Omega (3) I was reduced to spelling out each letter of the name while the clerk typed them into his console which soon issued a single ticket. He briefly explained how it worked. It was a two-stage journey on a four-phase fare matrix system. I would change at Ratford Central to get a steam train which stopped at Gotesdene on its journey ultimately to Lambdeth Peccadillo. The four phases of the fare were spelt out in pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, which amounted to £14 6/8¼d which I paid in a mixture of gold, silver and bronze. And then I walked towards the train waiting for me on Platform One. I sat somewhat nervously on a hard and threadbare seat in a tatty compartment, watching the last of the commuters run towards it and jump on. Then with a loud whistle and a wave of the station guard's flag, the train growled with anticipation and purred out of the station and on towards its destination. As the train shunted off, I could see passengers through the misted glass waiting on the platform, station porters pushing parcels and letters in trolleys and then the last vestige of platform giving way to rows upon rows of the houses, parks and roads which compose Suburbia. 2 Before I had travelled very far I knew for sure that I had left the Suburbs. The landscape through the train window became less precisely ordered. The ragged hedges no longer enclosed well tended lawns and flower-beds but rather rectangles of one crop or another, occasionally enlivened by a tree or clump of trees. Goats and other agricultural animals roamed freely about, sometimes raising their heads to watch the train going by. The transition from the Suburbs to the Countryside was not only apparent outside the train but also inside. The uniform presence of Suburbanites reading newspapers or staring blankly through the carriage window was steadily replaced by a broader mix of people, representing a cross-section of the people who live in the Country. The composition of the passengers changed as the train stopped, paused and then moved on again from the station platforms proclaimed by rustic Country names. At one station several rats in precisely made and appropriately tiny clothes clambered into a nearby compartment by steps provided for the use of such smaller railway customers. At each station, a loudspeaker trailed off a list of destinations and, just as the train was beginning to leave, recommenced the list from the beginning for anyone who wanted the first few names repeated. By this means I was aware that I was approaching the station at which I would have to change trains for Gotesdene. The train soon reached this stop and shook, shuddered and clanked as it steadied to a halt. I reluctantly sacrificed the warmth of my seat and disembarked onto the busy platform. Barley Junction was quite a different station from the one I had left in the Suburbs. Goats jostled freely about the platform place, some entering the train I'd just left and some trotting out of it. One goat with a station porter's cap and an official uniform was bleating more loudly and insistently than the others, and I soon became aware that it was he who was broadcasting the platform announcements. It took a few moments to adapt my ear to his bleat and rustic dialect, but presently I managed to couple the name Gotesdene with an appropriate platform number and with this information I headed over the station bridge, sidestepping the family of rats I had seen before, and descended to where a Steam Train was waiting. Being completely unfamiliar with the customs of the area - so different from the Suburbs - I looked for an indicator board that might confirm to me that this train, emitting large clouds of black smoke from its funnel, was the one I wanted, but there was no digital display unit to be found anywhere. There was only a wooden sign protruding from a post, with a list of names including that of Gotesdene. So this was it. I searched for an empty compartment, opened the door and sat on a hard upholstered seat by the window and watched the bustle of activity outside. There were the bleats of goats to one other: some advertising tea and newspapers. Above all this, was the more resonant voice of the station master listing where the train was due to stop. To lessen the platform din, and avoid the unpleasant smell of smoking coal, I pulled up the carriage window which promptly coccooned me from the world outside. I was alone in the company of two facing rows of upholstery, two opposing mirrors partly obscured by the rusting metal plate backing them and advertisements for dental chewing gum, rat-killer, the Green Party and the Times. I was not alone for long. The carriage door opened and in poked the head of a young woman about my age. "Is this compartment free?" She asked. "Why certainly," I said in a slightly panicked voice. This was not merely because her presence had perturbed my composure, but it also by her physical appearance. Partly this was due to the strangeness of her long straight green hair which cascaded down beyond her shoulders and to her waist. Mostly however this was to do with the fact that she wore no clothes whatsoever. This was not a sight often seen in the Suburbs. Her pale but warm and friendly face was illuminated by sparkling bright green eyes. "Then you won't mind us joining you," she continued climbing into the compartment. Her bare feet walked obliviously over the varnished floorboards and she sat on the seat immediately opposite me. I was uncomfortably conscious of her bare apple-round breasts and the green bush of hair between her crossed thighs. She was followed by a boy of about fifteen also with green hair, but in his case styled into a neat short back and sides, and wearing an outfit that would not look out of place in the Suburbs. Indeed only the colour of his hair might ever attract any comment. His face was also pale, but the eyes failed to illuminate it at all. He sat next to the girl and I felt sure I could see a family resemblance. "My name's Beta and this is my brother," continued the girl with an unselfconscious openness very rare in the Suburbs. "We're off to the City of Lambdeth. Do you know it?" "I've heard of it." "I've never been there myself, but Bacon has. He's going to college there and I'm escorting him." "Not that I need escorting!" The boy sniffed unenthusiastically. "I'm just pleased to get away from the Country. It's about time I moved into the Modern Age. I'm had enough of the ignorance and backwardness of the Village." "Oh, Bacon!" Beta responded. "You don't have to be so harsh on the Village. It's where we've lived all our lives." "Progress has just passed us by," Bacon