Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

       He had made another tour, checking doors and windows. The thing he hated most was the station shop shutters. He had to bend to check those and most of them were held shut by a cheap padlock.  They spent hundreds of pounds to fit shutters then would not pay two or three quid in the D.I.Y. shop to buy a decent padlock.  Most of them you could knock off with a sharp blow.

       He went into the licensed restaurant;  only Maggie did the night shift.   She was a tired-looking, thin, middle-aged woman but with the defiance to life of the Londoner.  There were no customers, there never were at two a.m.  The business would be mad come the breakfast trade but Maggie would be home and abed by then.

       She looked up from yesterday’s newspaper.  ‘Hello, Jeff, quiet again tonight.  Want a cuppa?’

       ‘That would be nice, thanks’.

       ‘I’ll make you a fresh one’.  She emptied the big aluminium teapot and spooned tea in it, then sugar and boiling water from the urn.

       ‘How’s the old man, Maggie?’   He knew the answer; her husband had asbestosis and was an invalid.  That wasn’t a three day cold.

       ‘Coughing his lungs up, poor old sod’.   She went back to her newspaper.

       ‘It’s a shame’.  He picked up his cup of tea and carried it to a nearby table, lit a cigarette and relaxed.  As usual, he realised how tense he always was when doing the tours.

       Suddenly Maggie looked up.  ‘Did you see that gel in the waiting room?  I went over to the Ladies and saw her sitting there, she don’t look happy’.

       ‘I’ll look in on her.  I’m going that way now’.

       The one thing he didn’t want was a suicide on his hands with the police and journalists crawling over the coach station.  He liked the quiet life;   he had too much of the other sort.  He finished his tea quickly and carried his empty cup back to the counter.  ‘How long has she been there, Maggie?’

       ‘At least a couple of hours.   I went over about midnight and she was there then’.

       Jeff nodded.  ‘I’ll have a word with her.  I’ll see you later’.   He usually saw her again for another tea about half past three.  He stubbed out his cigarette.

       Outside in the empty station it had that rather pleasant eeriness when there were no people about.  Jeff enjoyed the night and had volunteered for the shift.   His steps resounded but there was no other noise, a contrast to the times when he had visited during the day.  He strolled, still alert, through the bays until he reached the waiting room.
Through the glass he saw her, thirty perhaps, ash blonde hair and although she was sitting, he could see that she was tall and slim.  She did not see him.  Her face was sad and resigned.  She certainly wasn’t a vagrant.  Her clothes were tasteful, and appeared expensive.  She still wore good jewellery.

       She concerned him enough for him to enter.  There were a few old newspapers left by the waiting passengers of the day.

       Jeff nodded at the woman as he collected them and put them on top of the waste bin.  Not quite looking at her he said, ‘Waiting for the first bus, madam?’

       She started as though waking.  ‘Oh, oh yes, I can wait here - can’t I?’   Her voice was lifeless.

       ‘Of course you can, madam, but it’s a long wait’.

       ‘It doesn’t matter now’.  Her voice was still flat.

       ‘The restaurant’s open;  you might be more comfortable there’, Jeff smiled.  ‘Old Maggie’s always good for a chat and a cup of tea’.

       She looked at him for the first time.  ‘What’s your name?’

       ‘Jeff, madam,  Jeff Brand.  I’m the night security man;  if you need me I shall be around until six a.m.’  He didn’t know why he had added that;  she seemed to be so vulnerable.

       ‘You’re a kind man, Jeff;  I hope your wife appreciates you’.

       ‘Oh, I think we appreciate each other after all these years’, Jeff grinned.  ‘Is there anything I can get you?’

       As she shook her head a small slow smile crept across her pale face.

       ‘Well, I’ll pop back a little later’.  She thanked him as he left.

       He continued his routine.  One day there would be a reason for his job, a robbery perhaps, but the only thing he had done so far was throw out some pathetic vagrants and he didn’t like that.  But he was the piper and the devil called the tune these days.  He finished checking the waiting buses and coaches and palmed some door knobs.  At three forty-five a.m. he was back at the restaurant.  Maggie had finished her newspaper and now had her nose buried in an old Mills and Boon paperback.  Her working day started when she went home, shopping, cooking, cleaning and, with an invalid husband, nurse and care.  She looked up at the wall clock.
‘A bit later tonight, Jeff’.   She set a white cup on a saucer. ‘Everything all right?’

         Jeff nodded.  ‘Looked in on your girl in the waiting room’
‘What’s she waiting for?’  She poured a cup of walnut- coloured tea and pushed it across the counter, taking a second one for herself.

         ‘Thanks’. Jeff sipped the scalding tea’. ‘First coach, I didn’t ask where to, seems a nice woman’.
 
         ‘A lot of women are, Jeff’.

         He nodded. ‘I know; I married one’.

         ‘Funny, her sitting there all night;  didn’t look too happy though’.   Maggie sipped her tea.

         Jeff finished his drink.  ‘I’ll look in on her before I start my routine again.  Put a coffee in one of those takeaway cups for me, Maggie.  Expect I’ll see you before we sign off’.

        ‘If not, see you tomorrow night’.  She picked up her Mills and Boon.
Jeff strolled along the platform to the waiting room. She did not seem to have moved.   She looked up as he opened the door.

        ‘Just looked in to see if you want anything.  I brought you a coffee anyway’.   He placed the polystyrene cup on the seat beside her.

         She picked up the cup and snapped off the lid.  ‘I said before, Jeff Brand, you’re a kind man’.
‘Well, if you’re okay and I can’t do anything for you, I’ll leave you in peace.  The place will be waking up soon, the cleaners get in early’.

         He left her sipping the coffee and strolled off to finish the routine for another night.  It was during that last tour that he felt the envelope in his pocket.  She must have put it there when he bent to leave her coffee.  He stopped in his tracks, tore it open and read the sheets inside.  She wanted someone to know.

         She had been nineteen, a country girl longing for the adventure and glamour of London.  She was pretty, slim and naive.  She went to the West End and the wrong places.  She met Tony there, he was handsome, rich and evil but something clicked.  He wooed her and eventually married her.

         The years went by and she grew up.  She learned what everybody else knew;   her Tony was big in drugs and prostitution.  As the man said, ‘the scales had fallen from her eyes’ and she saw what an evil sod she had married.   From then on the love had bled out.   He had found other women;  not that he hadn’t before but now it was open.   She found she only had contempt for him left.

         A hundred times she had thought of going to the police. Maybe he sensed it and tried to kill her with a car.  She ran away and now she was sitting in a waiting room waiting for a coach back to where she was once eager and happy, but now she was scared.

         Jeff thrust the sheets back into his pocket, turned and ran back to the waiting room.  She was there, sitting in the same place,  the coffee cup beside her on the seat but he knew she was dead before he found the wound in her side.