Off the Rails

A crescent of faint orange light winds its way under Paul's heavy lids, waking him all at once.

This pisses him off, having always enjoyed the slow secession of oblivion from being, the somnambulant spectacle of the heavy dark deliquescing as the soft salmon glow of lamplight crept in, night a slipstream of the gentle dawn …

On days like this, however, sleep showed its true colours: neither companion nor comforter, but a bastard and a quisling, one which would thrust him back so roughly into life’s pomaded claws.

Ah, Life, that old, twinkly-eyed tyrant, insuperable for all its ingratiations …

*

Paul Willard Martin looks around blearily, his eyes so droopy with last night’s tequila and today’s tiredness that they look almost ptotic, sagging like overfull sacks, taut though heaving.

This is certainly not the Hilton, he realizes, not so much because the world seems to rhythmically jolt every few seconds as because he hasn’t yet received his breakfast. Such a dereliction of service to a Diamond Member, he sneers, clambering onto his feet, the russet leather of his suede shoes creasing under his paunchy frame, would be more unthinkable than the rooms taking flight.

‘Fuck me,’ he growls listlessly, apprehending that he is indeed on a train, a train he hasn’t the faintest recollection of boarding.

This is rare: despite his Caligulan appetite for booze and blow, Paul seldom suffers memory loss. Loss of dignity, loss of earnings, loss of love (the latter proving much less painful, if more expensive, when rendered, as the divorce lawyers were wont to, as alienation of affections, the only three words in the English language costlier than I’m trading Bitcoin), yes: he lost much on these nights out, but never memory.

How did I get here, he wonders, his nose still aflame with last night’s iniquities, his stomach tight, a bundle of nerves, decaying if not yet dead.

Realizing he needs a shit (he always needs one, this intestinal imbroglio being one of the less poignant - and thus more recondite - symptoms of alcohol abuse), Paul puts this query on the backburner, loping out of his carriage theatrically, hand poised on his belly, looking like a man who had been shot in an old Western.

He finds himself in a hot, dim aisle, the roof of which slopes down on either side, too sharp to be a parabola, too round to be chevroned. Whatever shape it is, it’s fucking hideous, broods Paul, staggering through the narrow automatic door.

The glare of a half dozen halogen lamps hit him all at once as he enters the communal car.

‘Fuck me, that’s too bright,’ he shouts to nobody in particular, cupping his moist face in his shaky hands.

‘Well, it is,’ Paul reasons, noticing an aghast mother who has clutched her son tighter, presumably as some infinitesimal act of retaliation against himself, as if she’s hugging the bad man’s swear words out of her precious boy.

‘Look, he probably swears all the fucking time himself, so you can get off your high horse,’ Paul remonstrates, sweeping on through the aisle, utterly aware that a good ten to twenty eyes are boring hatefully into the back of his sparsely follicled head, too hungover to care.

He thinks he spots a conductor: nobody would wear such a garish outfit - the epauleted jacket, the hat like a tin of chocolates - unless it were mandatory.

‘Hello, ma’am. I need the lavatory. Where would I go about finding one?’

‘Ah, Mr Martin,’ the conductor cries in an amiable Essex whinny, seeming more genuinely pleased to see him than even his own mother (admittedly, a low bar). ‘I trust you slept well. There is a lavatory adjacent to your luxury cabin, sir.’

Luxury! Two lumpy berths, a cheap muslin sheet, and a few sachets of Yorkshire tea …

‘I’d hate to see what you call economy,’ he sniggers to the woman, unsmiling now.

*

Paul stumbles back into his cabin more at ease than he had been.

For one, he would soon enjoy the pure cathartic joy of a bowel movement. For two, he had clearly elected to be on this train at some point, or else how could the conductor know him by name?

Collapsing on the small toilet in the adjoining lavatory – its faded steel cistern more suggestive of a lockup than luxury - Paul whips out his iPhone 13 Pro Max, eager to piece together last night, to fashion some sort of timeline, some hazy tableaux of his transgressions, from his text messages.

Oh Christ, no. Anyone but her …

Paul is not a man who readily experiences shame, chagrin, self-reproach, or any of the other sentiments an emotionally mature adult would recognize as fairly major needles on the proverbial moral compass … and yet, seeing Stephanie’s name blazoned on his screen, looming above a litany of lurid messages, dirty pictures, breathy entreaties and ad hoc train itineraries, even his heart sank.

