Scenes from a Station

Or

What the Porter Saw

I

Doreen Ratcliffe looked at her husband in exasperation.

"Why the hurry, Len? You're retired. You don't need to go at all!"

Her husband swept up his keys and his phone from the side table, shrugged on his jacket, and smiled at her.

"It's September the first, love."

She sighed.

"I know the date. I just don't understand your obsession with it."

His smile widened to a grin.

"September the first, Dor! Things happen on September the first! It's as good as the telly! Come with me, love, and see for yourself."

Doreen shook her head.

"Not likely. I have things to do. And I'm meeting Carol and Sharon for lunch."

Len grimaced. He liked Carol well enough, but he had never warmed to his sister-in-law.

"Okay then," he said resignedly, heading for the door. "But you're missing out. Have a good time, love."

"Bye," she said vaguely, watching him go with a slight frown on her face. She had never understood Len's fierce desire to be at the station on the morning of September the first every year, even though it had been going on for over twenty years now. When he was working, Len had wheedled and begged and cajoled his colleagues to swap shifts with him. Once he had even ended up in a disciplinary hearing for changing the rota without clearing it with his boss first. And now he was retired, with plenty to keep him occupied with the bowls club, the dog to walk, his allotment and the grandchildren, but he still insisted he needed to go to the station this morning. It was very odd.

Len banged the front door behind him and hurried down the road to the Tube station, He checked his watch: it was barely nine o'clock – he had plenty of time. He wished that Doreen had agreed to come with him; it would have been nice to show her the sights he had been telling her about ("going on about," she would say) for so many years. It would be nice to see her astonished face when she saw the owls, the old-fashioned trunks, the oddly dressed people. And he would have laughed aloud when he told her to watch carefully as families (it mostly seemed to be families for some reason) quite literally disappeared before her eyes. She had never believed him when he had told her his stories. You had to be there – and you had to have your wits about you and watch – to realise that there really was something very peculiar going on.

It did astound Len that none of his colleagues – former colleagues, he supposed he must say now - had ever cottoned on to what was going on. They had all seen some of the sights he had – they were difficult to miss, after all - but they just rolled their eyes at the oddness of the punters and moved on. Even when Len pointed out the coincidence of the date to them, emphasising that September the first seemed to have an excess of peculiar customers, they just shook their heads at him, asked him how much he had had to drink the night before, and made jokes behind his back about Len seeing conspiracies everywhere in his old age. Still, the jokes were good-natured, and Len didn't really mind. He was a popular bloke, and his September the first obsession gave everyone some harmless fun. It had even come up in his boss's speech at his retirement do in June.

There were only two people who didn't laugh at Len. One of them, Sally Thomas, worked in the ticket office. It was strange, because Sally was a good sport who normally liked a laugh, but when the subject of Len's September the first obsession came up, she looked awkward, pursed her lips and even walked away. Len got the funny feeling that she knew somehow what was behind the odd happenings, though he didn't really see how she could.

The other person who didn't laugh was young Liam Heggs, who had started working on the platforms a couple of years back. Len remembered Liam's eyes widening as he saw a middle-aged couple with a boy and girl in tow pushing a trolley laden with two old-fashioned trunks and a huge cage containing a screeching owl. The girl, if he remembered rightly, had been carrying another cage containing a large and angry looking black cat. That had only been Liam's second week on the job. He had goggled at the family and then turned to Len, who was supposed to be training him ("showing him the ropes," they used to call it back when Len started, but the new managers liked to give things fancy names).

"Do you see a lot of owls here?" Liam had asked Len, somewhat breathlessly. Len had laughed. Perhaps at long last he had found someone else who would share his feelings about this day.

"Not usually," he admitted. "But on September the first… Watch and learn, lad, watch and learn."

Liam had watched with widening eyes and an open mouth.

And Len noticed with approval that this time last year, young Liam had swapped shifts with Jim Davies, so that he, not Jim was on duty sweeping the platforms, tidying trolleys and answering passengers' queries at the end of the station where the odd happenings seemed to be concentrated. Len wondered if he would see young Liam today. He had a pretty strong hunch that he would.

Len stood up as the train slowed. He'd done this journey so often that he timed it perfectly, and was first out onto the platform. He smiled to himself as he headed for the mainline station. What sights would he see today? How many owls? (His record was seventeen, but that had been an exceptional year.) Would there be people in cloaks and pointed hats? Would the man with the scar be there – the one who had started all this for him over twenty years ago with his red headed friend?

Len could hardly wait to see.