WITNESS  

by Richard Banks

Most things just happen, no rhyme or reason to them; other things are meant to be. Call it fate, determinism, call it what you will, but you have no choice, no free will, you’re a puppet at the mercy of whoever / whatever is pulling the strings. Why it happens can seldom be explained although I’m convinced that when it does it’s always for a good reason. Why it happens to some and not to others is also less than clear, but that it does I have no doubt. How am I such an expert? Well, it happened to me. This is my story, except that it isn’t my story; it belongs to five others, and what I witnessed was also meant to be told.  This is it, everything I saw and heard, every thought, every feeling, everything.

         It was the week before Christmas and I was in Westwood for a night out with the boys at the Eagle. Good pub the Eagle, cheap beer, a decent curry and less than ten minutes to the station for the train home. What it didn’t have was a clock that told the right time. Nothing unusual in that. Most pub clocks are five minutes fast but this one was five slow. When did that ever happen? Not that it’s an excuse. I had my own time strapped to my wrist. Had I looked at it I would not be writing this now. There was no one to blame but myself, and fate. 

         Was I a little unsteady on my feet when I got up to leave? Maybe I was but it didn’t last long, a few minutes outside in a bitter, north-easterly cured me of that. By the time I was through the High Road and heading down Station Road I was the most sober man in Westwood. I was also one of the coldest and the thought of being in the comparative warmth of a railway carriage made my non-peak return seem like the winning ticket in a lottery.

         As I reached the bottom of the hill I reflected complacently on my good judgement that had left me with only a short wait for the train. Then it happened, that which should not have happened, what would not have happened if I had only looked at my watch – the 11.45 was in sight, rounding a bend in the track that now straightened as the train drew near to the station. I was never much good at running and encumbered by briefcase and umbrella there was no way I was going to make it in time. I saved myself the embarrassment of trying and by the time I reached the station the train was almost out of sight and its departing passengers trudging across the metal bridge that led over the line to the London bound platform and the night gate through which I had just passed. The last man across drunkenly negotiated the last few stairs and, without mishap, weaved his way past me and through the gate.

         I was alone now, growing colder by the moment and cursing myself for cutting it fine. It was time to assess my options: the single cab outside would now be gone, a queue forming for any yet to arrive and the only bus still running going nowhere I wanted to go. There was, I concluded, nothing for it but to wait for the next train but at 11.48 was there another train? The recently installed arrivals board, which should have told me, was blank and I had a sinking feeling that I was well and truly stranded. I was attempting to make sense of a timetable spread over several posters when to my relief the board on the other side lit up with the news that the last train was due in at 12.25; thirty-seven minutes to wait, but at least it was coming. 

         I crossed the bridge determined to maintain whatever body heat I had by walking briskly up and down the platform until the train arrived. Then I saw the light under the waiting room door. I tried the handle and on finding it turn and the door push open, stepped gratefully inside. There was a radiator on the wall which seemed even better news until I found it to be lukewarm and cooling. Whoever had set the timer wasn’t too bothered about those waiting for the last train, but at least the room was no worse than fresh. 

         I drew back the curtains from across the window so I could see the train when it came in and settled down on a bench to read a discarded newspaper. Grateful for anything to while away the time. I was through to the back pages when I heard the first shouts, faint at first, then louder. There was one hell of a scrap going on and if the shrieks and screams I could hear were anything to go by there were girls involved as well as the usual louts. The commotion continued ever louder until it appeared to be no further away than the station forecourt on the other side of the line and the station building. If I couldn’t see what was happening I was hearing every word, ugly voices bellowing abuse at whoever had incurred their displeasure.

         There seemed to be two warring groups and, by the noise they were making, one side definitely had the advantage in numbers. A loud voice was directing operations, urging his cohorts, to “get the bastards, do it now!” A stampede of footsteps had no sooner begun than the shattering of glass brought it to an abrupt halt. Another voice was shouting that “Deano was down,” his concern quickly changing to panic, “For Christ’s sake help him, he’s been cut.” A further crash was followed by another rush of feet that was almost certainly a retreat. 

         As I peered through the waiting room window five dark shapes were taking advantage of the lull in hostilities to slip through the night gate onto the far side platform. The last of them pulled the gate shut and, finding no way to secure it, followed the rest along the platform and over the bridge.

