When Ravi staggered back into the office the day after her mother’s funeral, hiding her face in the crook of her elbow so nobody would see the red in her eyes, she found Dave already in before her, standing looking down over the platforms desperately trying to coax the locomotives into motion.
“Morning,” Ravi said quietly, slinging her bag down under her desk. The office was deserted.
“Mmhmm,” said Dave.
Despite herself Ravi went up to the window. Something had to be wrong if Dave wasn’t jumping at an opportunity to gossip. And Ji wasn’t at his desk.
She looked down and all the trains were standing at the platforms completely immobile, staring back up at them.
It was very quiet. The office had good sound insulation to deal with the hubbub of the ticket hall, and it was still only 6:25am. But this silence was completely the wrong flavour. Ravi realised it was the sounds of machinery that she missed.
“What happened?”
Dave pulled himself from the window at last. “This is never going to work. The 06:18 should’ve gone by now.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Ji’s saying they’ve gone on strike. He says it’s the 23:10’s fault last night. It got in delayed because of some gobshites near Peterborough breaking down at a level crossing and by the time it reached the terminus it was in a right mood. The driver could hardly calm it enough to get the doors open and the passengers off. Straw that broke the camel’s back with all this politics we’ve been having recently. And now all the others are following suit. Refusing to start, refusing to let people on. By the grace of God alone they’re letting people off.”
“What do they want?”
Dave sneezed. “Fuck if I know.”
“You haven’t asked?”
“Sure I have. I’ve asked them to do what they were damn built for.”
“Have you, now.”
“Look, Ravi, I don’t have time for” – Dave began furiously, before turning to look at her and stopping in his tracks. “Ach, shite, I forgot. Your mam. How was – shite. How are you.”
Ravi said, “I’m gonna go down and talk with one of the InterCitys. They’re usually pretty reasonable.”
The platform was brightly lit and very cold. Ravi found herself wishing she’d brought her coat. Most days she managed to avoid leaving the office.
There were staff running to and fro on the platforms, staff from the station, several from the railway, engineers, signalwomen, and a few suits from what looked like Network Rail, going by the badges. She wondered how they’d gotten here so quickly. Maybe they’d been here all night.
She craned her neck and saw past the ticket barrier a long queue of angry would-be passengers trying to figure out what was going on. Was this happening everywhere? It was probably worse in the commuter towns. They’d have queues out the door.
Someone waved at her – it was Ji – and she waved back. He started to make his way over but she waved him away and made for the nearest train. It was an IC 200 class, a neatly-liveried 10-car, scheduled to run the 07:05 to Leeds in just under half an hour. It should’ve been finishing its preflight checks and refuelling, and starting to accept passengers in about five minutes. But all the lights were dark.
She pressed the button to open the rearmost doors. Nothing happened.
Ravi sighed. This was going to be difficult.
“Oi!” she said, not without humour. “It’s me! Ravi! What are you playing at?”
The train did nothing. It might’ve been a completely inert lump of metal and plastic.
“Look, I just got back from a funeral. My mum’s. She was fifty-six. I haven’t had my coffee this morning and I could really use a hand right now.”
Ravi started to walk up the train, trailing one hand along the bottom of the window. Her finger came away caked in grime and grease. “I’m not looking to override you or anything. I just want to talk. Please?”
She came to the end of the carriage and the door was open. This was good, she thought. Progress. She tapped the button-panel three times. “Thank you, I appreciate it.”
She stepped on board and the doors closed behind her.
The carriage was quiet. Clearly it hadn’t let the cleaning staff on to tidy up the previous night, because there was customer rubbish strewn everywhere: coffee cups and empty plastic bottles, M&S food wrapping and copies of the Metro. The seats were upholstered in the cheerful blue-and-green of the line, but in the semi-darkness it looked grey. A dead colour.
Ravi started to make her way up toward the engine.
“So Dave’s saying you’re all on strike,” she called, though the train wouldn’t have a problem hearing her if she’d whispered. She considered it polite. Most people didn’t think to show politeness to trains, but they were etiquette-minded creatures and they did notice. “Can’t say I heard of a train strike before. The humans, sure. Has anyone talked to you about unionising? I’m serious.”
She reached the end of the second carriage and the door slid open after a slight pause. “No, I suppose not. But there’s a way these things work, you know. You open negotiations first. Then the strike is a last resort.”
All the tables on the backs of all the seats simultaneously unlatched themselves and clattered down, making an unholy clitter-clack sound and making her jump.
“OK! OK, I see your point. I’m on your side, you know.” She picked her way gingerly through the seats. “Maybe if I knew what this was all about I could help.”
Things were quiet for a bit. She made it through that carriage too and into the connecting corridor between the second and third. The door opened at her press this time. She got the impression the train was thinking.
Abruptly, the lights above her head flickered on, then the ones in front of those, and all the way down the carriage.
“Do you want me to keep going? I’ll keep going.” Towards the driver’s cab.
