Free Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski Page A

rust-red.
    â€˜Let’s go for a boat ride,’ I suggested. There was a small ferry going back and forth, just a little boat with a sun shade and two benches on either side for about a dozen people. The heat, once we had left the air-conditioned restaurant, was exhausting. ‘It’ll be cooler.’
    Bet and I stayed on the ferry for a couple of hours, going from one side to the other, paying the two-dollar fare on each turn. Every so often we got off so that Bet could get another beer.
    â€˜You don’t drink?’ she asked me as I got a diet Coke.
    â€˜Not much,’ I apologised.
    â€˜Well, I do. I drink a lot.’
    The afternoon on the river was quite blissful, catching the breeze on the water, going backwards and forwards to nowhere. Bet and I congratulated each other on having found a perfect way to spend our layover.
    â€˜What’s the river called?’ I checked with the captain of our ship on one of our crossings.
    â€˜This is the St John’s.’
    â€˜The Jacksonville? ’ I turned to Bet.
    â€˜Hell, I don’t know what the damn river’s called. I was just trying to be helpful.’
    We giggled a lot, though we talked about nothing much. Bet was catching the Sunset Limited as far as El Paso.
    â€˜My hero’s picking me up and driving me home. There’s no connection to Albuquerque.’
    â€˜Your hero?’
    â€˜That’s my husband, Jim. My hero. Because he is my hero.’
    It sounded fine to me.
    â€˜He didn’t go to the funeral with you?’
    â€˜He had to stay home with Mikey.’
    â€˜Mikey?’
    â€˜Our youngest. He can’t be left alone. He’s brain damaged.’
    Mikey was in his late twenties and had just qualified as a policeman when he was in a car wreck which left him in a coma for eight weeks and damaged him enough to be completely dependent on Bet and her hero, who were just reaching retirement age.
    â€˜He’s a sweetie. Got the mental age of a kid. Can’t remember anything from one day to the next. Hell, one moment to the next. He’s got to be watched all the time. He’s always trying to do things he can’t do, and then he gets mad because he remembers he can’t do what he used to do. But he’s so loving. And funny. A real joker. He’s a joy. Our other kids are all grown and have families of their own, but we’ve still got our baby.’
    Only the words were sentimental. She spoke sharply in the face of a permanent tragedy. She lived with Mikey as he was now. I liked Bet’s toughness, though I wondered how deep it went.
    Back at Jacksonville station we still had hours to kill. We sat on a bench in the open on the platform, where Bet and I could smoke, next to a huge young black woman, in her mid-twenties, with a voice so loud you felt it in your solar plexus. It was the only place to sit, and at first I felt Bet’s uneasiness: she was on her guard at the excessiveness of the woman. She was sprawled lazily on the bench, her great thighs comfortably separated, monitoring the comings and goings of her two tiny children, a boy of six and a girl of three or four, who ran in and out of the station. When they had been out of sight for some internally judged time limit, she would call out their names, and although they were behind a glass wall and closed door at the other side of the station, they came running. She never turned to look at them, her antenna was so highly tuned she knew exactly when the kids needed to be recalled before they got on anyone’s nerves. The children returned instantly and amiably to their mother and hung around her knees for a while, being groomed, hair raked, mouth wiped, while she smoked and warned them not to get themselves dirty, before they went off again, both they and their mother reassured.
    â€˜And don’t you go bothering people, you hear?’
    They were dressed smartly, quite formally, while she wore a voluminous red