A collaboration with John Travis

"Don't you get tired of doing that all day?" asked Brenda, adjusting her shoulder-pads, as she spoke to the stranger who sat between her and the speeding train window. The activity to which she referred was unclear. The stranger turned from gazing at the rabbit-run fields yellowing past in extended blurs and stared at the other stranger who had just spoken from beside him, a stranger of the opposite sex, and at another stranger, opposite him, of the same sex.

Stanley, the particular stranger opposite, looked at the couple across from him in the carriage. One (the female) had unexpectedly broken the silence with a question. Stanley had at first assumed the two strangers opposite were together—but, after a considerable while, he guessed they were complete strangers to each other. But, then, came that sudden and slightly offensive question from the woman to the so-called stranger beside her. She now really had her metaphorical claws in the stranger who hogged the window-seat, having brought to bear the full-beam of her attention upon his initial non-response. The man had indeed acknowledged her presence in the carriage by a turn of the head, but he had just as quickly resumed his vigil of checking the quick-change environment beyond the fast-rolling track.

They were now approaching a city. Their fates entwined, whether they liked it or not—the three strangers, mutually exclusive but, equally, interdependent, at least for the rest of the journey.

No longer strangers, Stanley enlocked arms with Brenda, upon leaving the train in silence. He noticed her wig needed perming.

Behind them followed the third stranger. As he looked up—towards some pigeons flying amid the glacial light pouring down from the station's arched roof—he knew that his destination was sure to be the same as that of the other strangers. They were following him—from in front!

Sure enough, he turned a sharp left and went down the steps towards the exit of the station. In front of him, the other two had started a conversation of sorts.

"Nobody has still answered my question, dearie," said Brenda, having to raise her voice above the clacking of her shoes.

"Thank you," said Stanley, handing his ticket to an individual in a faded uniform, someone who had what looked like a full deck of train tickets to play with later. "No, you're quite right, nobody has answered you. I'm not even sure what was being done that was so fascinating."

The man behind—inferred as Eric—strained to hear what was said next. Whatever it was resulted in laughter from Stanley and a scowl from Brenda. "I SAID-" she shouted above the dry wheeze of a mouth organ in the car park "that it never does any g- OH, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, TUNE THAT GUITAR!" As she shouted the offending string broke away from the instrument, spewing itself onto the stained concrete.

"Do you know them?" said one of the buskers as Eric struggled to keep up.

"I'm not sure, really," he replied. "Ask me in an hour."

Meantime, as the middle of the train hadn't arrived at the station whilst its head and tail had done so, other passengers began to mumble about the driver and guard, and their respective responsibilities for the loss. But since the train had not halted between stations, the driver and guard in turn blamed the passengers who had packed the middle of the train, accusing them of being jokers. But that, the authorities claimed, was the biggest joke of all. However, it didn't really seem to matter much, because all the Kings and Queens were found safely in the two ends of the train (although not segregated as they were when they first set off). So, the issue was quickly forgotten ... till some other jokers kicked up a fuss.

Eric followed Brenda and Stanley from the station. There were no real Kings and Queens these days—or so Eric thought. Real ladies were a scarce commodity, too. But when he thought 'ladies', he was not referring to those who promoted a professional career above natural feminine attributes. Many had even forgotten that men were set upon this earth for opening doors and vacating seats in deference to the opposite sex. Dress sense seemed to have gone to the head rather than the heart. What Eric actually had in mind as a real lady was exemplified by a creature done out in a glorious outfit with flowing cape wings all in a fanfare of shimmering royal blue. She stood outside the station, waiting for a taxi, appearing for all the world as if she had travelled in one of the "Ladies Only" carriages that British Rail had seen fit to axe from their trains. Eric simply saw her out of the corner of his eye because she simply saw him out of the corner of hers. He remained unsure who glimpsed whom. All he knew was that, given half the merest chance, he would have indeed worshipped at the high-arched elegance of her enticingly part-revealed feet on sculptured patent leather high heeled shoes. And then he had seen himself reflected in them and knew he wasn't worth even half the chance of such worship. He walked from the taxi-rank, following Brenda and Stanley towards the underground. The buskers in their wake.

