Dinah & Shaw 5 – Train of Thought

“…Why do they even put backwards-facing seats into railway carriages?” asked Shaw.  “Nobody likes them.”
“Well, I don’t think they are backwards all the time are they?  I mean, when they get to where they are going, they don’t actually turn them around to come back, do they?  They just pull them from the other end….”
“No, of course not.  I know that,” snapped Shaw, who felt that he had to say something, but really just wanted to concentrate on the fact that he was distinctly unhappy at having to watch where he had just been slip silently away into the distance.  Knowing that his future was looming up, unseen, behind him made him anxious and, as everyone that knew him would testify, an anxious Shaw was a spiky Shaw.  For the moment, he occupied himself by staring malignantly into the distance, but Dinah recognised the signs, some kind of irrational outburst was just around the corner.  “Would you like a coffee?” she asked, all smoothing oil on troubled waters.
“I would,” said Shaw, “but that’s another thing: no buffet car.  A two hour journey and no buffet car.  What do they expect you to do, drink the sweat from your own brow?” 
Dinah recognised the warning: a troubled sea fanned by a full-on anxiety storm.  “I’ve brought a flask,” she said.
“A what?”
“A flask.  I’ve brought a flask of coffee.”  She unscrewed the little metal cup and poured the black steaming liquid, watching as Shaw’s bottom lip began, petulantly to protrude.  He opened his mouth to speak, but Dinah was ready for him.  “Milk and sugar are in the bag,” she said.  Shaw’s mouth made the slightest twitch towards complaint.  “And biscuits,” added Dinah.
“What kind?”
Dinah allowed herself the faintest of smiles.  “Bourbon, of course.”
Shaw looked into Dinah’s smiling eyes as passed the cup towards him and he felt the tension leave him in an instant, tingling away from the nape of his neck, although he was in no mood to admit that yet.
“So, do you mind telling me where we are going – and why?”
“There’s something we’ve got to see,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, where then?” persisted Dinah.
“There’s the thing…”
Dinah sighed deeply.  “You don’t know do you?”
“Not exactly, no, but I think I’ll know when we get there.”
“How?  How will you know?”
“The man in the tartan hat,” Shaw nodded, indicating the man on the seat behind him.  “He’ll be getting off there.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, he has to get off somewhere, hasn’t he?”
“I suppose so, but why him?  Why are we following him?”
“To see where he gets off, of course.”  Shaw sipped his coffee, indicating that, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. 
Dinah, as ever, absorbed and understood, but ploughed on anyway.  “I mean, you must have some reason to want to know why he, in particular, is going to get off the train, wherever he might choose to do so.  And you said that this was a two hour journey.  How can you possibly know that if you don’t know where we’re going?”
“Did I say that I didn’t know where we are going?”
Dinah tried to remember, but being with Shaw always played games with her memory.  “No,” she said at last.  “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Know where we’re going?”
“Of course.”
“Where then?”
“I told you, wherever he does.”
“But…”  Dinah floundered.  She knew that she would get nowhere other than where Shaw thought that they might need to be, so she decided to let it all go, but refused to allow her face to inform Shaw, who drank his coffee ever more slowly, eeking out the silence as long as he could, hoping that the man in the hat would save him further interrogation by making a move.  Finally, his cup empty, he sighed resignedly – determined not to have to explain the motives he did not have –  and said, “So, do you think we should be following somebody else then?”
“Well, no,” Dinah stuttered.  “That is…”
“Good,” said Shaw, settling back in his seat and revelling in his moment of triumph.  “That’s settled then.  We’ll stick with my original plan.”
Despite a billion reservations bouncing around in her head, like a zero-gravity hailstorm, she decided that the time had come to just go along with the flow and enjoy the day out.  She would have said ‘watching the world go by’, but she had to agree with Shaw, there was little fun in watching a world that had already gone by.
Slowly, imperceptibly, she surrendered to the steady sway of the train, and her head sagged steadily towards Shaw’s shoulder.  She drifted off into a soft, dreamless sleep, unaware of the gentle rhythmic snoring of Shaw in her ear…

…They both awoke in the otherwise empty carriage to the first lurch of the return journey.  Outside the carriage, the world was impenetrably dark.  “Typical,” said Shaw.  “We’re facing the right way, and now there’s nothing to see…”
“But what about the suspect?”
“Suspect?”  Shaw looked deeply puzzled.  “There’s nobody else here… Have you got any of that coffee left?”

First published 19.09.2020 as ‘A Little Fiction – Train of Thought’

I usually leave these reposted fictions alone, but I have toyed with this one a little bit. I remember thinking when I originally wrote it that Dinah & Shaw might get more readers if the stories were shorter and more concise, but I was wrong. I really liked the concept of this episode and I felt that the characters became a little more real – even in a surreal situation – because of the slight tetchiness between them. I have now smoothed over one or two cracks, but I really wish I had given them more time here…