Changing Speed

CHAPTER EIGHT: BOY'S NIGHT OUT

Throughout my working life I have made very few friends, lots of associates but very few friends. However this is about a man who will forever be a very special friend to me. Without our work I would never have known of him. When I finished working it would have been understandable for the two of us to have lost contact with each other, him being at one end of the country and me at the other. I was sad to hear that he too had been retired early from work due to a similar situation to that of myself.

We did keep in contact by telephone. It was not a regular contact, perhaps once in any six month period. He decided to visit an old school friend of his that lived alone in a splendid villa in Spain and I was invited to go along. In a rare moment of drunken stupor I accepted graciously, and then immediately regretted the commitment I had taken on.

The first part of my journey would be travelling south some three hundred miles or so by train. The last time I had been on a train was some seven years prior. That had been the day I labelled as my breakdown day when I had stood for hours in the station not knowing which train to board. Still seven years had passed since then and much medical expertise together with expense had been spent on me. I was certain that I could make a simple train journey.

The crowded train pulled into a station one hundred miles from my destination when an announcement told the passengers that the train could travel no further due to a malfunction. We would have to disembark and catch an alternative train. There was a mass exodus. I collected my case and left with the other passengers, trying more desperately than anyone around me could have known to maintain my composure. I couldn't make out which platform to go to and I could feel panic creeping upwards from my legs through to my stomach. I concentrated as hard as I was able but the overhead screens became no clearer to me. I instinctively followed the crowd and queued on another platform. As the replacement train pulled to a gradual halt, the crowd pushed forward. The previous train had been full of passengers and the replacement was not empty. I could not let this train go without me. It was clear that those attempting to board were determined in their actions, yet none were as desperate as I.

A lonely train guard asked for some volunteers to leave and catch the next train. People were standing in every inch of space, the seats already being occupied. I locked myself in the toilet of the carriage until the motion told me the train had started the remaining part of my journey. All I knew was that I could not go back onto the platform of the station. It was that simple. I wasn't even sure if this train was taking me to my intended destination. Even if it had not, I would or could not have left the security offered me by that carriage.

Stood, packed in amongst the other sardines, I became conscious that I was sweating. Others around me also noticed that water was dripping from my head, face and especially my nose. Nobody said anything as I searched my pockets for a handkerchief. I was as grateful for their silence as I was for the handkerchief.

Reaching my destination I made my way to where my friend had told me he would be waiting. I prayed secretly that he would be there. I was prepared to pray out loud if necessary. He was there. He looked at my face and appeared concerned. I was insufficiently focused to answer his questions and remained silent for the journey back to his home. Without a word he took my case from the car and deposited in the hallway. We walked to the local pub.

Once in the pub with a beer in my hand my composure returned, slowly. Only then did we begin to talk of my train journey and our illnesses. Comparisons were striking yet our conditions were individual. I kept my strongest desire, that of being back at home, to myself.

In truth, I felt as though I had let so many people down not being recovered after all the help(most of which I had never desired) I had been given. Even being in the company of my friend who had been forced to retire due to a similar condition to myself, I felt once again that I was isolated. Only I could understand how I was feeling. I felt isolated and yet I longed to be alone. It was not only isolation. I felt frustrated and perhaps a little scared that I was not over my anxieties. I was isolated and frustrated, dejected and confused, defeated and angry. Inexplicably I also felt nothing. All these emotions blended together to make a cocktail of where I had been seven years ago. Being there seven years ago and being there now was being somewhere, yet somewhere was nowhere I wanted to be.