Even the station seems to wait.
Some crisp bags shift listlessly on the rails.
We are drained of words.
A last few hang tenuously
“Surely….” “Perhaps if we’d….”
A scraping, rattling sound
and a youth is banging his bike
down the iron footbridge.
Gawky, acned, fifteen perhaps.
“You going to Hull?” he asks.
“Been to the market. It’s good the Beverley market.
See these…” Gently he unwraps some fishing floats.
They flash yellow and red in the sunlight.
“You got a bike? How many gears?
They’re fussy about bikes on trains now.”
Roy’s answers are short, not curt though.
The lad straddles his bike
“You going on after Hull?” I nod.
“Not you though,” he says to Roy.
He bends over the handlebars
“Do I do your head in?
I do me Dad’s head in.”
All three of us silent now, waiting.
