Chapter 54
All Shook Up
Agnes was looking worried. Her fingers were tapping against her leg. The train took a few moments to start moving again, and when it did she sighed and sat back in her seat, clearly relieved.
‘Do you comprehend what just happened, Old Bean?’ Even with the familiar ‘Old Bean’ her tone sounded cracked and desperate.
The Ghost sat down on the green velvet seat of the front carriage, beneath his portrait. ‘Nothing. He didn’t hear me.’
‘Something got through. And she kissed you years before she actually kissed you.’
She looked out of the window. They passed the protest at the art college, and students sitting on the concrete outside. They passed Wilbur running from work to that same protest.
The train started to shake and rattle like a tin can in an earthquake.
‘Hold on, Wilbur, hold on.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘We could be heading off-track … You created a difference in the timeline.’
‘What happens if we go off-track?’
‘Well, you disappear. The whole of the Midnight Train disappears. You don’t get to eternity.
Because you are the ghost of not just any Wilbur Budd anywhere, but this specific Wilbur Budd who lived this life and got married to Maggie Shaw at St Timothy’s Church in 1974.
The one who got a big loan from the Yorkshire Bank to set up another shop, which would lead to yet more shops.
The one who changed the name from Bagdale’s Bookshop to Budd Books, after Charlie had convinced him that a shorter number of syllables worked for IBM and Bob Dylan.
The one who won the Yorkshire Business Champion five times …
who got invited to advise three separate UK governments …
who had a profile piece in the Sunday Times and who owned six houses in three countries …
There are no other paths. There are no other lines.
There is no chance that you can reach another life because you are the Ghost of this life.
Do you understand? You are heading to eternity.
Your eternity. Not an alternate version of you.
So, if something changes, you lose that. ’
Wilbur felt weary.
But then the train stopped stuttering and wobbling.
‘I see,’ said Agnes to herself. ‘There was some interference, some wobbling about, some slight differences, but it seems we have got back on track. The thing you said and the kiss didn’t fundamentally change the direction of travel, Old Bean.’
‘Maybe it should have. Maybe things would be better that way.’
‘Well, there were only minor fluctuations. You hummed a different song on your way home. But Maggie stayed with Edward because she felt guilty and her life was busy with the demands from college and her work at the cinema. And you stayed on a similar path too because of your mother’s recurrent mental illness – including a prolonged bout of agoraphobia – because you were as consumed as you had been, and because you were intrinsically shy at this point in your life.
So the direction of travel remains the same.
And that is good. And look outside the window: New Year’s Eve, 1969.
When Maggie got caught in the snowstorm on the way back from Edward’s digs.
When she knocked on your door and needed shelter.
“Like Mary and Joseph,” she’d said. Elvis’s Comeback Special was being repeated on television.
And, look, there you are, sitting with your mother as Mr Presley sings “All Shook Up”.
But fortunately things aren’t especially “shook up” because this was precisely how you spent that New Year’s Eve, wasn’t it?
Right down to that rather questionable knitwear … ’
‘Yes,’ said Wilbur, remembering how lovely Maggie had been to his mother.
Remembering how she had humoured her every insanity during those two hours until the snow subsided.
And remembering the longing he’d felt for her after she’d left.
‘But why is this good? There’s probably a better direction my life could have taken. ’
Agnes’s expression folded into a frown, as if Wilbur was a particularly esoteric book for which she was not the target market.
‘Wilbur, don’t be so frustrating. This was a warning.
Think about it. If you’d switched track your eternity wouldn’t be there.
You’d disappear. You would never get to eternity or have a chance of seeing Maggie again. ’
Wilbur looked at her. He didn’t know why she cared about him, but she did.
Precisely as much as she had when he used to head into the bookshop as a boy without a penny in his pocket.
He liked her caring, but it troubled him.
And he needed to know something, because he cared for her too.
‘Agnes, please tell me something … If the track switched, if I disappeared and the Midnight Train disappeared … what would happen to you? To the ghost of Agnes Bagdale. Would you disappear too?’
‘Yes and also no. Once you are in eternity you can be everywhere all at once. I would stay being in eternity … But I wouldn’t be on the train because the train would leave the tracks and disappear, as the life flashing before your eyes would no longer be the life you went through.
And the Wilbur of the past would enter a different life that may well be worse than the one you lived. ’
‘Right,’ said Wilbur, pleased to realise Agnes would be safe.
‘Let this be a warning.’
In truth, Wilbur wasn’t entirely satisfied.
He felt there must be some kind of flaw with her logic.
A way for him to reach eternal life, but also somehow get himself to love Maggie differently.
But Agnes was a bookseller and also currently a universe, which made her quite hard to argue with. ‘All right, Agnes. I understand.’
And for a short while, he really thought he did.