When I Say
I read something in the local newspaper today about a couple of lads being hit by a train. It had happened sometime during the week on the mainline out of town. There was a head and shoulders shot – a passport photo by the looks – of the one lads, and a bigger picture of disused factories, all corrugated tin and grim looking, and in the foreground, paramedics and a couple of police officers, all stooped over a bundle of blankets on the railway line. There might have been an outline of a leg or an arm or a hand if you’d looked closely, but it was hard to tell. It looked like it had been a high speed collision. Neither lad had survived.
I read it a couple of times because it reminded me of something from way back. Thirty years ago, maybe a bit more. I was sixteen, but always pretended to be older. It was the summer before I was due to start college and I was in that no-man’s land, waiting for my O level results, thinking the world was my oyster and I’d be able to do anything I wanted, but not doing anything much. Me and my best mate, Paula, had taken part-time jobs in a shoe shop in town – jobs were ten-a-penny in those days – and we’d spend pretty much all our earnings on Saturday nights drinking vodka and limes in the Talbot in town. Like I say, I always pretended to be older, and anyway, Stourbridge has always been a bit parochial and boring, and drinking vodka and lime on Saturday nights, underage, was a thrill. I loved my Saturday nights out in town.
Paula’s parents were stricter than mine, they never let her out at all when we were sitting our exams, and whenever I went round to her house then, I had to leave by 8pm, and every Sunday night they made her go with them to the working men’s club. So that summer, exams over, we had to lie and say we were going to another friend’s house or the cinema or somewhere. We put on our make-up on the bus. I was never sure how her dad could ever believe us, but he never seemed to check up, he just gave us one of his looks and we carried on, every Saturday night. I always thought Paula ended up a product of her parenting. When we went out she was a wild thing, especially with a drink inside her. It was like she was kicking back, fighting against having to lie to break out of the constraints her parents put on her. As soon as she was out of their sight, she changed. Everything about her changed, even the way she spoke, the way she sat, her posture, even the way she thought seemed to change. It wasn’t confidence, exactly. It was much more than that. She was a different version of herself, a different Paula. And lads, well, lads were always interested in that version. She’d already had a serious boyfriend. Pete, his name was. She’d met him at the working men’s club. While her parents had played bingo, she’d gone into the bar where the men played darts and had spotted him. He’d been in his twenties, drove a Mini Clubman, worked as a tool-setter. One of his exs had had a baby, but he didn’t see it. He bought Paula an eternity ring, which she’d kept when she’d dumped him. She never did tell him she was only just fourteen. She could hardly stop laughing telling me about him crying and begging her not to drop him. We both had a good old laugh about that. I’d thought he was an arrogant sod and had deserved everything he’d got. And maybe it was that for Paula. Maybe it was knowing she was capable of that kind of thing that made her have that confidence or whatever it was, because it seemed after that other lads were drawn to her like moths to a flame.
Anyway, it was a Saturday night. Paula had another boyfriend. We’d seen him in the Talbot a few weeks before. We’d both spotted him, standing at the bar, straight away. Phil was good-looking, tall, he wore Ben Sherman shirts and Levi’s. He had this open, big, wide smile and bright grey eyes. I remember the grey eyes. And he seemed to have money. I remember that as well. Paula made a bee-line for him, struck up a conversation with him, no trouble, and neither of us had been surprised when he’d told us he was a Brummie, he looked like a city lad. He looked different to the usual sort. And he liked old-fashioned things, odd stuff like the film Brief Encounter on the one hand and music by the O’Jays on the other. Although Paula seemed to like that about him – and so did I – he made me feel boring, and worse than that Paula was different with him, softer, quieter. On the bus on the way back, after that first meeting with him, she didn’t make any jokes about his accent or the way he kissed her, like she did with the others. I saw the way she looked at him, and I remember not knowing what that look meant, and I remember feeling a stab of panic that this was it, that I’d be abandoned, that it was going to mean the end of our Saturday nights. I think he must have felt it, or felt a bit sorry for me because he and Paula had hit it off straight away and I was left, you know, in the corner with my vodka and lime. So he’d said he had this friend, Kev, who I ought to meet, so we could make a foursome. I’d been a bit nervous, obviously, I’d never been on a blind date at the time, but Paula said it would be fine, so that made me feel better.
Kev, though, was not much like Phil. For a start, that first time I saw him, he was wearing a checked suit. Checked suits were neither fashionable or attractive, even at that time. He was not as tall as Phil, his skin was a pallid colour, almost the same as his hair, which was too long. And he was thin. He looked like any local lad I’d seen at school or in town forever. By the look on his face when me and Paula walked in, it was clear he thought as much about me as I did about him.
