Something I wrote ages ago...
Mar. 22nd, 2004 11:43 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
maleghast.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
just_writingHmmm.... I re-read this on the train on Sunday, having written it months and months ago and abandoned it out of hand. Still on re-reading it I was filled with new-found hope for it, so I submit it to the group for scrutiny...
The only thing stranger than British train stations is that
there are any left at all. No single train that I have been on in
the last eighteen months has run to time – not a single one. Even
simple journeys, such as Reading to Paddington - you know a journey
where the train is not going to stop until it reaches the end of the
line – not even they are free of the tyranny of invisible herds of
cattle crossing the lines. Well what else are they stopping for in
the middle of nowhere? Signals, I hear you cry. I’m afraid the
preponderance of rail crashes in the last few years that have been
found after the fact to have been due to a driver ignoring a signal
seem to put paid to the signal theory. Look I’m not writing a
polemic on the state of British public transport, it merely occurred
to me that the whole institution was fairly unlikely and therefore I
should perhaps not be surprised by the strange things which happen in
train stations. They (who are they anyway?) say that all stories
should begin with some kind of happening, something that will grab
one’s audience and make them unavoidably hooked, rapt by the
spectacle in their minds and driven to read on. Okay, how’s this: I
was travelling between Reading and Chorley. The train to Manchester
(my connection point) ran late, as ever, and I decided to buy a
coffee. There you go, there’s the big opening. Not the most
thrilling series of events you might think – I’d be inclined to agree
with you if it were not for a couple of details I left out; that’s
right I’m pandering to a totally different, much hipper school of
misdirection and literary smoke and mirrors to reverse all of the
‘rollercoaster’ rules of writing. I’m hoping that you’re the same
kind of disaffected generation X-and-a-halfer that knows Nine Inch
Nails were never cool, but listens to them anyway, because a small
part of your mind won’t let such a good joke go to waste. So, now
that I’ve tipped my hand and we’re all on the same page, although
some of you have put the book down in disgust – does that mean these
words no longer exist, because you’re not reading them? – I’ll go
back to why buying a coffee was so amazingly important. For those of
you that don’t know Piccadilly Station in Manchester, it used to be a
typical, knackered, Victorian railway station with wrought iron
rafters, and no amenities apart from rich pickings in the fag-butt
roll-up stakes. Well it’s not so bad any more; they have a
Sainsbury’s and everything – note to Railtrack, if the fucking trains
don’t run on time, we don’t give a shit if there is a Sainsbury’s!
Sorry, but They (back again so soon…) spent around £2,000,000 on
making the station look pretty – MAKE THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME, THEN
GET TO SMALL SUPERMARKETS! Still, when you’re at Piccadilly late on
a Monday, it’s just like the Halcyon days of the eighties when we
could blame the government for having rubbish trains instead of a
faceless board that we didn’t… Sorry, tapping into my memories of
that night are kicking up all kinds of uncharacteristic political
fervour, I’ll try to put a lid on it, it’s getting in the way of the
story. So, I went to buy a coffee, and although it was over-priced
it did taste like coffee, so here’s to progress. Anyway, the coffee
place that was nearest was a branch of Railtrack’s own brand of
catering horror, and again if you don’t know the station, once you
are inside it, you are completely hidden from the main doors to the
station concourse. Whilst I was getting my coffee three people on
the main concourse were gunned down by stray bullets from a shooting
in front of the station, and that may not seem all that Earth
shattering, until you realise that they were the three people who had
sat around me on my train, and if I had been travelling only to
Manchester, I would almost certainly been walking with them, after
all I was until I peeled off to get a coffee. What if I’d decided to
go to the Newsagents on the station approach for a Rubicon instead of
coffee? Okay, so it’s not that amazing at all, it’s no more than
blind luck. That is exactly what I would have thought if I were you
– keep thinking that way, it is easier. Unfortunately when you have
turned away from the person serving you coffee to see familiar
strangers’ bodies flying apart scant metres from you, for no reason
other than blind luck and you do start to wonder. Have you ever
considered what a bullet does to the human body? I would not dwell
on it if I were you, but the really sensible part of your brain knows
that it is a lot more horrible than it appears in the kind movies we
watch to relax. Overall there is nothing more utterly terrifying
than death at close quarters, particularly when you can do nothing to
stop it and have only one choice, to bear witness. Think back to the
compulsion you felt to stare at the television on 09/11/2001, and the
unbidden empathy, horror and pain you felt for your fellow human
beings in those buildings and on those planes. Now imagine that you
were there. Now imagine that you saw three of those people die, as
if they were 26 feet away from you, but you were unhurt. Their
deaths only happened because you saw them – to everyone that knew
them or cared about them they will always exist in memories in love,
but to you they were death and nothing more. Like the trees moving
in the wind, the only evidence of wind we can see, those three people
are the trees moving in the gale of death, your only evidence that
death actually exists. That is what it means to bear witness and
that is what it means to come awake on a wet Monday night and realise
that it really does not matter if the train is late, so long as you
buy a coffee.
