There is something undeniably romantic about rail travel. Not for nothing did Brief Encounter recently top this newspaper's poll as the best romantic film of all time while songs by James Blunt (You're Beautiful) and the Divine Comedy (Commuter Love) both deal with fleeting moments of aching, unrequited longing experienced on a train journey. And to finish off the new Euroterminal at the new St Pancras International station, a nine-metre, 20-tonne sculpture of a couple embracing, called The Meeting Place, was commissioned to evoke the romance of travel. Here are three true stories for daydreamers everywhere.
Mark and Zoë Folbigg
Zoë remembers with striking clarity the morning she first saw Mark. It was July 2003, and she was waiting for her usual 8.21 train from Hitchin, Hertfordshire, to London. She knew the faces of all the other commuters, even though no one ever spoke to anyone else. But this time there was a new face. "I noticed him straight away, because I thought he was beautiful … He walked up the platform almost in slow motion."
So began Zoë's infatuation with the commuter she was to christen Train Man. Every day, she would get on the train at the same set of doors as he did ("I kind of engineered that a little bit"). As time passed, she noticed that they shared the same taste in books, something that convinced her he was a kindly, sensitive soul. She soon began telling her friends about him. "My work friends would ask, 'Did you see Train Man today?' and I'd say, 'Yes, he was wearing such and such, he's lovely, how can I get him to notice me?'"
She felt she might need a few glasses of wine before plucking up the nerve to talk to him, but as their paths only ever crossed on the morning train, she prudently decided that getting drunk in the morning might not create the best first impression. Instead, she concocted a plan, to sit near him, drop her ticket and pretend not to notice. Then, when he handed it to her, she would engage him with a sparkling conversational gambit, and they would be off. The day arrived, the ticket was dropped and Train Man duly picked it up and gave it back to her. "Thanks," she said meekly, and went back to her book.
Zoë's burgeoning crush was becoming a major feature of her life. She went on a few dates with various men, only to report back to her increasingly exasperated friends: "He just wasn't Train Man – I didn't have butterflies." After almost a year, her sister and another friend told her it was time to do something about her feelings.
In May 2004, Zoë resolved to act. She wrote him a note, to give to him on her birthday. "The note basically said: 'It's my birthday, and everyone should do something silly on their birthday, so here you go: Would you like to go for a drink sometime?'"
On the appointed day, Zoë walked up to give Train Man her note and, legs shaking, stood next to him. But she was paralysed by fear and couldn't go through with it. "He was reading the Gabriel García Márquez novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which seemed appropriate, as I thought we were destined to remain apart."
But Zoë kept the note, and 10 days later, finally delivered it. "He didn't know it wasn't my birthday!"
"He had hay fever and was in the middle of a sneezing bout, so when I said, 'Excuse me, can I give you this?' he just looked baffled. He said 'Sorry?' so I had to say it again, and people were starting to look. He said, 'Yeah, sure,' and took the note, and I walked away really fast, shaking."
At the end of the day, she received an email from a man called Mark. Train Man had a name. Unfortunately, he also had a girlfriend. "His email was really nice, but I was gutted. Of course he had a girlfriend!"
Mark had been touched by her gesture, though. He says: "I was a bit surprised, because people really don't communicate on commuter trains, and the last thing that you expect on your morning commute is for a beautiful young woman to give you a note asking you out on a date!"
Zoë had to face travelling on the train with Mark the next day. It was embarrassing, and they exchanged nervous smiles. Nothing more was said. For many, many months. Until 28 January 2005, to be precise, when Zoë received "the best email of my life". Mark's circumstances had changed. Months before, his relationship had ended, "for entirely unrelated reasons," he is quick to point out. He had spent some time alone and done some thinking. Then he had sent an email, inviting Zoë out for a drink.
The evening in a Hitchin pub was, she says, "the best date ever". She admits to saying, aloud, when he went to the bathroom, "Oh my God, I love him!" Fortunately, the feeling seemed to be quickly reciprocated. The pair embarked on a relationship and commuted together. Mark began to find out – bit by bit – the background to the story. "The full tale unfolded as time went on over the next couple of months, from Zoë herself and also bits and pieces from her friends." Was he ever embarrassed or even a little alarmed by her persistence? "No, it was fun finding out all about Train Man," he says, laughing.
Three years later, Mark proposed, appropriately, on a train in Australia. They were married in 2008, and have a baby, Felix.
Zoë still calls Mark Train Man.
Jonathan and Jacqueline Roberts
Jacqueline and Jonathan were in their 50s when they met and each assumed love had passed them by. Jonathan had never married and Jacqueline had been divorced for 15 years.
They met on 7 December 2002. For several years, they were commuting acquaintances, occasionally bumping into each other on the South West Trains route from Gillingham, in Somerset, to London.
One morning, in March 2006, Jacqueline was waiting for the 5.15 train when Jonathan approached her, and asked which train she would be travelling back on. They agreed to meet on the late train home and Jonathan moved on up the platform (sensible in the realisation that nothing good can happen at 5.15am).
