The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(13)

Sometimes, if boys were playing football out in the street, he would get a jeer or two, but generally he was left alone. Everyone knew who his brother was, and Dougie was nineteen now and would gladly and enthusiastically punch anyone in the face who disrespected his family. He would possibly even bite them too, as he was something of an animal.

Wilbur the Ghost walked over.

Once there he stood for a little moment, then crouched down beside himself with ease. He had the hip mobility of a twenty-nine-year-old once more.

‘You loved that book, didn’t you?’ he said to his young self. ‘What’s this? Your second or third time reading it?’

Obviously there was no response. The consciousness of young Wilbur was on a different plane to the consciousness of his spectral form. But remembering how his baby self had followed him with his eyes, he held out hope and placed a hand in front of young Wilbur’s eyes. And waved it.

‘Come on. Look. Can you see me? You saw me once, little lad. Can you see me again?’

But no. Not a glimmer from those studious eyes.

Two girls were walking along the pavement. They were in uniform but not that of Willow Park. About the same age as Wilbur or a smidge older. They were from De la Salle, the grammar school on the other side of town. This wasn’t unusual. Glossop Road ran all the way into town and was often full of young folk from all over the city after school hours, heading to browse shops or sit in the Milk Bar listening to rock and roll.

The girl on the right had red hair and freckles and a scrunched-up expression that seemed to indicate a hard and humorous attitude to life.

The other girl was holding her satchel in front of her. In contrast to her friend there was a calmness to her. This was the first time he ever saw her, the first time he noted her smile or the intelligence of her eyes.

It was Maggie.

He remembered this day. And it was, he supposed, why he was stopping here. There were days in life that rolled by and were never really thought of again. And then there were days that were so beloved or important that they contained inside them everything that came after. Russian doll days, that were always inside the expanding future.

And so now he was watching it all once more, in vivid detail.

The girl with the red hair – named Doreen Taylor, he would later find out – nudged her friend to point out the amusing sight ahead of them. The strange skinny boy reading outside on the street. And he could see now what he had never seen the first time. The moment Maggie Shaw first laid her eyes on him. Her expression seemed to contain amusement, curiosity and sympathy.

Then Doreen spoke up.

‘Flippin’ ’eck, Maggie, there’s a boy sitting out in’t street thinking it’s a library.’

‘Don’t worry ’bout her,’ said Maggie, needling her friend. ‘She’s never read a book.’

‘I can tell.’ Wilbur suppressed a slight smile.

Maggie laughed.

Doreen lost her humour. ‘Cheeky wazzock.’ And she elbowed Maggie towards the wall a little.

‘So what are you reading?’ said Maggie, tilting her head to see the cover.

‘The Old Man and the Sea.’

‘What’s that about, then?’

‘It’s about this old fisherman who’s really unlucky because he hasn’t caught a fish in ages but then one day he catches a fish but it’s too big to put on his boat and—’

‘That sounds as dull as owt,’ said Doreen.

‘Aye, it does a bit, to be fair,’ Maggie agreed. ‘I’ve been reading How Green Was My Valley. I like it. The characters are like people but better because you don’t have to talk to them.’

Wilbur looked up at her and stood up. There was something about her that made him want to be taller. ‘Yes. Not many folk are worth talking to.’

Doreen nodded. ‘My dad says that. He’s miserable too.’ Then, randomly: ‘He’s a foreman at Hawke Street.’

‘It’s the steel works,’ explained Maggie.

‘I know.’

‘Does your dad work there?’ Doreen asked. ‘Maybe my dad’s your dad’s boss?’

‘No. Well, he used to. He died in the war. He was in the air force. I never knew him.’

And Maggie’s face flinched just a little, as if some of his pain had splintered and shot through the air just by saying it. She was then and always as incapable of hiding emotion on her face as a river was able to hide the ripples from a fallen stone. And the Wilbur of 1958 clearly felt rotten for sending the conversation downward.

‘Sorry,’ Doreen said. She wasn’t too bad underneath it all. ‘That’s horrid.’

‘Don’t be. It’s all right. You can’t miss someone you never knew.’ Possibly the biggest lie he ever told. He wanted to change the subject. ‘I’d like to be a writer.’

He didn’t know, even at the time, if that was what he wanted to be. But in that moment he did. In that moment he wanted to be whoever had written How Green Was My Valley.

‘Nah. Really?’ said Doreen. ‘Do you, honest like? Aren’t writers lettuces?’

‘Lettuces?’ Maggie asked.

‘Aye, big and boring wet things that people say do you good.’

He showed her the front cover of his book, and remembered something Miss Graham had told him. ‘Ernest Hemingway is not a lettuce. He blew up Nazi submarines in his own boat with his own explosives.’