I missed my connection to Chorley, oddly enough. I am not entirely
sure, but I cannot think of a time when I cared less about making it
to my train than in those moments after the shooting. I was paying
for coffee, and then I was watching as accidental death was being
dealt to people I had made small talk with scant minutes before. The
whole thing happened in less than thirty seconds, but it seemed more
like two or three minutes as everything began to slow down and I was
given far too much time to observe, powerless and inferior. It was
Jeffrey, leading the threesome that was hit first, just below his
right knee. People tell me that I must have imagined it, but I swear
I can remember hearing that first bullet crashing into the bone, an
unmistakeable sound and nothing like the crack of a gun’s discharge.
It was more like the sound that is made when you break a boiled egg
with the back of your teaspoon, although louder and more intense, a
sort of laboured crumpling sound that chilled me right through. He
buckled immediately – he had been putting his weight down on his
right foot as the bullet hit his leg. As he went down, the second
bullet struck him in the left side of his head and passed straight
through his skull tearing a sizeable chunk out on the far side and
spraying Teresa with a fine red mist that seemed for all the world
like the mist from a perfume bottle as it hung in the air around her,
almost imperceptible it was so fine. That bullet careered into her
abdomen, just below her diaphragm, and presumably lodged there. It
was followed by another shot, slightly higher that struck her right
in the middle of her chest, and she fell to her left, the light
quitting her eyes as she fell. Her head and face turned to look at
me as I watched her slowly pitch to the floor and her eyes washed out
as she fell. The last three rounds that hit anyone all collided with
Hugo. He had not been given time to react to the sound or the sudden
deaths of his two companions – such as they were – he was still
standing in the line of fire as the last volley from outside the
doors thundered through the concourse, tore through his body and
smashed the glass wall panels behind him as they disappeared into the
night beyond the platforms. Unlike the other two, Hugo did not die
quickly. He did not even fall over to begin with, just stood between
their two bodies, looking down at the two bullet wounds in his
stomach and the one in the right-upper quadrant of his chest. I
could very much sense his thoughts at that moment - "I’ve been
shot…Oh Fuck!" – was probably something like it. His face slowly
morphed from amused and perplexed to fear and pain, his eyes filled
with tears and he began to turn his head this way and that, looking
for the source of this tragedy and looking for help. His eyes met
mine, just as Teresa’s had done and suddenly time was passing at its
correct speed once more and I was moving, running towards Hugo. I
had dropped my briefcase and as I ran I was pulling my cell-phone out
from the belt-pouch I wore. I am quite certain that everyone there
would have dialled 999, but I was moving and working on automatic
pilot at that point. I remember I was no use to the operator at the
other end of the phone when I got through, mumbling something
incoherent about a shooting at Piccadilly Station, and needing an
ambulance, that there were three bystanders shot by accident, and
they looked really bad. The woman operator I was speaking to had
obviously received a few other calls from people in or new the
station and simply told me over and over in a calm almost alien tone
of voice that there were several Police Units and Ambulances en route
and I should try to remain calm. I thanked her, hung up and skidded
to a halt over Hugo as he started to blow blood bubbles between the
screams of pain that were streaming out of him. I had no idea what
to do – years of First Aid courses and all I could do was stare
aimlessly at him. I seemed to have a long time to look down at him,
frozen with an odd macabre fascination until a Railtrack employee ran
across to me screaming at me to move away in case there was more
shooting. I looked down into Hugo’s eyes once more, and then started
to back away, aware within myself that there was no way I could help
him. There was already a growing red border to his shaking body; I
couldn’t save him. The frantic Railtrack employee was kneeling by
Hugo’s head, and I could not hear what he was saying, but I imagine
it was the kind of thing I might have said had I not been struck dumb
– "Don’t worry, help is coming. I’m here with you. Hold on." The
ambient noise was growing again as people let go of the silence of
their amazement and started to cry and shake and yell their confusion
to the heavens. I still stood there, behind the relative cover of WH
Smiths, staring at Hugo as he slowly bled to death on the polished
faux stone floor, an emissary of our mutual tormentors the only
person fitted to bring him any kind of comfort in his dying moments.