The means of Stanley's madness was appearing sane. The method in his madness was towards getting the better of Brenda. When Eric first encountered them, in the carriage of a British Rail train, all those years ago, he was in the doldrums himself. All three of them used each other's shoulder to cry on, Eric's ending up the driest. As time expired, however, Brenda became less tearful, but more aggressive. Stanley grew madder. And Eric—well, he left them to their devices and married somebody round the corner.

Eric invited Brenda and Stanley to his Silver Wedding, but only Stanley came. Stanley said Brenda had gone away. By train. To her mother's or somewhere like that. Or to live with a harmonica player.

Stanley looked the worse for wear. It was as if he had lost a part of himself.

Months afterwards, Eric met Stanley again and heard that Brenda had opened a butcher's shop in Redditch. Stanley was still drowning his sorrows about Brenda, but, at the same time, assuming drunkenness suited his demeanour better than insanity. Not wishing to become involved again in his peculiarities, Eric then steered clear of Stanley. And Brenda? Well, Eric was not likely to be anywhere near Redditch in the foreseeable future, so anything which had been between Eric and Brenda in the dimming memories of the past would take care of itself. And that was how it had all been left, until some future moment when Eric would meet one of them again, an event which became more of a certainty the longer he went without meeting them. Give or take the odd death or two.

Yet, all those years ago, when they had been three strangers on a train, Eric had in fact never caught up with Brenda and Stanley ... mainly because, on that first occasion, a tube train door slid between them, abandoning Eric, like a frightened rabbit, upon the Mind-the-gap-sign. The train continued to wend its way through arched, open-ended caves like some ouroborean serpent. Those onboard had got past the stage of looking at their watches.

If anyone had observed the time they would have seen that it appeared to have stopped....

"My God! I forgot Stanley and Brenda's anniversary!" said a small man sat on his own at the back of a carriage. He then remembered he didn't know anyone called Stanley or Brenda; he was just about to apologise to the rest of the passengers when someone from the other end announced: "You're too late, Eric. She's living with a musician these days." Then she frowned at herself.

"Er, this will sound foolish I know," the small man said, blushing slightly, "but it just occurred to me I don't know anyone of that name. I think this journeys's lasted a bit too long!" He looked downwards as others looked at him. "And how did you know my name?"

"I don't know either of them myself," the woman replied, "and I've no idea how I know your name."

People started to mutter among themselves.



Eric looked around at the empty platform. Nobody had got off that train, which was a relief. Suddenly, Eric smiled and pointed downwards. "A rabbit! What's the chances of that, eh?"

And there, on the black stome beneath the raised train tracks was a small brown rabbit. When it saw Eric its eyes widened and it shot off in the direction of the train.

"You'll never catch it, you know," Eric called after it.



Eric was safely aboard the next one that came along. Suddenly the way widened and for a brief second he was staring into a carriage which had stopped for some reason. As they passed he saw two faces pressed to the glass. Wasn't it that couple again?"

And what was she doing with that cleaver?

"Next station stop Harwich, then Redditch," a disembodied voice announced.

"Next skippety hop, Bluewitch," said a guitar-toting, harmonica-necked folkster by the fleetly flashing window.



Eric, having quickly escaped to another train in a parallel tunnel, only just managed to grab hold of the swinging strap as it jolted to a halt between stations. The on-board lights flashed off and on and off again and stayed off. His mind retained an imprint of being the only passenger in his particular carriage, but that would not explain why he was standing up like a spare part in the aisle, committed to the steadying of the leather knobble-ended tongue. Perhaps the train was on its approach to another bright-lit destination, since it had been reducing speed, if barely noticeably, before the application of abrupt anchors. In common with a man drowning in sudden death, Eric's whole life seemed to echo past. Breakfast that very morning had been a rushed picking at last night's butchery and he had decided to wear his best clothes today, being in a currently prevalent self-advancement mood—but he had to curse when cold beef blood dollopped down his silk tie. He wouldn't have minded so much if it had been the Watership Down T shirt he wore on other days. But being a drowner of the first water, past life presented more than simply one breakfast. He had been through a number of jobs, since leaving school in the mid-sixties, memories of which tossed him back into the same endless dead-end road, with uniform lines of terraced twouptwodown housing either side, faces tweaking at the curtains and his parents dressed in each other's clothes so nobody would notice them as they watered their flowers in the postage-stamp garden at the front of the end-of-terrace semi-detached.

