Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
The Months That Mistrust Me
Across one March the pages of a signalman's diary stop agreeing with one another about his shift nights, each leaf keeping a version with the dates a little wrong.
- dated: "March"
- narrator: "Harold Vann, signalman"
- reliability: unreliable
3 March. Roster through to the Saturday singles. My nights this month are the Eleventh, the Twelfth, the Third Tuesday and the Twenty-ninth, and the swap with Evans stands for the Eighth. The box is warm on my nights and empty on Evans's, which is what a box is. I have oiled the latch and drawn two pints of oil against the fog months, and the register book is ruled and waiting like the pantry shelf.
11 March, night shift. Drizzle from the Ninth Avenue window, lamp trimmed, kettle on the half hour. At ten past three the bell went for the down branch, three pulls and a rest, the signal for a goods off the quarry head. The branch has been closed since the other winter and its rails lift grass at the level crossing, but a signalman answers his bell whatever the rails are doing. I acknowledged twice, entered it, one goods, down, 3.12, and signed, and sat with my tea until the tail lamp went by the far board, which it did, the way a lamp does.
12 March. Morning bookkeeping. The register book is clean. There is no line for 3.12 and no signature and no smudge, and the binding sits square, and the page is ruled the same as ever. My own diary is the one that has the night: not this leaf, the Tenth, already written, near three weeks old, and it has the night differently written: starlight, no bell, all quiet from ten to six in my hand between ruled lines. The Tenth and the Eleventh are not agreeing the way two pages of mine have always agreed, which is exactly. February does it too now: its last leaf has the Eleventh in it, before the fact, in my hand, so between the three of them I am two men with one diary.
Third Tuesday. I took my own lamp book down for the arithmetic. A quiet night draws two inches of oil off the box lamp. The night before drew five, the draw of a working night, with the wick against the wind of moving gear. The books say no night. The oil says the night. And the block shelf holds the smell of hot iron still, which the kettle alone never puts there. I have written the inspector's monthly report in full and said nothing of any of this in it, because a report is a box too, and I have always posted my nights tidy.
29 March. The last leaf of March is full and the month has no more to say to me. April's pages are ahead of mine by four entries, four of my shifts written through in my hand with nights I have not worked, and the Thirteenth of April is a busy page, busier than April has any business being. The bell is going now, single, patient, for something up the line. In the morning there will be a signature under 4.04, mine or already mine. What I cannot get straight at this third hour is which of the two men it will be, since the page for the morning is written either way.