Stephanie, his brother’s wife. Christ …

*

Reeling from this fresh revelation, Paul hurls himself upon his narrow, makeshift couchette, figuring if he is to self-flagellate he may as well be comfortable.

Jesus, Paul. Jesus. Why her, why her you scumbag?

I need a drink.

He fumbles through his satchel, searching for a sliver of booze with all the single-minded celerity of a child opening his Christmas prezzies. He feels the cool slender nape of a bottle, lifts it tremulously to his lips, inhales …

Nothing.

Paul looks down. An empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka glares up at him, glaucous and bare as the sky above.

Panicked, he dives back into his bag, resolving not to come up for air until he’s found something, anything.

He discovers all manners of paraphernalia: immaculate suits, ironed at the loving hands of his longsuffering wife; crumpled baggies, their flecks of white residue like snow on a windowpane; countless soaps, towels and toiletries - some complementary, most stolen – but for the love of God, not a blessed drop of booze, not an iota of ethanol.

*

‘What do you mean you don’t serve alcohol before 12 p.m.!’

‘It’s company policy, sir.’

‘Company … company bloody policy! A British company in the 21st century won’t serve alcohol to a paying customer, a premium customer, no less …’

‘We are actually a subsidiary of a German holding comp –‘ stammers the conductor, a pimply-faced waif, hardly a day over twenty, before faltering at Paul’s raised hand, its fleshy index finger bewitching as a wand.

‘Listen, mate, I’m the CFO of a nine-figure export business. With all due respect, I don’t need an economics lecture from a kid,’ Paul blusters, enunciating the last word like a profanity, as if there is something deeply and inarguably offensive in the man’s youth.

‘O – okay, sir, well, as I said –‘

‘What I do need,’ Paul interjects, gesticulating so vigorously his Daytona Rolex almost hooks the boy’s nose, ‘is a fucking drink. Can you do that? Or shall I fetch your boss?’

The conductor shuffles nervously, his eyes trained on his feet. Paul notices that the boy is in scuffed up Vans caked in some sort of detritus, the little bits of foliage and smears of mud more striking for the trainers' almost fluorescent whiteness.

‘Dressed like that, denying me service. Get me your manager,’ Paul barks, still surveying the boy’s feet.

‘What would you like to drink, sir? I’ll … we’ll -,’ he corrects himself, feeling safer, less morally compromised, under the aegis of the royal we, ‘make an exception this time.’

‘A bottle of merlot should suffice. And not one of those silly little bottles you peddle to tourists and old age pensioners, a proper bottle. I’ll be in my room.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good man. The name,’ he calls out, already several paces towards the next car, ‘is Paul Willard Martin.’

‘Oh, I know who you are, you prick,’ says the boy, his words falling noiselessly on his Vans.

*

It is now thirty minutes to noon, and Paul is sprawled over his bed, already mottled from big burgundy splashes of wine.

The guilt he had felt half an hour ago is quickly dissipating, is supplanted sip by sip with the growing conviction that he has all the right in the world to shag his sister-in-law.

We’re two consenting adults, after all, Paul reasons, languidly entering the passcode to his phone.

It was not as if he didn’t want to sleep with Stephanie … he had pursued her just last month at a family barbecue, had planted his big solicitous hands upon her shoulder as she batted her lashes and bemoaned her husband.

‘George has totally lost his sex-drive since starting those damned anti-depressants,’ Stephanie had confided, mock-glum, her eyes glinting even as she frowned.

‘Redundancy … is a terrible thing,’ he had returned, grinning hideously, unable (and, indeed, unwilling) to hide his schadenfreude.

‘Yes,’ she had replied, barely listening, twirling the lustrous black skeins of her hair around her fingers like some suburban Medusa, ‘I only wish George could be more like you.’

And yet, could Paul really do such a thing? Maybe he should call it off, chalk last night’s messages up to drunken flirtation, fantasy gone awry.

His phone rings. Stephanie.

*

‘Hello,’ Paul answers, his voice unusually timorous.

‘Hello, darling. I shall be at the platform around three-ish.’

