Serial Monogamy Read Free

silk on one side and a sensible purple muslin on the other, all three of them clinging to one another as the train seemed to settle briefly back into a regular forward motion before suddenly there was the most horrible grinding and screeching, like the braking but worse. They could hear cries from other passengers in the compartments on either side of them, but these were soon drowned out by a ferocious series of crashing sounds, one after another, as though some giant were striding through a warehouse full of wooden crates, knocking down towers of them as he went. But this awful noise was not the worst of it. It was the sensation that accompanied it, that the passengers were being pulled backwards, jerked back down the track. Later they would say to one another, when trying to remember the exact order of things, “It all happened so fast,” and yet that moment also unfolded appallingly slowly, the three passengers sitting there in horror, wondering how far the carriage would slip before it stopped.
    Suddenly, they were falling, all three flung from their seats to the floor as the other side of the compartment collapsed down in front them. Nelly tried to stop her fall with her hand but could feel something sharp cutting into it while Charles’s larger body fell heavily against hers. And then, with one final crash, it all stopped.
    They sat up and found themselves clutching one another on the floor of the carriage, tumbled togetherin one corner like gumdrops at the bottom of a paper bag. The seats they had occupied were now several feet higher than the ones across from them: the crash had left the compartment at a forty-five-degree angle, and as the immediate shock passed, Nelly became aware not only that her hand was bleeding profusely but also that their carriage kept shifting slightly, as though trying to settle into its improbable new position.
    Outside, there were voices, some yelling instructions and demands, others simply calling for help, but in the compartment it was oddly silent as the three passengers waited for the movement to stop. Charles seemed to realize their predicament first. He turned to his older companion. “Are you hurt, Mrs. Ternan?”
    “No,” she replied. “I think I am fine. I’ll just see if I can stand…”
    “I wouldn’t do that. Stay down and try to move as little as possible. We don’t want the carriage to fall any farther.”
    “Nelly’s bleeding,” she said, noticing her daughter’s hand for the first time.
    “It’s all right. I’ve just cut myself. There’s broken glass.” Charles pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wrapped it around her hand and then, very gingerly, sat up high enough to raise his head above the window. He looked about in both directions.
    “I think I can climb down here,” he said. “The embankment looks to be within reach. I’ll see if I can jump down and get help.”
    He turned the handle of the compartment door, pushing it outwards and up into the air, and then carefully crawled into the opening and peered down.
    “Should be able to manage it,” he said as he began to swing his legs into position and attempt to shimmy himself up and out the opening without making any sudden movements. He was in his fifties now—only a few years ago Nelly could not have imagined such an age as anything but decrepitude, but today she recognized it as the prime of mature life—and he was still athletic, sprightly when he needed to be. He seemed to have found firm footing beneath him for he slipped himself down from his perch and, as his head disappeared from view, they could hear the thud of his feet landing on the ground.
    “Are you all right, sir?” Amid all the other noise, the voice that greeted him sounded close at hand. “Why, I know you…”
    “Do you now?” Charles’s response was almost jaunty.
    Inside the carriage, Nelly froze.
    “Sure I do. It’s Mr. Dickens.”
    And it was then that Nelly knew they were sunk.

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