PLATFORM 2
Secrets in the Rain
Stefan Grieve
As the rain pours into Westgate station, the wind whispers its secrets.
The train wails as it lurches to a halt in the station, it wails because it knows the secrets.
Those who cross onto the platform have no clue, no one knows the secrets in the rain. The only ones who know are insane. Each raindrop is a word.
I’ll let you know, I’ll let you have the secret in your brain, just one of them, too many could make you as mad as a lost Sunday caught in a centre of a storm.
One of these secrets is this –
No one is ever alone on the platform.
Not even when no one else is around.
Why is this?
Well, ask Frank.
He’ll tell you.
He’ll say it’s because he is always there, in his nice hat and coat. He’s always there to talk. But no one listens. Even now, when it’s raining, no one listens. Frank thinks maybe they’d rather listen to the rain. He calls it the music of the crying clouds. His mother told him that once, when he was very young, when he was frightened of the rain, she told him the secret song of the rain, to help him drift into a sweet solemn sleep.
Only once did it seem that someone listened to Frank. There was a young man, drifting dangerously close to the edge of the platform. Frank whispered gently to him. The young man turned back, but he didn’t even look at Frank, not even a glance, but he must have heard him, Frank thought, he must have; he was being rude. Frank never had time for rudeness. He was brought up to be a gentlemen, just like his father. He’ll teach his young boy Joshua to be a polite and kind one day, when he learns to say more words and maybe walk.
Frank thinks of Joshua’s mother, Agatha.
His beautiful darling wife, who had made his heart glow like an orange lamplight through the dank mists that had been his life before that moment,
And he would be seeing her again, very soon, he thought.
He liked Wakefield, but he was hoping soon to go back to Leeds, to see her again. Not long now, not long not long until his train turns up, he thought.
So that’s what he’s really doing, when he’s talking to strangers, being friendly.
He’s waiting.
Waiting for the train.
It will never arrive.
It did once.
He went under it.
He was in such a rush to get the train, to see once again his beloved Joshua and Agatha, his warm summer glow, he tripped and fell onto the tracks in front of the speeding train..
But he must not know this.
It would break his glowing heart.
And that is why, in Westgate station, the wind whispers, the train wails, and there are secrets in the rain.
