The Wrong Train

Ivo asked for his coffee to take away, then changed his mind when he saw the pastries. He put his toolbox beside the door and asked whether he still had ten minutes. Vera wasn't sure what for. It was a quarter to seven; Ivo's evening crew usually started work about the time she began to feel like sitting down.

‘Always time for a pastry,’ she said.

He chose the one with the most icing. Something wet had left an imprint on his jacket. He rubbed at it to no effect.

‘Have you just been up on the bridge?’ Vera asked.

‘That's where we're starting in a minute.’

‘There's a screw missing from the nameplate.’

Ivo looked up. ‘That screw's been missing since June.’

His mouth was still half full. Vera waited for him to swallow.

‘Reported it. Twice.’ He raised two fingers with the pastry between them. ‘Why?’

She told him about the tin and the woman who had been on the bridge three evenings running. Ivo didn't know her. He had seen someone up there with a phone clamped to the handrail, though. The chalk mark could be for finding the same spot again. There were two rubber marks beside it.

‘A phone?’

‘What did you think?’

‘That she was waiting for someone.’

Ivo folded his paper napkin. ‘You can do that with a phone.’

He brought his cup to the counter and picked up his toolbox. Vera asked if she ought to hand the tin in somewhere, to someone at the station. He shook his head. As far as he knew, there was nobody about in the evenings better qualified to look after a biscuit tin. If the woman came back, he could explain about the screw.

‘Not straight away,’ Vera said.

‘No?’

‘I don't know if she knows I've seen it yet.’

He raised an eyebrow, but was already trying to free his sleeve from the toolbox handle. A colleague was waiting outside with a trolley. They took it over to the gate behind the signal box.

Milan arrived while Vera was washing Ivo's cup. She told him where the tin was. She would like to speak to the woman if she came to collect it. He asked whether she would also be handing back the lost umbrellas in person.

‘Only the blue ones,’ she said.

She took the photograph out of the envelope once more. Not because that gave her permission to keep looking, she told herself, but because she had missed something right there on the front. The departure board behind the men. Below the destination was a time. Twenty-three fourteen.

The cigarette machine beside the door had already gone when she took over the café. The booklet about the station mentioned it among the things people remembered. A button you had to press hard, a packet that sometimes got stuck. This hadn't been taken last week. Of course it hadn't. The trouser legs and the sign could have told her that.

She slid the photograph back. Perhaps that was why nobody had put a year on the reverse. For anyone who had been there, the time was enough.

In the kitchen she cut a piece of cardboard to go under the tin, so it wouldn't slip down among the umbrellas. She set it in place and went to finish the order list. She didn't spend the next half-hour watching the door. The café was still hers, and the supplier wanted the order before eight.

Later she sat with a bowl of soup at the little kitchen table. Milan came to ask how much more bread he could cut. He had already eaten a sandwich from his own lunch box. She said the guests could have the remaining half of the round loaf. Two people had come in after missing a connection and were keeping themselves going on coffee.

‘That eleven o'clock train doesn't run any more,’ she said as he went back out.

‘They know. That's why they're here.’

‘I mean the woman.’

Milan stopped in the doorway. ‘You can ask when she comes for the tin.’

‘Yes.’

‘Otherwise you'll have to hang on to it.’

He picked up the bread basket and went out into the café. Vera carried on eating. At the bottom of the soup were pieces of celeriac she had meant to cut much smaller. She broke one in half.

At half past ten she put the tin on the counter, in the corner where nobody set glasses down. She sat on the high stool beside it. Her coat was over the back, giving the impression that she might leave at any moment. Nothing was waiting for her at home except the washing in the machine, and that wasn't going anywhere.

Eleven o'clock came and went. Nobody appeared on the bridge.

The passengers who had missed their connection had left. Milan loaded the dishwasher and turned down the music; the song seemed to hang in the empty room. Outside, someone dragged a wheeled bin across the paving. The noise stopped at the gate where Ivo was working.

At a quarter past eleven the woman came in. She was out of breath and had no coat, only a cardigan over a blouse with one cuff unbuttoned. She saw the tin and went straight to the counter.

‘That's mine.’

She rested her hands on the lid without picking it up. Her nails were short; a fine red line marked her index finger.

‘I've lost my coat as well. Left it at my sister's. It's becoming a habit.’

‘It says Bas,’ Vera said.

‘My brother. I'm Ria.’

‘Vera.’

The woman could probably have worked that out from the till screen, but she had said it now. She indicated the envelope without touching it.

‘I looked for a phone number. That was all.’