Surely there is some reason for this – that is all I could think,
there were no other thoughts.
Hugo died about a minute before the paramedic team arrived, even
though they logged his time of death as some minutes after, once they
had attempted heroic methods to resuscitate him, but I saw him go.
He looked up into the eyes of his comforter, and then over to me.
There was an unspoken beseeching goodbye in those two looks, as if to
say that we should tell people that he had been peaceful at the end.
Then the circus really began. The private moments of experience were
gone and there were police officers and paramedics as well as
Railtrack security staff and journalists everywhere. I watched as
order was bolted back onto the world and I turned away from the three
of them and went to retrieve my bag from the coffee stand. I was
checking my bag over, to make sure that no hard-nosed opportunist had
made off with my Apple Mac, my brain running on automatic as I tried
to do anything but think about what I had just seen when a young
female police officer tapped me on the shoulder. It was Deborah, a
friend of mine who was supposed to be on the beat in South Yorkshire,
so what was she doing in Manchester? She clocked the look of
confusion, told me she would explain later and told me to go with
her, I had to speak to some people and then they would get me home.
As we walked towards the hastily erected situation centre near to the
Metrolink Escalators she asked me if I had called Mum and Dad, or
even Ilaena. It had been fifteen minutes since the three of them had
been shot and already it was on the TV, people I loved would be
wondering if I was one of the…
‘Two men and a woman have been gunned down accidentally by
suspected gang members at Manchester Piccadilly Railway
Station. The intended target of the attack that was mounted
with illegal automatic weapons is in intensive care at
Manchester Royal Infirmary, but already doctors have released a
statement that they expect the un-named Asian youth to survive
his injuries. Police sources state that it was incredibly
lucky that there was not further loss of life, but that the
identities of those killed in this tragic incident will not be
released until their families have been informed. We will of
course…’
I tried to shake the insanity of the situation out of my mind for a
moment and then pulled my cellphone out again. I was still connected
to the Emergency Services Operator, I had not disconnected. I
quickly keyed the little red phone and dialled 2, green phone for
Ilaena. She picked the phone up on the first ring, and all I could
get out was "Not me!". She was sobbing at the other end of the
phone, obviously relieved that I was able to make phone calls. We
spoke for a few moments and then she told me to ring my folks and do
whatever I needed to do at my end, now that she knew I was safe she
could deal with waiting to talk again. My mother was glued to the TV
clutching the cordless phone, according to my dad’s description of
that evening at a later date. She also answered on the first ring
and she was also sobbing, but like only a mother can, her care and
worry no less or more than Ilaena’s, but so completely different.
Again we spoke briefly, she asked if I’d spoken to Ilaena, and once
she had calmed down let me go to get on with giving a Police
statement and so forth. I wondered to myself if I would have been so
paranoid if the situation had been reversed. Would I have assumed
the worst? I’m sure that would all prefer to believe that we would
remain level headed, calm and sensible, repeating to ourselves that
no news is good news, that the chances of the person that sprang to
mind having been in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time
are miniscule at best. I am sure that Jeffrey, Teresa and Hugo’s
loved ones were somewhere in that spectrum, from the calm of reason
to the panic of my lover and my mother, and still all of them were at
the very heart of their beings convinced that their significant
other, friend, child, brother, sister was quite well after all.
I was considering all of this when Deborah came back with a black
coffee and an unlit cigarette. Of all of my friends, Deborah had
nagged me to the point of bloodshed to give up smoking, and I had
done it finally, a whole eighteen months before, but she had seen
something in my eyes – that was how she put it when I asked her about
that night a few weeks later – and decided that just that once she
would allow me to self-medicate in the way only ex-smokers can in a
real crisis. I sat back and took that first pull on my special
cigarette and the warm, spicy acrid flavour, trickling down my throat
made me forget it all for a moment. The coffee helped as well.