‘Alright?’ he said, and I nodded.
Paula slid her arms round Phil’s neck, right there at the bar, and they kissed, and I remember looking at Kev’s mouth, his slack-jaw and weak chin, and I remember thinking, Christ Almighty, and ordering a vodka and lime without answering him. I remember waiting for my drink at the bar and seeing Paula and Phil out of the corner of my eye, still kissing, and wondering if the two of them might just go off together and leave me with Kev, but Phil must have seen me and came over, put his hand in his pocket and held out a pound note.
‘Here,’ he said, smiling. ‘And keep the change.’
I remember him holding onto the note as I tried to take it from him so we were both standing there, holding it for a split second, and I remember maybe looking up at him for a bit too long, and Kev coming over and standing too close to me, breathing beer on my neck. And I remember not having a pocket to put the change into and holding onto it all night, without knowing why.
I don’t remember every single thing about that part of the evening, I think I drank more than my usual that night, sitting in the corner, mostly facing away from Kev, watching the locals come and go, not being able to make out everything Phil was saying to Paula. But I did catch some of what he was talking about: films. John Hughes. Something about The Breakfast Club. And music. Something about how he was planning to see Bowie in concert the following year in Italy. And I remember feeling jealous and a bit pissed off. He made his life sound sophisticated, and by comparison, mine seemed shallow. Paula seemed to hardly touch a drop, and every now and then, she let out a sound, like a laugh, but not, and the way she looked at Phil, well. I remember she never spoke a word to me in the pub all evening. Kev had been necking the beer down him, occasionally mumbling at me when it looked like I might need another drink and I noticed his eyes had started to glaze over way before closing time. He seemed to be able to walk a straight line to the bar though, and unlike Phil, he seemed to be paying for my drinks in little bits and pieces of coins, not notes. I remember that.
At chucking out time, me and Paula went to the ladies. There was a single cracked mirror on the wall, and the fluorescent lights in there made me look tired and a bit pale. Paula looked fine. I remember her licking a bit of tissue paper and rubbing some black mascara from under my eye. I remember her holding my chin, and looking at her mouth, her lips, and thinking about her kissing Phil. And I remember her telling me we were going to walk with Phil and Kev back to the station so they could catch their last train back.
I don’t remember much about the walk, initially, except feeling dizzy and sick as soon as the air hit me, and letting Kev put his arm around me, but only so that I could keep upright. I remember walking behind Phil and Paula on the narrow High Street pavement, and we must have gone under the underpass and up past the bus station. There’s a station at Stourbridge Town we call the ‘shuttle’. It runs an electric train now, but then it ran a proper engine that just used to go the mile or so to the main station at Stourbridge Junction and back. Used to cost about 10p. That night, for some reason, the shuttle wasn’t working. Maybe it was too late. The little ticket office was in darkness. The café at the bus station was just closing up and a great waft of fried food filled the air as we passed it. The woman, or man, I can’t remember which, locking up saw us gawping at the closed shuttle office. I could feel all that vodka, and the sourness of lime swilling around in my stomach. The thought of sausage sandwiches, bacon, grease and hot fat had started to make my mouth drip and my head heavy. It wasn’t hunger.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said. And I was. Into a flower bed that lined the pavement. Instantly, I felt better, relieved. Kev’s face, as I remember, was a picture.
‘They won’t let you on the bus if you’m ill,’ the woman, or man, said.
And all of us looked at each other and laughed, or at least me and Paula did, at any rate.
Feeling suddenly sober and clear-headed can be euphoric, and that’s what I must have been feeling. Phil was looking off up the shuttle line. It wasn’t quite dark, even at that time of night and a summer haze blurred the distance into darkish blue. Trees crowded in from both sides, not moving, so it was like some kind of painting we were looking at.
‘We could walk the line,’ Phil said. ‘It’d be faster than walking the road. The last train’s at 11.32.’
‘What?’ Kev said. ‘No way.’
He looked at me, shook his head and said, ‘He’s a couple o’bob short of a pound, he is.’
‘Oi,’ Phil said, laughing. ‘What’s up, Kevin? You deffin’ me out?’