‘Then you've seen the men.’ Ria pulled a stool towards her. ‘Bas on the left. My husband on the right. Will that lid go on now? I can never get it right.’

Vera pressed the corner where the rim stuck up. The other side sprang open. Ria freed a cable from between the edges, and the lid closed.

‘The microphone belongs to the boy next door,’ she said. ‘He wants paying if I break it. Told me before he lent it to me. He hasn't had it a month yet.’

‘Are you filming the bridge?’

‘Trying to.’

Ria sat down properly. She seemed to have run so hard that she was still catching her breath. Vera slid a glass of water towards her, poured one for herself and signalled to Milan that he needn't come over. Ria drank half.

‘I keep getting the wrong things in the shot,’ she said.

‘The train?’

‘Among other things.’

She opened the tin again; now she needed something out of it. The microphone was on top. It was so small that Vera wondered if it picked up much beyond the wind against your hand. Ria held it by the lead.

‘Bas can't manage the steps any more. Not for now, he says. He's had his hip done.’

‘And the eleven-fourteen train?’

Ria looked from the envelope to her. ‘That hasn't run for years.’

‘I saw from the photograph.’

‘Their last shift together. My husband went to the depot afterwards. Bas stayed at the station. I gave him the photographs. He wrote the time on the back himself.’

Her thumb followed the edge of the envelope. It wasn't a gesture asking for sympathy. She seemed to be checking that the flap was still intact.

‘Bas wanted to remember that train. I wanted to record something before Monday. Before they shut it all off.’

A sharp bang came from outside. Ivo had struck the gate with his palm. He said something Vera couldn't make out through the closed lower window. Ria turned her head. Suddenly Vera saw how her questions had taken her past the simplest answer. Here was a woman with leads and a microphone. No buyer of brass plates, no appointment with a train someone had erased from the timetable.

‘So he worked here,’ she said.

‘For years. Nights, mostly. So did I, though you wouldn't know it from that photograph.’ Ria put the microphone down. ‘He's got more photographs than I have. At home.’

‘Couldn't you give him a quick call and ask what he wants to see?’

‘We use video calls. He went deaf after an illness. I put the captions on when my hands are full. They do come up with some odd things, though.’

Vera looked at the microphone. She didn't want to ask, and asked anyway.

‘Who's that for, then?’

‘Me.’ Ria answered plainly. ‘I want the sound too. I've stood up there fiddling with the thing for three evenings. I'd like to hear what I was doing when I get home.’

She finished her water. Vera filled the glass again.

‘The first night the phone didn't record at all. I'd tapped the picture instead of the button. The second time I looked back, all I could see was drops. Water everywhere. On Wednesday I thought I'd got a bit, but I hadn't cleaned the lens properly. Then yesterday my sister rang. I packed it all up and forgot the tin.’

‘You always stood in the same place.’

‘You get the bend and the lamp together from there. I thought that would do. But now Bas says he's looking at a railway line.’

Ria searched her phone. She kept the screen to herself while the messages were still on it. Only when she had found the recording did she turn it round.

Rails. A section of handrail. Far away, a light moved briefly between two dark shapes. Not a person in sight. The clip was short. Below the picture was a question from Bas about a radiator guard.

‘That's inside,’ Vera said.

‘Exactly.’

For the first time Ria smiled broadly enough to dispel her tiredness for a moment.

‘He wants to see where he worked. I'm filming a train.’

Vera looked through the top window. Ivo was still at the gate. She could call him, but then she would be standing here waving as though there were a fire. She set her glass on the counter and got up.

‘I can ask if he'll open the door. You'll have to know what you want to film in there.’

Ria looked at the tin. ‘I haven't brought a light.’

‘There's a light in the building. It might work.’

‘What if the train comes?’

‘It hasn't been yet.’

Vera sounded more certain than she was. Milan looked up from the dishwasher.

‘Freight train? No. We'd have heard it.’

Ria got up and carefully looped the cable twice. This time she didn't put everything away. She kept the phone and took the tin's handle in her other hand.

Vera paused at the door. ‘You all right here, Milan?’

He surveyed the room. One man was still tapping at his phone by the socket. The last glasses were in the rack.

‘I'm here anyway,’ he said. ‘Just don't lock up on me before midnight.’

Vera took her coat from the stool. Ria was trying to do up her cuff with the tin still in her hand. Vera took it from her for a moment.

Outside, Ivo had his foot against the bottom of the gate. He let go when he saw them. It stayed ajar.

‘Don't tell me there's another screw missing,’ he said.