A Connection
It was easy to spot the Londoners, their clothes too new, too bright, worn in too many layers, boots fresh from the box, neither properly seasoned nor broken in. Waiting on the local platform at Carlisle, they had a wide-eyed look, pioneers venturing bravely north. The train opened its doors to let them on, two carriages only, and Michael waited patiently behind a woman with a rucksack the same size as her torso, the straps too long so that the weight tugged her backwards. He thought for a moment about advising her.
But he must not teach. He would be travelling with adults who had no need or desire to learn about drumlins and moraines. The train ticked and hummed, then began to crawl, rattling past sooty Victorian buildings, warehouses, the new light industry at the edge of town, the sky widening like a cinema screen, opening on to farm and woodland. Seated diagonally across the aisle, the woman with the poorly fitted rucksack was typing noisily but without a table, so that the laptop kept slipping down her new trousers towards her new boots. What was so important that it should take precedence over the view? She was certainly making a big show of it, tutting and blowing up at her fringe. It was a nice face, amused and amusing, attractive and expressive, with a city haircut (was it a ‘bob’? He wanted to call it a ‘bob’) and more make-up than you’d expect on a walker, sometimes rolling her eyes or clapping her hand to her flushed cheek at the words on the screen. He noticed that she was perspiring slightly. Noticed, too, that he’d stopped looking at the view.
But he must not stare at strangers on trains and he must not play the Lakeland poet either, though there was a kind of poetry to the towns they were passing through now: Wigton, Aspatria, Maryport, Flimby. Look, look up, he wanted to tell her, though in truth the landscape was not yet beautiful, at least not to a tourist, a belt of old industry between mountain and coast, small towns exhausted by winter, exposed terraced houses that seemed to regret their sea view. As they curved around towards Workington the Solway Firth appeared, a great slab of polished pewter with Scotland beyond, and still she shook her head at the screen, her hand a visor, one eye clenched shut as if she couldn’t bear to look. If it was causing her so much pain, why was she still reading?
Now the train was hugging the black cliffs, the sea some distance below. They entered a tunnel, long and sinister, then back into the light at Corkickle, where they both began to gather their belongings. Wary of the dawn start, the others had driven on ahead and were all staying overnight at a hotel in St Bees. They would meet on the beach at the start of the walk, seven of them. Cleo and her husband Sam were bringing their son Anthony who, they insisted, could handle it. Sam was bringing an old friend from London, Cleo two old friends. ‘Female but don’t worry,’ she had told him, as if this were a phobia. He did not have a phobia, it was just …
He’d read somewhere that people found it easier to talk frankly when walking, something about the forward gaze and the rhythm. He’d have to watch out for that. Not too open, not too reserved, not the teacher or the poet or the northerner or the grizzled old man of the mountains; not too judgemental, because all boots were new boots at some time or another. As to which role he should assume, well, he wasn’t sure. Cleo had told him just be yourself by which she meant be your former self and that was no longer possible. So much of his social life had been led by Nat and he’d yet to work out how to perform as a solo act. He would do his best to appear cheerful, and if he could keep that up for two days, he would be on his own again, unobserved and therefore invisible, racing to the North Sea. At nearly two hundred miles it was the furthest he’d ever walked and his pack, as he heaved it on to his back, felt impossibly heavy. He’d get used to it, he had no choice, and in nine days he’d be the other side of England, aching, browned by spring sunshine, everything thought through and resolved. ‘Walking it off’, that was the phrase, and though it was more usually applied to indigestion or rage, it was worth a try.
The train pulled into St Bees station, red brick and wood, like something from a model railway. He let the woman descend, so that she might go ahead.
But on the platform she was looking at the town map quite unnecessarily, blocking his way. The sea’s right there. Just point yourself at the sea.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s this way.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, a little prickly. ‘Thank you.’
It would be embarrassing to fall into step with a stranger and he accelerated past her. ‘Good luck,’ he said, but without looking back and, in turn, she didn’t reply.