Paula started laughing, and then I did, and I think Kev joined in, and it all seemed hilarious. Paula didn’t say anything, but I saw her reach for Phil’s hand and I saw their fingers tighten round each other and hold tight. Somebody – me, it could have been – said, ‘Well come on then, let’s leg it.’ And we just ran for it. We just jumped down onto the line, all four of us, like lemmings off a cliff edge, and we just ran off. We must have looked like little kids running into the sea, having to lift our legs up over the sleepers, one following another, following another. And we were laughing, still, or at least I was, and Phil was. Laughing and running along the railway line, into the blurred darkish blue, under the bridge, into the shadows and out again, past the trees, past the nettles and the blackberries, on and on, laughing and running. I’ll never forget that. I never will. That feeling. And the thing was, the Junction, the railway station at Stourbridge Junction seemed to come into view quicker than I’d thought. We were there. It was there. We seemed to round the bend and there it was, the station, we could see the platform lit up orange and we could see the waiting room’s light flickering like it always did. And we slowed right down and stopped, stood just beneath the platform edge. We were holding our sides, wiping our noses on our sleeves, breathing like animals breathe, looking at each other and laughing again. The platform was high – it still is – and Phil leaned against it. He looked up, closed his eyes as if about to pray or something, and let out a loud, high-pitched yowl and then looked straight at me, his mouth big and wide.
‘That,’ he said. ‘That was better than sex, that was.’
I’ll never forget him standing there and saying that, his shoulder against the brick or concrete or whatever it was, of the platform, his shirt open so I could see the crook of his collar bone, the beginnings of a silvery sheen of sweat across his neck, across his forehead, his eyes like flashing metal, greyish. I’ll never forget that. He looked like Richard Gere. He really did. Paula stood beside him, probably seeing the same thing as me. She placed her hand on the back of his head like I know she’d seen actors do, and then she kissed him, and I could hear their mouths working away, and I saw his hand, stroke down her spine and rest on her hip and I could see his fingers scribing patterns across the top of her backside.
Kev lit a cigarette and offered one to me. I didn’t smoke then, but when they’d eventually stopped kissing, Phil took one and I watched him light it, watched the way he breathed the smoke out.
‘Better than sex.’ Kev said it in my ear and I winced against the smell of his breath. He reached for my hand, the one still clutching change from earlier, and I snatched it away. I’d forgotten I was still holding onto that money. Bits and pieces of coins shot out across the railway line. A couple of ten pence coins and some copper. I glanced across at Phil and saw his face light up.
‘What about if we push it a bit further?’ he said, and he stamped his cigarette out in the gravel.
‘What?’ Kev said, and smoke drifted up past his gormless face.
‘We do have to go home, you know,’ Paula said, and I could see she looked narked, worried. ‘We’ll miss the last bus if we don’t hurry up.’
I knew she’d be in trouble if we missed that bus. Her Dad would go mad. And I remember smiling at her, then at Phil, and still being able to taste vodka and lime on my tongue, sour, and seeing his arm round her shoulder and her hand resting on his chest.
‘Go on then,’ I said to him. ‘Where do you want to push it to?’
I saw Paula roll her eyes and heard her sigh.
‘Let’s flatten some coins,’ Phil said.
‘No way,’ Kev said. ‘No fucking way.’
‘Aw, mate,’ Phil said, and he let go of Paula. ‘What’s up with you tonight. I thought you was an hard-knock.’
I laughed again. Remember, I was only sixteen. I thought it was all so funny, or maybe I was getting a bit hysterical. I just thought I felt amazing, alive, important.
‘What’s up with all of you tonight?’ Paula said.
‘What do you mean?’ I said to Phil, ignoring her. ‘What does it mean: flatten coins?’
Phil looked at me the way he’d been looking at Paula, I was sure of it, and put his hand in his pocket.
‘Here,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Go on, take some of these.’
Kev had started backing away towards the railway line. No one was standing on the platform, it was always pretty much deserted at that time of night. There used to be a clock, and it clicked across a minute, to twenty past eleven.
‘Now,’ Phil said. ‘What we’re going to do is place these coins on the line, but…’ and he hesitated, looking at each of us in turn. ‘It must be on the mainline. The train has to go over them fast, so we’ll have to walk down the other side, wait for the Worcester train to go through. And one more thing…’ He looked at us all again, and I can remember feeling as clear-headed as I’ve ever felt, caught in the gaze of those greyish eyes of his. ‘We all have to do it. All of us.’
‘This is daft,’ Kev said. ‘You’re a mental case.’
‘Don’t start,’ Phil said. ‘Man up. We all have to do it. All or nothing.’
Paula was shaking her head. I could see her bottom lip quivering. It might have been the way the light shone on her, but I thought there were tears in her eyes.
‘I’m in,’ I said.
I thought Phil was going to lean across and kiss me then, but he didn’t. He just gave me one of his big, wide grins.