It was peculiar how drowning created dreaming from real memories, Eric thought. Further back, his childhood was a fog, but as he quickly floated forward again he caught sight of other people islanded in the sea of memories and dreams, constituting the wreckage of adolescent fears. He failed to grab the steadying handhold of the person who once befriended him—he called her Queen Bee for being the only mother such a drone as he could hope for. And Eric dived back into murkier memory's maw, emerging with surprising reality: well-sunk in a dark warm belly of pulsing liquid.

The train started trundling or, rather, stopping and starting with the fitful courage of a bull in a ring. The lights flickered revealing nobody in the carriage, only a steamy pool of yellow fluid, slopping back and forth, where its owner had originally drowned in an earlier dream.



Brenda and Stanley could go hang. Once strangers, always strangers. But, then, a lady rose from the underground, her royal blue coat flapping wide like wings in the relentless down-draughts of the escalator shaft. Another stranger descended the opposite escalator and, at the point of passing each other, their eyes met, as if magnetised by two dissimilar but concomitant destinies riding along with them. She half-smiled and he opened his mouth in return. Her cards were shuffled and guitar unplucked. With a dress sense that left nothing to chance or periwigs.

"Would you like a jam tart?" she said, as his mouth gaped open.

From a large bag looking like an oversized pillbox hat she took a small packet of crumpled silver foil. "Or maybe a lemon curd one?"

Eric stood and gaped. "Er."

"Lemon curd it is. There you go."

"What's your name?" Eric asked.

"Oh, Queenie," she replied sadly. "Don't look very regal, do I?"

"I think you do," Eric answered shakily.

"Stop that bloody rabbit! stop it now!"

They both turned to see a man running towards them, heavy black boots clapping on the pavement. At that moment a small brown rabbit skipped past and down the steps. As the man thundered down after it, his face bright red, the hatchet wobbling insanely in his cleaved guards' hat, Eric turned away with a shudder. How the mighty are fallen, he thought to himself.

Turning back to Queenie he tried a smile. "I used to know him a long time ago," he said brightly. "Shall we go?"

Linking arms, they went through the empty ticket gate and waited for any taxis that might appear.

And I you, thought Queenie, still smiling at the world.

But the blue lady had passed by on the opposite escalator. Once gone, gone forever a different Eric presumed—one of those moments when a whole potentiality of life fled before his mind's eye, never to be grasped but equally never forgotten. The tongue clove to the dried out roof of his mouth and, turning sharply to regain her attention, he could drag no sound from his bursting lungs, except eventually a screech of sorts, more like that of a long-eared beast in pain than a human being about to articulate the most important connection of his sojourn on this world. His eyes followed the back of the blue lady’s diminishing head, the hair of which was probably woven tight for painstaking hours before the double mirrors of her boudoir. If he had possessed any common sense, he would not have started running back along his side of the escalator against its motion. Who knew what events he was inadvertently setting off? Like trying to run back into the past. Or unspilling the milk. Or staring at a stranger on a train...

Breathing hard, one stranger waited at the top of the escalator—but she walked straight through him—or he through her. Perhaps they were both ghosts snubbing each other. Or bodies with exactly matching molecules—one the other's negative. He wrapped the blue coat around him, tottered on his high heels, held his hair tight and eventually hit the cold night air, where the road was full of complete strangers. Some even winked at him.

The Joker made as if to return underground. But Redditch wasn't on a tube line, was it? He tried to make his arse swallow his prick, root first. Then he strummed it and wailed inharmonically. Stanley and Brenda called their first child Queen Blue, from the tangled strands of ribboned sky that buzzed and fed upon its feast of flesh curds. Someone had left the honey-cake out in the pissing rain.



True love is the optimum coincidence—Rachel Mildeyes (from A STUDY OF BOB DYLAN)

The Collective Unconscious can become a honeycomb of geometrical dream-cells when true unconnected strangers ratchet into existence a series of two-headed DNA creatures tracking an index called love—Eric Hare (from JUGGED JOURNEYS)