The Chthonic Railway

When Sunny gets blue, she breaths a sigh of sadness,
Like the wind that stirs the trees,
Wind that sets the leaves to swaying
Like some violin is playing strange and haunting melodies.

Jack Segal and Marvin Fisher

'For heaven's sake!' Alfie said. 'Snap out of it, girl!'

'Shut up,' I replied. I had the right to feel a little upset, didn't I?

'No I won't.'

'Yes you will.' I looked around the compartment for something to throw at my stupid daemon, but everything was pretty well fixed in place. That only left my bag. I lifted it in what I hoped was a threatening way.

'You'll miss.' I threw the bag and, just as Alfie said, I missed. It landed on the seat facing me, but by the time it got there Alfie was somewhere else; where, I couldn't tell.

'Alfie?'

'I told you you'd miss.' Alfie sprang up from the floor and landed square in my lap. I coughed.

'You smell disgusting,' I said.

'They don't clean these carriages like they used to.'

'You smell of dust and dirt and leaf-ash.'

'Shouldn't have got in a smoking compartment, then, should you?'

'Oh! Oh! Shut up! You know I had no choice! And stop looking at me that way!'

Alfie jumped back down onto the floor and fetched my bag for me. Now it was dusty and dirty too. Oh well, it was no good making a fuss over it.

'Friends?'

'Thanks, Alfie. Yes - friends.' I gave him a hug, and tried not to let him see me wrinkle my nose. Not that that made any difference, of course.

The train stopped at Aldbrickham station, with a hissing of steam and a banging and jolting of its buffers. People got off and people got on, but nobody tried to get into my compartment because there was a big sign on it - RESERVED, BY ORDER - and nobody was going to risk trying getting in and being spotted and hauled off by the railway constables. The platform was pretty crowded and I guessed that lots of travellers were taking the last possible train up to London. There were quite a few couples, I noticed. They'd be saying goodbye to each other at Crècy, or London Bridge, or Eversholt station, leaving it as late as they possibly could. I remembered saying goodbye to Gerry like that, at Kings Cross, two years ago.

Oh, beggar it. I took a book - Lady Audley's Secret - out of my bag and tried to read. We pulled slowly out of the station, past rows of people on the platform patiently waiting for the next train up to London. I expect there was standing room only in the rest of the train.

Privileged is what Aunt Sybil called it. 'Privilege has its responsibilities, Sonya,' she'd say. 'You are a very lucky, a most fortunate, girl if you would only see it. You have a beautiful home and all the necessities of life in abundance. Let me remind you that many others are not so fortunate as you. Not everybody has enough to eat, or a room of their own to sleep in. Not every girl is surrounded with affectionate - I may say doting - relatives, as you are. Not every girl receives such an education as you do. I most certainly did not. You take too much for granted, Sonya. Altogether too much.'

And so on, and so on, and so on. But I didn't feel lucky. Yes - the sentry had saluted Daddy at the station, and the station-master himself had halted the train, and held the carriage door open for me and handed me in, while the head porter saw to my trunk. Yes, I had a private compartment all to myself, and I wouldn't have to share elbow, knee and foot space with a bunch of total strangers. But I still had to go off to Highdean School and be ordered around by ugly old women - the monkey-women, we called them - and sleep in a nasty iron bed, and play lacrosse in the wet and learn Roman and Frankish and Algebra and crocheting until I became old and crotchety myself. Could anything be more boring, or less like what I really wanted to do? Well, Alfie?

'Worse things happen at sea.'

'Oh, Alfie!' I burst into tears. My daemon, my horrible, beastly, infuriating, lovely daemon, sprang to my shoulder.

'Sunny, I'm sorry. That was awful. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking.' Alfie nibbled my ear and I felt a little shiver run down my back.

'How could you!'

'I'm... you know...'

'An idiot, just like me. I know.' I took Alfie in both hands and held him in front of my face. He was looking genuinely sorry, I have to say. 'How are we ever going to stay out of trouble with... all those people, if we can't stay out of trouble with ourselves? Why are you so bloody... so bloody daft?'

'You're daft too. You're impossible. You say the silliest things.'

We were both crying now. I kissed Alfie and he kissed me back.

'We're the daftest pair there ever was. Aren't we?'

'Yes. We're dafter than anyone. Ha-ha!'

'Ha-ha-ha!' I shouted as loud as I could. 'Ha-ha! Beggar them all!'

Paddington station was absolutely heaving. I mean solid. Alfie took one look at the crush and dived into my bag. Never mind the smell! It took all the elbow-work I could manage to get off the train - I was right, it had been standing room only - and away from all the smoke and grime. The platform was jammed, the booking hall was jammed and, when I finally got there, the concourse was worse than that. I took one look at the taxi queue and decided to take the Chthonic instead.

