Last Train to Locarno.

Miranda saw her on the station platform. In truth she was hard to miss. There were not many things to attract the attention on a wild Monday night in April on the platform of Zurich Hauptbahnhof. The handful of passengers waiting for the last southbound train of the night were huddled protectively over their luggage, their collars turned up against the cold wind that penetrated along the lines. Trains arrived, streaked with rain; their windows misted with condensation and stood dripping at the platforms discharging discontented looking passengers who hastened away, eager to be shut of their journeys. The hustle of the big station was subdued at this late hour; the few travellers like lonely islands, introverted with their own thoughts and disinclined to be sociable. In this damp grey world the dark haired girl stood out like a single beacon of radiance illuminating her patch of uninspiring platform concrete as if a shaft of sunlight from the Mediterranean warmth to the south of the mountains had somehow pierced the pervading gloom over Zurich.
Miranda found herself fascinated by the girl. She looked Italian. The long hair was so dark as to be nearly black and it framed a face of almost exquisite loveliness. She was slender but with perfectly proportioned curves and long slim legs terminating in shapely feet in open, high heeled sandals. Her light soft short, white and mauve summer dress seemed incongruous as if, arriving from warmer climes; nobody had thought to mention to her that it could be cold on this side of the Alps. Her only concession to the dismal weather was a light shawl about her shoulders and the neckline of her dress plunged into a deep vee that exposed her long graceful neck, adorned with a curious pendant in white gold, and the enticing valley of her cleavage. She was breathtakingly beautiful.
Yet, to Miranda watching her covertly from the corner of her eye, from her relatively concealed location behind a pillar, it wasn’t simply the undoubted beauty of the girl that so captured one’s attention. There was something feline about her; feline in a predatory manner, as if she was prowling, her eyes constantly darting over the landscape seeking prey. In the gloomy atmosphere of the station most people were content to keep themselves to themselves and avert their gaze from others. This girl was fully alert however; her senses attuned and wired. You could almost fancy that you saw her nostrils flaring as she tried to catch some scent; her eyes like restless beams scanning her environment, stalking her quarry.
Even to the most jaded of sensibilities, the nature of the girl’s prey was transparent. There was an electrifying sensuality about this girl; a hedonistic indulgence in her sexuality. It showed in the way she smoothed the hem of her dress sensually against her legs; the way she brushed a lock of her hair back into position, pausing to stroke it in evident enjoyment; the hint of a pout in those lovely lips and the smoky lustre to her huge eyes as pleasurable thoughts crossed her mind. This was a girl enslaved by her senses, so in thrall to her sensuality that even a cold Monday night in Zurich Hauptbahnhof was a potential playground for pleasure; a hunting ground for the gratification of her all consuming libido.
There was little scope for the predatory instincts of the dark haired girl on platform four at ten o’clock on a Monday night but she didn’t seem at all discouraged. A pretty blond girl came struggling along the platform under the weight of a heavy suitcase and Miranda saw the dark haired girl come instantly to attention, riveting her gaze upon the girl and with a wry smile playing about her lips. In a tingling bolt of shock Miranda recognised the girl’s prey; saw to an instant the moment when the dark haired girl marked the blond down as a possible. Already she was edging toward the blond girl looking coiled as if about to pounce. Miranda held her breath as it seemed the girl was about to make a move; offer to help the girl with her bag. Then there as a whistle and the blond girl dropped her bag to wave. A young man was hurrying along the platform. Obviously the boyfriend, he gathered the blond in his arms to kiss her fondly before picking up her suitcase and leading her away with an arm about her waist. The dark haired girl backed away; the disappointment evident in her face.
“She’s a lesbian!” thought Miranda to herself, sure of it, and despaired that the realisation gave her such a thrill of excitement. Miranda didn’t want to consider herself a lesbian. She had, after all, just emerged, barely intact, from a relationship of some fourteen months with a man that, while not exactly endearing her to the male of the species, had nevertheless surely not entirely convinced her of the complete worthlessness of them. Yet the sudden realisation that the beautiful dark haired siren stalking the unattractive environs of platform four was out hunting for pretty girls sent a shiver of long suppressed forbidden sensations coursing through her. She felt a flush of warmth rise to her cheeks and for a fleeting second she wanted the dark haired girl to notice her; wanted to see that same look on her face as she arrowed in with triumphal anticipation. She wanted it very much.
