Country : Australia
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SHORT STORY - Coming Home written by Richard McRoberts

Mary Urwin was coming home. She had been late getting away from work, and had only just managed to catch the last express. It was a cold, dismal night. Mary was tired. She gazed in silence at her pale reflection as it rocked to and fro in the frosted window of the railway carriage. The wrinkles of approaching age were visible round her dark eyes.  Mary was a solitary person. At eighteen, she had acquired the habit of solitude as a defence against the callousness of the world. Now she was thirty-eight and it had become an impenetrable barrier.  None of her acquaintances could get through it – nor would relatives have fared any better, if she had had any.

That chance had been lost, years ago. Mary was efficient, cold, inviolate. But she was also worried.

She glanced sidelong into the glass.  He was watching her.  Again.  Every night now for weeks he had sat opposite her on the way home. He had never said a word. Just stared. Of course when she looked at him he was busy reading his paper. But when her eyes left his face, she knew he watched her again. He was a pleasant-looking young man of twenty or so, fair moustache and fine brown eyes not unlike her own, a plaintive air such as lonely people often have. But that unnerving gaze of his – like a cat watching a bird. It haunted her.  And he was always there.  It didn’t matter which carriage she got into, or at what hour – he was always there.  Only one thing prevented her from panicking: her journey was always a short one - her station was the next on the line.  A couple of minutes and she would be home.  He did not leave the train: just sat there, his eyes straining to keep her in sight as the train separated them.  Night after night.

Here she was at last. The station was deserted. Without a backward glance, she headed for the exit, her heart already lifting with the thought that the bizarre nightly ordeal was over. The train whined off into the darkness. She turned to watch it go out of sight.

All at once, in the darkness between the streetlights, a shadowy form moved. He was there!  Her throat contracted.  Panic flooded her body.  Tonight he had followed her! But the flat was close by. Walk, don’t run, she said to herself. You’ve got a head start and as long as he doesn’t break into a run you’ll get home first.  She set off again, not daring to look back.

The key clattered in her shaking hands as she searched for the lock.  Then she was inside, the door shut. She leaned against it, exhausted with fear, her temples throbbing.

Minutes went by. All was silent, inside and out. At last she drew the curtains and turned on the lights. She cast an anxious eye over the small, cold flat, drinking in the familiar sights with a sense of profound relief. She put some milk on to boil, mixed a hot drink, swallowed a sedative, changed into her dressing gown. Then she tiptoed through the flat touching her modest possessions:  the small prints of the Old Masters, the bonsai plants, her collection of porcelain cats, yellowed photos from that unhappy past which she had closed out two decades before.  Mary had come home.

She lay down on the sofa, and wondered who was the stranger who seemed intent on invading her private world: a rapist, a robber, some insane person who preyed on lonely women in ways she could not begin to think of? The sedative began to take effect. Maybe he was in love with her. She smiled involuntarily at the thought. Her? A man young enough to be her…Ludicrous. She had had nothing to do with men for twenty years.  One trauma like the one she had lived through was more than enough. She sighed. That was the trouble with living alone.  You tended to imagine things – all kinds of things.

 

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  • Posted on : September 15th, 2018
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