‘We’re going to have to hurry up,’ he said, and I saw him grab Paula’s arm, and I remember seeing her trip a little on something. Kev was chuntering on, but followed us across the gravel and soil down the main line towards Birmingham. Overhead lines criss-crossed and the sky had darkened to a purplish bruise. We started off walking, and ended up running as if we were some molecular reaction with energy ramping up inside us. We stopped where the track made a slow curve, at the back of Andrews old factory, all corrugated tin and grim looking in that light. Somebody, Phil, I expect, must have known that would have been where the train’s speed was fastest, but we all knew that because of the curve, we’d only be able to see it at the last minute.
‘Right.’ Phil was licking his lips, ‘Okay. This is what we’re going to do. When I say, we’re each going to place our coin on the track.’
I could feel the penny in my palm, sticky with sweat. The sound of my heart beating was loud in my head.
‘We’re not going to do that until I say. Right?’
I nodded, but I don’t know if anyone else did.
‘We’re going to hold the coin on the track until the last possible moment,’ Phil said.
‘How come?’ Kev said. ‘Why don’t we just stick them on and leave them?’
Phil clipped the back of his head, ‘Because, numpty, the vibrations from the train’ll make them fall off.’
It made perfect sense at the time.
‘And we’ll let go of it and step right back when I say. Understand?’
Paula said nothing, and maybe Phil felt something for her, I don’t know, but he leaned across, pulled her to him and kissed her, really hard. I heard her gasp. I watched as his hand strayed along the outline of her body, saw him flick his thumb across her breast. I could see his eyes were open. I could see them, like metal flashing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kev sort of twitch as if he might have been about to approach me, but then he seemed to think better of it. I remember watching Phil’s every move, wanting to do what he did, watching him stoop down, put the palm of his hand on the track as if feeling for vibrations, and then he placed his penny and I heard it clink against the metal, and I heard him say, ‘Now,’ and he held it there, this penny, with the tip of his finger. Paula did the same, and Kev, and me. None of us were breathing, none. We weren’t even moving. We must have looked like runners on our starting blocks. All around us was a summer darkness so you could only see things, movements, in your peripheral vision. But you could hear things. And in the distance, there was a growl. A rising edge to it was making me tingle and, holding the penny on the track, I could feel the throb of the oncoming train beginning to pulse through me. I can honestly say I’ve never felt so completely alive, not at any point since really. I could sense the movement of the engine, the metal against metal, the speed through the air, the way it must have been thundering towards us. I could sense it. Kev was next to me and I thought I could see him trembling and I said something, swore, and suddenly, it was as if we hadn’t been ready, as if we’d blinked and missed a trick, and the lights of the train seemed to abruptly turn into the train itself, as if out of the blue. Huge and monstrous. One of us screamed, but I don’t remember Phil shouting anything and I seemed to feel the force of air hit me in the face, in the chest, and I was flung backwards, my breath ripped out of me, my hair wild, my eyes full of grit. I hit my head as I landed on my back on the uneven wasteland opposite Andrews factories. The train, the carriages of the train, roared past. And as quickly as it started, it stopped. And there was silence. I lay there, taking shallow, shaky breaths, still trying to process what I – we – had just done. It seemed ages before someone spoke. It was Paula, and she was calling my name, her voice a crescendo of dread. I coughed, struggled to sit up. ‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Over here.’
I couldn’t see a thing with all the grit and crap in my eyes, but I could hear Kev chuntering away, saying something about how stupid that had been. And Phil. Phil started laughing. I could hear that.
Apart from bruises and scratches, none of us was badly hurt. Not physically, anyway. We all stood up as if checking we still had limbs and walked back along the line to the station. Kev helped me up onto the platform and I let him kiss me. It had seemed right at the time.
Me and Paula waited with the lads without speaking, and watched them get on the train to Snow Hill. They both waved like school kids as the train left the station.
I think Paula saw Phil a couple more times, but it was never the same between us after that. I tried, but Paula always seemed very cool towards me. Anyway, when our O level results came out not long after, I’d failed most of mine so never went to college after all. Paula passed all hers and took up her place at the Art College, gave up her job in the shoe shop, and we lost touch. I heard she got pregnant and married quite young, but her husband committed suicide. I don’t know how true it is. As for Phil and Kev, who knows?
I hadn’t thought about Paula or any of that for years and years, but reading that article brought it back, clear as day. The two lads in the article were from Brum, apparently. Next to their bodies on the railway line they said there was a wallet, and on the track there were two pennies, flattened.
