The Second Life of Sally Mottram. David Nobbs
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In which Totnes is mentioned many times
Sally woke up to find herself in a dream world. She was on a train, which was running right along the coast. The sea was sparkling under a southern sun. A few bathers were braving the chill waters.
She had no idea why she was on a train. She had no knowledge of where she was. For a moment she thought she was sixteen and travelling along the Côte d’Azur to meet up with her family.
Then Barry’s letter, read by Sam only last night, fluttered from the luggage rack, turned into stone and crashed on to her forehead.
The sun went in, abruptly, terrifyingly. All colour drained from the sea. For a moment it seemed like a supernatural event. Sally shivered, even though the temperature on the train hadn’t changed. Then the sun came out again, with startling suddenness, as if switched back on by a playful God, and she realized that a cloud had passed across it, a cloud so small and so fluffy that it seemed utterly incapable of hiding a whole burning planet even for a few seconds.
Now it all came back to her, the dreadful letter, the sleepless night, made all the worse because she had been separated only by an absurdly thin wall from her son’s sleepless night, and worse still because beside her son had lain Beth, and beside Sally had lain nobody, yet that could no longer be regarded as sad, for it was far better to lie beside nobody than to lie beside someone who didn’t love you.
And still the sun shone and the bathers swam. How could these things exist in the same world?
Then a more trivial, yet also more urgent, worry assailed her. She was travelling to Totnes, to stay with her sister Judith. But where was she? Had she passed Totnes? She had certainly been in a deep sleep. She had been peering determinedly at the countryside, trying to take an interest in every house, every tree, every cow, rather than brood over her misfortune, and she had fallen asleep, fast asleep on a fast train. She might have been undisturbed by many stops at many stations. Had one of them been Totnes?
She had endured an unhappy marriage and she had thought that she was happy. How stupid was that? She looked out of the window hurriedly, searching for happiness. The train was still passing the coastline, but it was turning inland, alongside an estuary. There was a pretty little town on the other side of the estuary. What town? What river? Before Totnes or beyond Totnes? Ask!! Don’t be stupid, Sally. You may have been stupid for twenty-four years of marriage – it occurred to her for the first time that she would never have her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, she had missed it by … quick calculation, absurd to be bothering to calculate at this moment, but there we are, you are absurd, Sally … twenty-three days … they were slowing down, they were approaching a station, ask!
She couldn’t. At Totnes she would see Judith, and be able to communicate with a human being again – unless Judith was furious because she had sailed past her on the train in a mixed metaphor and fast asleep. Judith could get quietly furious if things didn’t suit her, oh God, she had wondered if she could stand two weeks with her – now one week felt like a mistake. Perhaps she had passed Totnes and she’d just go on and on and jump off a cliff at Land’s End. Don’t even think like that, ask ask ask, you fool, she had to stand a week with Judith, Judith was her only hope.
The train had picked up speed again, but now it really was slowing down, and she couldn’t ask, not these three people, two men and a woman, seated round the same table as her. It occurred to her that the human race looked absurd. The heads were so tiny, the arms and legs so long, the stomachs so large, all that body, all those bones and muscles with no thoughts whatsoever, no personality whatsoever, all the personality and character stored in a little mechanism in the middle of the tiny heads – no wonder the human race was making such a mess of things. No, there would be no point in seeking help from people, from any people, let alone these people, who were probably foreigners anyway. ‘I not know this Totnes.’
They were sliding in to a platform. She heard a voice saying ‘Newtnarbt. Newtnarbt’. It meant nothing to her, but it didn’t sound like Totnes. She calmed down, searched the platform for the station’s name, and there it was, clear on a large board. Newton Abbot.
It wasn’t Totnes. She broke into a slight sweat of relief. Then she realized that nothing had been solved for her. She didn’t know whether Newton Abbot was before Totnes or after Totnes. She was shamefully ignorant of her nation’s geography. She would put that right if she ever recovered her sanity.
There was an announcement. Shut up, everybody. This is the quiet coach. I want to listen. ‘The brain standing at platform …’ Shut up with your trivia, you wankers. Oh, Sally, language. ‘… four twenty-seven for Penzance …’ Silence, pleeeeese! ‘… Totnes, Plymouth …’ Oh, the relief. The tension drained from her, taking all her energy with it. She sank into exhaustion.
The relief didn’t last long either
She realized why she had found it impossible to ask the other passengers at her table. She was terrified of them. She was terrified of them because she hadn’t the faintest idea what they were thinking. That was the terrible legacy Barry had left her, not debt, not poverty, not loneliness – they were nothing compared to his legacy. He had left her mistrust. He had left her not daring to believe that anybody at any time was speaking the truth about anything.
The train was slowing down again. Was it approaching Totnes? She hadn’t been able to hear the announcement on the tannoy at Newton Abbot well enough to be sure that she hadn’t failed to hear the name of another stop between Newton Abbot and Totnes.
Luckily, at that moment, the woman at her table asked, ‘Is this Totnes?’
‘Yes, Totnes,’ said one of the men.
‘They usually announce it,’ said the woman. ‘They usually announce everything several times all the time. But I’ve had this one before, and he’s lazy.’
‘I’ll do it for him,’ said the other man wryly, dryly. ‘This is Totnes. Please remember to take all your personal belongings with you. And mind the gap between the train and the platform edge on leaving the train.’
‘Remember to put one leg in front of the other when walking along the platform,’ said the other man.
The three of them laughed. Sally wondered if she would ever be able to laugh again.
She stood up, and busied herself remembering to take all her personal belongings with her.
The train drew to a slightly abrupt halt. Black mark, driver.
‘Totnes,’ called out a rather pleasant, reassuring, West Country voice. ‘Totnes. This is Totnes.’
A kind man – was he really kind or was this all fake? – helped Sally with her cases. She minded the gap between the train and the platform edge, and stepped carefully out into the rest of her life, whatever that might turn out to be.
She walked along the platform, remembering to put one leg in front of the other.
Judith was standing there, elegant as ever. It was surprisingly cool on the platform; the swimmers she had seen from the train really had been pretty brave. Judith was wearing a light coat in spectacular pink. It was trimmed with fur. Sally wondered if the fur was real or fake.
Judith didn’t move towards Sally. She let Sally move towards her. That was characteristic. But she was smiling. Sally wondered if her smile was genuine or fake. If she’d been a betting woman – oh God, Barry, William Hill – she’d have said that the fur was real, but that she wasn’t so sure about the smile.
‘Welcome to Totnes,’ said her sister.
They hugged. How they hugged.
Was Judith’s hug real or fake?