That night, on the journey back, Jacqueline, a physiotherapist, asked Jonathan when he was going to do something about his leg, which he had recently injured in a car accident. He volunteered to visit her clinic in London and suggested they make it the last appointment of the day and travel home together. "There were two motives," he admits. One was that he needed to do something about his leg. "But there was also that slim hope …"
After his second appointment at the clinic (again, the last of the day), they arrived at Waterloo early, and went for a drink. It was 6 April 2006. Jacqueline was asking about Monet's garden at Giverny (a passion of Jonathan's) and, heart in mouth, he took a leap. "I could tell you about them," he said. "Or I could show you." Jacqueline was surprised to hear herself readily agreeing to the second idea.
On the train home that evening, Jonathan turned to her and said: "Can you feel it?" Jacqueline smiles at the recollection. "I said: 'Feel what?' And it was like somebody throwing a bucket of water over me. It was either lightning or water, I don't really know. It was a physical feeling. And that was it.
"We then had to get to know each other because we knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together." Jonathan proposed the next day and Jacqueline laughed at him. But 10 days later he asked again, she said yes. Four months later they were married.
Their wedding cake was a six-foot-long sponge-and-icing scale replica of their train, No 159002, The City of Salisbury. "We cut it precisely through the seats where we'd been sitting," says Jonathan. Place settings were replica railway tickets, which read "From: Jacqueline To: Jonathan, via Milton Clevedon and Batcombe, Dining Ticket," and then the date and time, and the name of the person. And two of the staff from the train even came to the wedding.
Today, the couple still regularly commute together from Gillingham to London and always look out for the 159002, which still serves the route. Not long after their wedding, though, they heard that the train was being refurbished. They asked if they could buy the two seats they were sitting in when lightning struck. South West Trains said they could have them for nothing. So now, in their living room, by the window, there is the charmingly incongruous sight of two train seats. "We sometimes sit on them and have some cheese and a bottle of wine," says Jacqueline.
Jonathan laughs. "Imagine being struck by lightning between Basingstoke and Andover, of all places."
David Koya and Nikki Badejo
David and Nikki met four years ago when he spotted her looking lost at Marylebone station in London and stopped to help her. Was there an ulterior motive? David laughs. "She's a very lovely woman, she's very, very beautiful. To be honest, yeah, I did see her and think, this is a very attractive young lady looking lost. OK, let me help her out. But I've never been one to chat up girls out of the blue; my motive was just to be a nice guy and then go off on my own."
There the story would have ended had they had not bumped into each other again at the exact same spot a week later. David was heading home to Wembley Stadium station. Nikki, it turned out, was going to the same stop to visit a friend. They sat together on the train and chatted.
Both had a strange sense of fate playing a hand. "On first meeting David, I thought he was really cool and cute but didn't think much more about it," says Nikki. "But I had a funny feeling there was more to just bumping into him again." David agrees: "You start to wonder if this could be leading up to something … But even then, you don't think the whole nine yards – marriage."
The pair chatted comfortably on the train and Nikki was surprised how quickly time had passed. At the end of the journey, David said he would like to see her again. "We met up, and I cooked for her. It just went on from there," says David.
Marylebone station continued to play a prominent role in their relationship. "We shared so many moments at the station," says David. "We'd always meet up there. It was always where we'd meet up and go home together."
So it seemed perfectly normal to Nikki when David arranged to meet her at the station on her birthday, 20 November 2008. Unbeknown to Nikki, though, David had gone to see staff at Chiltern Railways with a plan – to propose to Nikki over the Tannoy. "They were so happy to help me out, I was stunned by it. They were so excited. They planned out everything for me, told me what time to get there and got me a 15-minute slot when it wasn't a busy time for trains so they didn't need to make announcements. It was amazing. I even got calls reminding me. They were so supportive."
At 11am on the day, David covertly watched as Nikki arrived at their meeting place opposite the flower shop. "Then the staff took me to the office. I was given brief guidance on how to operate the PA system, and then I did it. I read her a poem I had written for her a long time before." Then he asked her to marry him.
There was, of course, the risk that Nikki simply wouldn't listen to the announcement. David roars with laughter: "I kept thinking, 'What if she goes to the bathroom? That would just ruin everything.'"
But Nikki had heard every word. "I was waiting patiently, passing the time admiring the flowers in the florist, and then I heard David's voice over the speakers and froze. I kept trying to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming."
David, who was so nervous that he was struggling to put one foot in front of the other, went to find Nikki. "I got down on one knee and got the ring out and asked her again. And she said yes."
"I said a quiet yes," she points out, "hoping people waiting in the hall for their train wouldn't notice what was happening, but they did. They started clapping, cheering and taking pictures. Next thing I knew, the lady from the flower shop in the station brought me a rose. It was an indescribable moment!"
The couple were married in February 2010. In November, they moved from Wembley to Leytonstone in east London. Marylebone no longer formed part of their daily routine. But, says David, they still use it often enough to visit family.
"And every time we do," says David, "We smile to ourselves."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2011
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου