The Train

It’s a cold, blustery morning with a hint of spring in the air; clouds hurry across a pale blue sky causing sudden showers to wet the pavements of the dull coastal town. It is the end of March 1959, a time when travel of any kind is still imbued with romance and excitement. Long distance air-travel is still something of a luxury for which the few still dress up; jets have recently taken the place of lumbering turbo-prop aircraft allowing destinations which were once a few days away to be only a few hours out of our increasingly busy lives. Each journey is preceded by days of anticipation and eager packing; there is still the sense of going somewhere, leaving and arriving amidst noise and bustle. We have not reached the stage of arriving at a huge sprawling airport with crush-proof baggage, dressed in jeans and running shoes, to join a long queue to have our papers stamped and then to be herded into cramped spaces numbered on our tickets. We are not transported from A to B, personal phones switched off and stowed in our hand-luggage; we are not force-fed with aircraft food off plastic plates, nor are we concerned with what movie may be playing to while away the few brief hours of our high-speed journey; we have not reached the stage of departing one side of the world and arriving on another within twenty-four hours, wondering how we arrived there or what we have missed on the way. In 1959 it is not the arriving that matters, it is the getting there which holds all the pleasure.

Few families own even one car and our towns and villages are not scored with enormous shopping centres and carparks; we take the bus to do the shopping, we go to work by train, we buy tickets instead of carrying credit cards for the purchase of petrol; we cannot plan our journeys by computer; we cannot press a button and have our tickets printed within a matter of seconds; the world we live in is much bigger, much more individual, its nooks a crannies still undiscovered and untrammelled by tourism; the age of the masses is yet to come.

England is still criss-crossed with minor railway lines which are still profitable; country stations still have tended flower beds and heated waiting rooms; we can still sit by the fire, and the art of conversation is still alive; we have not yet reached the stage where our lives are ruled by the television schedule, and we still regard the Sunday chicken as something of a luxury. We know who lives in our street and what they do, how many children they have; we still go to the cinema occasionally instead of taking in a movie; we dress for the theatre. It is 1959.

So it was that, on that blustery morning, the old black taxi deposited us and our various large, leather bags, at the steps that swept up to the main railway station. We had already bought and paid for our tickets and, unheard of as it is today, our seats were booked. We heaved the numerous bags up the steps and through the dark foyer onto the windswept platform to join the already large crowd of people waiting expectantly for the train. It is almost impossible to imagine today the smell of a railway station; in those far-off days there was somehow an odour of stale coal-smoke, damp clothes, the sea, and numerous other scents that whistled through the drafty entrance so fast that you were largely unaware of them. But they were there and they made up part of the excitement of going somewhere. Although nothing much was happening there was a constant buzz of hushed conversations, the occasional clang of a porter’s trolley as it unloaded someone’s luggage on the platform, the sound of a distant taxi arriving or leaving, but over all lay a kind of hushed expectancy, a waiting for something momentous to happen. The cold wind cut in eddies under the bridge and along the platform, causing us to hug scarves tighter and raise collars against departing winter. The large central clock beneath the sooty awning stood at eleven-forty-five and every few seconds we stole a glance beyond the bridge, round the curve of the line, hoping to see something.

Promptly at eleven forty-seven a hissing and clanking could be heard somewhere just out of sight, the other side of the bridge. This hissing grew louder and louder until it was overtaken by a kind of huffing roar; clouds of smoke began to appear through the arches of the bridge, and then, suddenly, with an almost deafening chuff, hiss, and clank, the enormous monster grew out of the bridge until it dwarfed the crowd on the platform. A belching funnel topped a mountain of dark green shiny paint and gleaming brass; massive silver pistons shot up and down, back and forth, a wave of heat struck us from the tender as it slid past, and then came carriage after carriage of dark red and gold, sweating from a recent shower, windows closed and slightly misted from the outside cold. Almost silently now, the enormous monster came to rest against the platform with a final hiss of steam as it curled up from somewhere underneath the carriages. Doors opened with a thud, leather straps waving in the wind, and the scramble to get aboard began. This was the beginning of a journey.

We manhandled our luggage into the corridor and left it by the door while we went looking for the reserved seats. Outside in the windy morning the announcer could be heard above the clamour and hiss reading out the stations of our journey; they were magical names even though they were distorted by the speaker-system and the amount of noise that the arrival of a large train always generates. “Chichester, Portsmouth, Yeoville, Exeter, Okehampton, Plymouth.” Inside, the carriages smelled of soot, steam, slightly of coffee, but most of all of going somewhere. The corridors were jammed with people walking up and down looking for reservations and the atmosphere was warm with the dampness of steam-heating. We found our reserved seats and heaved the luggage along to the compartment and then up onto the rack which stretched above our heads.

