Afterwards

 

The three travellers sat together. Unaccustomedly, they all wore good suits of English tweed and brown boots, for were they not all English? By birth or examination?

"A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England’s, breathing English air"

 

The travellers were slightly fuddled - it seems as though from forgetful sleep, for it was a long time since they had left the station, and they each bore injuries.

The noise, smoke and shouting had been lulled by the heat of the afternoon and the motion of the train.

They did not converse, 

but when the train drew up unwontedly by a bare platform and no-one left and no-one came, one of them coughed. 

The Conductor immediately appeared, dapper in his railway uniform of black trousers and neat white jacket. His name badge said Abraham.

A breeze stirs the heat. Somewhere, a bee hums. The train waits.

One of the three asked: is this a scheduled stop? How long is the delay?

Abraham replied: the wait is very long. Do you three martyrs wish to take tea while you wait? 

The three stir, confused, the city already far away in corrupted memory.

Abraham pauses. The train breathes steam. Outside, the trees are still.

"You are three, and yet not alike. You are not equal in deed. But you are equal in ending".

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

with thanks to Edward Thomas for Adlestrop and Rupert Brooke for The Soldier