On the Overnight Train from London
In 1972 I was a yong kid going to college in Ontario. I took a train ride home for Christmas that year, and despite the passage of all that time, the memories of that trip still bring a smile to my face. I finally got around to writing about it last year. I have been asked if I would post it again this Chrstmas, so for anyone who would like to read it again, or if you missed it last year, here it is. But I should say that to appreciate the scope of the ethical battle going on in my head, you might have to be of a certain age, because times have changed. You’ll see what I mean.
The train coach was jam-packed with fellow Maritimers and Newfoundlanders all heading home for Christmas. This was party central, or certainly soon would be. You could feel it.
I was the last one on though, and the only seat left for me was a window seat at the front of the coach, beside an older lady. I felt cheated. I didn’t want to be sitting beside her. I wanted to be part of that party farther down the car.
Disappointed, I threw my suitcase up on the overhead rack, and put the shoebox I had also been carrying on my seat. Then I struggled out of my coat the way you do when you don’t have enough room to maneuver, half crouched over and twisting to remove one arm and then the other. Finally freed of it, I picked up the box and sat myself down, then stuffed it and my coat under my seat.
I offered an awkward apology for struggling so much with my coat. She just smiled and nodded.
“Where you heading?” I asked, trying to find that space between annoying questions and not being anti-social, but mainly wanting to find out how long she’d be sitting there. I can’t recall exactly where she said. It wasn’t as far as I was going, but it was going to be all night. I nodded in response.
We settled in, in silence. I focused on how good it would be tomorrow when I’d arrive home and see my mom and dad, and my brother Fulton and my Dorchester friends again.
But first there was this 1400-kilometer train ride to get through. I resigned myself to making the best of what it was - a coach seat for a long evening and overnight beside a boring old lady.
A few minutes after I settled into my seat, the silence was broken with a thump and a gentle jolt from the train couplings tightening, then the high-pitched squeal of steel against steel as the train came to life and we started to pull away for points east. It felt good.
The rhythm of the rails and the gentle swaying from the train’s movement brought a totally relaxed feeling. It was almost hypnotic.
I often sing to myself when I’m trying to kill time, and being on a train it was natural for my mind to go to train songs. They were some of my favourites anyway. Folsom Prison Blues, Midnight Special, Midnight Train to Georgia, Canadian Railroad Trilogy. In my head, I sang them all as I watched the miles go by.
Every once in a while, I’d look over at the older lady, hoping she’d be asleep, but she never was. Whenever I stole such a glance, she looked the same. Always sitting straight up with perfect posture, looking ahead, tall and thin, with a face that looked friendly enough, I guess, and with wavy snow-white hair that reminded me of my grandmother.
I felt my box with my foot for the umpteenth time. I wanted like anything to get into it, but I couldn’t if she was there awake. That would be awkward.
More than awkward. This was an ethical dilemma for me.
Here’s the thing. I was brought up to share. And if it was food, it was especially easy. I could never eat something in front of somebody without offering them some. It’s not complicated – except when it is.
Cathy, my classmate and friend, had given me this shoebox the night before. In it was a batch of special brownies she had baked as a gift for my trip. Remember, this was 1972, and “special” was frowned upon. In fact, “special” was highly illegal.
So what was I to do? Share, like my momma taught me? If I did that, I would be breaking who knows how many laws and social mores. I wondered just how ethical it would be to give an old lady I didn’t know a brownie that she didn’t know was laced with cannabis? “Honest Your Honour, I thought I was doing the right thing. I’d like to call my mother to the stand to talk about sharing.”
While my mind wrestled with this, impatience got the best of me. I leaned over and grabbed the box and laid it on my lap. I felt I had just crossed the Rubicon.
I had come down on the side of etiquette. Manners, after all, is what separates us from the animals. Or so my parents had taught me. Apparently.
I opened the box, pulled back the wax paper, and with my outstretched arms moved it toward the lady. “Excuse me, would you like a brownie?”
She looked at them. “Yes. You are very kind. Thank you.”
“Oh-oh,” I’m thinking, “Now I’ve done it. Now we’ll see where this goes.” I grabbed my own brownie and chomped down on it nervously. What struck me right away was how dry it was. It tasted awful. Munching down on it, I remembered the pleased look on Cathy’s face the night before when she presented them to me. “A gift for your trip”, she said. Cathy was a sweetheart and smarter than a whip, but she was obviously no Betty Crocker. I kept thinking of my elderly seatmate. I looked over. She smiled at me and took another bite. I’m thinking she’s probably finishing it just to be polite.
There was something about her smile that I hadn’t noticed before. There seemed to be a warmth to it, but also a distance. She seemed happy and content with whatever thoughts she was processing.
I started staring out the window again, wondering about my brownie and daydreaming about home, and back to my train songs.
After a bit, I wasn’t sure if the brownie was working or whether I should have another. I opted for another, but should I offer the lady another one too? I figured I couldn’t not, and that she would probably refuse anyway.
“Yes, thank you again.”
Not what I expected, but, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.
I grabbed another one for myself, closed the box and put it back under my seat.
I looked over to her, and we made eye contact. “How far are you going?” she asked. It was her first comment that wasn’t a reply to a question.
“Heading to New Brunswick”, I said. “I’m going home for Christmas”.
I saw that smile I’d caught earlier. “Me too” she said. It was definitely a smile of contentment. And there was a warmth in her voice. “By the way my name is Rebecca, but everybody calls me Becky.”
“Nice to meet you, Becky. I’m Duncan but people call me all kinds of things”, I replied as I stuck my hand out. She laughed as she accepted my handshake. There was something very warm in both her laugh and her hand.