Our compartment was not full – there were still three seats vacant – but every seat had a little card screwed above it showing that it was reserved. The seats were of a dark red moquette with arms which pulled down between each place; the window was large and square and when you sat down it came to knee-level; the top section consisted of a ventilator which could slide along into the open position to allow a bit of fresh air to enter the compartment and each place was topped with a framed picture of some seaside spot. The air inside could only be described as a ‘fug’. We struggled out of our overcoats, folded them and put them up on the rack, for this was to be a long haul; we took our window seats and watched the platform expectantly, waiting for the inevitable whistle and the knowledge that, at last, the journey was beginning.

At ten years old it was the first time that I had been anywhere outside the routine of going to school or exploring the local woods and fields with my friends; it was also the end of an era of post-war greyness where life was depressingly the same, day in and day out. Around the corner, at the end of the year, was the beginning of the famous 1960s: the start of inflation, the end of the security of knowing just where we would all be at the end of each month, the era of free love, flower-power, and the end of many institutions to which we had all become accustomed. By the end of the coming decade many of the smaller railway-lines would be closed, steam would be largely a thing of the past, cars would be the rule rather than the exception, and people would begin to fly to ever more distant destinations, becoming more and more casual about it as time began to fly past for all of us. In a sense, 1959 marked the beginning of the end of innocence.

After precisely three minutes, the enormous twelve-carriage red and cream monster began almost imperceptibly to move, sliding out of the station away from the platform and pulled by this enormous streamlined relic of the early 1940s which belched and puffed great gouts of black smoke into the cloudy sky. The suburban back gardens began to slide past, at first slowly and then with increasing speed until one blended in with the next. Level crossings flew past outside the window, small stations caused the train to rock excitingly as it dashed westwards, and from each bridge under which we steamed small groups of children ran in and out of the cloud of smoke that marked our passing. We were finally on our way.

The grey of suburbia gave way to the sound of the click-clack of the wheels over the joins in the rail to the green of fields filled with new grass, shining with a recent shower of rain, and in the background we could see the hills and hedges of the South Downs which, in turn became once more a jumble of houses, gardens, and factories as we slowed into Portsmouth. Up and down the carriages bustled a man in uniform announcing that the first sitting for lunch was now open, so we stashed our bits and pieces and, as the train once more slid into motion, staggered along rocking corridors until we reached the dining car. This was a long saloon through which the passage led, seats arranged in groups of four on the left and two on the right, each seat facing a table set with a spotless white cloth on which was set the required number of places. Each place had silver cutlery, its own napkin and wineglass, and each plate, when it came, bore the insignia of British Railways. It was a heady experience to sit at such a table and be served good food while looking out of the window at total strangers who stood waiting for some other train, huddled against the cold and wrapped in raincoats against the chilly March showers.

As we left the big port cities of Portsmouth and Southampton behind us, the sun burst from behind the scudding clouds; occasionally the view from the window was hidden behind a streak of steam from the engine and the cutlery jangled merrily as we rocked and rattled our way through small country stations at speed. Like royalty we sat back and enjoyed our roast beef and our chatter as the rest of the world went about its daily business, shielded from us by a sheet of glass while we, in our normal indoor clothes (although somewhat smarter for the occasion) enjoyed the warmth and security of our isolation. The world outside was still turning, still doing its shopping, its farming, delivering post in suburban streets, but we were going somewhere; we had all the trappings of excitement and movement and the knowledge that this was a day unlike any other.

After lunch was over we returned to our compartment, warm and replete with good food and enjoyed the ever-changing scenery as the train steadily steamed westwards. Ploughed fields which had been brown in Sussex and Hampshire became red as we crossed Dorset; hills which had been low and rounded became higher, and roads which had been wide and flat became narrow and winding and edged with high hedges. It suddenly rained while we stood in Chard station but the sun soon shone again, somehow brighter this time, as we crossed into Devonshire and the shadows began to lengthen into late afternoon.

All was hustle and bustle at Exeter Central where we stopped for ten minutes or so, the loudspeakers on the platform telling us to change here for Dawlish and the southern towns, but we were soon on our way again, this time close to the wilds of Dartmoor with its barren hills and bare trees, and at the end of the afternoon we pulled gently into Okehampton. We gathered our bags from the luggage rack and walked down the corridor to the open door to the platform. Okehampton was a sleepy station whose only claim to fame seemed to be that it was the junction for the branch line on which we were to continue our explorations.

