The silence in the crowded train carriage was immediately striking. So many young women, pink hats, pink overnight bags and white veils, some in shreds. One started to speak but was soon defeated by the forced croak that emerged. She slumped back into her arms, folded across the carriage table, joining three sets of folded arms already there.
My seat was at a window among a similar set of folded arms. Frozen by terror and pity – which Aristotle claimed lies at the heart of tragedy – I considered my predicament. Should I disturb the suffering young woman in my seat to claim what was mine and risk the terrifying wrath of a disturbed hangover, or meekly pass by hoping to find a seat elsewhere in the packed train?
Above seat A23 my name winked back at me, a seeming challenge to claim what was mine. Should I just slink away, a mess of shimmering cowardice with my self-esteem between my legs but live to fight another day – that perennial battle. Did I dare disturb that exhausted universe that was this spent hen party in occupation of the carriage and my seat? “Man or mouse?”, number A23 seemed to ask. “Mouse” had its attractions.
Braced, I said to the settler in my place: “Sorry. Excuse me. Hello. Hi. Are you awake?” I was about to raise my voice when she looked up through strands of dishevelled hair, a question in her eyes that seemingly asked: “What planet is this?” I explained that she was sitting in my seat, pointing to my name overhead.
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“Uh, sorry,” she said, which was not expected. “Girls, I’m in the wrong seat,” she announced, urbi et orbi (to the city and to the world). “Sure we’re all in the wrong seat” a weary colleague said from down the train. “But his name is on it,” said the occupant of A23, to no response. She rose to leave, inquiring “where will I go now?”, that cry of the displaced down the centuries.
A colleague called her and she squeezed in beside two fellow travellers nearby.
From there we all journeyed to Dublin in companionable silence, adjusted lines from Yeats dancing in my brain: `How can I, those girls suffering there,/My attention fix/On Roman or on Russian/Or on Spanish politics?’
Train, from Latin trahere `to pull.’