Miranda shook her head to rid it of the unbidden and deeply dangerous thoughts. What on earth would she do if the girl did make a move on her anyway? She wouldn’t know what the devil to do if a lesbian approached her! She’d probably run away screaming! Why on earth did she think that the dark haired girl would be interested in her anyway? It was an unworthy thought because Miranda was a warmly beautiful girl in her own right. Her soft brown hair with its natural wave was the accompaniment to a gentle face of demure attraction; not overtly seductive but open and friendly with sweet, hazel coloured eyes of trusting warmth and shyness. Her pretty blouse and knee length skirt clung to a frame of gentle curves and slender waist and her hands were long and sensitive. She was a beautiful girl but a series of disastrous relationships had seriously eroded her belief in that beauty; irreparably as it seemed to her. Timidly she cowered back behind her pillar and stove to master the curious yearnings within her.
In the moments that Miranda was alone and wont to examine herself with brutal honesty, she recognised that there was a part of her that was by no means unmoved by the attraction of a beautiful woman. She was honest enough too to admit to herself that her admiration of feminine beauty went well beyond dispassionate, aesthetic appreciation. She desired it. In a fundamental part of her that she had never dared allow emerge, Miranda had a deep seated desire for the touch of a woman’s skin against her own; their lips upon hers; her caresses upon their body and the stroke of their fingers upon hers. Very occasionally she allowed herself guiltily to daydream about it and if her daydreams led in the privacy of her own room to languid touches, stroking herself in arousal, then she never told any of her friends of her secret yearnings. Miranda came of a morally conservative background in which such things were dangerous temptations. She had certainly never acted upon such temptations and kept them firmly locked from view. Nobody suspected them of her and, if her sexual relationships with the few men in her life had proved unsatisfactory and unfulfilling in comparison to her secret fantasies, she kept this side of her hidden and suppressed. Only at such moments as these with the sight of an alluringly seductive beauty on the hunt would these concealed feelings within her well up and demand gratification.
Miranda’s attention was diverted by the approach of a train at the platform and the mundane tones of the tannoy announcing the arrival of the 22.09 Inter Regio express for Chiasso calling at Zug, Arth-Goldau, Bellinzona, Lugano and Chiasso. Miranda was taking the train to Bellinzona where she was obliged to change to the local train to Locarno; her final destination. It would be a long night. Her train wouldn’t arrive in Bellinzona until nearly a quarter to one in the morning and she wouldn’t be in Locarno until ten past. Her friend Alex, upon whom she was relying on for accommodation, worked late in a bar in Ascona a few kilometres away. He had told her to phone him on her mobile when she reached Locarno and he would come and pick her up. Alex was an old friend and entirely sympathetic when she’d phoned him and told him she needed to get away for a few days; a few days to take stock of her life and the apparent chaos it which it had seemingly descended with the demise of her recent relationship.
Miranda saw the dark haired girl pick up her bags. She had a small suitcase on wheels and what appeared to be a large camera case. Miranda shouldered her own bag and moved toward the train. From the corner of her eye she saw the dark haired girl pause at the platform edge to allow a passenger to disembark. It was then that her persistently questing eyes saw Miranda. Miranda knew instantly that the girl had seen her. In seclusion behind her pillar Miranda had been hidden previously from the girl but now the girl saw her and the beckoning open door of the railway carriage was momentarily forgotten as she followed Miranda with her eyes. Miranda glanced at her and regretted it instantly for the girl was staring straight at her and caught her eye. She inclined her head and smiled; an expression of perilous invitation. Miranda looked away sharply and blushed to the roots of her hair. Hastily she mounted the train.
The train was very nearly empty. There were a few people scattered about in second class but it was even quieter in the carriage to which Miranda took her bags. Wanting some privacy with her thoughts Miranda, in a rush of extravagance, had purchased a first class ticket. Her quest for solitude had been successful. She was the only passenger in the whole carriage. Miranda found a seat, stowed her bag on the overhead rack and took off her jacket, shaking a few drops of rain from it. From her handbag she took out a book she’d brought to while away the journey. It wasn’t a very good book she was obliged to confess; a poorly penned and rather unconvincing romance; but it was all she’d had to hand when making her sudden impetuous decision to flee south for a few days. She took a can of coke from her bag to place on the little shelf by the window and placed alongside it a rather unappetising cheese sandwich she’d bought at the station buffet. There was no buffet or restaurant car on the late night train to Chiasso.