‘Ah, three-ish? Is that when I arrive?’

‘Yes, sweetheart, it is a bit of a trek. 15:15 is the ETA,’ she coos. ‘I was so pleased that you said yes.’

It dawns upon Paul that Stephanie lives in Penzance, a little port nestled in westernmost Cornwall. Having traversed the length of Britain on countless ‘business trips’, he realizes that this is some three hundred miles away from his hotel in London. Far from spurring him to penitence, the pragmatist in him flares, the burden of commuting greater than any communal bond, blood or otherwise.

‘I want you,’ he purrs, his voice guttural, all aftershave and androgens.

‘Oh, Paul.’

He hangs up, proud and vacant as a killer … as a businessman.

*

Paul listlessly watches the news on his phone. Tory leadership hustings, inflation, heatwaves … a menagerie of half-digested diatribes, defences, delineations, it washes over him like chatter in a shopping centre, energizing in its inconsequence. He loves the news: its glossy nihilism makes him feel warm, alive even …

‘ATTENTION PASSENGERS: THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT’.

Paul drops his phone in shock, the glassy-eyed anchor’s drones inaudible over the tannoy’s wail.

'THE TRAIN OPERATOR FOR THIS SERVICE HAS EXPERIENCED A SUDDEN CARDIAC ARREST. WE WOULD ASK ANYONE WITH MEDICAL TRAINING TO CALMLY MAKE THEIR WAY TO THE CAB AT THE FRONT OF THE TRAIN. WE WOULD LIKE TO EMPHASIZE THAT THIS SERVICE OPERATES A DEAD MAN'S SWITCH.'

Paul hears a peal of shrieks issue from outside his cabin. The stupid bastards must not know what a dead man’s switch is …

‘TO CLARIFY, A DEAD MAN’S SWITCH IS A LIFE-SAVING TECHNOLOGY DESIGNED TO AUTOMATICALLY APPLY THE BRAKES SHOULD AN ENGINEER BECOME INCAPACITATED.’

A silence ensues, followed by pockets of fraught laughter.

‘Fucking morons,’ Paul says aloud, clutching at his wine.

*

Twenty minutes have passed, as has the engineer.

‘THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT. WE ARE EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTIES WITH THE DEAD MAN’S BRAKE. WE ARE IN CONSULTATION WITH SPECIALISTS VIA REMOTE CHANNELS, AND EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO RESOLVE THE FAULT IMMINENTLY. PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND STAY SEATED.’

‘I’d remain calm if that fucking tannoy didn’t go off every ten seconds,’ Paul quips, pacing up and down the aisles of the carriage, a lit cigarette jutting from his thin lips.

‘Could you put that cigarette out, sir?’ asks the conductor, the same slim one Paul had berated an hour earlier.

‘We’re gonna die either way, kid. I only hope that they don’t bury you in those biohazards you call trainers,’ Paul replies, blowing a dense cloud of smoke into the boy’s face.

‘Why are you such a bastard?’ the conductor yells, abruptly tearful, his face childlike with anguish.

‘Someone has to be, I suppose,’ Paul answers with a blithe, hateful grin. ‘Got any more wine? We might as well pop out the champers, given the, er … circumstances.’

The young man stalks off crying and cursing.

Paul doesn't care; he feels a frisson, a giddy expansive thrill that seems to seize his whole body. He feels as airy as the first time he did opiates, like the whole world is covered in some enchanted gauze.

His phone rings. Stephanie again.

‘Hello, darling.’

‘Paul, Paul, what’s happening! It’s all over the news! They say the train can’t stop … darling, what’s happening?’

‘It would appear, darling, that I’m going to die, en route to shag my sister-in-law, no less. Karma perhaps, my love?’ Paul drawls, his voice not unkind, for all its irony.

‘What do you mean, Paul?’

‘Don’t worry, my love. I don’t mean anything. I never have meant anything. Ever.’

‘You don’t deserve to die, Paul. You won’t die, darling, don’t be so morbid.’

‘Goodbye, Stephanie. Tell George he was a better man than his brother, even if it is damning with faint praise.’

He hangs up the phone, lights another cigarette and waits raptly, ready to see his old companion anew, ready for heaven, its heavy dark splendour.