained a step-Dad. Instead, they shared a big old farmhouse at the north end of the Hebridean island that they called home, with Georgia. 

Georgia was quite possibly the most wonderful woman Cormac had ever met. She was small and wiry and blonde and weather-beaten and straight talking and tough and funny as hell. She ran cattle on her 400 acre coastal hill farm, pretty much single-handedly. She’d taken over the farm when her Dad died, the year Cormac was born, and had been there alone until she and Mum made friends and decided to share the place. Of course the island had been awash with gossip – the term lesbian whispered breathily from scandalised lips. But the truth was that Georgia lived in the right-hand end of the house and Cormac and his Mum and sister lived in the left-hand end and they all shared the huge kitchen in the middle. Together they made an unusual but very happy family. And Mum had finally achieved her life-long desire to live in a house overlooking the ocean.

Hannah settled herself into her single compartment. She did have lovely memories of crowding in with all her sisters, but these days she preferred to travel with as much personal space as she could buy. Her stuff sorted, she leant her hands on the little table below the window and took a look at the remaining passengers as they headed for the train with increasing urgency apparent in their step.

23.40. The whistle blew. The sleeper train lumbered into action. They were off.

~~~

Cormac came to with a jolt. His ears were still wired for sound and an especially loud bit of The Killers had rudely interrupted his slumber. He cursed quietly, tucked his ipod away in his bag and consulted the tiny blue screen of his phone.  01.14 . He could hear the regular breathing of deep sleep coming from above. Paddy was sound. After a few more turns on the narrow bunk, too short for his lanky frame, Cormac got up with a sigh, carefully slid the door open and padded down the corridor to the lounge car. As soon as he was out he could hear music. Yo! He strode with more purpose toward the lounge and could make out fiddles and…dammit was that Indie playing her sax?

Melissa was enjoying this – her daughter jamming with proper musicians and keeping up with them at that. This was cool. The guard hadn’t been too pleased to see a saxophone emerging, but Indie had played a few low quiet notes to reassure him that sax doesn’t have to wake the dead. And the trio had a regular crowd around them now; maybe thirty people were seated along the length of the carriage. A handsome white-haired woman had strolled in about ten minutes ago and seated herself at the table opposite the musos. Only a moment later a rather odd looking woman dressed entirely in red, from her shoes to her earrings, had tottered in – the shoes had ridiculous heels that their wearer clearly wasn’t used to – and plumped her tightly clad body into the nearest chair. She looked as if she might not be able to get out of it again.

As Cormac entered the lounge car he raised his hands in silent question to his mother, who simply smiled back and patted the seat next to her. He folded his limbs and sat and stared in wonderment at the two fiddlers. With their elfin faces, mischievous eyes and general hairiness, they struck him as rather Narnian.

“Hey, it’s snowing.” Indie lowered her sax and made her observation louder than she intended. Everyone turned to peer out through their nearest window and sure enough, there were huge snowflakes moving through the night in surreal, backward horizontal slo-mo. The fiddles fell silent. The train slowed. No one spoke. It was as if the world had paused for breath.

‘Still, yet still moving’, a half remembered quote drifted into Melissa’s mind. ‘To a further union, a greater communion’. She couldn’t quite place it. It had been in a book she’d read decades ago, while she was still with Rob. Could it have been by Michael Tippett? As far as she knew he had been a composer rather than a writer. Ach well, just a glimpse of a memory flitting though her mind like a migrating butterfly. She couldn’t will it to turn back and show itself fully.

Something woke Jerry: a change in engine noise? He shivered; chilled now that the sweat of getting to the train had dried and cooled on his body. He grappled with twisted bed sheets and tried to sit up but his head connected with the ceiling before he could make it all the way. Instead he negotiated his bulk sideways until he could peer down at his sleeping bairns. Wee Rory was spread-eagled across the pillow end of the bunk while his bigger brother clung to the edge as a man clings to a cliff ledge; nothing more substantial than sheer will power appeared to be keeping him from falling off. He’d be better off sleeping on the floor, mused Jerry, and probably will be by morning. In the end eleven year old Fion and Ross, the quieter of the nine year old twins, had elected to share a cabin. This left Jock, the other twin and the cheese to Ross’s chalk, to bunk in with Rory. Despite four years of an age difference, these two sometimes seemed the more likely twins.

Jerry slithered to the floor as elegantly as is possible for a man of considerable proportions, and pulled a jumper over his head. Snow was thick against the window. They appeared to have stopped. He stooped to tuck the boys more firmly into their bunk and then slipped from the room. Out in the corridor several people were having whispered conversations. By eves-dropping, Jerry deduced that the train had had to stop due to snow on the line. 

“Are these trains so feeble that they can’t grind through a bit of white powder?!” he heard a rather pompous man exclaim.

He consulted his watch, two am. He peeked in on Paddy and discovered him sleeping soundly and alone. Where was the other guy? Cory, was that the name? Two doors down he checked in on Fion and Ross and found them both tucked up and breathing softly. They were both such good, quiet kids. No bother at all. 

From along the corridor ahead of him he could hear music and see a throng of people moving around. Were they dancing? Well look at that, a party in full swing on the Caledonian Sleeper in the middle of nowhere and the middle of a beautiful white-out of a snowy night. Wonders will never cease. ‘When it snowed the train stopped’, When it snowed the rain stopped’, ‘When it snowed the train sopped’. Jerry worked at trying to make a Lost Consonants joke but his versions just lacked the brilliance of what’s-his-name’s. ‘When it snowed the people partied’, ‘When it snowed the people parried’, ‘When it snowed the people artied’. Nope, he just wasn’t getting it. Don’t give up the day job, ho ho. Oh, he didn’t have a job. Hey ho, best just stick to baking and gambling.