         I checked my watch to find there were still twelve minutes to go until the arrival of the train, twelve minutes in which the battle was almost certainly going to resume unless the youths now on my side of the line were able to make their escape over the wire fencing that ran the entire length of the platform. Instead, they were still in the station and moving closer to the waiting room. I drew the curtain, but it was too late. The door opened and in they spilt, three youths and two girls, none of whom looked older than seventeen. If they were surprised to see me they showed no sign of it. Indeed they looked so scared I doubt if they even noticed me.

         With the door shut an argument broke out between the youths. “It’s due anytime now, I tell you. Three minutes tops.” The speaker was a fair-haired lad, taller and more solid than the other two, but if he saw himself as the leader he had much to contend with in the other two, one of whom asserted that the last train had already gone. The third youth said he didn’t care, that they should get over the fence. “Wasn’t that the plan?” One of the girls shrieked that it was too high. She couldn’t do it and neither could Debby.

         My apprehension at their coming was all but gone. Whatever nonsense they had been up to, their only concern now was to get away from those who clearly meant them serious harm. If they had started the evening in their outdoors clothes they were now nowhere to be seen, the boys in T-shirts and jeans and the girls in party dresses. They should have been freezing but, if the panic on their faces was anything to go by, the weather was the last thing on their minds. Their indecision as to what to do was giving way to another argument between the boys.

         “You shouldn’t have done it, Josh! Didn’t you know who he was?”

         Josh, wild-eyed and in no mood to take the blame, snapped back that it wasn’t his fault. How was he to know she was T-bone’s girl. Anyway, he was only chatting her up, all he wanted was a dance, he hadn’t tried anything on. T-bone had started it. All he had done was shove him back.

         The girl who wasn’t Debby told him to shut up. “Who cares who started it! Do something to get us out of this mess!”

         “What d'you think I’ve been doing? Wasn’t it me who threw those bottles? What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t? Beaten brainless, that’s what, and don’t think they would have let you off.”

         The fair-haired lad was now listening at the door which he [1] had eased open. “Keep your voices down. I can hear them talking. They’re getting ready to rush us again.” He looks down at his watch and decides he was wrong about the last train. “It’s not coming,” he says, more to himself than anyone else. “OK, we’ve got to get out of here. Any ideas? Anyone? No? OK. So here’s what we’ll do. There are no more trains so we walk down the track towards Wilford. Once we’re past the signal box there’s a hedge at the side of the line. Get through that and we’ll be clear away.”

         It was time to stop being a wallflower and get involved. “No, no,” I shouted, “the last train’s not yet come, it’s on the arrivals board, don’t you see it? Now, listen to me I’ve got a mobile telephone, a Motorola. Heard of them? It’s in my briefcase. I’ll phone the police, tell them what’s happening. They’ll be here in five or six minutes, probably less. Until then put yourselves against the door and make sure nobody gets in. Got it?”

         I thought they had. As they gathered about the door I made the call and was assured that help was on its way. “They’re coming,” I said, “stay calm, we’re going to get through this. Just do as I say.” The door opened and to my horror, they rushed through it. I followed them out and watched as they ran to the end of the platform and jumped down onto the line. In a few moments, they were out of sight, lost in the darkness of the unlit track.

         What happened next was seen neither by myself or the dozen or so youths who had come through the night gate and were making their way towards the bridge, but what we did not see, we heard and never will forget: the sound of a train beginning to slow as it sped around the bend, the screams of those in its way, the thud of metal striking flesh and bone, the train grinding, screeching to a halt, its headlights undamaged, still shining, some hundred yards down the track. Silence now, but not for long. A siren was sounding, getting steadily louder until it was no further than the station forecourt. Silence again, as the siren stopped, then doors slamming, the sound of voices and at last the sight of two bobbies on the far side platform.

         “They've been hit by a train,” I shouted, “call an ambulance, they may still be alive.”

         A young PC and his Sergeant dashed across the bridge and along to where I was standing. This was not what they were expecting and for the next few minutes, I attempted to explain what had happened.

         “So, there wasn’t a fight?”

         Either I wasn’t making sense or they weren’t listening; either way, it was several minutes before I could get them to go down the platform and look down the track.

         “Can’t you see the headlights?” I roared.

         “What headlights?” they said and sure enough when I looked again there were none.

         The Sergeant returned to the patrol car leaving me with the PC who watched my hand shaking as I lit up a cigarette.

         “Have you been drinking?” he asked. “You have, haven’t you? I can smell it on your breath.”

         “What’s that got to do with anything?” I snapped, but when the Sergeant came back it seemed to be the reason for everything; at least, that’s what they thought. According to their Ops Room, there hadn’t been a crash. The few trains still running had been contacted by BR and those that should have arrived had arrived. All was well, no one was dead, no one hurt.