As the long cream and red monster huffed its way out of the station and into the darkening distance we crossed the platform to another smaller train, this time in the green livery of British Railways, which waited, four carriages behind a much smaller engine; small puffs of steam came from beneath each carriage and we seemed to be the only people on the platform. Opening one of the doors, we climbed aboard and stashed our luggage in one of the rear compartments, having been warned that the train would split at Tower Hill, the first two carriages taking the northern line to Bude while the remainder of the train would continue south-westwards to Padstow. Since there was an hour before its scheduled departure, my mother asked one of the men in uniform if we could leave our bags on the train while we went for a cup of tea.
“You’m leave ‘em where ‘e likes, m’dear. They’m quite safe,” he encouraged, as he walked down the platform.

As a ten-year-old who had never been anywhere, I couldn’t understand a word he said, but it was fine and we climbed the steps up the bridge and crossed the lines to the station cafeteria where we had a rather watery cup of British Railways tea served in apparently indestructible white china.

At just before six o’clock we climbed back into the train. Outside, the gas-lamps were already giving off their steamy, greenish glow, and the quiet countryside was disappearing into the approaching night. With a few creaks and groans the train began to move and soon we were slowly chugging our way along a winding track with the sound of the river Dart chattering away somewhere below us; we seemed to be virtually the only people on the train. The night air smelled of all the scents of spring: we could almost see the catkins on the trees and feel the whisps of mist which clung to the lower slopes of the moor.

Small country stations marked points of hesitation in our journey, and I remember clearly the brighter and larger appearance of Launceston as we stopped there for a few minutes. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, dark now, we shunted back and forth at Tower Hill, and then we were on our way once more and into the unexplored wilds of North Cornwall as night finally wrapped us in our own little cocoon of electric light reflected in the dark window-panes of the compartment. I was tired and sleepy with all the excitement of the day, but I remember well the three stations where we stopped. I remember the strange names they bore: Egloskerry, Tresmeer, Otterham.

At Otterham, we gathered up our bags, opened the door into the quiet night, and stepped down onto the still platform. Owls hooted somewhere nearby and small insects buzzed around the gas-lamps as we walked slowly towards the station buildings where a small man in tweeds and a battered pork-pie hat waited for us. The three of us made up the entire complement of humanity on this rather deserted and lonely platform. The stranger ambled up to us and took our bags.
“You’m bin ‘itch-‘ikin’, m’dear?” he asked my mother as we walked into the building. For a moment she looked surprised – lost for an answer. Perhaps, like me, she didn’t understand him either.
“Oh, you mean ‘hitch-hiking’”, she laughed as we walked out of the building towards the green Austin Somerset which waited just outside the station. “No, why do you ask that?”
“Well,’ he said, ‘train’s late. I’m waitin for ‘e for more ‘n twenny minutes,” he grinned as he threw the bags in the boot and opened the doors for us.

As we drove off into the unlit night and down endless winding lanes of apparently empty countryside, past Tresparrat Posts, and other little hamlets whose names I completely forget, I nodded with sleep in the leather back-seat. Our journey, the first of many for me, had come to an end, and with it came the end of one of the most memorable days of my childhood, but one which I would never forget and which I would always strive to repeat.

The End of the Day

Outside all was quiet and peaceful; the garden slept in the deep heat of a summer afternoon and the pool burbled quietly away. Birds flew in and out of the sprinklers in the herbaceous borders, bees buzzed quietly in and out of the flowers, and the big dog slept against the sliding glass doors to the patio.

Inside he was putting the finishing touches to a painting, his thoughts far away as he brushed at the canvas. Although she had been dead less than five months, suddenly, the silence was broken by the sound of her voice calling him repeatedly from somewhere inside the house. The dog immediately rose up, skidding on the tiled floor, his hackles standing on end; he looked into the darkened house and barked softly. The painter got up from his painting and went to investigate – but there was nothing to be seen or found.

Some days later, after a bad night when he had lain awake for a long time worrying about this and that detail of the future, he heard, through the mists of sleep, the phone ringing. He looked at his watch; it was only 6.45 a.m. and so he curled up again and went back to sleep. At nine he woke up, stretched, and reached for the morning pill, realising from the congestion in his chest, that he had to get to the nebulizer quickly.

He staggered into the living room, loaded the nebulizer, switched it on, and put it to his mouth to take the first relieving breaths of the morning. Suddenly, his mouth was filled with something horrid – something that struggled and moved around, and eventually bit him quite hard in the left cheek. He coughed and spluttered and spat the offending thing out on the floor. It was a spider which had found its way into the mouthpiece of the nebulizer and now lay, dying, on the floor.

