I can trace the pleasure my son is experiencing as I stroke his face. It makes me smile outwardly now that I am sure he is laughing inside, and I can be certain that I have made his day just as he has made mine. Steadying his head gently, I swish the ends of his auburn fringe just a little off his forehead to mark each circuit of the train’s wheels as they turn. It is their rhythm he is responding to, the regular beat of the steam engine as it chuffs and puffs us along towards Matlock station. I glance across at my wife who sits seemingly locked in her thoughts, dealing with her own illness, her own confusions no doubt. Our trip has been exhausting for her, the getting ready, the manoeuvring into the car, handling her sticks whist I load his wheelchair, the drive nagging at her pain levels, and then the effort of walking onto the platform and climbing onto the train and into a seat so that she can be comfortable. I concentrate on supporting Rob so that he can rest against me, almost prone on the banquette, whilst we wait for the slow beginnings of the train’s churning movement and its familiar gaining of speed.
We love this train. The effort seems nothing now that I know that Rob is happy, fulfilled, free to enjoy the moment. Of course, other people on the train stare at him briefly, out of curiosity, but it doesn’t bother him. Fellow passengers are drawn to look by the arc of bright ginger hair that frames his white face with its seemingly vacant eyes and skew-whiff expression. That eye-catching shock of red hair was not our only surprise when he was born, but we were so grateful for it. It gave us something to talk about with professionals, friends and family none of whom found it easy to address the elephantine question in the room: what kind of life would Rob have? Instead, we could diffuse the tension by making light of his looks, joking that there must have been a distant Celtic warrior somewhere amongst our ancestors. It made it easier for them to accept the accident of genetics that had delivered to us our unique, red-headed son to keep at least for a time.
We love to travel on the Thursday train. For some reason it is a busy day on the heritage line and the engine lacks the ideal power to pull the extra carriage added on to accommodate the number of passengers. Of course, they need as many of those as they can to keep the line and its volunteers in business. The engine struggles with all that extra weight of human expectation and excitement and the carriages seem to become like paper cut outs from a cartoon film, their seats moving emphatically backwards and forwards in rhythm and jerking their passengers with them. It is this repeated movement that Rob loves so much: It is his rock music, his cinema closeup, his escape into the world of his imagination if only for a few moments. We try to come each week that we can in the season.
So long as he has this, then I am content. Earlier, whilst we were waiting to board the train on the platform, a kind-faced woman had sidled up to me as I was helping Rob to drink from his juice beaker. ‘I just wanted to say,’ she had begun. As usual I had recoiled inwardly from her incipient pity, hoping that she would not go through with it, though too polite to stop her in her tracks. She hesitated as she looked at my wife and my son and then carried on: ‘What you’re doing is marvellous,’ she gushed, ‘You’re a hero in my book, the way you keep on going like this… It can’t be easy’. I tried to smile and mumbled something appreciative. Thankfully, she moved away quickly to join a friend further down the platform whilst I breathed deeply to suppress my embarrassment. After all, the woman had meant no harm by the assumptions she had made and the judgement she had passed on my situation. She simply saw a now elderly man with a wife who was barely mobile and seemed not entirely with it, and who was caring for his only son, fully grown, but whose gaunt face, wasted muscles and apparent unawareness of his surroundings suggested he might not be long for this world either.
Perhaps if I had tried to explain to her, she might have been able to understand why I am not anyone’s hero; how I am not ‘keeping going’ because I’m trying to keep up appearances or because I’m some kind of martyr keeping the faith at all costs. No, what I wanted to tell her was just how very much I enjoy my son’s company. Perhaps we cannot chat over a pint together at the pub, but he still lets me know what he thinks of me and listens to me intently when I speak with him in his way. As for my wife, well yes, I can see that she is fading, but then I find that we still share a joke, or a memory and we both smile much more than we cry together. I could not say all that to the woman on the platform of course, but the truth is that I am only ever truly happy when I am with my little family. I need them far more than they have ever needed me. I hunger for my time with them, selfish in my determination.
It is this greed that makes me savour the final stages of the train’s rattle into Matlock alongside my wife and child as I reluctantly ready myself for the end of the journey.
About the author
Jane Spirit lives in Suffolk UK and has been inspired to write fiction by going along to her local creative writing class.
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