Jerry squeezed himself into the lounge car and looked around. The scene reminded him of one of those slightly awkward family gatherings – a christening perhaps, or even a wake – where folk who didn’t really know each other from Adam attempted to make upbeat conversation. Everyone had stopped dancing. A lone fiddler, an odd looking chap with a cascade of white hair, stood in one corner and began to play a hauntingly beautiful rendition of Silent Night. Jerry would have liked to ask for silence; the better to appreciate this moment of aural beauty, but everyone else seemed to be ignoring it completely.

Cormac spotted the bloke he now knew as Paddy’s Dad making his way through the lounge car and stood up to intercept him.

“High there, hope you’re OK with me leaving Paddy alone? There was music…I wanted to join in” Cormac wasn’t sure why he felt the need to explain. “We’re stuck for the next few hours apparently” he wittered on nervously, “until the sun melts the snow, so they hope! There’s free tea ‘n stuff being served from the hatch.” Cormac ground to a halt, scratched his head and looked back toward his Mum in an appeal for moral support. She was in deep conversation with an old white-haired woman, with that, ‘don’t disturb me unless it’s life threatening’ edge to her demeanour. Indie had taken herself off to bed a while ago. Cormac felt rather alone.

“Oh, ye’ well thanks” muttered the guy, seemingly equally awkward with conversation, and off he shuffled toward the kiosk.

Rora was trying her best with the ‘woman-in-red’ who was either stand-offish or just painfully shy, she couldn’t decide which. They’d discovered, through the usual ‘where are you headed?’ opening gambit, that they were both going to the same party, Rora as a musician and this Catriona woman as guest. Rora explained that she and As made up the ‘Farray Fiddlers’ and added, with huge pride in her voice, that they’d be playing alongside the hugely famous London Fiddler, Lars Campbell. Catriona had looked blank.

“You must have heard of Lars Campbell?” Rora was incredulous. “They call him Camp Lars, for obvious reasons! You must have seen him on TV at least! No? He’s Scottish”, but no there didn’t seem to be even a pretend glimmer of recognition in the woman’s Philistine eyes. Instead Catriona ventured her own news of the party:

“I’ve been promised Royalty, possibly Eugene and Beatrice!” It was Rora’s turn to look blank.

Ten minutes of strained conversation later and it seemed that the London party was indeed the only thing that the two women, the Bohemian and the Philistine, had in common. Had they asked slightly more intimate questions of each other they would have discovered that they were both in their early forties, both childless despite wanting children and both in rather lonely places in their lives. But, on this occasion, neither woman was brave enough to scratch below the surface of social interaction with the other.

Hannah had had a great chat with Melissa. It turned out that they were both artists and both worked in clay, Melissa having set herself up as the island potter soon after Rob had vanished to America. Hannah had suggested that Melissa should bring some of her pots to Edinburgh, where she, Hannah, might be able to get them into some of her regular galleries. They had gone to the extent of exchanging addresses and phone numbers with the promise of getting together in the New Year. “The New Decade!” Melissa had exclaimed with a laugh.

By then it was past 2am and Hannah was dog tired and wanted nothing more than a cup of tea and bed, so she made her goodbyes from this lovely woman and wended her way toward the kiosk to claim her free cuppa. A stout man was leaning on the skinny counter conversing with a sunken-eyed, pasty-faced boy in British Rail uniform who was nonchalantly slopping murky looking liquid into cups. Some things about British Rail never change, thought Hannah. Stout Man seemed to be explaining to Skinny Boy how to make mince pies, starting with the pastry. “Don’t use that ready made stuff, it’s really easy to make it yourself!” he made expansive rolling motions with his hands, “and the secret with the mincemeat is to buy in the jars of it then add grated apple, lemon and orange zest, chopped almonds and brandy” he counted the ingredients off digit by chubby digit. Skinny Boy kept his eyes firmly focused on the counter and looked completely under-whelmed at this imparting of knowledge for his benefit.

Funny that – Hannah had heard that recipe somewhere before. Oh gosh yes, it was that little old lady who always used to get the train down to London the same night as Hannah’s family. After a few years of seeing each other they had begun to chat. What was her name? Something old-fashioned. She was a tubby little woman who was forever carting vast tins of baking and jars of pickles, jams and chutneys down to London, to take to her sister, Hannah seemed to recall. Their travels must have coincided for ten years or more and then one year, somewhere around the late ‘80’s, the old woman had not been there. Hannah had never seen her again, and often wondered what had happened. Had she stopped going to see her sister? Or changed the night she travelled? Had they moved to be together? Had she or the sister died?

With a sigh Hannah reached around Stout Man, claimed a cup of tea for herself and headed off to bed.

~~~

The late December sun rose into a clear blue sky and smiled her warmth down onto hills and valleys blanketed in pure white snow. It was a gorgeous sight, but not one seen by many of the Caledonian sleeper travellers as, despite the late hour, they were all still tucked up in their bunks. After that impromptu lounge car party, a lie in was just what they all needed. No one was really in that much of a rush to get to London. It is, after all, often better to journey than to arrive*.

One little boy though, was up and had crept out of his bunk and climbed onto the little table under the window. From there Rory could look out over a magical white landscape and let his five-year-old imagination run riot. In his mind the white was the icing on his Dad’s Christmas cake and all across it were reindeer and fir trees and tiny children whizzing along on sledges. And there was Father Christmas on his sleigh, the back piled high with presents. Dad had promised them a magical Christmas and things were looking pretty good so far.

The train lurched and began a slow forward roll. “Dad, Dad, wake up!” Rory stood up on the table and yanked at Jerry’s protruding left foot. ”Da’ad!”

©Julia Welstead

With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson for the misquote of, “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”