Frederick

FREDERICK

Paul Radcliffe

A compass rose is set in marble, but it offers me no direction. I am long past the point of guidance. There is no direction and I must remain. Thousands pass me by in the day and in the evening. There is worn brass in the booking hall, and signs reading For Lease. The ceiling rises above me like a cathedral, a place where I am the only worshipper and as such, I am unnoticed by the passing crowds.

They are the commuters. The morning rush and the evening departures. Wellington Station. It is part of daily life for so many, a fixed point of daily routine. The huge columns loom upwards to the roof, and the travelling public quicken their steps. They rarely look up, perhaps only to check the timetables and their warnings of pending departure. The passengers are blown in by the Wellington wind which swirls around them. And they leave to the suburbs, to warmth and home and families. They depart as if life will go on forever. They rarely give it thought. Life has more pressing concerns than the train ride home, a journey they have undertaken so often.

Others before them shared that belief. But there are some things that do not leave when the lights of the last train vanish in the distance and the station falls silent. I remain. My name is Frederick, and I cannot leave. I see the faces of the travelling public, not those of today, clutching their mobile phones as they would a lifebelt tossed from a dying ship. Their link to the world, to their loved ones, to their work and their passing days. I see the faces of those of many decades past, as anxious and rushed as those of today. And now all of them are dead. They may have gone to a better place-there are churches nearby, a huge cathedral and the white wood of a small colonial church. Polished brass to remind the flock of sacrifice made and all but forgotten. I know nothing of where they go because I remain. The days and nights pass and I remain on the station. I remain because it was here that I died. I will tell you of this in the hope that I may at least be remembered by some, and one day the compass rose may show me the way to release. If such a thing exists.

I was a night watchman at the station. It did not pay well but it was enough. And to a point I enjoyed the silence, or relative silence, as the last trains left and the station became another place entirely. Most places do, at night. I had fought in the First World War—even won a medal for Distinguished Conduct, but I was never fool enough to believe it was the war to end all wars. And time proved me right. It was six years on, in August 1950, that I became a reflection. That is the easiest way to put it to you. I became something just at the edge of vision, a shape or an outline. But I was still Frederick. The same man who looked up at the upper floors and imagined the children in the nursery, closed for ten years, playing. I sometimes thought I heard them. The nights in this city are like that sometimes. The wind pulls at you, rattles doors and windows, and sometimes you can hear voices, just for a lingering moment before the night sweeps them away. The wind brings voices and it takes them away when it fades. I do not know where to.

The station concourse was quiet that night, quieter than usual even, though that may just be my memory. The cafeteria was locked, though nearby I knew some of the night clerical and telegraphy staff would be on duty. Looking out at the darkness from grimy windows and wishing time would move more quickly. But time, as I know too well, is not open to persuasion. I remember I was thinking of my boy, Gabriel, just seven years old and fast asleep in a small house in Brooklyn. My stepdaughter was there too, all sleeping as the night wrapped itself around them. And then I saw him. And I knew a drunk when I saw one, though I was never quite sure how he found his way onto the concourse. No one was allowed there at this hour, and I can still see him coming toward me. There was hate in his face, hatred of everything. Most of all himself, I imagine. I told him he had to leave and—of all things—he told me to unlock the toilets. I had no key and even if I had I would not have done so. They were to stay locked till morning and that was the job. A nightwatchman keeps watch. I saw him pick up something, a stick or maybe a bar left nearby by one of the maintenance labourers who rarely tidied up their gear. And he rushed at me .The war had left me with a limp and I suppose I was slow to move. Perhaps I should have been quicker, but there is never any point arguing with a drunk, especially one as bitter as this one. I saw the bar—if it was a bar—come down, and felt its impact. I cried out—I know I did, because one of the night clerks, tapping away in his office heard my cries. But there were only two of us there and the last thing I heard on this earth were his insults. And the last thing I thought of was Gabriel. And then there was a long—how can I describe it?—a long greyness. I saw the police arrive. I saw a tent or cover put over and around me. I saw all this as if I were watching a film unfold from somewhere in the gallery of the old Majestic Theatre in Willis Street. I was above looking down, and there is no other way I can put it. I was confused, I did not understand the most simple of all truths. That I was dead. And I could not leave the place of my death, a place of rushing commuters and the sound of trains arriving and departing. I was, as I now know, a ghost, and I would never see my family again.

This life after death is difficult to fully explain, and I can only tell you what I know. Some events in life are so traumatic that we cannot leave them behind. There is a tie to the places they occurred, and the breaking of that tie is, well, let us say the prerogative of a higher authority, as is the timing. Until that occurs we remain, even in a place as commonplace as a railway station in the centre of the city. And I have remained, glimpsed in windows or perhaps at the far end of platforms where I used to do my rounds. The railyards nearby have mostly gone, but I can still hear the echoes of the night shunters. I see the faces of the commuters rushing for their trains, and if they see me at all it is just, perhaps, as a passing shadow or reflection. I see the faces of the travelling public and I wonder do they know how short life really is. The station clocks are measuring out their lives—as they once measured mine—like an hourglass in a junk shop.

At the main entrance of the station, a compass is set in the ground. One day, perhaps, it will point me where I should leave, and I will know. Until then, I drift soundlessly in the closed booking hall, and listen to the wind. The one who murdered me died in prison long ago. I do not envy him his departure. There are always consequences. I have never seen my son since the night I was murdered.

What, I wonder, will the murderer see when he dies in his turn? I cannot be sure, but I think he will learn whose voices are borne on the Wellington wind. And they will not be kind.

Paul Radcliffe is an Emergency RN. In the past, he worked in an area where children were sometimes afflicted with sickness of Gothic proportions. Some are ghosts now. As a child he visited an aunt in a haunted farmhouse. This explains a lot. Paul has worked in a variety of noisy places unlikely to be on anyone’s list of holiday destinations. He is also a highly suggestible subject for any cat requiring feeding and practicing hypnosis.