The Retreat from Moscow by William Nicholson

Author:William Nicholson [Nicholson, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307490155
Publisher: Anchor Books: A Division of Random House, Inc.
Published: 2004-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

It’s by Charlotte Mew, about Mary Magdalene, touching Jesus. How did that young woman in the train know what I was feeling? I was astounded. I felt as if I had stepped through a doorway into another world, where the inhabitants could read my heart. It was your mother, of course. It was Alice. And I was on the wrong train. It was the fast train, it never stopped at my station. We were almost at Dover before I realised it.

So you see, I made a mistake about Alice, right at the beginning, and she made a mistake about me. We thought we were like each other, and we weren’t. I didn’t know it. I did my best to be who she wanted me to be. And I suppose the real me went into hiding, like a—what do they call them? Terrorists who live ordinary lives for years and years, until the phone rings, and the order comes, Set off your bomb. Sleepers, they call them. Yes, I was a sleeper in my own marriage. All it took was Angela’s hand on my arm. Her touch. I wept, like I wept on the train. Not for something I would never have. No, this time for gratitude. For the return of life. It was me she touched. Me. Me. No demands. No expectations. Just love.

How can I tell any of this to you, my son? My only child. Alice’s child. How can I say to you that all those years ago, I got on the wrong train?

(Lights out on EDWARD, and the stage is dark once more.)

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