End
I read something in the local newspaper today about a couple of lads being hit by a train. It had happened sometime during the week on the mainline out of town. There was a head and shoulders shot – a passport photo by the looks – of the one lads, and a bigger picture of disused factories, all corrugated tin and grim looking, and in the foreground, paramedics and a couple of police officers, all stooped over a bundle of blankets on the railway line. There might have been an outline of a leg or an arm or a hand if you’d looked closely, but it was hard to tell. It looked like it had been a high speed collision. Neither lad had survived.
I read it a couple of times because it reminded me of something from way back. Thirty years ago, maybe a bit more. I was sixteen, but always pretended to be older. It was the summer before I was due to start college and I was in that no-man’s land, waiting for my O level results, thinking the world was my oyster and I’d be able to do anything I wanted, but not doing anything much. Me and my best mate, Paula, had taken part-time jobs in a shoe shop in town – jobs were ten-a-penny in those days – and we’d spend pretty much all our earnings on Saturday nights drinking vodka and limes in the Talbot in town. Like I say, I always pretended to be older, and anyway, Stourbridge has always been a bit parochial and boring, and drinking vodka and lime on Saturday nights, underage, was a thrill. I loved my Saturday nights out in town.
Paula’s parents were stricter than mine, they never let her out at all when we were sitting our exams, and whenever I went round to her house then, I had to leave by 8pm, and every Sunday night they made her go with them to the working men’s club. So that summer, exams over, we had to lie and say we were going to another friend’s house or the cinema or somewhere. We put on our make-up on the bus. I was never sure how her dad could ever believe us, but he never seemed to check up, he just gave us one of his looks and we carried on, every Saturday night. I always thought Paula ended up a product of her parenting. When we went out she was a wild thing, especially with a drink inside her. It was like she was kicking back, fighting against having to lie to break out of the constraints her parents put on her. As soon as she was out of their sight, she changed. Everything about her changed, even the way she spoke, the way she sat, her posture, even the way she thought seemed to change. It wasn’t confidence, exactly. It was much more than that. She was a different version of herself, a different Paula. And lads, well, lads were always interested in that version. She’d already had a serious boyfriend. Pete, his name was. She’d met him at the working men’s club. While her parents had played bingo, she’d gone into the bar where the men played darts and had spotted him. He’d been in his twenties, drove a Mini Clubman, worked as a tool-setter. One of his exs had had a baby, but he didn’t see it. He bought Paula an eternity ring, which she’d kept when she’d dumped him. She never did tell him she was only just fourteen. She could hardly stop laughing telling me about him crying and begging her not to drop him. We both had a good old laugh about that. I’d thought he was an arrogant sod and had deserved everything he’d got. And maybe it was that for Paula. Maybe it was knowing she was capable of that kind of thing that made her have that confidence or whatever it was, because it seemed after that other lads were drawn to her like moths to a flame.
Anyway, it was a Saturday night. Paula had another boyfriend. We’d seen him in the Talbot a few weeks before. We’d both spotted him, standing at the bar, straight away. Phil was good-looking, tall, he wore Ben Sherman shirts and Levi’s. He had this open, big, wide smile and bright grey eyes. I remember the grey eyes. And he seemed to have money. I remember that as well. Paula made a bee-line for him, struck up a conversation with him, no trouble, and neither of us had been surprised when he’d told us he was a Brummie, he looked like a city lad. He looked different to the usual sort. And he liked old-fashioned things, odd stuff like the film Brief Encounter on the one hand and music by the O’Jays on the other. Although Paula seemed to like that about him – and so did I – he made me feel boring, and worse than that Paula was different with him, softer, quieter. On the bus on the way back, after that first meeting with him, she didn’t make any jokes about his accent or the way he kissed her, like she did with the others. I saw the way she looked at him, and I remember not knowing what that look meant, and I remember feeling a stab of panic that this was it, that I’d be abandoned, that it was going to mean the end of our Saturday nights. I think he must have felt it, or felt a bit sorry for me because he and Paula had hit it off straight away and I was left, you know, in the corner with my vodka and lime. So he’d said he had this friend, Kev, who I ought to meet, so we could make a foursome. I’d been a bit nervous, obviously, I’d never been on a blind date at the time, but Paula said it would be fine, so that made me feel better.
Kev, though, was not much like Phil. For a start, that first time I saw him, he was wearing a checked suit. Checked suits were neither fashionable or attractive, even at that time. He was not as tall as Phil, his skin was a pallid colour, almost the same as his hair, which was too long. And he was thin. He looked like any local lad I’d seen at school or in town forever. By the look on his face when me and Paula walked in, it was clear he thought as much about me as I did about him.
