CROSSING THE LINE (I.P.)

Late Friday afternoon was always a very important time for him, for that was when the weekly “inspiration point”, the I.P., would be posted on “ABCtales.com”.

Sometimes the I.P. would leave him totally bereft of ideas, other times the seeds of a story or poem would present themselves immediately. This week’s was described as ‘considerably simpler’ than the previous week, but that was easily said.

“Write a story or poem using the following three phrases: a fountain pen; crossing the line; broad brush strokes.”

Yeah right. To make it worse the phrase “I suspect that we may all head off in the same direction with this one so try and surprise me!” only added to his uncertainty. He certainly didn’t want to head off with everyone else but unfortunately he wasn’t sure what “direction” was being referred to.

“Crossing the line” germinated an idea, pointing him to a sign by a railway track: ‘Proceed with caution when crossing the line’. Was this the direction the I.P. had warned against? He wasn’t sure. God knows he wanted to be original but a story about crossing a line, a railway line, was where his keyboard was wanting to go.

As well as an urge for originality he also yearned for accuracy; would such a sign exist in the real world? He decided to “Google” it just to be safe. Thanks to the “Bodmin and Wenford Railway” he found not a notice but a track safety policy for railway workers; there might be some mileage in this tale after all.....

....Fred Fish had only been the signalman at Lampton Junction for thirty-seven days but he was already convinced it was the best job in the world. Let the others slave away in the mill or break their backs down the pit; Fred was in seventh heaven. During the course of each twelve hour shift he need only change the signals a dozen times at most, the rest of the time was pretty much his own. Fred Fish was a happy man.

The only time his mood took a dip was at 19.07 each evening, the precise time his predecessor, Jonathan Jackson, had been killed just six weeks before. Tonight was no different. Perhaps it was a warning from beyond the grave, but even as Fred thought of him his eyes were drawn to the “track safety policy” hanging by the door to the signal box, one paragraph in particular grabbing his attention:

“When getting to and from their place of work railway employees should look both ways before crossing the line.”

If only Jackson had remembered that the night he’d died.

When a steam locomotive and a human body, or even two bodies for that matter, suddenly find themselves occupying the same space the results are distressingly predictable. What could not have been predicted in this instance was the way the remains of those bodies presented themselves.

Remarkable enough was the fact two severed hands, one from each victim, were discovered with interlaced fingers, holding each other in death even as they had at the very last moment of life. Further inspection of those fingers provided an uncanny insight into the background of the two unfortunates as well as the events leading up to the dreadful accident on that fog enshrouded night.

The one, undoubtedly Jackson’s, was rough skinned and ink stained, the hand of a working man who had managed to work his way up in life, albeit only a little. The other hand, undoubtedly female, was soft and delicate but also stained, stained by paint. This was the hand of a young lady of breeding who filled her considerable leisure time by rendering the world around her onto canvas. In Victorian England these two should not have been together.

Lying next to the conjoined, orphaned appendages were two objects linked to the marks they bore; a fountain pen, belonging to Jackson, and a paintbrush, belonging to the young lady. Furthermore, a recently penned letter, addressed to “Elizabeth Farndale, Lampton House”, was discovered on one side of the tracks. A recently completed oil painting, still ever so slightly wet to the touch, was found lying on the opposite side of the rails.

The letter said simply: ‘My dearest Elizabeth, I love you with all my heart, but we are from two worlds which can never meet. No one must ever know of what has passed between us. Farewell my darling.’

The painting, a depiction of the Lampton Junction signal box rendered in broad brush strokes, bore an inscription on the back: ‘Jonathan my beloved, I love you with all my heart, but we are from two worlds which can never meet. No one must ever know of what has passed between us. Farewell my darling.’

The young sweethearts had met up that night for what each had planned to be one final tryst before consigning their relationship to the mists of secret remembrance. Each sought to tell the other it was over, neither one knowing that was also the other’s sad intention. Fate, in the form of an unseen and unheard steam locomotive, hurtling toward them in the fog, had conspired to keep them together forever, thrusting their story into the light even as they passed hand in hand into darkness....

....And there you have it: a letter alongside the fountain pen which scribed it; a paintbrush close by a painting rendered with broad brush strokes; the disembodied hands of two tragic lovers cut down crossing one line even as they stopped short of crossing another.

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COPYRIGHT DM PAMMENT 29th JANUAY 2011