Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [31]
THE CENTRAL TRAIN STATION
Station Hall
The hall of our Central Train Station (trolley bus 8 from either Market or Cathedral Squares, trolley bus 11 from Entralla University), like many another station hall, is far larger than it need be; even at peak times its immensity is never filled. In the long afternoons, before a brief fit of activity at five o’clock, the railway customers walk cautiously around the edges, relying heavily on the emotional support granted by the various periphery establishments of the ticket office, the waiting room, the lavatories, the two restaurants (one with waiter service, the other with counter service selling principally American-style cuisine), before finally building up the courage to make the distressing dash to their platform. And yet, one night two school children far from being frightened by the vastness of this place have felt a freedom here that they would experience nowhere else in this city.
THE QUIET BOY, Girin Lang, who we knew secretly wanted to be with us, continued to avoid us all the time, despite our winning the first place in school. He very rarely came out into the playground any more and if he did he would always go up to some other children and speak to them, forcing himself upon their company. I didn’t mind, I could wait. The city of Alvairvalla is a city of plasticine and of patience.
We continued to follow him to Verres Square. Mother would inevitably be waiting for us at the school gates but we’d walk past her: ‘We’re not coming home, mother, not yet.’ We’d follow the Quiet Boy all the way to his house on Verres Square, and once we reached Verres Square, and he’d darted inside his house again, we’d often sit on benches in the square just looking at his house, for hours sometimes, just looking. Occasionally we’d see his little white face peeking through the net curtains on the ground floor, checking to see if we, his friends, were still there. When we saw his little face staring at us, we’d stare back at him, our hearts beating faster and faster, and we’d keep staring at him until his face disappeared behind the curtains again. He was always the first one to stop staring. But after a month or so of this following, while we were sitting in Verres Square, the door of no. 12 opened and there stood a thin woman with a cigarette, who was the Quiet Boy’s mother, Mrs Lang, looking directly at us and at no one else. She even walked up to us, she told us to clear off, to leave her son, our friend, alone, to stop terrorising him. Obviously, we said to each other, shaking with nerves, as we returned home, obviously she hadn’t understood. We weren’t terrorising the Quiet Boy. Hardly that.
The day after we were ushered into the headmaster’s office. Grandfather was in the office and so was Mother and so was Mrs Lang, but not the Quiet Boy himself, who she referred to throughout the meeting as ‘My Girin’ or ‘My Little Girin’ or ‘My Darling Little Girin’. We were told that we were forbidden to follow the Quiet Boy any more, that we had upset him, that we were giving him nightmares, that he would wake up in the night screaming, all because of us. We terrified him, his mother said, we had seen that he was shy and timid and because of this we had gone after him and would never leave him alone. Something had to be done about it.
Mrs Lang said to Mother: ‘Your daughters walked straight out of a picture book that frightens children. They should’ve stayed in that picture book, you should have left them there.’ The headmaster told Mrs Lang to calm down, and then with utter strictness he said to us: ‘This following/bullying can not continue.’
We were forbidden to go near him ever again; if we were caught following him there’d be great trouble. Verres Square and the Quiet Boy: out of bounds. We must keep our distance at all times. After we left the headmaster’s office we had identically red and throbbing right hands from ten strikes each by the headmaster’s ruler, which stopped us, for a day, from working with plasticine.
Irva insisted that Alvairvalla didn’t need company after