Heads down, hoodies up...

"They went that way!"

Dearest readers, Welcome to the Obscura pages, here I write about anything that doesn’t quite fit on A Hill and I. This is one of those anythings!

Until last summer my daughter lived in Borderouge in a seventh floor apartment that looked out over the roof tops that make up the city of Toulouse. The view from the balcony stretched as far as the Pyrenees on a clear day, below was a very grey, bland by comparison, mainly concrete town square. On a Saturday morning people from the suburban neighbourhood gather for the very social and infinitely more colourful occasion of market day. When their baskets and bags are filled many would sit on concrete benches with their purchases beside them, watch the hustle and bustle, gossip a while with a takeaway coffee. From above, if a person were to watch closely enough, they might notice other, more furtive market goers, heads down, hoodies up, also with bags, albeit much smaller. They too would sit a while, bags placed beside them. Usually, another person would arrive within seconds of the bag being placed on the bench. An almost invisible exchange of payment would take place, the dealer would leave immediately, his client, waiting for a couple of minutes would then pick up the bag and he too would disappear into the market crowd.

It’s easy to hide in a city, clandestine dealings go largely unseen, small dealers are unknown, lost within the melange of the throng of thousands of others. In rural towns with empty streets and stations where everyone knows everyone and their business, there is little anyone can do without being seen…

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Capdenac Gare - Friday evening 21h08

In my new old car, I drive through dusky evening shadows glancing across earth recently turned and barley fields with feathered ears glinting in tangerine light. Accompanied by this deepening light I never fail to fall in love with—over and over again—playing music to capture my ecstatic mood, I make the thirty minute journey to Capdenac station. I am on my way to pick up my daughter. Something about the dusky light and my elation and driving alone and the nostalgia of being able to play songs I love, volume turned up—Mumford & Sons, Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan, Ben Howard, Foy Vance—makes me feel lighthearted, young again. It holds the same intense sensual awareness as walking up the hill on a morning when I know sunrise is waiting for me. The road I am travelling is deserted at this time of the evening, on any evening, it’s the way of things here until the summer months, doors close, shutters are locked, the world is silent, not one single car passes me.

I drive past The Corner, ever since referred to in capitals—drive safely on The Corner darling—where on a bitterly cold December day just before Christmas 2008, me heavily pregnant, uncomfortable, my husband driving, we witness an accident, it is fatal, a life ended. I shiver involuntarily as I pass, carefully, always with a silent prayer, the music doesn’t falter, the feeling is left on the tarmac behind me.

Capdenac Gare has a population of just over four thousand residents, a small country town, at nine-thirty on a Friday night there isn’t a soul in sight, nor even a stray dog or cat scavenging for food. A ghost town minus the tumbleweed… It is not quite dark, but neither is it light as I reach the station which is as deserted as the streets and the road I travelled to get here. I am ten minutes early.

The length of the platform is one hundred and ninety-two steps—I don’t need to count, I’ve been here in this empty space with empty minutes to spare many times—as I pace towards the tunnel end a dog leaps up, barks threateningly from behind the fence containing him, the noise is an unwelcome intrusion, discordant with my elated mood. I turn to pace the one hundred and ninety-two steps to the opposite end, my silent shadow for company.

Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy….

There are sheds in various stages of dilapidation on the side of the line at the far end of the platform, over grown with weeds, wind-swept plastic too, caught in railings and unkempt trees. Most, I think, are unused. An air of abandonment is present, as if even the ghosts have hitched a ride on a passing train.

Tacked on to the very end of one dimly lit building is another, much smaller, perhaps a store room. Here three people are lurking. They carry an air of illicit unease. Two boys and a girl, perhaps in their early twenties stand huddled into their whisperings under a lamp behind the furthest gable. They think they are hidden but have that look, you know the one, when you know they are doing something they don’t want anyone else to see and already look guilty. In the absence of any other human in the silence, they are too conspicuous and I can’t help glance in their direction as I walk. All three pairs of eyes, glistening suspiciously in the light, glare back, I smile at them—I know their game—they throw me a fuck-off oldie or you’ll regret it look back. The girl is pretty, she walks quickly away, laughing at something they said and I wonder for how many years she will be able to laugh before her habit destroys her ability to do so. Ignoring their obvious displeasure, I pace on to the end of the platform, turn and return. When I reach the building again it is just another vacant lot lit by a dusty overhead light, life litter strewn on waste ground. The two boys now, also disappeared into the night.

A recorded voice announces the arrival of the train over a tannoy placed in the middle of the tracks, tinny words join the scream of train brakes as they echo in the tunnel. Both make me jump as I wait at the crossing. Rosie is the first passenger to cross iron lines smiling her divine smile, almost running as she sees me waiting. The two boys appear from nowhere, run past her in the opposite direction crossing on the¹tracks, heads down, hoodies up. She too, can’t help but notice them, turns her head as they pass.

Greeting me she laughingly says, ‘well they didn’t look dodgy at all did they!’ as she hugs me tightly for a long, deliciously beautiful moment. I pick up her bags, we are going home for the first time in four months, together. We leave whatever the end of the story this night holds here, on the once again deserted platform, uninterested in their plight, for surely it will come.

As the train, iron wheels on iron tracks squeal away towards the next stop, drug dealers aboard no doubt en route to the dark shady place of their next deal, we see two squad cars cruise up. They stop in the car park. Four armed police jump out, run around the station building. We look at each other with the same unspoken thought, ‘too late, they went that way!’

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Take good care with eyes open lovely ones,

This post was inspired by

Deirdre Lewis

, her perceptiveness, her noticing of small events in big places. 

1. There is no tunnel or bridge to allow passengers to cross from one side of the the tracks to the other at Capdenac station, everyone has to cross the lines at a designated place.