She asked how I felt to be going home, and I explained how I was especially excited because I hadn’t thought I’d be able to swing it, that I had been looking at my first Christmas alone. She said she knew how I felt. Then she changed the subject. She asked about my college, and about my hometown, and my family.
She seemed genuinely interested, and interesting. She had been a teacher. She talked about former students, taking obvious pride in what many of them had accomplished.
Every once in a while, our conversation would get drowned out by an extra-boisterous chorus of Farewell to Nova Scotia or Sweet Caroline from farther down the coach. We’d look at each other and laugh, and sometimes join in, just loud enough that we could hear each other. As much as I earlier wanted to be back there and part of that, I was now more than content with where I was.
I asked her what she meant when she said she knew how I’d felt about the prospect of my spending my first Christmas alone. She explained that her husband of more than 40 years had died back in the spring, and that she had struggled since. She choked on her next words, and with a cracking voice talked about how terribly she missed him. She explained that their only child, their daughter Sara, and her husband wanted her to come live with them, but that she’d resisted because she didn’t want to be a burden, that she felt she’d be in the way, and she feared her mental state was such that she’d not be good to have around the house.
I felt a little awkward with the serious turn the conversation had taken, but wanted to be supportive, so I nodded. She took that as a cue to continue. The smile from earlier returned. “But Sara and her husband had a baby in the fall. He travels for his job a fair bit, and her maternity leave was about to run out, so they asked if I would come down to help look after the little guy. They named him Henry, after Sara’s dad - my husband. They asked me to come for Christmas and then stay. I wasn’t able to go when he was born, but I’m sure ready now, so I’m off to see my grandchild for the first time. I’m going to be the live-in grannie, and I can hardly wait. I’m pretty excited about it, as you can probably tell.”
I could. There was no mistaking that. “Becky, would you like another brownie?” I was still a little nervous about sharing them with her, but everything seemed to be going well, and I felt like having another myself.
“Actually,” she said, “aren’t you getting hungry for something more substantial? We’ve been on this train for hours. Let me buy you dinner.” I put up a token protest about how I couldn’t possibly have her do that, but as I secretly hoped, she insisted. So we looked over the menu and she got the porter to bring us a couple of roast beef sandwiches and soft drinks. “Thanks” I said, “It’s a hard habit to break, isn’t it – helping out one more struggling student.” That smile again. The sandwich tasted wonderful. We had brownies for dessert.
I was feeling comfortable enough at this point to ask her what happened to her husband. She explained that it was a heart attack. “I heard him struggling and found him on the kitchen floor. I called 911, but he died in my arms before the ambulance got there. Right there in my arms. That’s how the paramedics found us. I was a mess. It all came so fast. I lost my soulmate and, for a time, my reason for living,” she explained.
I gave her my best impression of a sad, understanding smile. I didn’t know how else to react. Then she said, “It took a long while and it was tough, but now I have reason to live again. I have little Henry to look after.”
After a brief silence, she volunteered “My Henry was a railroad man, you know. In fact he worked this very line for nearly 40 years.”
“Really,” I said. “You know, I’ve always had this fascination with trains. The power of them, the sounds they make. And all those great train songs.” “I know”, she said, “We loved them too.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Henry and I used to sing them. We’d be in the car going somewhere and we’d sing train songs, and laugh. God, I miss that.”
I was anxious to tell her. “You might not believe this, but when I first sat down, before we started talking, I was looking out the window and singing train songs to myself.”
She looked at me, and nodded. “There are some great ones, aren’t there?”
We exchanged our thoughts on the subject and I could see she was going back and forth between enjoying the conversation and sadly missing what once was.
“What was your and Henry’s favourite?” I asked. “There were so many” she replied. Our favourite though, was This Train”.
“Ah, that is a great one.”
I thought for a minute. I had an idea but was nervous, thinking Cathy’s baked goods might be clouding my better judgement. “Should I suggest it? Of course I should. No, don’t do that. I don’t know.” From somewhere inside me it just came out, even as I was hoping I wasn’t overstepping any boundaries.
“I am certainly no Henry by any means, but do you want to give it a shot? I mean only if you want to, and you’d have to lead because I don’t know all the words.”
She didn’t immediately respond. A few seconds passed, and then she looks straight at me, somewhat expressionless, as if she’s trying to decide. She pauses another few seconds and begins in a soft voice. “This train is bound for glory, this train.”
I jump in, also in a soft voice. “This train is bound for glory, this train.”
She continued with the song. I paused when I needed her to sing the parts I didn’t know, then I’d join back in for the chorus. On and on we went and by the end of it she was smiling broadly, and so was I.
She reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “Thank you for that,” she said. “That brought back some great memories.” I was proud of myself for making the right call, something I am not always great at.
We continued talking through the night and into the wee hours. It was such an enjoyable time and so engrossing that we didn’t notice that the coach had gone from a loud party to she and I being the only ones still awake.
Eventually we nodded off too. Not sure which one of us went first.
I woke when the porter was trying to wake her. It was morning, well past sun-up, and we were just about to pull into her stop. She stood and moved into the aisle and so did I. I helped get her bags down from the overhead compartment and put them on the seat. Then I went first, saying how wonderful it was to meet her and what an enjoyable trip she’d made it for me. She expressed similar sentiments, and added how grateful she was to be able to talk about Henry. She said she always found that difficult, but with me she found it surprisingly easy. “And especially thanks for the song.”.
We shared a big hug and wished each other a Merry Christmas. She flashed that warm smile one more time, stepped to the doorway of the coach and descended onto the station platform. The train creaked and rumbled, and on we went, leaving Becky to her new life looking after her new grandchild.
Home was now only a few hours away.