She took her book in her hand and stared out of the window at the platform as the train driver welcomed the passengers aboard the 22.09 to Chiasso in a bored voice over the internal P.A system. Feeling disconsolate and dissatisfied Miranda stared out of the window at the platform with a sigh. The platform was empty apart from the conductor with his baton checking that the last passengers were aboard before signalling to the driver to depart. There was no sign of the dark haired girl. She must have boarded the train. Idly Miranda thought of taking a walk the length of the train on some pretext to see if she could spy the girl again but she knew she would never dare. These were feelings she’d spent half her life running away from. She was hardly about to abandon the habit tonight; not on a night when she was already running away.
Fleeing from the realities of her life was something she was getting rather good at lately, Miranda thought to herself ruefully. The emptiness of her little studio and the miserable weather that had persisted for days now had exacerbated her loneliness to the point of breaking. The sympathy of her friends had been genuine and well meaning but it had not comforted her for she felt it misguided and undeserved. They had been full of solace and pity for her and eager to apportion blame for the collapse of her relationship upon her boyfriend. Miranda had been unable to tell them that their loyalty was misplaced and their analysis unjust. In the honest kernel of her soul Miranda knew that it was she who was to blame for the failure of the relationship; a failure she could attribute directly to those desires she so carefully concealed from the world. Her relationship had been a lie; her whole life had been a lie. But it had been a lie that she had told so long and so cleverly that nobody suspected the truth. Her subterfuge had been brilliant and completely convincing but it was still a lie and it left a bleakness in her heart; a gnawing awareness of her dishonesty and hypocrisy, eating at her self esteem and sense of worth.
Last night had been the breaking point. Some friends had taken her out to dinner to “cheer her up”. It had been a frightful ordeal for Miranda. She had listened to her friends berating her ex-boyfriend for his idiocy and conduct and Miranda had hated herself for not contradicting them or candidly informing them that her boyfriend had in fact been blameless and merely the latest victim of the confusion of Miranda’s sexuality. She had simply been unable to talk to them about it; unable to tell them the truth. Somehow, in her deceit and self denial, she had felt more lonely than ever. One boy among her friends had even intimated that if she needed somebody to bounce back on then he would be more than happy to oblige and Miranda had thanked him and felt more wretched than ever. She had returned back to the hollow desolation of her empty studio and cried herself to sleep. She had tried to work on her new article throughout the next day but had finally broken down and sought escape. It was then she had thought of Alex.
Alex was an old college friend and Miranda had been close to him. Of all the men in her life Alex was the one outstanding male that she could talk to without the complications of sexuality. Alex was gay and flamboyantly open and contented to be so. He treated Miranda with the affection of a beloved sister not at all concerned about any sexual attraction to her. She had sometimes used his shoulder to cry on and he had always been kind and non-judgemental with her. Two years ago he had moved to Ascona to live with his boyfriend and a stable reference point in Miranda’s life had been taken from her. This evening, in this crisis of her life, Miranda had dug out his long neglected telephone number and called him. He had told her to pack her bags and come down to Ascona. It was miserable weather on the north side of the Alps but in the south, beyond the climatic dividing line of the great mountains, the land was full of Mediterranean sunshine. It was thirty degrees in Ascona. Come down he’d urged her, come down and spend a few days while you get your head back together. Miranda had had just enough time to pack a few belongings, take a tram into town and catch the 22.09 train heading south through the Gotthard pass to find the sun beyond.
The conductor blew his whistle and stepped aboard the train. There was a hiss of compressed air and the doors clattered shut before the train, with a lurch, began its stately progress out of the station. Miranda glanced at the clock on the platform as they passed. It was exactly 22.09. Weather notwithstanding, Swiss trains ran with almost metronomic precision. Clear of the station awnings, the rain battered against the windows as the train picked up speed. The passing lights of Zurich were blurred in the dirty streaks through which Miranda peered. Before long the dimly illuminated suburbs were passing in a blur of unconnected lights and the train plunged into the obscuring darkness of the countryside.