Escaping the Rain
We had to leave Wales or go mad. We were already crazy perhaps, crazy
to escape, to get out of the endless downpour. Our umbrellas were dented
canopies on twisted poles. They had endured too much, and so had we. It was
time to flee, to hurry into the rain and rush to the train station, and to
catch a train, any train, heading east.
The English border is only an hour
away. We just had to cross the big river that marks the frontier; and we knew
the torrential rain would cease at that point, or at least slacken
considerably. Rainfall in Wales is about eighteen times as heavy as it is in
England, according to the latest figures released by the meteorological office.
But we all know how they tend to
underestimate things. Probably they had received bribes to downplay the
downpour. The truth of the matter is that in Wales it never stops raining, not
even for one minute, and on those days when it seems not to be raining it
simply means that a very big flock of birds is migrating directly overhead.
We headed for the train
station and bought tickets to Bristol. The train pulled into the station and we
jumped onto it. Then we searched for seats in the crowded carriages. The train
was bursting with commuters. Maybe other people had decided to escape from
Wales too. At last we found free seats in a carriage at the rear of the train.
One seat faced forwards and
the other seat faced backwards; and both of them faced each other across a plastic
table. Chloe lowered herself into the seat facing forwards before I had a
chance to object. That was the seat I wanted! But no point being childish or
churlish about it, so I sat down in the other seat, the one facing backwards.
Travelling backwards in a
vehicle often makes me feel nauseous and I much prefer to face forwards and
look out of a window to see where I am going. But this seemed to be a trivial
detail at this stage. The crucial thing is that we were together, Chloe and I,
and escaping the rains of Wales. It was a relief to have finally taken this
step.
The guard blew his whistle
and the train pulled out of the station. We waved farewell to Cardiff and its
dripping relentlessness. We held hands across the table, and this felt nice and
romantic and special, but there was a persistent tugging, as if a force was
trying to break our grip. I fought it and noted that Chloe was fighting it too.
“Something is yanking at my
arms,” I informed her.
“Mine too. Just keep hold of
me.”
“I wonder what it is?”
“Probably the inertia of the
train’s motion.”
“Pesky laws of mechanics.”
And so we held hands,
fingers in gloves intertwined, until an inspector came to check our tickets. He
punched a hole in them with a little device, returned them to us and lurched on
his way. Then we resumed the holding of our hands, both of mine in both of
hers, or both of hers in both of mine, across the table. It felt important to
do this.
I wasn’t sure why it felt so
important, but it did, and even when a very powerful itch tormented my nose I
refused to scratch it. I endured it until it went away, which it eventually
did. The time was passing. At long last we were approaching the tunnel that
would take us under the river, and on the far side we would be in sunny
England.
The train hurled itself into
the tunnel mouth and the view beyond the windows went black. My ears popped. I
frowned at my reflection in the glass and saw that it was holding hands with
Chloe, but I wondered why her reflection was out there, in the window, and I
feared I was losing her; that she was on the other side of a barrier.
“What are you doing beyond
the window?” I asked her, and I jerked my head to indicate her reflection.
“No, I am here. You are the
one in the glass!”
I froze at her words. She
knew.
The train emerged from the
tunnel. No rain streaked the windows. It was a dry sky that confronted us, blue
and speckled with clouds that were white rather than an angry dark grey. This
was England, a country where it doesn’t rain every second of every minute of
every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year.
It was a place where it
would be possible to make a fresh start without squelching, without growing
mouldy. The train pulled into the station at Bristol. Then Chloe disengaged her
fingers from mine and stood up, and smiled at me. “Time to get off. We’ re
here,” she said. Then she noticed the tears in my eyes, like substitute rain.
“Yes, you have arrived, but
I haven’t,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I was sitting the wrong
way,” I explained. “I have been travelling in the other direction all this
time. You were facing forwards and that’s the way you have gone; but I was
facing backwards and I’ve ended up going west instead of east. I know it
doesn’t look that way, but appearances are deceptive. We are further apart than
ever!”
“Where are you now?” she
asked.
“Almost at Swansea. Should
be arriving in a few minutes. That’s what happens when passengers sit opposite
each other instead of side by side. I realise we didn’t have a choice. These were
the only free seats. It’s a real shame. Don’t forget me, Chloe, please!”
“Take care in the rain,
dear,” she begged me.
I promised her I would. She
couldn’t linger any longer. The train was about to depart. With a tender look,
she broke away and got off the train just in time. She stood on the platform
with a raised hand and I raised my own in a melancholy salute. I shut my eyes.
I opened them again. The
train was pulling in to Swansea. The heavy rain was beating against the
windows. Everything was greyness, mist and blurred lights. At least one of us
had managed to escape! That was better than nothing! I listened to the bark of
dogfish as the train came to a stop. The flooded city was infested with them.