If Aunt Sybil had known that I was going underground she'd have had a fit of the vapours. The one time I'd suggested it - I was only nine and up to Town to visit the Exhibition - she's swollen up to twice her usual size. 'The Chthonic Railway!' she'd spluttered. 'I suppose the girl will ask to eat in a Brytish Restaurant next! Why don't we take a walk down the Ratcliffe Highway, or go drinking in a Limehouse tavern? Let's join the dope-fiends on the Embankment!' I got the message, as they say. Well-brought-up ladies didn't travel by the Chthonic Railway.

Stuff well-brought-up. If I was going to get to Crècy Station by five o'clock, I was going to have to rub shoulders with the hoi-polloi.

Anyway, it was different - fun - going by tube. I pushed and shoved my way over to the travelling staircase, skipped onto the top step the way I'd been told, and rode on it down to the ticket office as confidently as if I did it every day. I smiled ever-so-sweetly at the men standing in the queue by the ticket window - 'Oh, I'm so sorry, but I'm frightfully late. Would you mind...?' - and gave the poor tired-eyed girl behind the glass sixpence for a one-way ticket to Crècy. Then more push and shove down the stairs to the Orbital Line platform to wait for the next anticlockwise train. I stood right at the edge so I could see down the tunnel. I wanted to be first on the train so I could get a seat.

Alfie poked his nose out of my bag. 'Are we there yet?' The little chap was looking distinctly bad-tempered. Was he going to go into one of his sulks? I had an idea.

'No, we're not. Nothing like. You're just going to have to stay in there until we get to Crècy. Unless...'

'Yes?'

'...You'd like to come out and meet some nice sailors' daemons. Look!' I grinned and yanked Alfie out of the bag by his forepaws and held him up so he could see the blue-uniformed men who were jostling next to us. Not quite touching Alfie and me, naturally, but as close as they could get without being offensive.

That was one of the stupidest, most dim-witted things I've ever done. Alfie panicked, and so did I. He squealed and wriggled out of my grasp. I cried out in my turn as he fell to the platform and, losing his footing, tumbled over the edge. He landed on the rail and lay completely still. My head swam and my stomach tried to force its way out of my mouth. I felt my knees give way under me and I measured my length on the cold stone of the platform, banging my forehead hard against it.

I could hear a terribly loud roaring in my ears - or was it in Alfie's ears? My head was throbbing and strange patterns were pulsating somewhere behind my eyes; backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards. Through the blinking, criss-crossing shapes of grey-purple light I could see a row of dim anbaric bulbs set in the ceiling - but I could also see through Alfie's eyes the headlight of the train that was fast approaching the platform. I tried to scream 'Alfie! Get off the track! Get out of there!' but my voice wouldn't come, and Alfie couldn't move and neither could I.

We were going to die, and it was all so pointless, so stupid, so bloody ridiculous. It was so funny I was starting to laugh - I could see the report in the Chronicle:

Stroppy Little Madam Throws Own Daemon In Path Of Oncoming Train, Perishes

From Our Special Correspondent

Spoilt schoolgirl Sonya Moon, 16, threw another of her silly tantrums Sunday afternoon...

I found my voice at last. 'Hee-hee,' I screamed. 'Ha-ha-ha! You stupid cow. Now see what you've done to Daddy! Take that, Auntie. Up yours!' The roaring and flashing were getting louder and louder and brighter and brighter.

Then Alfie was there with me again, and he was singing a song that Peggy Williams had learned from her brother, about an Inuit girl. I loved it. We were happy, happy, happy. I joined in with Alfie, singing descant:

So stand me a drink and find me a seat, and a yarn to you I'll tell,
of Dead-eyed Dick and Mexico Pete, and a whore called Eskimo Nell.

What a fantastic song! We liked to sing it in the dormitory, once the monkey-women had gone to bed. All of it. All one hundred verses! I was just getting stuck into verse thirty-two, where the action really starts to warm up, when someone rudely interrupted me:

'Miss? Miss? Are you all right, miss? Can you hear me?'

'Shut up! What? Sorry!' I tried to sit up, but a gentle hand stopped me.

'You stay there, miss. You had a nasty fall.'

'Alfie? Where's Alfie?' I opened my eyes. A middle-aged woman in a nurse's uniform was bending over me. I was lying on a wooden bench in a cream-painted room. The walls were covered with posters and official notices. It was calm and quiet.

'Your daemon? He's here, look!'

Alfie was there, lying next to me. I grabbed hold of him and nearly squeezed the life out of him. 'Oh, Alfie!'

'Sunny!' We kissed, and the woman smiled down on us.

