Free Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski Page B

tracksuit and trainers ground down by the weight they carried. The two children were obedient but never frightened or cowed by her great voice and monumental presence.
    Bet relaxed and she, Troy and I were entertained during our wait with watching the way the family worked together.
    â€˜Hey, they’re great kids,’ Bet said to the woman.
    â€˜They better had be,’ the woman boomed in mock ferocity. ‘Or they’ll catch it.’
    But her pride in the compliment and her smile suggested that they didn’t need to catch it often, and whatever they caught wasn’t anything compared to the love they received. Bet seemed quite at ease now with the woman, who though black, young, loud and outsized, and perhaps somewhat strange and potentially dangerous at first sight, exhibited what to Bet was a proper understanding of social control and correct public behaviour when it came to the children. They were never going to grow up to be disaffected, morally blank wanton killers. We introduced ourselves. Her name was Gail, she was on her way from Virginia Beach, where she lived with her husband, to stay with a girl friend in Los Angeles. She was exhausted, having had the same ten-hour layover as us, but with the added responsibility of keeping two small children entertained. She had spent the afternoon with them at the movies, window-shopping and buying food and drink for the train journey which was going to be the full three days. She got back to the station an hour or so before we had arrived hoping she had worn the kids out enough for them to fall asleep. She could have dropped off at the snap of a finger, but the kids had hours of energy left in them. Like Troy, they were travelling coach, which meant sitting all three nights in reclining seats which were comfortable by airline standards, but still seats in a public coach. Bet and I had sleeping compartments. Travelling by train is pretty cheap if you don’t want a bed and a space to yourself for the night. If you do, the price rises steeply, well beyond the means of a working family with better things to spend their money on than the luxury of a bed on a train. My enjoyment of the day in Jacksonville with my new friends depended on the knowledge that when the train came, I’d have a bed and a door to close. But I was delighted by the way the layover had turned out. Bet and Troy were people I would never have come across travelling any other way, nor by spending time in one place in a hotel, not even staying with friends. I was intrigued by Bet’s contradictions and her bearing, and moved by Troy and his lone efforts to be who he was.
    A train passed through without stopping, hooting from a distance to warn anyone off the track which was flush with the platform. It slammed past us like a shiny tornado. Troy watched it come and go.
    â€˜When we were kids we used to hang out at the station. They put pennies on the rail when a train was due. Flattened them like pancakes. You ever done that?’
    I hadn’t. Trains had never been so accessible in the middle of London, and the tracks were always recessed. It was an all-American tradition.
    â€˜I never managed to do it,’ Troy said. ‘I always got too scared at the last minute.’
    Bet and I gave each other a maternal glance at this confirmation of Troy’s timidity.
    â€˜Well, there’s another train due before ours comes,’ I said. ‘Do it now.’
    Troy looked alarmed, and shook his head.
    â€˜It’s OK, I was only kidding.’
    Troy became silent. The loudspeaker announced the imminent arrival of the next train, which would be slowing but wasn’t stopping, so we should keep clear of the track. Gail told us how she had missed the train this morning because her husband had overslept and she’d made him drive them hell for leather to the next station in time to catch it.
    â€˜Or he sure as hell would have caught something. But we got there,