It Goes Without Saying
Mondaugen has invented many different
kinds of vehicle and it was thus inevitable that he would eventually turn his
attention to designing a new kind of train. There was nothing special in the
way it looked when it was finished; but he insisted that the power source was
something quite new and that it would save a lot of money.
He couldn’t interest any of
the authorities in investing in it, so he was forced to pay for the
construction of a prototype himself. This is normal when it comes to
Mondaugen’s creations. He spends all the profits that he earns from his
successful inventions on his unsuccessful ones. But at first his new type of
train seemed promising.
“Silence is the fuel of the
future!” he announced.
We craned forward to catch
these words, because he hadn’t made this announcement very loudly. In fact he
had merely mouthed words silently and we were expected to lip-read them. Some
of us managed to do so. A few of us can’t even read newspapers all the way
through, let alone lips, and they remained as confused as ever.
“The engine of this
vehicle,” he continued silently, “runs on smooth air, on undisturbed
atmospherics. In other words, even the vibrations of the barest whisper will
disrupt the fuel that it feeds on and ruin it. That’s why I insist on no
talking in its vicinity.”
This was a lot to ask from a
crowd of curious Welsh onlookers. Most of us had squeaky or squelchy shoes and
dripping noses from the endless rains of Wales, and total silence was an
unknown ideal in our damp lives. I thought that Mondaugen was going to be disappointed,
but we tried our best not to make a sound, to be inaudible.
How the engine processed
silence into motive power is something he never explained in detail. Sometimes
I wonder if Mondaugen knows how his own inventions work, but that doesn’t really
matter. The main point is that they do work, and work well, although
they often go wrong later. But this one seemed to go wrong from the start.
He pulled a lever on the
side of the engine but the vehicle just refused to budge. It stood on its metal
wheels on the rails and slowly rusted in the rain. Mondaugen waited and we
waited with him. Then he placed a finger to his lips. He assumed one of us was
rustling or making some other faint noise and polluting the fuel, but we
weren’t.
It was a vehicle that ran on
absolute silence. Talking would bring it to a dead halt. It was a train that
goes without saying; and such an invention is doomed in Wales. Not only is
Wales a garrulous country in terms of its inhabitants, but the rain doesn’t
just pitter-patter like normal rain in other nations. It makes conversation
when it falls.
The raindrops in Wales have
tiny mouths that utter a word when these drops bash themselves open against the
ground, roofs or umbrellas. They cry out in joy or surprise or fear or just for
the hell of it. Although a man with a stethoscope might be able to hear these
words clearly if he’s lucky, he won’t understand them. They are inhuman.
And that’s why Mondaugen’s
train was doomed to failure. The instant he realised the rain was responsible for
sabotaging his project, he made a few half-hearted efforts to fix the problem.
Nothing helped. At one point he persuaded us to stand on the roof of the train
with umbrellas, shielding it from the rain. But there was too much noise.
Everywhere there was splashing
and the utterances of those tiny damp mouths, the background hum and buzz of
Wales, wettest land in creation, and silence stood no chance. We dismounted
from the roof and cast aside the useless umbrellas and waited for him to
acknowledge defeat. But he’s always the most stubborn inventor imaginable.
He kept tinkering to no
avail and finally I approached him, tapped him on the shoulder and broke my vow
of silence. I said, “A train that runs on silence is a totally unfeasible
device here. Why not convert the engine to run on a more practical and
plentiful fuel, such as rainwater? Can you try that, do you think? Invent a
kind of rain train?”
He could, of course. He was
Mondaugen, the most ingenious inventor ever to plod through the puddles of
possibility, or wade the waterlogged vales of wonder, in this saturated land of
ours. He could take his spanner right now and make the necessary adjustments to
the mechanism without delay. Because that’s the kind of genius he was.
He stood back, panting. The
rain streamed down his face, but he was happy. He had converted the engine from
one that runs on silence to one that was powered by falling rain. It was ready
already. He reached out to pull the lever. We watched him in trepidation and
leaking shoes. Down went the lever and the train simply disappeared.
It vanished in a blur; and
all that remained was an afterimage that was so persistent it is probably still
there. There is so much rain in Wales that a train powered by the stuff is
going to fly off at the speed or light or even faster than that; and it will
vaporise or go backwards in time. No one can guess exactly what happened to it,
not even him.
We all turned away and left
the scene. We walked without enthusiasm and our knees shone in the rain and our
feet squeaked in the rain and our chins dripped in the rain and our ears
flapped in the rain and our nostrils quivered in the rain and our souls rotted
in the rain. I made an apology to the great inventor. I felt it was my fault
and said:
“Wales is simply too rainy.”
“That also goes without
saying,” he answered.
Well, there you have the lost chapters of Cloud Farming in Wales.
They weren’t really lost, because to get lost you have to go somewhere and in
order to go somewhere you have to exist; and these chapters didn’t exist until
after I had decided they were already lost, which is the wrong way around. But
that doesn’t matter much.
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