He paid it little heed at the time, finishing off his time on the machine before going to make the customary morning tea. His mouth felt a little numb and vaguely unpleasant, but he soon forgot about it as he went about the chores of the day – one of which was to see who had phoned so early in the morning.

It wasn’t until much later in the morning that he became aware that his mouth was still tingly and rather numb, and he idly wondered why. He walked out to the kitchen and started the washing-up from the day before, listening with one ear to the radio which blared out its usual hash of reggae and popular music of the day, interspersed with the occasional news bulletin and the same adverts that had been spewing forth for the last two weeks from the speakers. He didn’t really have the radio on to listen to it, more for the company as he went about his solitary day.

It was after lunch that he first realised there might be something wrong. His mouth still felt a little numb, but nothing to worry about, but now he felt how the glands under his arms were enlarged, and a kind of drowsiness crept over him in waves. He stood up from the computer where he was working and took a few steps towards the kitchen with the intention of making a cup of tea. Suddenly, without warning, he found himself lying flat on the floor of the passage. The door frames seemed to be all the wrong way up and the windows, where he could see them, were all upside-down. He was quite conscious yet he knew that he couldn’t move, couldn’t even reach for the phone in his pocket, let alone remember what numbers to dial. He lay like that for some time. The dog came and snuffled at his face, eventually lying down beside him because he understood that, somehow, his master couldn’t move properly. The only thing he could do was to lie there and see that no harm came to him. Outside the silence of the midday persisted.

After what seemed like a long time, he was able to get up again and walk shakily to the bedroom, where he lay down on the bed. The dog followed him, licking his face and snuffling against him, but to no avail, because the dog couldn’t speak English, or any other language. He only understood that something was wrong with his master, and he wasn’t going to move.

Some time later, in the mid afternoon it must have been, he found enough strength to get to the kitchen and switch on the kettle. His mouth was no longer numb and he was beginning to feel better; but hardly had he found a cup and poured the hot water into it on top of the teabag, than he was once more overcome with giddiness and tiredness, and it was all he could do to get as far as the bed and fall, noisily, on top of it. The dog followed him, knowing in his way that there was something wrong, but being quite unable to deal with it.

He must have slept for an hour or so, and when he woke up the tea was still by the bed and the dog was lying peacefully on the floor. He struggled up and took a couple of mouthfuls of cold tea and then lay back, exhausted, on the pillows. The room had begun to come and go again in his vision. One moment it was dark and quiet, the next it seemed full of light and he could hear many voices just outside his ability to understand what they were trying to say. These voices the dog couldn’t hear.

He must have lain there for several hours, because the next time he opened his eyes, the light had faded to twilight and the evening was well advanced. He had a vague memory of the phone ringing somewhere in the distance, but he wasn’t quite sure where, or what he had done with the instrument which he normally carried with him. The dog was now restless, because it was past his time for eating, and he was hungry, but the man on the bed could not find the energy to get as far as the kitchen and dig out the food.

Later, when he awoke again, it was fully dark outside, and the whole house was in darkness. He realised, with a certain sort of alarm, that he couldn’t really feel his feet, and that other extremities seemed to have gone to sleep. The dog remained curled up at the side of the bed, not wanting to leave his master for even one minute. He tried to lean over and touch the dog, to ruffle its head and say that all was OK, but he couldn’t do it. With a kind of resignation, he realised that perhaps he would never be able to get up off this bed again – but somehow it didn’t seem to matter.

The voices were coming nearer, but he still couldn’t understand what they were trying to say. At times the room seemed full of light and he could see faint shapes moving somewhere beyond his vision, but he soon gave up trying to see them or to understand what they were saying. He must have dozed off again because when he woke later, it seemed that the night was well advanced. He heard, in the distance, the sound of a clock chiming three. And then, suddenly, the room was filled with light and he could see people he hadn’t seen for many years and he could almost understand what they were trying to say. It was then that he remembered the spider and the calls in the quiet afternoon, and he lay back, exhausted, and allowed the people and the room to gradually swallow him up into their strange embrace. He breathed his last, stertorous breath, at 3.30 a.m. and then lay back and surrendered to those who had come to fetch him.

Three days later the cleaning lady came in and found him, dead on the bed, the dog still lying faithfully at his side on the bedside mat. She let out a piercing shriek and ran for help. The dog didn’t move because as long as his master was still there, this was his place and he was not going to forsake it for anyone.

Two hours later, the ambulance had come and gone on its last trip, and a friendly neighbour coaxed the old dog to his final resting place at the local vet. The past was now over – finished. Nothing mattered any more.

