Boarding

The station is quiet.
The few people there are engaged in their own subjective little self-absorbed activities: The middle-aged man of an ethnicity I cannot identify is devouring a book I have never seen before but can tell is deep and meaningful; the young Indian mother rocks her sleeping baby after finally silencing his cheerful but disruptive chatter; a girl, either Goth or punk or perhaps a mix of the two, hooks up her headphones and very casually makes her way to another platform after purchasing her ticket; a young couple sits on a bench and shares a bottle of water, he savouring the taste of her lips on its neck and she merely seeming to appreciate the quenching of her thirst, watching for the train to appear.
It’s quiet, and I appreciate the quiet.
Just as I tempt fate by thinking this, the quiet is broken by the sound of heavy workboots striding past the Goth-punk down the stairs. A moment later they are joined by smaller, jogger-clad footsteps and a voice:
“Wait for me!”
The workboots, of course, belong to what appears to be a builder, coated in brick dust and an angrily blank expression. Following him like a puppy is a boy, perhaps ten years old and holding enough of a resemblance to be his son.
From behind my sunglasses I watch this duo make their way across the platform, resenting their interruption to the peace I was enjoying. The builder stops at the ticket machine, observing his options. His son halts beside him and reaches for a button, pretending to choose a destination.
“Don’t press that.” The voice is sharp and unhappy and completely not the voice of the father that the son clearly seems to see.
“I wasn’t,” the son chirps, oblivious. “But where’s mine? Where are we going?”
Builder’s body language is defensive, exasperated. I watch him claim his ticket and know what’s coming next.
The train pulls up to the platform and Builder chooses a door, follows it, and shatters his son’s cheer.
A meek enquiry of: “Dad?” is met with silence, broken only by the hiss-squeak of the train’s brakes.
“You’re not leaving us, are you?” An element of panic has entered the boy’s voice and he tugs on Builder’s filthy shirt. “What about mum?”
Builder looks down at him and nothing flickers across his face; nothing like in the movies where at this moment the heart would relent, and he’d kneel to embrace his son, offering either apologies or excuses but above all some sort of promise.
“What about me?” A sad little voice. I watch with interest and wonder if it’ll change anything.
Builder reaches down and touches his son’s shoulder as the train’s doors groan open; grips it with an intensity that in fiction is followed with reassurance. He swears and shoves the child away with an irritated gesture and boards the train, sliding the doors closed before his son’s balance is regained.
The train pulls away and the quiet resumes. No one has moved, still absorbed in their own personal books and children and relationships and lives.
From behind my sunglasses I watch the son raise a tear-streaked hand to hesitantly wave to his father’s away-turned figure, and I can’t tell if this kid is lucky to lose the guy or not.
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