Victims of conflict.

Victims of conflict.

  I sit gazing down on Horton West railway station, watching the passengers alight from the last London train of the evening.  I've been here so long, I know the timetable backwards. 

   Looking down on that bench where I'd sat six months earlier on a cold wet November evening.  I recall the icy wind and rain seeping through my heavy ex-army parka as though it were paper.  I smile, remembering.  I was wearing a sodden black woollen hat pulled down below my ears and a thick woollen scarf wrapped around my face.  My parka hood held them in place, reinforced by its drawstrings, to keep out the wind.  My boots were sturdy enough, but my jeans hung around my legs like wet bog roll.

   I'd tried the door to the waiting room, it was locked and the phone had been vandalized.  The sign announcing arrivals said 06:00am.  I looked at my watch, it was 02:00am.  Four hours before the next train arrived.  All the taxi's had departed long since for destinations unknown.  So I curled up on the bench, shivered, and tried to sleep.  My pillow was the ex-army rucksack containing all my worldly goods.

   Suddenly a light came on in a house some thirty yards beyond the tracks.  I looked up to see a woman who appeared to be waving at me. 

"Me?" I mimed with exaggerated gestures.  She nodded and waved me over, indicating, by mime, that I would have to go out of the station and over the bridge to reach the house.  I crossed the road bridge and entered a row of houses.  But, became disoriented in the dark.  Then the porch light came on, like a beacon, so I hurried towards it.  As I reached for the knocker the door opened.

"Come in dear and close the door.  It's not a night to be out in."

"Thank you," I said.  If only I'd said no!

I heard the friendly chirping of a whistling kettle; beckoning.  My mother used to have one just like it.

"Tea or coffee?" She asked, fussing around me.  "You must be freezing let's get that coat off and get you warmed up!  Come, come over here and sit by the fire."

"Thanks," I said hunkering down in a cosy well-loved armchair "tea please." It was then that I got my first real look at her: 

She had long dark hair curling about her shoulders.  She was close to 5' 6", quite attractive, probably in her mid-thirties, slim but shapely underneath her semi-opaque silk dressing gown.  Her pale complexion suggested that she wasn't a great sun lover.  But her most striking features were two large sympathetic green eyes full of compassion. 

She disappeared into the kitchen talking to me all the while.  "I have a fresh batch of lamb & barley stew on the stove if you'd like to give it a try?" she said placing a tray before me on the heavy oak coffee table.

I nodded "thank you..." and sipped the hot sweet tea.

She repaired to the kitchen once more, returning with a large hunk of a fresh-baked white cob, and a generous helping of the promised stew, piping hot.  "Elise Stuart," she said, looking expectantly.

"Colin Fairbrother," I said returning her warm smile.

Perching on the edge of the equally well-used twin to my sumptuous leather chair, she leaned towards me with genuine concern, affording me a generous view of her cleavage.  "Eat up Colin.  Then you can tell me how you came to be stranded on Horton West station at two in the morning."

I started to eat, conscious of those intense green eyes on me; her open-toed fluffy pink slippers and the small painted toenails shyly peeking out at me.  I ate hungrily.  In the process divesting myself of my sorry tale.  A trouble shared is a trouble halved, mum always said. 

So I told her how I'd returned from Iraq, a different person to he who'd gone innocently into the fray 'for Queen & Country'.  

"I returned but part of me never did.  I'd wake up sweating and yelling.  I seldom had a full nights sleep, so neither did my wife Paula, I scared her."

Eventually, she spoke her mind. "You're not my Colin.  Not the man I married, he was loving and considerate, outgoing and friendly, somebody I wanted to be with.  You're not him, I don't know who you are.  You rant in the night scaring Mark to death; he cries out 'I want my daddy', even the dog doesn't recognize you..."

"I hit her, I'm ashamed to say.  She yelled at me to get out!  So I grabbed my meagre possessions and left.  I took a bus, and thumbed lifts, heading South.  I have a buddy who lives in Wandsworth.  A lorry driver dropped me at the Station.  I'd planned to sleep in the waiting room but it was locked.  Then you took me in."

"Poor boy, eat up, let me fetch you some more, then I'll show you to the spare room, you can stay as long as you like.  In the morning you can let your Mother know where you're staying."

"No need, I'm alone now, Mum died while I was on my first tour, and I have no immediate family anymore."

I felt tired, Elise had to help me to climb the stairs.  I stumbled into the room, and collapsed on the double bed, as if In a drunken stupor.  I felt feverish, my body tingling all over.  Then I noticed the wheelchair in the far corner.  She answered my unspoken query...

"My husband Arthur returned from the Gulf war, damaged, as you are, both mentally and physically.  I used to be a nurse, but it took all my time and professional skill just caring for him.  Arthur has been gone nearly a year now, and I miss him so, despite his flashbacks, occasional bouts of anger and aggression.  Ah!," she smiled.  "But, then there was always the sex.  For that, I could forgive him anything."

"I have to confess, I've not been much good in that department for quite some time, not since my return," my eyes filled with tears, "maybe if I had been more responsive, my life would have turned out different..."

"There, there don't take on so Colin," she said in a sympathetic voice.

"How did you ever manage?" I asked.

She smiled, removed my boots and helped me out of my clothes.  "I was a nurse, there are medicines for most things these days, and since leaving the profession I've learned a lot about natural remedies, herbs that will calm a restless soul, fungi, moulds and other natural substances: let's just say they can make a dead man stand." 

I followed her eyes down my naked body, I couldn't move.  The tingling had centred in one area, and my body had become hypersensitive to touch.  Slowly and deliberately Elise removed her clothing, climbed onto the bed and straddled me, I moaned.  Neither of us slept that night nor on many nights that followed.

.-...-.

 She spoon-feeds me, massages my limbs, lifts me into the wheelchair and parks me at this window.  She reads to me, we listen to the radio and watch TV.  She has a fine voice and sings happily as she goes about her household chores; always cheerful, always smiling.  A few days after my arrival, she began to call me Arthur.  

I no longer suffer flashbacks, I feel calm and relaxed. My anger has dissipated, like candy floss, but I do wish I could be more useful about the place.  She is content now, her life seems fulfilled somehow.

Yet, there is still a small nagging thought at the back of my mind: If only I had rejected her invitation.  "Ah!  But then there's the sex."

...ends