There are a million things to see and hear in train stations.
That’s why I so often find myself taking the 381 to Peckham, getting off at London Bridge and strolling into the station. The conversations hit you as you maneuver though the entrance: Welcome to the world of the long-distance boyfriends, the waiting husbands, the traveling girlfriends, and the worried wives. More importantly, welcome to the world where those relationships are exposed, where goodbyes are unintentional performances, and hellos are embedded in the platform gates.
I sit there waiting for the train to Denmark Hill. There are probably a dozen couples preparing to part. Some are smiling. Some are not. Some will return to meet. And some will simply not know. I watch the ones who are about to be left, the ones who have so much more to say that an unsubstantial ‘goodbye’. You can see it in their faces – they’re struggling to walk away. Clumsily they fumble in the pockets of their coat: Are they trying to find their words? Did they scribble down their farewell? These are the ones who confirm for me what train stations really are – they are places of love letters. They hold the greatest love letters in the world because they store the unwritten ones, the tragic ones, the ones that were never read. They were only left with a writer who wished they had slipped them into the packed pocket of their companion before they departed to the gates. Only the fatigued passengers, the trodden platforms and their trains will get to hear what they really had to say.
My train is delayed so I continue my gaze, my eyes focusing on the woman in the red coat. The man she’s with has turned away, his suitcase dragging behind him, his head drawn to the ground. She’s mouthing through the crowd, I have so much more to say: Her arm is held out, a speech prepared – an unsent love letter in her hand. Then she departs, coffee cup thrust in the bin along with tissues and crumpled paper.
I stand to make my way to the platform and the woman in red melts into the crevasses of London Bridge. Train stations. They are places of love letters, the unsent and the unsaid. Perhaps though, they were better off never being sent. After all, the greatest ones never are.