The Early Morning Service

I took the early morning service out of Ipswich one day in January. My Dad had driven me through the dark countryside to the station. When I left him he had a coffee in one hand, heavy eyes and a granite expression. He placed a hand on my shoulder and said goodbye. A puff of steam escaped with each syllable in the morning air.

I boarded and took a window seat. There were only one or two other passengers. I wondered who designed the seat covers; these ones were red, yellow and purple checked. The train made a sound as if clearing its throat, and started.

In the darkness I could make out the town, the quay, a premier inn. Portman road sat squat in the dim skyline, its floodlights arching above it. Through the gaps between the buildings, I could see a pink strip on the horizon, beginning to bleed upwards. Dawn. A red orb floated before me, I focussed on it with tired eyes, and saw that it was a sign advertising a 24 hour ASDA. Then, I pulled my gaze back, and saw my own face reflected in the clinical carriage lights.

I had bought a coffee because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Taking a sip, I found that it tasted a little of cigarettes. I was queasy as the day woke, and the town centre gave way to the suburbs, then the fields.

In the respiratory ward, sickness followed you. It had something to do with the smell. It was a mixture of things, sort of like old meat and bleach, so heavy you could feel it, taste it. They left the lights on in the corridor all night, and I wondered how anyone could sleep. The window in the room had a view of the car park, and every now and again the beams of headlights would swell and shrink on the walls. We took it in turns to talk, none of us really conversing, over the metronomic sound of the breathing. I could see us all pretending to ignore it, but I knew that we were all thinking please God, don’t let me be around to hear that breath - the one that goes unanswered.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, and neither could my Dad, but my brothers were more creative. Mike played some gentle music, Chopin, Satie. He’s the oldest, and that was the oldest I’d ever seen him. In his work suit and tie he looked mature, as if he had never been anything else than a man. I knew better. Joey was different, he was growing an awkward moustache, and dressed in his tracksuits. He talked about the football. We mulled over transfer policies, refereeing decisions. Then Joey, lit by the bedside lamp, leant in and did his favourite thing. He told bad jokes, answering them quickly before we could.

Hey, guys, why can’t Peter Pan fly planes? Cos he can neverland.

Ok, so, what did the fisherman say to the magician? Pick a cod, any cod.

I’ve run out of ideas. Why did the chicken cross the road?

But then he stopped, and looked down. We realised that there was morbidity in every joke, if you looked for it. There was only the sound of breathing for a while.

Being in that room, at that time, lent gravity to everything you said. When Joey, leaving the room, said ‘see you later’ we all started to wonder precisely when later could be. No one could venture any sufficiently wise words. Any attempt at consolation, we knew, was hopeless.

I couldn’t bear the sound of the breathing. Something had to be said to drown it out. I thought maybe a poem would do, but then immediately rebuffed the idea as too dramatic.
Besides, I only knew one: Phillip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings.

But the breathing didn’t stop, and the idea began to tempt me again.

How did it go? I forgot how it began, but remembered my favourite part:

For some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

I nearly died

A dozen marriages got under way.

I couldn’t remember the next bit, but then:

And none thought of the others they would never meet

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.

Then, the beginning came to me:

The Whitsun, I was late getting away.

Not till about

One Twenty, on the sunlit Saturday.

I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate, but I had to cover the breathing. I opened my mouth to start - but nothing came out. I couldn’t do it.

We just had to sit in silence, listening to the breathing.

After a while the Chaplain came. He was fat and bald, with a striped shirt and no collar. He didn’t seem to know the Bible, but neither did I. He asked a few questions, looked nervous, and talked about the inevitable sadness of leaving the world.

I felt the train begin to slow beneath my feet, and noticed with pleasure that on one side you could see the sun creeping upwards, and on the other, a gibbous moon disappearing. The train passed a solitary horse in its rail-side paddock, a few old trailers, a wall of haystacks. I baulked at the last dram of my coffee, and saw a refinery I recognised go by. We had arrived at Stowmarket.

I caught a blast of sharp air as the doors opened, and people shuffled aboard. With them they brought noise, and I awoke temporarily from my reverie. A woman and her young daughter sat opposite me. They were wearing matching red anoraks, something that annoyed me at the time. A pair of elderly women were laughing at the other end of the carriage. We continued our journey.

The woman and her daughter starting practicing their alphabet. She read to her from a large, colourful book, pointing at the illustrations.

A is for Alligator, see?

Allagarrr.

Good! B is for ball.

Buh! Bor.

The day was becoming clear. Beauty is ephemeral, and it has infinite modes of expression. I noted that phrase down to use later. At that moment, beauty was the cooling towers of a power station in the distance, poking above above an icy mist. The frost had compacted the soil of the passing farms, and an incongruous huddle of pines skipped past.

Bury St. Edmunds came and went without my noticing. I would not be stopping. I gripped my coffee, and decided that rather than drink it, I would use it to simply warm my hands.

I don’t know what time it was when the doctor came. I had been looking at the TV suspended over the bed. It showed a phone number you had to dial to pay for it, and I wondered how many patients could physically dial that number. I had always assumed hospital TVs were free, to have it staring at you there seemed like an insult. Joey was reading a magazine and chewing gum. My Dad was pacing outside in the corridor, ready to greet the doctor when he arrived. I couldn’t see out the window, but I knew he had arrived because Mike, who had been watching Dad closely, stood up and went to join them.

I was left in the room with Joey and the stertorous breathing. Joey told me that the food court had a Burger King, and I amused myself by thinking that it was a ploy by the hospital to ensure a constant stream of customers. Just as I was thinking it, Joey said the same thing.

Maybe that’s how the hospital gets its customers.

I smiled at him. He had no idea how much I appreciated his efforts to be cheerful on our behalf. He smiled back.

And then my Dad and Mike walked in, wearing expressions on their face that I have never forgotten.

They made me think of the passengers I had seen that morning on the train. The expressions I had seen then were of mirth, warmth. Whoever wasn’t enjoying another’s company stared out the window, like me, simply absorbing the passing details - the disused tractors, the worn billboards, sparks of sunlight moving in waves across the frosty fields. The sun was rising fast, and I could feel its warmth reach my cheek. It seemed impossible, then, for all my weariness, to not feel cheered, to not believe in something better at the end of the line.

When I heard the sound of my fragile breathing, amplified by the silence of the room, I could picture the steam escaping my lips, the clouds that my breath formed against the carriage window.

I am glad, then, that this was what I saw before the track buckled, the carriage jack-knifed, and the ground swung up to meet my shoulder: a canal, steaming in the winter morning. A goose, its head tucked beneath its wing. The sun, a white hot plate rising through a band of cloud. A man walking his dog, a barn, a field - my life, flashing before my eyes.