‘Alright?’ he said, and I nodded.
Paula slid her arms round Phil’s neck, right there at the bar, and they kissed, and I remember looking at Kev’s mouth, his slack-jaw and weak chin, and I remember thinking, Christ Almighty, and ordering a vodka and lime without answering him. I remember waiting for my drink at the bar and seeing Paula and Phil out of the corner of my eye, still kissing, and wondering if the two of them might just go off together and leave me with Kev, but Phil must have seen me and came over, put his hand in his pocket and held out a pound note.
‘Here,’ he said, smiling. ‘And keep the change.’
I remember him holding onto the note as I tried to take it from him so we were both standing there, holding it for a split second, and I remember maybe looking up at him for a bit too long, and Kev coming over and standing too close to me, breathing beer on my neck. And I remember not having a pocket to put the change into and holding onto it all night, without knowing why.
I don’t remember every single thing about that part of the evening, I think I drank more than my usual that night, sitting in the corner, mostly facing away from Kev, watching the locals come and go, not being able to make out everything Phil was saying to Paula. But I did catch some of what he was talking about: films. John Hughes. Something about The Breakfast Club. And music. Something about how he was planning to see Bowie in concert the following year in Italy. And I remember feeling jealous and a bit pissed off. He made his life sound sophisticated, and by comparison, mine seemed shallow. Paula seemed to hardly touch a drop, and every now and then, she let out a sound, like a laugh, but not, and the way she looked at Phil, well. I remember she never spoke a word to me in the pub all evening. Kev had been necking the beer down him, occasionally mumbling at me when it looked like I might need another drink and I noticed his eyes had started to glaze over way before closing time. He seemed to be able to walk a straight line to the bar though, and unlike Phil, he seemed to be paying for my drinks in little bits and pieces of coins, not notes. I remember that.
At chucking out time, me and Paula went to the ladies. There was a single cracked mirror on the wall, and the fluorescent lights in there made me look tired and a bit pale. Paula looked fine. I remember her licking a bit of tissue paper and rubbing some black mascara from under my eye. I remember her holding my chin, and looking at her mouth, her lips, and thinking about her kissing Phil. And I remember her telling me we were going to walk with Phil and Kev back to the station so they could catch their last train back.
I don’t remember much about the walk, initially, except feeling dizzy and sick as soon as the air hit me, and letting Kev put his arm around me, but only so that I could keep upright. I remember walking behind Phil and Paula on the narrow High Street pavement, and we must have gone under the underpass and up past the bus station. There’s a station at Stourbridge Town we call the ‘shuttle’. It runs an electric train now, but then it ran a proper engine that just used to go the mile or so to the main station at Stourbridge Junction and back. Used to cost about 10p. That night, for some reason, the shuttle wasn’t working. Maybe it was too late. The little ticket office was in darkness. The café at the bus station was just closing up and a great waft of fried food filled the air as we passed it. The woman, or man, I can’t remember which, locking up saw us gawping at the closed shuttle office. I could feel all that vodka, and the sourness of lime swilling around in my stomach. The thought of sausage sandwiches, bacon, grease and hot fat had started to make my mouth drip and my head heavy. It wasn’t hunger.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said. And I was. Into a flower bed that lined the pavement. Instantly, I felt better, relieved. Kev’s face, as I remember, was a picture.
‘They won’t let you on the bus if you’m ill,’ the woman, or man, said.
And all of us looked at each other and laughed, or at least me and Paula did, at any rate.
Feeling suddenly sober and clear-headed can be euphoric, and that’s what I must have been feeling. Phil was looking off up the shuttle line. It wasn’t quite dark, even at that time of night and a summer haze blurred the distance into darkish blue. Trees crowded in from both sides, not moving, so it was like some kind of painting we were looking at.
‘We could walk the line,’ Phil said. ‘It’d be faster than walking the road. The last train’s at 11.32.’
‘What?’ Kev said. ‘No way.’
He looked at me, shook his head and said, ‘He’s a couple o’bob short of a pound, he is.’
‘Oi,’ Phil said, laughing. ‘What’s up, Kevin? You deffin’ me out?’