         Then I saw the lights again and nearly went crazy. “Can’t you see it?” I screamed, and indeed they could, the last train, the one I been waiting for since 11.48. By the time it was in the station I had been told in no uncertain terms to get on board or they would arrest me for wasting police time.

 

                                                *****

         Angry and confused I vowed never to return to Westwood but the need to visit the City on business left me with no choice but to take the train through the station several times in the Spring and Summer of the following year. By the time I had plucked up the courage to get out and revisit the waiting room I had the full story, or at least as much as was in newspaper archives.

         What they told me was all the more remarkable for what was not said, that when the accident happened I was nowhere near. The basic facts, as reported in both the local and national press, were these: that shortly after midnight on 21 December 1984 a train struck and killed five young people on the railway line outside Westwood Station. Their full names, when published,  included a Joshua and a Deborah. What they and the others were doing on the line no one knew although the tabloids were not short of theories, the chief of them being that they were involved in a recent spate of vandalism. Another paper picked-up on the rumpus that had taken place in the town’s one and only nightspot and had them down as local desperadoes when only one of them had been in trouble with the police for a minor misdemeanour.     An Inquest was convened and heard evidence from fifteen persons, including local residents who recalled a loud altercation for which the victims were held to be responsible. Apart from the driver of the train, there were no eyewitnesses. The Coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure and newspaper interest ended three weeks after it begun with the funeral of one of the boys.

 

                                                 *****

         So, what was I to do? Nothing was not an option, so on 29 June 1995 I wrote to the local paper describing what I had witnessed six months earlier on 20-21 December. They published every word including my comment that they seemed like decent kids and had been unfairly maligned by the popular press.

         I hoped that what I wrote would be of comfort to the parents and provide them with answers to questions they had surely been asking. To the parents of Sara – the girl who wasn’t Debby – my letter only stirred up painful memories they had been trying to forget. Subsequently, they complained to the police who arrived unannounced at my home one evening to tell me that what I had done could be construed as vexatious harassment and that if I wrote any further letters or attempted to contact the parents I would be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. However, that didn’t stop me from talking to Debby’s mother when she contacted me requesting information which I was able to give her, including - to her satisfaction - a description of her daughter and the dress she was wearing. 

         An irony I have often reflected upon is that if mobile phones had been available in 1984 the kids would have summoned help for themselves and stayed off the track. In December 1994 I was one of only a few people to own one but by then it was not possible to use it for their benefit, or indeed my own. Another irony is that when I told them that the last train was upon the arrivals’ board they could not have seen what was not there in 1984.

         The years have continued to drift by and I’m pleased to report that, thanks to an ‘anonymous’ donor, the accident and its victims are now commemorated by a large information panel in the town museum. In 2009, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accident, a service of remembrance was held in the parish church.  Since then the memory of those young people has begun to dim again; a pity, they deserve better which is why this new account of what happened has been placed in a bank deposit box with a request to my Executor that it be published in whatever paper or magazine will take it. If you’re reading it now, then you’ll know that I’m six feet under, but maybe not the all of me.

         If I meet those young people again I hope they will be satisfied with what I have done to set the record straight, both about themselves and the accident. That, I feel sure, was their purpose in coming back that night, although why they selected me as their witness and messenger is only known to themselves. Perhaps they knew I was a writer of sorts and like the proverbial dog with a bone was never going to give up. One day, not too far off, they may get round to telling me; until then death, my death, holds no fear. That has been their gift to me. I thank them for it. 

The End.

 

The above story is based on Peter’s prize-winning entry, ‘Freed Spirits’, in the Yellow Advertiser Ghost Story competition (2016). Both our stories are set in the mythical railway station of Westwood although readers of my version may recognise the station I describe as being Rayleigh.

 

One of the problems I had in writing it was in recalling when electronic arrivals information first arrived in Rayleigh and other suburban stations. For my story to work it would have been absent in 1984 but functioning by 1994. My somewhat hazy recollection is that when I first came to Rayleigh in 1980-81 there was no arrivals equipment apart from loudspeaker announcements several minutes before trains were due in the station (manual or automatic in 1984?) and that the first electronic indicators were television-like devices that have since been replaced by the present slim line equipment. I can’t find anything online that gives me firm dates for any of this but if your recollections are better than mine please let me have them.

Richard.

Copyright Richard Banks