The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(44)

‘You’re a good lad, Wilbur. But don’t take it for granted. Love is a garden. You have to keep tending to it.’

‘Yes,’ said Wilbur, trying to look like he was taking it in, rather than actually doing so.

‘You should have listened to him,’ said the Ghost, unheard through the smoky room, as Alfred offered Wilbur his final pork scratching.





The Landscape of Life


The Midnight Train rolled by some of the best times he had known.

Wilbur and Maggie on a bench outside the theatre, spending a lunch break together … Wilbur working hard late at night in the back room of Bagdale’s after Charlie clocked off …

Maggie designing an advert for the shop. A murmuration of flying paperbacks in the sky …

Wilbur and Maggie in the new house in leafy Broomhill, painting the bathroom walls avocado green …

Double-dating with Claudette and Charlie at a sit-down cabaret bar …

Maggie giving an evening talk at her old art college with Wilbur in the back row for support.

‘I had time for her,’ the Ghost said to himself, looking at his smile. ‘I had time for life.’

The happy couple on a Sunday in Robin Hood’s Bay, looking out to sea and eating fish and chips …

Maggie up a ladder Charlie and Wilbur were holding, painting the shop sign she’d said desperately needed a revamp …

Had he always acknowledged the hard work she had put in during those early days, even though she had a job of her own? The Ghost wondered if he had understood that the way the shop looked was a key part of its success.

He caught sight of himself in a jeweller’s. Mr Leslie Thomas Top Quality Fine Diamonds. Wilbur was leaning over a glass cabinet and choosing a ring … Then he was down on one knee proposing at the bench where they had once sat as teenagers. And he couldn’t hear it from the ghostly train but he distinctly remembered how it sounded – ‘Yes, oh, Wilbur, yes …’





Flower


He wanted it to slow down. Not then, but now, watching it back. He wanted those days to pass like centuries. No, he didn’t want them to pass at all. He wanted the train to pull to a halt somewhere in that patch of life and for him to stay there. He just wanted to live inside a moment of that life with her for ever, to pluck it like a flower and press it in a book, and just stay on that page until the end of time.





Confetti


He got out to watch himself in a rare moment of relaxation in the bookshop.

Flicking through a guidebook to Venice at the back of his shop, thinking about their honeymoon, just as Charlie walked in holding a copy of the Bookseller magazine.

Inside, the Ghost remembered, next to a big piece on the author Graham Greene, was a small interview with himself that he had done over the telephone. The article had reported that Bagdale’s had quadrupled its sales within a year, thanks to Wilbur. A few key decisions – such as letting people sit on chairs to read, stocking new and radical books, paying staff more and offering commission, as well as Maggie’s aesthetic overhaul – had worked wonders.

Charlie slapped the magazine down excitedly on the desk.

‘Look, Wilbur!’ he beamed. ‘You’re famous! You’re the Ziggy Stardust of books!’

The Ghost looked at Charlie. Still with his long hair, but now a short-sleeved shirt and tie too. He realised how lucky he had been. To have a friend like him. So genuinely happy to see his success.

And the train pulled up, right there into the back office, before the Ghost had time to linger on his response.

‘That was one of the quickest stops so far,’ Agnes told him. ‘Faster than a scalded cat. But not as quick as the next one.’

‘Is this how it’s going to be from now on?’

‘Oh no. Not always. It’s just, well, the Midnight Train lingers for as long as it needs to, and sometimes happiness has the least to teach us …’

And so the train shunted to a stop at possibly its happiest location. A street full of stone-built semi-detached houses outside the small chapel of St Timothy’s Church on the outskirts of the city.

He was there only for a minute or so – not much longer than if he was watching it through the window. But out in the air, it felt more real. Maybe that’s why the stop was made. For him to actually feel the reality of a moment he had only seen as a photograph for so long.

He saw himself and Maggie walking out of the church into the blazing August sunshine. All the guests were lined on the grass beside the thin path. The confetti was thrown enthusiastically, especially by Charlie and Claudette.

‘The happy couple!’ beamed Claudette.

‘To the Budds!’ shouted Charlie, quite tipsy already in preparation for his best-man speech at the Queen’s Head later.

Then Claudette added, with a Shakespearean flourish: ‘The Darling Budds of August!’

Maggie laughed, slightly self-conscious but eyes shining as she caught sight of her dad, Alfred, clapping with pride. And Wilbur smiled out at the guests as the wedding photographer – Jim, the landlord at the Queen’s Head who had decorated the pub with his own pictures – crouched to get a better angle.

‘Oh what a day,’ sighed the Ghost, smiling and lost in the memory, as Maggie turned to throw the bouquet behind her for Doreen to catch.