Paula started laughing, and then I did, and I think Kev joined in, and it all seemed hilarious. Paula didn’t say anything, but I saw her reach for Phil’s hand and I saw their fingers tighten round each other and hold tight. Somebody – me, it could have been – said, ‘Well come on then, let’s leg it.’ And we just ran for it. We just jumped down onto the line, all four of us, like lemmings off a cliff edge, and we just ran off. We must have looked like little kids running into the sea, having to lift our legs up over the sleepers, one following another, following another. And we were laughing, still, or at least I was, and Phil was. Laughing and running along the railway line, into the blurred darkish blue, under the bridge, into the shadows and out again, past the trees, past the nettles and the blackberries, on and on, laughing and running. I’ll never forget that. I never will. That feeling. And the thing was, the Junction, the railway station at Stourbridge Junction seemed to come into view quicker than I’d thought. We were there. It was there. We seemed to round the bend and there it was, the station, we could see the platform lit up orange and we could see the waiting room’s light flickering like it always did. And we slowed right down and stopped, stood just beneath the platform edge. We were holding our sides, wiping our noses on our sleeves, breathing like animals breathe, looking at each other and laughing again. The platform was high – it still is – and Phil leaned against it. He looked up, closed his eyes as if about to pray or something, and let out a loud, high-pitched yowl and then looked straight at me, his mouth big and wide.
‘That,’ he said. ‘That was better than sex, that was.’
I’ll never forget him standing there and saying that, his shoulder against the brick or concrete or whatever it was, of the platform, his shirt open so I could see the crook of his collar bone, the beginnings of a silvery sheen of sweat across his neck, across his forehead, his eyes like flashing metal, greyish. I’ll never forget that. He looked like Richard Gere. He really did. Paula stood beside him, probably seeing the same thing as me. She placed her hand on the back of his head like I know she’d seen actors do, and then she kissed him, and I could hear their mouths working away, and I saw his hand, stroke down her spine and rest on her hip and I could see his fingers scribing patterns across the top of her backside.
Kev lit a cigarette and offered one to me. I didn’t smoke then, but when they’d eventually stopped kissing, Phil took one and I watched him light it, watched the way he breathed the smoke out.
‘Better than sex.’ Kev said it in my ear and I winced against the smell of his breath. He reached for my hand, the one still clutching change from earlier, and I snatched it away. I’d forgotten I was still holding onto that money. Bits and pieces of coins shot out across the railway line. A couple of ten pence coins and some copper. I glanced across at Phil and saw his face light up.
‘What about if we push it a bit further?’ he said, and he stamped his cigarette out in the gravel.
‘What?’ Kev said, and smoke drifted up past his gormless face.
‘We do have to go home, you know,’ Paula said, and I could see she looked narked, worried. ‘We’ll miss the last bus if we don’t hurry up.’
I knew she’d be in trouble if we missed that bus. Her Dad would go mad. And I remember smiling at her, then at Phil, and still being able to taste vodka and lime on my tongue, sour, and seeing his arm round her shoulder and her hand resting on his chest.
‘Go on then,’ I said to him. ‘Where do you want to push it to?’
I saw Paula roll her eyes and heard her sigh.
‘Let’s flatten some coins,’ Phil said.
‘No way,’ Kev said. ‘No fucking way.’
‘Aw, mate,’ Phil said, and he let go of Paula. ‘What’s up with you tonight. I thought you was an hard-knock.’
I laughed again. Remember, I was only sixteen. I thought it was all so funny, or maybe I was getting a bit hysterical. I just thought I felt amazing, alive, important.
‘What’s up with all of you tonight?’ Paula said.
‘What do you mean?’ I said to Phil, ignoring her. ‘What does it mean: flatten coins?’
Phil looked at me the way he’d been looking at Paula, I was sure of it, and put his hand in his pocket.
‘Here,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Go on, take some of these.’
Kev had started backing away towards the railway line. No one was standing on the platform, it was always pretty much deserted at that time of night. There used to be a clock, and it clicked across a minute, to twenty past eleven.
‘Now,’ Phil said. ‘What we’re going to do is place these coins on the line, but…’ and he hesitated, looking at each of us in turn. ‘It must be on the mainline. The train has to go over them fast, so we’ll have to walk down the other side, wait for the Worcester train to go through. And one more thing…’ He looked at us all again, and I can remember feeling as clear-headed as I’ve ever felt, caught in the gaze of those greyish eyes of his. ‘We all have to do it. All of us.’
‘This is daft,’ Kev said. ‘You’re a mental case.’
‘Don’t start,’ Phil said. ‘Man up. We all have to do it. All or nothing.’
Paula was shaking her head. I could see her bottom lip quivering. It might have been the way the light shone on her, but I thought there were tears in her eyes.
‘I’m in,’ I said.
I thought Phil was going to lean across and kiss me then, but he didn’t. He just gave me one of his big, wide grins.