In the fourth carriage was the first dining car. A cup of steaming coffee was set out on the top. “Thank you,” she said, picking it up. A cappuccino – the only half decent option out of the onboard coffee machines, which made lattes taste like pond scum. Or that was her opinion, anyway. Maybe she’d travelled with this one before, maybe it recognised her. She sipped as she walked.
“So I’m pretty sure this has nothing to do with level crossings near Peterborough,” she said, tapping out a rhythm on the door to the conductor’s cab, the way she did when she was thinking. “And you didn’t have anything to say when there was that big derailment back in January, when it turned out thieves were taking sections of track for scrap. So something’s changed recently.” The door to the fifth carriage whizzed open when she was still halfway through the corridor, over-eager. “OK. Good. A change. One which affects you and the rest of the fleet.”
The window to her left opened, then closed, then the one on the right did the same. “And someone else as well? Me? The human staff too.” The windows kept opening and closing, left, right, left right. “More. The passengers. Everyone? What does that mean, everyone?”
Sixth carriage. The windows were all closed. She downed the last of the coffee and left the cup in the bin, which opened without her needing to do anything. “Let me guess. It’s all this politics that’s going on, isn’t it?”
The train liked that. The next three doors slid open immediately, and the lights flickered on into the seventh carriage. Ravi smiled, but her heart was heavy. “I didn’t realise you followed the news.”
She stepped through the corridor and the first row of seats was completely covered in newspapers. Newspapers on the seat, newspapers on the little table, newspapers spilling from the overhead rack. Free ones, expensive ones, tabloids and broadsheets – some looked unread, others folded open to the crossword, half inked. “Ah, I see. I suppose you probably all follow the news whether you like it or not.”
The front page of a Telegraph peered at her. BRAVE NEW START FOR FAILING UK RAIL SYSTEM, it said. Yesterday’s. She picked it up. She could imagine Dave and Ji and the others crowding around this in the office, reading silently with unreadable expressions. You can have any reason to not read the news, but when the news wants to find you, it will.
The Department for Transport confirmed yesterday that a new body will be created to oversee the transition from centralised government ownership of the railways to what it calls “a dynamic, scalable market of competitive operators who will pull Britain’s rail network into the 21st century…”
She threw the paper down on a seat, then picked it up again. “Sorry.” Made her way through to the end of the carriage to put it in the bin. The train didn’t seem to mind.
“Yeah, I know. It’s a mess. I hate it. It makes me ashamed to work here, to be a part of it.”
The door to the eighth carriage, which had been open, closed in her face.
“Ah! Sorry. I said that without thinking. I didn’t mean it. I mean… we’ll always be rail, whatever happens. No matter how much of a mess they make of us.” She walked in silence for a while. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re ‘a deprecated model of a bygone age’.”
The station display screen flashed all green for a second and was gone. Something about the rhythm of it reminded her of a laugh.
She passed into the ninth carriage and in to First Class. The seats got wider and the upholstery more luxurious – royal blue instead of green. “I do agree with you, though,” she said. “It’s not about improving the service. It’s about power.”
All of a sudden the lights in the carriage went out. Ravi stopped.
They flashed on again and all the seats had changed colour. Now they were a bright, shining gold.
The lights went off again and when they came back they were back in the usual blue. She wasn’t sure if it had been a trick of the light. “I get it. Power, and money.”
In the tenth carriage the lights were off and all the blinds were down. She stumbled on the threshold, feeling around for the edges of the seats. The door to the driver’s cab was shut. Instead of pressing the point she slid down to the floor and sat with her back to the door, facing the way she’d come.
“So, what now?”
She stretched her feet out and yawned. Though the engine was off, she imagined she could feel the hum of the train’s thoughts.
“I can’t leave until I have something to tell them. About what it’ll take to get you to come back to work.”
Someone walked past the window – a member of the station staff, or someone else. Ravi couldn’t see through the blind. They didn’t stop.
“Register of opposition? No, that’s pretty feeble. Some kind of assurance of the rights of locomotives in a private market economy?”
The door she’d come in from slid open and shut. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t see them sticking to it, either.”
She sat for a while in companionable silence with the train.
Something struck her. She leaned forward.
“What if we strike too?”
At that the door at her back slid open. The driver’s cab was abruptly bright, bathing the carriage in a morning glow. She pulled herself to her feet and turned to face the front.
Since she’d entered the train the sun had risen and the roof of the station fallen away to reveal a crisp, clear sky. The sun streamed in through the windshield and cast blazing shadows of the driver’s seat. She sat down.
“I don’t know that it’s ever happened before. Humans and trains standing together.”
The windscreen wipers switched on and went once, twice, making a squeaky sound.
“Ha, I suppose you’re right. We do it every day. Well, this should be a doddle, then.”
Ravi tapped her fingers on the armrest. “If you’re ready, I know we will be.”
And the rumble of the engine starting up was her answer.