People who drink their coffee black and smoke will read this and
understand – it really equalised the crazy rollercoaster of emotions
I was experiencing. I could focus just on the various interesting
nuances in the flavour, which were being heightened by the smoke.
Nothing else mattered for that first three or four sips and drags.
There was the thick nicotine syrup of a strong English fag (obviously
Deborah had tapped a career Bobby of her acquaintance for that) and
the unmistakable horror of Railtrack pseudo Mocha. Even though it was
the kind of coffee that even casual coffee drinkers would normally
rather go without, the familiarity of its shortcomings, the nasty
bitter edge that was well beyond the suggestion of bitterness that we
black drinkers enjoy, the thin watery consistency of the brew and the
leaky styrene cup were all oddly comforting. They were a world away
from the horror of a few short minutes before. Deb left me to take
my medicine and I gave the process my full attention for a good three
or four minutes. She returned with a serious looking Police
counsellor and a pad. Her boss had allowed her to take my statement
and she had brought one of the duty crisis counsellors along. I
looked him up and down and could not help but think that he looked
like he’d been dragged out of bed quite against his express wishes
and needs. I wondered how supportive and caring he was really
feeling below the very professional surface that was already
cautiously shepherding me to one of the offices that the station
staff had turned over to the Police. Deb was a true friend, sticking
to facts and quickly establishing that I could not possibly have seen
the gunmen. She gave me enough room to recount what I had seen as a
kind of on the spot exorcism and then she quickly got me out of there
and into a cab that was on the Police account. The crisis counsellor
told me to call him if I needed to talk, but was still so half-asleep
that he had in fact completely forgotten to tell me his name or give
me a card. Not that I noticed until I was falling into a melancholy
reverie in the back of a smelly Vauxhall Vectra. That drive home was
exactly as long as it should have been, I am sure, but to me it
seemed to have taken almost forever and to have been over in a moment
at the same time. Mum and Dad were up when I got home, but I only
managed a very clinical account, two whiskies and immediately to bed.
Once there in the darkness I rang Ilaena, and we talked for a good
hour or so. We cried and shared our fears with each other and more
than anything railed against the tyranny of geography – that was one
night where I could not believe the cruel fact of her being in London
and my being in Chorley. We parted company as sleep’s tendrils began
to reach up to each of us and we realised we might stay on the line
in our sleep until the batteries of our cell phones gave out.
The only thing stranger than British train stations is that
there are any left at all. No single train that I have been on in
the last eighteen months has run to time – not a single one. Even
simple journeys, such as Reading to Paddington - you know a journey
where the train is not going to stop until it reaches the end of the
line – not even they are free of the tyranny of invisible herds of
cattle crossing the lines. Well what else are they stopping for in
the middle of nowhere? Signals, I hear you cry. I’m afraid the
preponderance of rail crashes in the last few years that have been
found after the fact to have been due to a driver ignoring a signal
seem to put paid to the signal theory. Look I’m not writing a
polemic on the state of British public transport, it merely occurred
to me that the whole institution was fairly unlikely and therefore I
should perhaps not be surprised by the strange things which happen in
train stations. They (who are they anyway?) say that all stories
should begin with some kind of happening, something that will grab
one’s audience and make them unavoidably hooked, rapt by the
spectacle in their minds and driven to read on. Okay, how’s this: I
was travelling between Reading and Chorley. The train to Manchester
(my connection point) ran late, as ever, and I decided to buy a
coffee. There you go, there’s the big opening. Not the most
thrilling series of events you might think – I’d be inclined to agree
with you if it were not for a couple of details I left out; that’s
right I’m pandering to a totally different, much hipper school of
misdirection and literary smoke and mirrors to reverse all of the
‘rollercoaster’ rules of writing. I’m hoping that you’re the same
kind of disaffected generation X-and-a-halfer that knows Nine Inch
Nails were never cool, but listens to them anyway, because a small
part of your mind won’t let such a good joke go to waste. So, now
that I’ve tipped my hand and we’re all on the same page, although
some of you have put the book down in disgust – does that mean these
words no longer exist, because you’re not reading them? – I’ll go
back to why buying a coffee was so amazingly important. For those of
you that don’t know Piccadilly Station in Manchester, it used to be a
typical, knackered, Victorian railway station with wrought iron
rafters, and no amenities apart from rich pickings in the fag-butt
roll-up stakes. Well it’s not so bad any more; they have a
Sainsbury’s and everything – note to Railtrack, if the fucking trains
don’t run on time, we don’t give a shit if there is a Sainsbury’s!
Sorry, but They (back again so soon…) spent around £2,000,000 on
making the station look pretty – MAKE THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME, THEN
GET TO SMALL SUPERMARKETS! Still, when you’re at Piccadilly late on
a Monday, it’s just like the Halcyon days of the eighties when we
could blame the government for having rubbish trains instead of a
faceless board that we didn’t… Sorry, tapping into my memories of
that night are kicking up all kinds of uncharacteristic political
fervour, I’ll try to put a lid on it, it’s getting in the way of the
story. So, I went to buy a coffee, and although it was over-priced
it did taste like coffee, so here’s to progress. Anyway, the coffee
place that was nearest was a branch of Railtrack’s own brand of
catering horror, and again if you don’t know the station, once you
are inside it, you are completely hidden from the main doors to the
station concourse. Whilst I was getting my coffee three people on
the main concourse were gunned down by stray bullets from a shooting
in front of the station, and that may not seem all that Earth
shattering, until you realise that they were the three people who had
sat around me on my train, and if I had been travelling only to
Manchester, I would almost certainly been walking with them, after
all I was until I peeled off to get a coffee. What if I’d decided to
go to the Newsagents on the station approach for a Rubicon instead of
coffee? Okay, so it’s not that amazing at all, it’s no more than
blind luck. That is exactly what I would have thought if I were you
– keep thinking that way, it is easier. Unfortunately when you have
turned away from the person serving you coffee to see familiar
strangers’ bodies flying apart scant metres from you, for no reason
other than blind luck and you do start to wonder. Have you ever
considered what a bullet does to the human body? I would not dwell
on it if I were you, but the really sensible part of your brain knows
that it is a lot more horrible than it appears in the kind movies we
watch to relax. Overall there is nothing more utterly terrifying
than death at close quarters, particularly when you can do nothing to
stop it and have only one choice, to bear witness. Think back to the
compulsion you felt to stare at the television on 09/11/2001, and the
unbidden empathy, horror and pain you felt for your fellow human
beings in those buildings and on those planes. Now imagine that you
were there. Now imagine that you saw three of those people die, as
if they were 26 feet away from you, but you were unhurt. Their
deaths only happened because you saw them – to everyone that knew
them or cared about them they will always exist in memories in love,
but to you they were death and nothing more. Like the trees moving
in the wind, the only evidence of wind we can see, those three people
are the trees moving in the gale of death, your only evidence that
death actually exists. That is what it means to bear witness and
that is what it means to come awake on a wet Monday night and realise
that it really does not matter if the train is late, so long as you
buy a coffee.
I missed my connection to Chorley, oddly enough. I am not entirely
sure, but I cannot think of a time when I cared less about making it
to my train than in those moments after the shooting. I was paying
for coffee, and then I was watching as accidental death was being
dealt to people I had made small talk with scant minutes before. The
whole thing happened in less than thirty seconds, but it seemed more
like two or three minutes as everything began to slow down and I was
given far too much time to observe, powerless and inferior. It was
Jeffrey, leading the threesome that was hit first, just below his
right knee. People tell me that I must have imagined it, but I swear
I can remember hearing that first bullet crashing into the bone, an
unmistakeable sound and nothing like the crack of a gun’s discharge.
It was more like the sound that is made when you break a boiled egg
with the back of your teaspoon, although louder and more intense, a
sort of laboured crumpling sound that chilled me right through. He
buckled immediately – he had been putting his weight down on his
right foot as the bullet hit his leg. As he went down, the second
bullet struck him in the left side of his head and passed straight
through his skull tearing a sizeable chunk out on the far side and
spraying Teresa with a fine red mist that seemed for all the world
like the mist from a perfume bottle as it hung in the air around her,
almost imperceptible it was so fine. That bullet careered into her
abdomen, just below her diaphragm, and presumably lodged there. It
was followed by another shot, slightly higher that struck her right
in the middle of her chest, and she fell to her left, the light
quitting her eyes as she fell. Her head and face turned to look at
me as I watched her slowly pitch to the floor and her eyes washed out
as she fell. The last three rounds that hit anyone all collided with
Hugo. He had not been given time to react to the sound or the sudden
deaths of his two companions – such as they were – he was still
standing in the line of fire as the last volley from outside the
doors thundered through the concourse, tore through his body and
smashed the glass wall panels behind him as they disappeared into the
night beyond the platforms. Unlike the other two, Hugo did not die
quickly. He did not even fall over to begin with, just stood between
their two bodies, looking down at the two bullet wounds in his
stomach and the one in the right-upper quadrant of his chest. I
could very much sense his thoughts at that moment - "I’ve been
shot…Oh Fuck!" – was probably something like it. His face slowly
morphed from amused and perplexed to fear and pain, his eyes filled
with tears and he began to turn his head this way and that, looking
for the source of this tragedy and looking for help. His eyes met
mine, just as Teresa’s had done and suddenly time was passing at its
correct speed once more and I was moving, running towards Hugo. I
had dropped my briefcase and as I ran I was pulling my cell-phone out
from the belt-pouch I wore. I am quite certain that everyone there
would have dialled 999, but I was moving and working on automatic
pilot at that point. I remember I was no use to the operator at the
other end of the phone when I got through, mumbling something
incoherent about a shooting at Piccadilly Station, and needing an
ambulance, that there were three bystanders shot by accident, and
they looked really bad. The woman operator I was speaking to had
obviously received a few other calls from people in or new the
station and simply told me over and over in a calm almost alien tone
of voice that there were several Police Units and Ambulances en route
and I should try to remain calm. I thanked her, hung up and skidded
to a halt over Hugo as he started to blow blood bubbles between the
screams of pain that were streaming out of him. I had no idea what
to do – years of First Aid courses and all I could do was stare
aimlessly at him. I seemed to have a long time to look down at him,
frozen with an odd macabre fascination until a Railtrack employee ran
across to me screaming at me to move away in case there was more
shooting. I looked down into Hugo’s eyes once more, and then started
to back away, aware within myself that there was no way I could help
him. There was already a growing red border to his shaking body; I
couldn’t save him. The frantic Railtrack employee was kneeling by
Hugo’s head, and I could not hear what he was saying, but I imagine
it was the kind of thing I might have said had I not been struck dumb
– "Don’t worry, help is coming. I’m here with you. Hold on." The
ambient noise was growing again as people let go of the silence of
their amazement and started to cry and shake and yell their confusion
to the heavens. I still stood there, behind the relative cover of WH
Smiths, staring at Hugo as he slowly bled to death on the polished
faux stone floor, an emissary of our mutual tormentors the only
person fitted to bring him any kind of comfort in his dying moments.
Surely there is some reason for this – that is all I could think,
there were no other thoughts.
Hugo died about a minute before the paramedic team arrived, even
though they logged his time of death as some minutes after, once they
had attempted heroic methods to resuscitate him, but I saw him go.
He looked up into the eyes of his comforter, and then over to me.
There was an unspoken beseeching goodbye in those two looks, as if to
say that we should tell people that he had been peaceful at the end.
Then the circus really began. The private moments of experience were
gone and there were police officers and paramedics as well as
Railtrack security staff and journalists everywhere. I watched as
order was bolted back onto the world and I turned away from the three
of them and went to retrieve my bag from the coffee stand. I was
checking my bag over, to make sure that no hard-nosed opportunist had
made off with my Apple Mac, my brain running on automatic as I tried
to do anything but think about what I had just seen when a young
female police officer tapped me on the shoulder. It was Deborah, a
friend of mine who was supposed to be on the beat in South Yorkshire,
so what was she doing in Manchester? She clocked the look of
confusion, told me she would explain later and told me to go with
her, I had to speak to some people and then they would get me home.
As we walked towards the hastily erected situation centre near to the
Metrolink Escalators she asked me if I had called Mum and Dad, or
even Ilaena. It had been fifteen minutes since the three of them had
been shot and already it was on the TV, people I loved would be
wondering if I was one of the…
‘Two men and a woman have been gunned down accidentally by
suspected gang members at Manchester Piccadilly Railway
Station. The intended target of the attack that was mounted
with illegal automatic weapons is in intensive care at
Manchester Royal Infirmary, but already doctors have released a
statement that they expect the un-named Asian youth to survive
his injuries. Police sources state that it was incredibly
lucky that there was not further loss of life, but that the
identities of those killed in this tragic incident will not be
released until their families have been informed. We will of
course…’
I tried to shake the insanity of the situation out of my mind for a
moment and then pulled my cellphone out again. I was still connected
to the Emergency Services Operator, I had not disconnected. I
quickly keyed the little red phone and dialled 2, green phone for
Ilaena. She picked the phone up on the first ring, and all I could
get out was "Not me!". She was sobbing at the other end of the
phone, obviously relieved that I was able to make phone calls. We
spoke for a few moments and then she told me to ring my folks and do
whatever I needed to do at my end, now that she knew I was safe she
could deal with waiting to talk again. My mother was glued to the TV
clutching the cordless phone, according to my dad’s description of
that evening at a later date. She also answered on the first ring
and she was also sobbing, but like only a mother can, her care and
worry no less or more than Ilaena’s, but so completely different.