‘We’re going to have to hurry up,’ he said, and I saw him grab Paula’s arm, and I remember seeing her trip a little on something. Kev was chuntering on, but followed us across the gravel and soil down the main line towards Birmingham. Overhead lines criss-crossed and the sky had darkened to a purplish bruise. We started off walking, and ended up running as if we were some molecular reaction with energy ramping up inside us. We stopped where the track made a slow curve, at the back of Andrews old factory, all corrugated tin and grim looking in that light. Somebody, Phil, I expect, must have known that would have been where the train’s speed was fastest, but we all knew that because of the curve, we’d only be able to see it at the last minute.
‘Right.’ Phil was licking his lips, ‘Okay. This is what we’re going to do. When I say, we’re each going to place our coin on the track.’
I could feel the penny in my palm, sticky with sweat. The sound of my heart beating was loud in my head.
‘We’re not going to do that until I say. Right?’
I nodded, but I don’t know if anyone else did.
‘We’re going to hold the coin on the track until the last possible moment,’ Phil said.
‘How come?’ Kev said. ‘Why don’t we just stick them on and leave them?’
Phil clipped the back of his head, ‘Because, numpty, the vibrations from the train’ll make them fall off.’
It made perfect sense at the time.
‘And we’ll let go of it and step right back when I say. Understand?’
Paula said nothing, and maybe Phil felt something for her, I don’t know, but he leaned across, pulled her to him and kissed her, really hard. I heard her gasp. I watched as his hand strayed along the outline of her body, saw him flick his thumb across her breast. I could see his eyes were open. I could see them, like metal flashing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kev sort of twitch as if he might have been about to approach me, but then he seemed to think better of it. I remember watching Phil’s every move, wanting to do what he did, watching him stoop down, put the palm of his hand on the track as if feeling for vibrations, and then he placed his penny and I heard it clink against the metal, and I heard him say, ‘Now,’ and he held it there, this penny, with the tip of his finger. Paula did the same, and Kev, and me. None of us were breathing, none. We weren’t even moving. We must have looked like runners on our starting blocks. All around us was a summer darkness so you could only see things, movements, in your peripheral vision. But you could hear things. And in the distance, there was a growl. A rising edge to it was making me tingle and, holding the penny on the track, I could feel the throb of the oncoming train beginning to pulse through me. I can honestly say I’ve never felt so completely alive, not at any point since really. I could sense the movement of the engine, the metal against metal, the speed through the air, the way it must have been thundering towards us. I could sense it. Kev was next to me and I thought I could see him trembling and I said something, swore, and suddenly, it was as if we hadn’t been ready, as if we’d blinked and missed a trick, and the lights of the train seemed to abruptly turn into the train itself, as if out of the blue. Huge and monstrous. One of us screamed, but I don’t remember Phil shouting anything and I seemed to feel the force of air hit me in the face, in the chest, and I was flung backwards, my breath ripped out of me, my hair wild, my eyes full of grit. I hit my head as I landed on my back on the uneven wasteland opposite Andrews factories. The train, the carriages of the train, roared past. And as quickly as it started, it stopped. And there was silence. I lay there, taking shallow, shaky breaths, still trying to process what I – we – had just done. It seemed ages before someone spoke. It was Paula, and she was calling my name, her voice a crescendo of dread. I coughed, struggled to sit up. ‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Over here.’
I couldn’t see a thing with all the grit and crap in my eyes, but I could hear Kev chuntering away, saying something about how stupid that had been. And Phil. Phil started laughing. I could hear that.
Apart from bruises and scratches, none of us was badly hurt. Not physically, anyway. We all stood up as if checking we still had limbs and walked back along the line to the station. Kev helped me up onto the platform and I let him kiss me. It had seemed right at the time.
Me and Paula waited with the lads without speaking, and watched them get on the train to Snow Hill. They both waved like school kids as the train left the station.
I think Paula saw Phil a couple more times, but it was never the same between us after that. I tried, but Paula always seemed very cool towards me. Anyway, when our O level results came out not long after, I’d failed most of mine so never went to college after all. Paula passed all hers and took up her place at the Art College, gave up her job in the shoe shop, and we lost touch. I heard she got pregnant and married quite young, but her husband committed suicide. I don’t know how true it is. As for Phil and Kev, who knows?
I hadn’t thought about Paula or any of that for years and years, but reading that article brought it back, clear as day. The two lads in the article were from Brum, apparently. Next to their bodies on the railway line they said there was a wallet, and on the track there were two pennies, flattened.
End