All along the river's been mostly redeveloped now, but the city kids, those without company car parking spaces at least, still have to get from shiny point A to shiny point B. Most going eastwards take the Docklands Light Railway. And those pensioners—near-forgotten survivors from the blitz, the summer of love, the silver jubilee and Thatcher's Britain—take the Network Southeast out from Limehouse station to visit their offspring in the suburbanised East-end of the Thames-hugging Essex towns north of the river. Some of them even make it to Leysdown or Canvey for a Bank Holiday by the coast, 'cause Southend's not what it was. The Railwaym'n watches them all, untroubled for now by the ever-encroaching threat of area regeneration. His skin is the mould-greybrown of moss-addled brickwork, and his bulbous eyes glisten with damp, the whites lightninged like the bloodshot gaze of an unemployed drinker, his knuckles as pallid as those of a housebound and lonely OAP, and his teeth the jaundiced yellow of a phlegm-racked smoker's. Even though the steam trains ceased running this route so long ago, the memory of them remains in his skinny lungs. His ears are heavily concaved, with pointed tips; alert to the whistles of the station guards and the clacking metal wheels of approaching trains. He hears too the recorded announcements regularly spouted by the tannoy from the Docklands Light Railway. A young tousle-haired mother has hauled a collapsed buggy up the studded steel steps of the eastbound platform, a pink-faced baby, certainly no older than a few months, strapped into a pack on her back. The Railwaym'n squints his myopic eyes in their direction, unable to make out the woman's features from even such a short distance. He is more comfortable in the nocturne: not because his night vision is particularly exceptional, but because his sallow skin is slightly photosensitive. Indeed in summer he undergoes a semi-hibernation, holed up in the metal rafters alongside the local pigeons, with little save them and the precariously close rooftops of double-decker buses for company. And the winter is hardly better, what with the drastic drop in temperature and the lack of suitable cladding, for other than the wisps of damp guano-tinged hair on his head and thatches of greasy brillo covering his armpits and groin, the Railwaym'n is completely naked. Several years ago, long before the ominous construction of the DLR, when the station had still be known as Stepney East, he'd stolen the jacket from a jumper, but he'd lost it again up on the guard's box in the early hours of a spring morn: it was taken by an unexpected gust of wind. The Railwaym'n had watched in silent dismay as it flapped away from him and down onto the green that had then stood on the opposite side of Commercial Road. (Like a great denim hawk it was, falling to lie predatory over a discarded two-litre bottle of Woodpecker cider.) Other than the preoccupied passengers, the bored guards and occasional signalmen, his only other human visitors were the resident hooligans. One chill autumn midnight he happened upon an adventurous boy little taller than he, and feeling brave, due in part to the intruder's slight stature, but in the main to the biting wind of the night air, the Railwaym'n spoke: I want your coat. The kid—no more than eleven or twelve—almost lost its grip on the outside wall of the station and was struck by a near-insurmountable wave of vertigo. The Railwaym'n scuttled closer. I'm cold, he said. At the partially revealed sight of the odd creature the boy dropped his tin of spray-paint. It landed on the white-spattered road below without the anticipated explosion he'd braced himself for but with a metallic crunk. The hooded boy used his now-free hand to gain a firmer grip on the wall. Look, my coat's only thin. (It was true. The lad was shivering almost as much as the Railwaym'n.) Me mate's on the other side of the bridge and he's wearing a puffer jacket. That's much warmer than mine. The boy breathed a sigh of relief as the weird thing scarpered off in pursuit of his friend. He heaved himself over onto the relative security of the platform. After a quick rub of the hands and a few deep breaths to overcome the shock, the boy was off, almost falling down the stairs in his haste to escape. Hugging his thankfully thin coat about him, he waited in the space between the two stations, by the payphones. The Railwaym'n found the second night crawler easily enough—he was working practically parallel to the first boy's interrupted efforts. But this youth was slightly bigger than the first. Still, the Railwaym'n found the cold more intimidating than the child, so he repeated his demand: I want your coat. I'm cold. This time the ambushed party lost it's footing on a round half-ball of metal, and dangled from one fingerless-gloved hand. A navy blue baseball cap bobbed for a moment in midair before the coat-wearer regained firmness underfoot. He looked down below to see his erstwhile companion waving lanky arms, misted breath breathed like smoke as he silently mouthed something completely indecipherable. I, it's not as warm as it looks. He could smell the Railwaym'n's pigeon-corpse breath, even though the thing was keeping its distance. There's mostly just air inside, that's what makes it look so puffy. Any coat's better than no coat. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. The lad's fingers were slipping due to stress-clammed hands. Look, Bill's over on the DLR. You can see him from here. The boy jerked his head behind him and, though the Railwaym'n couldn't see the large dark shape moving against the side of the Docklands station, no more than twenty feet away, he could hear the familiar hiss of a spray-can. He's got a proper goretex jacket. It's warm even in the snow. Down below the first boy was standing by a drainpipe less than a couple of feet from his friend's side. The second boy—unaware that he'd convinced the weird coat-hunter to leave him be—reached out for the pipe and slid painfully down to the ground. The Railwaym'n had never ventured across to the Docklands Light Railway before. Of a daytime it was a bright and noisy place and the pseudo-trains didn't warn of their approach either. But the promise of a warm night's sleep was too much to resist. He cleared the space between the two stations in an almost easy bound, his feet landing on the third boy's shoulders, his curled-nailed toes digging into the material of the coat, his gnarled fingers finding the top of the rail. The kid named Bill scrabbled for a moment before beginning his quick descent to the unyielding floor below, landing not a couple of metres away from his fellows. His coat was left flapping in the autumn wind for a moment: the Railwaym'n's pendant of victory. When it was obvious their elder would not survive to spray another day the two survivors vanished into the artificially illuminated half-gloom of the main road, just as a group of patrons noisily vacated the White Swan to head in haste down Butcher's Row, to their dockside retreats on the riverbank by the Highway. *** The next morning the Railwaym'n was oblivious to the dawn frost as he watched a pair of police constables puzzle over why a fallen graffiti artist would have ventured out on a near-winter night lacking the convenience of a coat. Sprayed on the wall, at a height high above their heads, was the almost finished tag that the dead boy had been etching: Billy The Kid. *** Originally hailing from London, Neil Ayres now lives in Surrey, England. His fiction has appeared in many venues, including Electric Velocipede, 3LBE, Jupiter, The Elastic Book of Numbers and Poe's Progeny. This year he helped edit and launch 'Book of Voices: an anthology for Sierra Leone PEN', and also edited 'The Minotaur in Pamplona' chapbooks for D-Press. He has tales forthcoming in Trunk Stories and A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults. *** Image: Off the Wheel: original artwork by Aria Nadii. Please visit her website at www.arianadii.com for more information about the artist and her works. *** back to fiction archives ***      Design ©2005 Cabinet des Fées, page content ©Neil Ayres.