Again we spoke briefly, she asked if I’d spoken to Ilaena, and once
she had calmed down let me go to get on with giving a Police
statement and so forth. I wondered to myself if I would have been so
paranoid if the situation had been reversed. Would I have assumed
the worst? I’m sure that would all prefer to believe that we would
remain level headed, calm and sensible, repeating to ourselves that
no news is good news, that the chances of the person that sprang to
mind having been in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time
are miniscule at best. I am sure that Jeffrey, Teresa and Hugo’s
loved ones were somewhere in that spectrum, from the calm of reason
to the panic of my lover and my mother, and still all of them were at
the very heart of their beings convinced that their significant
other, friend, child, brother, sister was quite well after all.
I was considering all of this when Deborah came back with a black
coffee and an unlit cigarette. Of all of my friends, Deborah had
nagged me to the point of bloodshed to give up smoking, and I had
done it finally, a whole eighteen months before, but she had seen
something in my eyes – that was how she put it when I asked her about
that night a few weeks later – and decided that just that once she
would allow me to self-medicate in the way only ex-smokers can in a
real crisis. I sat back and took that first pull on my special
cigarette and the warm, spicy acrid flavour, trickling down my throat
made me forget it all for a moment. The coffee helped as well.
People who drink their coffee black and smoke will read this and
understand – it really equalised the crazy rollercoaster of emotions
I was experiencing. I could focus just on the various interesting
nuances in the flavour, which were being heightened by the smoke.
Nothing else mattered for that first three or four sips and drags.
There was the thick nicotine syrup of a strong English fag (obviously
Deborah had tapped a career Bobby of her acquaintance for that) and
the unmistakable horror of Railtrack pseudo Mocha. Even though it was
the kind of coffee that even casual coffee drinkers would normally
rather go without, the familiarity of its shortcomings, the nasty
bitter edge that was well beyond the suggestion of bitterness that we
black drinkers enjoy, the thin watery consistency of the brew and the
leaky styrene cup were all oddly comforting. They were a world away
from the horror of a few short minutes before. Deb left me to take
my medicine and I gave the process my full attention for a good three
or four minutes. She returned with a serious looking Police
counsellor and a pad. Her boss had allowed her to take my statement
and she had brought one of the duty crisis counsellors along. I
looked him up and down and could not help but think that he looked
like he’d been dragged out of bed quite against his express wishes
and needs. I wondered how supportive and caring he was really
feeling below the very professional surface that was already
cautiously shepherding me to one of the offices that the station
staff had turned over to the Police. Deb was a true friend, sticking
to facts and quickly establishing that I could not possibly have seen
the gunmen. She gave me enough room to recount what I had seen as a
kind of on the spot exorcism and then she quickly got me out of there
and into a cab that was on the Police account. The crisis counsellor
told me to call him if I needed to talk, but was still so half-asleep
that he had in fact completely forgotten to tell me his name or give
me a card. Not that I noticed until I was falling into a melancholy
reverie in the back of a smelly Vauxhall Vectra. That drive home was
exactly as long as it should have been, I am sure, but to me it
seemed to have taken almost forever and to have been over in a moment
at the same time. Mum and Dad were up when I got home, but I only
managed a very clinical account, two whiskies and immediately to bed.
Once there in the darkness I rang Ilaena, and we talked for a good
hour or so. We cried and shared our fears with each other and more
than anything railed against the tyranny of geography – that was one
night where I could not believe the cruel fact of her being in London
and my being in Chorley. We parted company as sleep’s tendrils began
to reach up to each of us and we realised we might stay on the line
in our sleep until the batteries of our cell phones gave out.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}