'He's gorgeous. What is he, a fox?'

'Alfie's a mink, Goodwife. You're right, he's beautiful.' I started to offer him for her to hold. It would have been all right, she being a nurse and all, but she shook her head. 'You hang on to him, love. You've had a nasty shock, slipping over like that. It knocked you right out - you were quite badly concussed. It's lucky you didn't go over the edge of the platform, either of you.'

'But he...' I shut up.

'Very lucky indeed.'

'I'm sorry but I don't know your name, Goodwife.'

'I'm Sister Crawford, and this is Michael.' Her bulldog-daemon nodded his head.

'Thank you for looking after me, Sister.' I sat up. The room - it was the Ladies' Waiting Room - tilted slightly around me before settling down again. I saw the clock over the fireplace. 'Oh no! Sister, I've got to be at Crècy station by five! I'll miss my train - I'll get into terrible trouble.'

'On your way back to school, were you?'

'Yes, Sister.'

'Well, you'd better not travel on any more tubes today. Mabel!' This was directed at the door. Another woman appeared at the door of the Waiting Room. 'Got room for one more inside?'

'If it's a little one.' Mabel was younger than Sister Crawford, with a freckled face and red hair tucked into a peaked cap. She looked at me. 'Oh yes, she'll be fine.'

I didn't understand. 'But I have to get to Crècy station!'

'That's where we're going. I've got to take some men over there now. Don't you see? I'm an ambulance driver. Look, here's my badge!'

I sat with Mabel in the front of the ambulance. Behind us were eight grim-faced soldiers with bandaged arms, legs and heads. 'I'm taking them over to Crècy and then they'll go on to Hayward's Heath. There's a physio hospital there.'

'Are they going to get well again?'

'Oh yes, they'll be fine.'

'They don't look fine.' Mabel looked at me.

'What do you know about it?' Mabel's chaffinch-formed Hal hopped from foot to foot on the dashboard. Alfie was back in my bag. We hadn't had a proper chance to make it up between us yet.

'I - I don't know.' I gulped. Mabel was looking stern. I could guess what she thought of me - this silly little schoolgirl.

'They will be fine. Look, believe me. I've seen them go and I've seen them return.'

'And get shipped back to the Front.'

'Yes, of course.' I fell silent. Mabel was driving fast, the gas-engine under the ambulance's bonnet chuffing and blowing under the strain.

'Don't I know you from somewhere?' she said, as we rounded Alexandria Square on two wheels. 'What's your name?'

'Sonya Moon,' I replied, hanging on to the window-frame.

'Moon... Moon... I say! Do you live Pangborne way?'

'Yes, I do.'

'I thought so. Wait a mo.' Pedestrians scuttled out of our way, encouraged by Mabel's vigorous use of the klaxon. 'You're not Geegee Moon's baby sister, are you?'

That was what they'd called Gerry at school. Gerald Gresham Moon. Geegee, see?

'Yes! Yes, I am. How did you know?'

'I was at the Goring Hunt Ball, two years ago, before the balloon went up. My brother Dick introduced us. He's rather a ripper, isn't he, your Geegee?' Mabel grinned broadly. 'Super dancer. Lovely legs. He has joined up, hasn't he?'

'Yes. Navy, like Daddy.'

'Oooh!' Mabel swerved around a lamppost. 'I bet he's got a girl in every port! Do you hear from him?'

I gulped. 'I used to. Every week.'

'Used to. Oh God.' We bumped to a halt outside the station's main entrance. Mabel turned to face me. 'Oh God. Oh, you poor thing. You poor little thing. What happened? Do you want to tell me?'

'His ship went down. Off Heligoland. Thirteen months ago. HMS Thaxted. Oh, Mabel!' We embraced, while the injured soldiers filed unsteadily out of the back of the ambulance and formed up in a line, with their dog-daemons standing rigidly by their sides.

'I've got to go.' It was just coming up to five o'clock. 'I'll be late.' I jumped out of the cab. 'Thanks, Mabel. See you again!'

She called back. 'Number Twelve Ambulance Depot, in Mornington! Ask for Driver Patterson!' The ambulance huffed and puffed out of the yard, heading back to Paddington, I suppose. I staggered into the station concourse, still a little queasy after my fall and our breakneck journey through central London. Thank heavens - there was a group of Highdean girls standing next to Smith's, and a grown-up supervising them.

'Moon!' said Miss Alton, my housemistress. 'You are late!' The other girls giggled, but I didn't care. We'd show them!

Author's note

Sunny's Brytain uses traditional currency. There are four farthings (or two ha'pence) to a penny, twelve pennies to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound. Slang terms for common coins include tanner (sixpenny piece), bob (shilling) and quid (pound).