The Haunted House

In the autumn of 1970 my mother and I moved into a large house in Parktown; although not as ostentatious as some of the houses built by the Randlords in the last decade of the 19^th century, built in 1897 it was a very solid Victorian of typical appearance, single storey with gables to the front and one side joined by a covered veranda, and set in an acre of what had once been lush garden. It had an enormous lounge with a fireplace, an interleading music room looking onto the front stoep, a large dining room with a most interesting arched stained glass window which opened to the lounge, and several of the external windows were of etched glass. The lounge and music rooms both had intricate pressed-steel ceilings with a deep cornice and in the centre of each ceiling was a magnificent chandelier made of hand-blown Venetian glass. The floors, which at first glance appeared to be covered by lino, were made of the most intricate marquetry in a delicate pattern. It was one of the loveliest houses I have ever lived in.

The occurrences started as soon as we began moving in. The removal lorry was parked in the back garden and I gave directions to the men as each item of furniture was removed and taken into the house; in the meantime my mother was hanging pictures in the lounge and making sure each piece of furniture ended up in the right place in the right room. She was knocking a nail into the wall next to the stained glass window by the lounge fireplace and opening to the dining room but the nail refused to remain in position and kept on falling out. She clearly heard a voice behind her saying “What are you doing?” Thinking that I was in the room and had asked the question, she turned round to find herself alone in the house. When she looked out of the dining room window I was still outside with the removal lorry.

After I had been able to restore the living areas to their previous splendour (they had been painted in the most terrible colours by the previous occupants), we would sit by the fire in the lounge in the evenings quietly listening to the radio or to music on the hi-fi. We had at that time two cats which were never far away and these would curl up in front of the fire on the settee. However, sometimes, the cats, ever aware of their surroundings, would refuse to remain in the room; their hackles would rise and their fur would stand on end suddenly and, peering into the corner in the direction of the stained glass window, they would suddenly run out of the room. Sometimes if I looked up slightly I could see at the edge of my vision, a couple standing by this window and silently watching us. They were not malevolent, but they were definitely there. As time went by we became quite accustomed to sharing the sitting room with this nameless couple and so really ceased to notice them.

The front door opened into a large entrance hall next to the music room; the hall then led through an interior door into a passage which ran the length of the house between the living areas and the bedrooms to the door into the dining room. Outside the front door there was an electric bell which connected with a bell-pull in the main bedroom; neither of these appliances worked any longer and had probably failed with old age. However, sometimes and for no apparent reason, they would ring. My mother used her bedroom (she slept in the large front room) as a sewing room and often she would become aware of a woman in a long pink dress slipping through the closed front door and disappearing down the passage.

The piano was situated in the music room at an angle which permitted me to see both the front stoep and through the door into the entrance hall. Late one night I was trying to get my fingers round a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody when, suddenly, I became aware of someone standing behind my right shoulder; it seemed he was urging me to let him show me the right way to handle the music. Afraid and ‘spooked’ I jumped up, turned out the light and went to bed.

Even friends of ours who were avowed sceptics and who denied the existence of the supernatural would often refuse to stay in the sitting room because they felt uncomfortable there; they felt as if someone was watching them.

When we had lived in the house for about two years I was introduced to a clairvoyant; he was a strange elderly man who lived in a very grand flat in the centre of Johannesburg. Wearing a copper-coloured corduroy suit over a dark red jersey, I visited him for the first time one winter night. When I knocked on his door he called from inside the flat and told me to wait a minute. From the other side of the door, in which there was no peep-hole, he told me that I was tall and blond and was dressed in a mixture of coppery brown and red. I was amazed, but was even more surprised when, as we sat across the table from each other, he described accurately the house in which we lived, even going so far as to detail the stained glass window which seemed to be the centre of these ‘happenings’.

He also told me about the two people who stood by the window from time to time: apparently they were a couple who had lived in the house about 1920 and who had had some very memorable experience in that room, hence their returning there quite frequently.

There was also, from time to time, a terrible smell of death which hovered around the second bedroom from the front door; on conducting some research I found out that an elderly man had been killed in the house by robbers who believed he had hidden a large sum of money under the floor. This happened in 1956, or thereabouts.

Say what you will, houses collect the feelings and scents of those who have lived in them, a bit like a piece of clothing absorbs the scent of the person to whom it belongs. Sometimes these spirits are downright evil and need to be removed so that we can enjoy peace but on other occasions they are merely the ghosts of those who once were who return to visit a place of importance to them from time to time. They mean no harm and we should learn to live with them.