continued. "The years go by and the Village and the Country just remain the same." He looked at me with a sardonic smile. "You just wouldn't believe how primitive the Village is. If you went there you'd think you'd been through a time warp." "It's the way it is because its way of life has been so successful over the years," defended Beta. "Why change a place where people are quite happy with things as they are?" She leaned forward towards me, her hair falling off her shoulders and breasts to drop in curtains of green in front of her. "What do you think?" As I had no wish to offend either the attractive naked girl or her brother I decided to be diplomatic. "I don't know your village, so I really can't comment." "It's so beautiful and natural! A sweet little brook babbles alongside a wood and open fields, and goats and other animals wander freely in the lanes. Everyone is friendly and helpful - and, excepting my brother, nobody feels the need to wear clothes..." "So? How primitive can you get!" snorted Bacon. "If dressing like savages was so wonderful, how come it's not more universal? People in the Suburbs wear clothes. And so do people in Lambdeth. Babbling brooks and goats aren't everything! You didn't mention, Beta, that the roads are unmetalled; the electricity is unreliable and intermittent; the water still comes from a well; there are no street-lamps and the only transport we've got is oxen-, goat- or mule-driven. It's only a paradise if you think deprivation's a good thing." "But you don't need all those things if everything else is fine..." "How can it be? The Village is barely self-sufficient at the moment. It produces very little surplus product and not many people from elsewhere are that enthusiastic about buying our organic vegetables and dairy products. It won't be long until the Village will have to diversify its production or everyone will starve." "Who says the Village will starve! Everyone has enough to eat now. Nobody's unhappy." "It'll happen! Nowhere can last forever contented on just enough surplus to afford a single television for the whole Village and hardly any of the other luxuries that people in, for instance, the Suburbs take for granted. One bad harvest and the Village will collapse!" "There have been people saying that for centuries and it's never happened!" Beta indignantly retorted. "All that's happened is that more people like you predict it to try and get people to change their ways and become more progressive. And it is self-fulfilling prophecy when people like you leave and it becomes more difficult for the Village to get by." "And what's wrong with me for wanting to do that? If there's a better world beyond, why not go for it!" At that moment, the train discharged sounds of scraping, puffing and snorting, and then accompanied by a chorus of cries, particularly from the station announcer, the Steam Train slowly puffed out of the platform. Bacon and Beta dropped their conversation to watch Barley Junction recede behind and green fields open up ahead. As the train settled into its rhythm of railway-track breaks and occasional hoots, I continued the halted conversation: "There are certainly a lot of goats around here! Far more than you'd ever meet in the Suburbs!" "That just demonstrates how much more Progressive the Suburbs are!" agreed Bacon. "You're right. There are far too many goats in the Countryside. There really should be fewer of them." "Now you're being unfair to goats!" Complained Beta with a frown. "They smell. They eat anything and everything. Left to their own resources they'd just eat the entire Countryside and we'd be left with nothing but desert" "But they still have rights just like everyone else. You can't dismiss them just like that." "Yes, you can! The issue is quite straightforward. There are too many goats! What you've got to do is reduce the number. And if it involves deportation or birth control then so be it." "Or anything else, I suppose?" Wondered Beta sadly. "Exactly so!" Bacon said adamantly. "Goats are a menace, and they've got to be eliminated by one means or another!" I could see that I hadn't chosen as safe a topic for conversation as I'd thought, but I listened as the two siblings discussed what Bacon termed the Goat Problem. Some of his solutions were quite drastic and not too dissimilar to some I'd occasionally heard in the Suburbs when considering eliminating vermin. "It's entirely a question of Progress!" Bacon insisted. "There should never be obstacles set in its way. We're all better off in the end - Goats too! - if less attention were paid to the finer feelings of the outmoded and obsolete..." "For no fault of their own!" Beta interrupted. "It doesn't matter! If there is any purpose to life at all, it must be the pursuit of Progress and Truth!" I was just about to rejoin the conversation to announce my own interest in the Truth, when the engine released a series of hoots as it noisily came to a halt at another station. This one was extremely small, consisting of a platform, a derelict ticket office and a waiting room. A border of flowers and vegetables brightened the platform and beyond there was nothing but an uninterrupted series of open fields with a few scattered windmills in the distance. "We'll be here for ages!" complained Bacon. "The train always is." Beta stood up and pulled down the window. Instantly the Country air rushed in, carrying the smell of hay and the buzz of little insects. "I don't see why that should be!" she commented as she leaned her shoulders on the top of the pulled-down window, her head and mass of hair outside and her bare bottom sticking out in front of my nose. The sun sparkled on her cheeks and lit up her hair, revealing long thin strands that floated about. "Last time I was here I had to wait while they were shooing some animals off the tracks. I'm sure they were goats! You wouldn't get such gross inefficiency in Baldam I'm sure!" Beta ignored her brother. "It's such a nice place here!" She remarked cheerfully. "There's a whitewashed wooden church over there. And a little château. And some donkeys trotting by on their way to the fields." She leaned out even further, her arms straightened, her buttocks tautened and her face soaking in the warm morning Sun. "And there's a large mouse there!" "A mouse! Are you sure? Not a rat or something like that?" sniffed Bacon. "I've known enough rats and mice to know the difference!" Beta retorted. "And I do believe this mouse is Tudor!" "Tudor!" snorted her brother, leaning over to peer through the window himself. "Why should he be catching a train I wonder?"
Go to part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52
Copyright © 2000 Bradley Stoke |