The rain is a gentle pitter-patter against the glass door of Heuston Station. The ticket inspector nips the end of his fag and drops it into a rapidly growing puddle outside the door. He fixes his cap and moves towards the semi-warmth of the station. He saunters past the ticket booths, past the waiting passengers and boards the train to Limerick.
He shares a barely audible hello with a guard leading a blind man by the arm. He recognises the face, but he hardly knows the man to say any more than that. He joins the engineer up front to catch up on the latest gossip. The word comes from the guard and they’re ready to go. The train pulls out with a slight shudder.
It’s the most popular service of the evening; there was at least 300 people waiting on the platform. The inspector has a busy couple of hours ahead of him. He’d better get started.
He enters the first carriage and it’s empty except for the blind man. With his sunglasses and white stick, staring straight ahead, there’s something unnerving about the scene. He checks the man’s ticket and moves on to the second carriage. Empty. He moves on to the third, the fourth, the fifth, and so on until he reaches the last one. All empty.
A look of bewilderment slowly creeps across the inspectors face – where the hell are the rest of the passengers? Ah ha!
BANG.
With a roar of “Come out, ye cheating bastards”, he kicks in the toilet door. He’s half way through the door when it slams against the toilet seat, rebounds and hits him full in the face. Eyes watering and nose bleeding, he stumbles back into the carriage.
He moves to the next set of toilets. In his frustration, humiliation and anger, he aims an even harder kick at the toilet door, but this time he’s a bit more careful – he waits for the rebound. The noise of the door hitting the toilet seat reverberates throughout the near silent carriage.
He’s becoming unnerved. He saw the passengers waiting on the platform, they have to be here somewhere. He moves with a speed that belies his age and his size. He passes the still staring blind man and enters the engineers cabin.
The engineer turns at the sound of the door being opened and is greeted by a mass of blood and snot. “Jaysus, what happened? Youse get attacked by a passenger ag’in?”
The inspectors tries to babble his story, but the engineer is gone. He’s out the door with fists clenched and revenge in his mind.
Left on his own in the cabin, the inspector fumbles through his pockets and locates his handkerchief. He’s gingerly cleaning the blood from his face when the engineer returns, pale faced and trembling.
“Christ, dere were three hundred people on dis train. What happened ‘em?”
“Actually, don’t answer dat question. Lock dat door and I’ll get us to Limerick as fast as I can.”
Both men stood in silence with only the rhythmic tu-tu, tu-tu of the train beating monotonously beneath them.
It was a while before either of them spoke. Despite the inspectors damaged nasal passages, there was hint of fear in his voice when he finally broke the silence.
“Dat blind fella looks like he could be dangerous. Do ya think we should get de guards in?”
“Nah, somehow I don’t think dey’ll believe us.”
Thanks to The Limerick Blogger for this story of CIE leaving 300 passengers stranded in Heuston Station, Dublin, while one blind man got to travel to Limerick on his own.