The town of Milford Haven, in Pembrokeshire, sits along the northern edge of a great cleft sliced into the southwest flank of Wales during the last Ice Age. This cleft is vast and wide and deep, fed by cold waters from the turbulent North Atlantic but calmed to a smooth sheen by the myriad bays, inlets, marshes, and mudflats that line and protect the sinuous, winding estuary. In winter, the weather can turn wild and unpredictable. In the brief and poignant months of summer, however, the northernmost influence of the Gulf Stream warms the seas, the days assume a kind of sleepy languor, and all feels at peace along the tranquil Milford waterway.
Sun and light command these mild, mid-year months. Tankers, sailboats, watercraft of all kind, glide serene and untroubled upon the glistening Haven. The sky is rich and blue. Seabirds swoop in lazy circles. The breeze comes warm and gentle, fragrant of salt and blooms and wild grasses from the hills, tilting the mind toward gentle thoughts and optimism.
It is only a passing thing, however, this fair and placid season. Soon enough, the skies will fill again with rain and cloud. Winds will whip the waters. The land will brown with autumn. The season will have changed. As if knowing their time is short, therefore, the splendid days of summer glory in their brief and transient reign and refuse to yield the skies. And thus, as each sun-sprinkled summer day nears its close, a quiet struggle grips the quiet, drowsy Haven.
It begins with what the senses perceive as an alteration in the composition of the air, as if something is withdrawing, draining away. Nothing is definite or measurable – the day simply loses its solidity, ceases being what it was, and changes. The warm air cools. The waters lap. Bird cries soften. The colors of the sky, the landscape, the sea, all darken a shade - or appear to, at least, the eye less reliable with the advancing hours. A hint of mist, at first a mere wisp, collects atop the soft, green hills. The sensation of lassitude deepens, accompanied by an impression that the light itself, that thin, frail, northern summer light, is disintegrating.
As this subtle contest hastens, thin ribbons of pink and orange materialize above the western horizon, flooding the skies with blazing streaks - then fade and disappear, all spent. Passersby on the streets, gardeners tending their roses, shopkeepers closing their shops, children at play, all feel the approaching chill, gaze skyward, and tighten their jackets. As the fiery color-bursts recede, a pale, translucent outline forms, and the ascending moon emerges as a faint sketch, barely visible against the graying background. The earlier mood of weary indolence, so benign, gives way now to a hollow foreshadowing of the impermanence of things, and this empty feeling threads steadily through the atmosphere.
It feels unnatural, this silence, this emptiness, and cannot last. Into the solemn stillness, therefore, arises an anticipation, a suggestion of vibration, pitched just beyond hearing, humming from sea to sky to land - then suddenly it is done, the day has died, and dusk drops full and quick like a violet cloak across it all – the hills, the towns, the country lanes and fields, the houses and the waters – and another summer day along the sheltered Haven has met its end.
On one such evening, a balmy July Monday, in the year 1968, we find this familiar little drama repeating itself. The day has been long and warm and filled with light; but moves now toward its familiar conclusion. A chill rises from the water. Mist gathers in the hills. Flames of gold blaze resolutely on the western horizon, only to expire. Evenfall steals over Milford Haven and descends upon the weathered Milford Railway Station, there to circle and swirl about a train that crouches taut in readiness, blue and silver on the iron track.
This waiting train is the Great Western's overnight express to London, which departs at 8:45 p.m. every Monday in the summer – and its departure this evening is imminent. Slanting rails of willowy sunlight are fading against the coming darkness. Night, with its sudden sea-borne draught and strange, lonely quiet, is draping steadily across the waterway, and the thick, leafy trees surrounding the station sway loosely in the freshening breeze. Little collections of passengers – mothers and fathers shepherding wide-eyed children, white-haired ladies carting worn-out bags, frowning men bearing briefcases - scurry aboard the express as the conductor whistles shrilly to sound its departure and the steam begins to blow. Moments later, there emanates from the train a low, menacing rumble, then another, followed by an eerie interlude; and then abruptly, almost without warning, like a dark creature rousing fitfully from slumber, the big train shudders and coughs and lurches and begins to labor away from the station, its enormous wheels straining painfully against the rails, its cars and couplings clanking in a high, metallic cry that cuts against and through the silver faint-light's calm repose. The rending cry sharpens as metal grinds against metal, as thousands of tons bearing hundreds of people to a hundred different destinations stir agonizingly to life. 8:45 p.m. has arrived and the train, indentured to its timetable, is on the move.
Although the express departs every Monday with monotonous sameness, and nothing of interest ever occurs, as the engine now heaves forward the form of a young man of sixteen can suddenly be seen, craning out the window of one of its compartments, waving his arms round and round at a circle of youths gathered together back on the platform. And these clustered figures, alone on the now-deserted siding, eight or ten of them, bright-eyed, fresh-faced, red-cheeked - they cry out to the one on the train who is leaving. He can tell they are calling to him, for their mouths are wide and straining, and their expressions urgent, but he hears nothing above the tumult of the departing train. Inaudible against the furious roar, they may as well be a ring of mutes. Leaning from the compartment window, however, he knows otherwise; knows without hearing that they are shouting, imploring him to come back, to stay, and never to forget them. But the train presses forward, on and on, louder and louder, leaving them behind.
The young man's face falls stricken. Squinting his eyes against welling tears, he watches the small knot of his friends and companions draw together on the platform, recede, recede, and grow ever smaller against a backdrop of dirty yellow clouds drifting in from the sea, smudging the darkening sky. From among the little corps, arms reach into the dusk – two, three, four arms reaching out as if to grab and pull him back; and out he stretches too, in helpless reply.
Now, however, to the strengthening beat of the train, it all begins to blur, and he grimaces with one final effort to catch and keep just one brief word or call; to no avail, however. For night has fallen over the little station, and over the trees and the hills and the rippling waters, and the whipping wind cuts cold against his face and smells suddenly of rain, and the boy's eyes sting in the gathering rush as he stares back blank and still. The train picks up speed and power and wraps him within its hurtling mass; and then his tiny group of friends draw together on the platform as if one, then vanish, leaving his eyes to scour the darkness. There is nothing to see, however; nothing save the pale half-moon lifting timorously against the purpling sky as the speeding train leaves Milford Station far behind and thunders on through the night, far away.