the cadence of part time poets

Chapter 3: Chocolate and Train Stops

Don't do this and don't do that,
What are they trying to do?
Make a good boy of you;
Do they know where it's at?
Don't criticise, they're old and wise;
Do as they tell you to,
Don't want the devil to,
Come and put out your eyes...

- "School" Supertramp, 1974

Remus slept badly. The train carriage was dim and his head kept knocking against the window. It wasn't until he thought to ball up his jacket and use it as a pillow that he was able to make himself comfortable enough to try for a lick of sleep, but even then the train felt like a furnace. Sweat was running down his back and past his belt, and he couldn't so much as crack the window for a bit of breezy relief—the latch was broken. He was stuck in coach, surrounded by many more unhappy overnight travellers, including the man to his right who was currently grumbling about burning a Sunday roast in his sleep. If he had made his train the morning before Remus would've probably had his own carriage, but that was a privilege better off forgotten under current circumstances.

Giles had been quiet most of the way to the station, but once they'd got there he'd preened over his charge—making sure he had all his school papers, reminding him to shave downwards and not up, and not to spend every lesson with his nose stuck in a book—until Remus had finally had to snap at him to stop.

"You call if you need anything," Giles ordered. "And no more punching teachers or I'll have to drive up to the Highlands to whoop you one myself."

"Not sure how the Rolls would do on dirt roads, Gil," Remus had teased. It made Giles smile, and he sighed a bit before clapping him on both shoulders affectionately.

"Be good," he said, "and if you can't be good then be smart."

They'd separated on the station platform just before midnight, and Remus had taken the last train to Scotland alone and feeling distinctly sorry for himself. Now, several hours later, he spent the morning's wee hours awake and wishing he could've had a cig, but the train car didn't allow smoking and his trunk was tucked up above him on the shelf along with his fags, a few books, and his mother's small collection of albums. Even if he could've had one without facing retribution from the attendant or other passengers, Mr. Sunday-roast was so thick round the middle that even as skinny as he was, Remus doubted he would've been able to fit past without saying something first. And that of course would require conversation, which he was too irritated to consider.

So sleep didn't come, and Remus was forced to watch as the great English countryside rolled by in the dark. He'd be at his new school in the Scottish Highlands soon, where supposedly, countless rich and well-to-do British families sent their youth to grow and flourish under the finest education money could buy. For those looking to get into a good university, Hawkings Independent School was step one; for Remus, it might as well have been another prison. The closest village to the school's grounds was four kilometres away, and even then the Scottish township of Craigtyre had little to offer, if the school's guidebook was anything to go by.

After a near half hour of biting his fingernails down to the quick, a heavy jostling from the tracks awoke Remus' seat partner with a start. The man snorted rather grotesquely, and blinked around himself as though he couldn't remember where he was. Remus avoided eye contact, turning his chest toward the window, confident that the low-light of the carriage would discourage any conversation, but that didn't seem to matter much to the man. He reached over and tapped Remus on the shoulder.

"Coffee cart come by?"

Remus shook his head, thumb nail still stuck between his teeth. The man sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Just as well, really. Makes me awfully gassy on cross country."