Ron took an evening walk. His influenza had
cleared somewhat, though a low rumble sometimes emanated from his chest and his
lungs occasionally sounded like a Turkish hookah. The October evening was mild and breezy, and
darkness was beginning to fall. Coleridge’s ‘The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush
out: at one stride comes the dark,’ sprang into Ron’s mind, though he had to look
it up later, because he could only remember the first part of the line.
The sky was heavy with cloud, but in a
gap between layers of cumulus, he noted the comforting form of Venus, shining
brightly, ‘setting its watch in the sky.’
A solitary aeroplane flitted across the sky like a silver moth, on its
way to the airport, carrying its cargo of homecoming tourists. The street
lights came on gradually, casting long shadows on the pavement. They were the
new type of low-energy, high-density lights, and they were much more efficient
than the old sodium lamps that had previously lit the town. Traffic was slight,
but a couple of buses roared clumsily into the High Street. They were more or less empty. Apart from
that, unusually, the town was quite deserted, eerily quiet. ‘Soap time,’ said Ron. The lights were on in the old corn
exchange, but there was no-one within, not even the slow-witted caretaker.
He continued his walk up a gentle
gradient out of the town, along the West Road. Mean new houses had sprung up
like weeds on one side of the road and the ground on the other was being
prepared for yet another estate. Ron thought
ruefully that this was no longer a rural town in its own right, but a dormitory
town for the big city twenty miles away.
He made his way towards the old railway
branch line that the council had thoughtfully turned into a metalled path. It led back into town. Part of it was in darkness. Ron took out his mobile phone and put his
finger on the torch icon. A thin pencil
beam of light lit the tarmac in front of him.
A hundred yards on, the street lights were working, so he switched off
his torch and replaced his phone in his pocket. The wind strengthened, blowing
the branches of the trees that lined the route. This created grotesque
shadows of dancing men on the ground in front of him. Behind the trees on the right-hand side were
yet more new houses, and he could look through the branches of the trees into
the bare rooms where the inhabitants had by accident or design left on their
lights.
Ron didn’t scare easily, but he was
discomfited by the shadows and the sullen emptiness of the path and its
surroundings. He was relieved when he
stepped out at the end of the railway walk into a street of solid, respectable,
middle-class, semi-detached houses. A narrow
path led past a row of small modern cubist tenements to the old station and
station yard, through which there had been no train in fifty years.
The yard is now occupied by a local radio
station, a music studio and a number of small business units, all of which just
about survive. There was just one light
shining, from the radio station, where a rather rough-and-ready disc jockey always broadcast long into the
night. The rest of the yard was dark and
empty.
Half a mile further on, walking past the
ambulance depot, Ron noticed three fire tenders in attendance, but no evidence
of any fire. The firemen, in full uniform, were chatting amicably
to the late shift ambulance staff.
When Ron finally reached his home, he found
that his shirt was damp with sweat, and that was not purely a result of the
mildness of the night, the influenza, or his exertions over three and a half
miles. He came to the conclusion that he
didn’t much like the dark.
