This story was written as a response to a challenge on the WordBohemia web site.

http://wordbohemia.co.uk/            or             https://www.facebook.com/groups/wordbohemia/

The challenge was a photo of a station clock above a platform.....



The station

The station lies with its back to the river, wedged in between the buildings and roads. Sphinx-like it sprawls across the concrete desert as its blackened glass roof winks and glints in the morning sun. One end has many infibulating rails lines emerging, crossing and changing as they route the trains out to their different destinations. The other end terminates in a cliff of red brick. Behind this cliff the offices of the railway managers hide. ‘ This train terminates here,’ comes the voice from the loudspeaker system, what else would it do? Join the managers in their plush offices for a drink of tea or posh coffee in the senior manager’s rooms? Why is this move called a terminus? Do Penzantian people think of Paddington as their London  terminus, or terminator?

Why is a station called that when it is all about moving to another place? Stationary is the opposite to moving so why not call it a move to give a better idea of what it does?

Encyclopedia Ricardia

Move – n. A place for passengers to board and leave trains.

                I will call it ‘move’ throughout this story. The man pushes the broom along the platform of the move. It is early morning, the diesels stand waiting, their haze of blue power panting up through the morning sunlight to the soot- stained glass panels of the roof. It is the opposite to a cathedral, they have stained glass in the walls with a dark roof. The move is a temple to travel. The roof is supported on pillars, they are in compression so they must be made of cast iron – I think back to the metallurgy classes all those years ago. The crossing, horizontal tie rods are in tension, so they must be steel. Abraham Darby would have recognised the structures as he designed and made his Iron Bridge.

                The broom glides more easily across platforms 1 and 2. They have had the makeover, upgraded to a surface of French limestone.  It is Rocheret Jaune, an Early Cretaceous limestone that comes from Belley, near Lyon. Beautiful sections through fossil shells, especially high-spired gastropods, can be seen in places by looking down at the floor, not where you are going. Fossil watching in the Mouvre.

                I look at the panting beast of the diesel, crouched, waiting to unleash its power to speed the train through Old Oak Common then on to Penzance. I think back to the days of steam when a trip on a train always started with a walk to the engine to stand in awe looking at the Merchant Navy, West Country or Schools type of beast. Less power than a diesel, less efficient, dirtier but altogether better. Diesels have no soul, they don’t talk to you with the same language or have the BO of warm, escaping steam.

                The Penzance train is leaving Bristol. The driver, official title, motorman, checks around his darkened cab. Dials on the dash have a muted gleam, he leans on the dead man’s handle, notches up the throttle, checks the speed. Looks out the windscreen at the reds and greens of the signals. Heading to Reading, up to full speed insoulated from the outside, cosy in his cab – motorman’s trance setting in. Shakes himself awake, cannot sleep on this job – he is responsible for more than four hundred lives. 
             

A clatter of shutters opening from WH Smith – the news concession on the concourse. A bored woman starts heaving in the bound lumps of newsprint holding the ephemera of the day – so Kyleigh has a new hair style – so what.

                A submarine noses out of the door of the sandwich shop, they have found that cooking bacon and leaving the door open doubles sales of food and who doesn’t have a cup of coffee with their bacon sandwich. Manipulative huh? You betcha, everyone in the move is on the make!

                The derelicts cautiously raise their White Lightning hungover  heads from the seats at the edge of the concourse, the transport police having taken pity on them over this cold night and not moving them on until the morning commuter flood tide starts to rise.

                The first in train of the day edges cautiously in to its daytime home, the red terminating buffers reaching out their welcoming arms. It stops, doors open and the human cargo spills out, the first off running down the platform – to get to work early? Bankers, plonkers, graphic designers, girls in short skirts hurrying to their appointment with their computer screen, boys wearing their first suit, tie in pocket for later dressing. Across the concourse, down the steps, on to the waiting underground – no way to live, to earn a living. The train sits there, job done, all doors swinging open. The driver steps out of his cab with his airline pilot’s bag and walks along the platform to the back, now front of the train.He gets ready for the trip out to commuterland for the next load of human detritus. The train adjusts its psychology for the change in direction
.

                The sun gets brighter, glinting off the rails that go from these buffers in an unbroken line to Penzance, stretched and welded to their optimum equivalent expansion of 21 degrees Celcius – no fishplate joints now with their hypnotic rhythm.  Rails of steel, a compromise between soft toughness for strength and hard brittleness for minimal wear. How many sleepers between here and Penzance? A good question for a pub quiz.

                Ten minutes before lift off, the barriers open, the concourse people hurry through, clutching their tickets – some without, hoping to sneak through. The train has been cleaned, fuelled, maintained, washed – all overnight. Now it is ready, whistle, green flag, the clock ticks, it moves! All twelve coaches accelerate in a terrible symmetry, heading for Cornwall, grockles on the way to Penwith.

                Jed is sipping his third cup of coffee, he has been waiting for three hours, eager to meet the overnighter from far-off Penzance, eager to meet his love, eager to start the rest of his life, eager to start their life together.

                Chloé only left him three days ago, just enough time to visit ’ her-now-ex’ in Penzance to tell him, finally, that she will not be back. She has left him, she has found Jed, Jed has found Chloé, they have found each other, they will be together for ever – they are sure.

                He tries her number again, again no answer, is she asleep on the train, the ‘fone on silent?

                He finishes the coffee, tosses the paper, ‘this coffee may be hot’ tautological cup into the nearest empty bin, he transfers the bouquet to his coffee hand and checks the clock again. It hangs suspended from the roof. A cube with six faces, only four have clock faces. He reduces it step by step - cube, square, line, dot, nothing, he oxidises it to a tesseract – what is next? A tesseract has fourteen faces, an expensive clock for one more dimension. He has checked the Chloe train is on time, twenty three minutes to go, he finds it hard to cope now that the clock has slowed down. Another coffee – no, he is already jittery from the anticipation of seeing Chloé and the caffeine. The seconds tick by, the hands on the clock crawl to the train-in time.

                The Penzance train arrives – all the way from the cornubian granite of Cornwall.

                It tiptoes to the buffers and then stops and relaxes with a sigh. The doors open, the Kernow people debark and look around. Where is Chloé? Jed strains to look – there is a Chloé sized gap on the platform. He waits, no Chloé. He calls, no Chloé. He waits for another hour, no Chloé.

                He checks the date, 14^th February, no Chloé.

                He trudges home from the move, no Chloé

    He lives his life, without Chloé.