Full Steam Ahead, Felix

16. Time to Say Goodbye

Karl’s funeral was held on a cold, dry day in November 2017. The temperature itself was sobering, but the bite on the team’s cheeks that day was a wake-up call they did not need. Everyone arriving for work that morning knew the itinerary for the day. They climbed the stairs to the station with a hushed air of respect, walking the same route as Karl had once done, his forever absence present as they traced the steps he would never walk again.

Ascending the stairs that morning were the TPE colleagues who worked in the booking office, such as Angela Dunn, and those who had volunteered to cover the shifts of the staff who worked on the platforms. The latter knew Karl best of all and needed to attend his funeral. Naturally, they weren’t coming into work that day. So the railway family pulled strings and swapped shifts so that all those who wanted to could be with Karl for his final journey.

When the railway loses one of its own, it is a tragedy that ripples all the way along the network. And as Karl had worked on the rail-replacement buses before joining the team at Huddersfield, he had made a massive impact on people all over the railway. Everyone wanted a chance to say goodbye, even if they had to work on the day of the funeral. Karl’s family also wanted their boy to bid farewell to the place he had loved for so long. A special send-off was now devised for this very special man. It proved to be so special that no one who witnessed it would ever, ever forget it.

At about 1 p.m. on 6 November, Karl came to Huddersfield station one last time. The word went round, and people from all over the network came to pay their respects. They arrived in ones and twos and groups: drivers and conductors and even some executives from head office. As they stepped through the gateline, it was with very heavy hearts. The concourse at Huddersfield was often the setting for affectionate reunions of friends and family, who rushed at one another to hug, the excitement of coming home eclipsing all else, but that morning there was little warmth to be found among the travelling TPE workers. Colleagues embraced or shook hands or acknowledged each other with formal, gruff nods, but there was no joy in their being together. For the one person who had brought them together was painfully absent.

In the booking office, Angela Dunn was fighting her way through her shift. Then, at the appointed hour, she gently drew down the window on her serving hatch. All work at the station ceased. Before she left the office, she draped a bright red pashmina over her navy uniform; everyone had been asked to wear red today for Karl, in honour of his favourite football team, Manchester United. Angela planned to wear her scarlet scarf all day long. It was nice to feel that she was honouring her colleague in this small way, even though she couldn’t go to the funeral. Customers would ask why she was wearing it, and she would tell them, and in speaking Karl’s name there was a kind of comfort, as though it was helping to keep his memory alive.

As Angela stepped out on to the station steps that lunchtime, she saw that everyone else had got the memo: all the TPE colleagues were wearing ruby-red hats, scarves, jackets and jumpers as they ranged along the steps of the station – about fifty people or more, all told. The steps were absolutely full. The colourful clothing made for an incongruous burst of brightness. It seemed at odds with the solemnity of the day – and yet, somehow, it also perfectly summed up the man they were mourning, he who could always cheer his colleagues up, no matter what was getting them down.

Despite the numbers there, a hush soon fell among the gathered colleagues. At that moment a big black hearse pulled off the road by the taxi rank and crossed on to the regal sandstone floor of the square itself. Driven at a sombre pace, the car pulled up in front of the steps – and there it remained.

The square fell silent. Even the pigeons pecking in the fountains seemed to stop what they were doing and be still. Karl’s coffin was wreathed all over with flowers; one that stood out in particular was a love heart made of pink roses from his fiancée.

Angela Dunn blinked back tears. It was a very emotional moment. Karl had been so young and his death so sudden, and he had been such a wonderful, kind bloke. His was a truly tragic loss; there were no words to explain how everybody felt.

And so, without words, everyone standing on the steps simply joined hands and bowed their heads. Sara was there, and Dan, and Chrissie and Amanda from the booking office. Everyone wanted to pay their respects. That was testament to Karl, and to his character – how very many people he had touched in his too-short time on this earth. There was a shared, silent moment as they all looked down at Karl’s coffin in the hearse, holding hands and thinking of him. They cried genuine tears for the loss of a much-loved colleague who had been taken far too soon.

For Sara, it was a very peculiar moment. For though she was distraught, there was also some strange comfort in the knowledge that Karl was surrounded by his colleagues. There was comfort in knowing how much he had been loved. And, in a way, his presence at the station made him feel part of the team for one last time. This was one last shift that they all could work together.

Eventually, though, and all too soon, the time came for Karl to move on to the crematorium, for his funeral service to begin. So many people were going that the company had laid on a coach, and Sara, Dan and the others went off to board it. Angela Dunn and those who had agreed to work remained behind on the steps, ready to wave Karl off on his final journey, just as he had waved off thousands of passengers in his time at the station.

As the hearse pulled away, Angela raised a hand in farewell, saluting a colleague who had given so much to the station, but who, they all knew, had had so much more to give.

Karl’s funeral, as with all such services, was supposed to mark the end of mourning, but of course that is never, ever the case. Though it provided an opportunity to celebrate him and say goodbye, afterwards the raw pain of his loss still smarted. It was impossible even trying to get back to ‘normal’. In truth, Sara wasn’t sure she ever wanted not to feel that lurching pain when she stood out on the platforms in the wintry weather without him. At least her grief reminded her of him. But who was she kidding – there were reminders everywhere she looked.

For Dan, it was the night shifts when he missed Karl the most. Though the team leaders and platform staff only coincided irregularly in the rota, he was abundantly aware that the next time Karl and he were due to work together it was going to be somebody else covering for Karl. Dan had figured that one out, and it left a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

As she had done for so many of her colleagues before, it was Felix who helped him through. The cat had such an extraordinary sixth sense at picking up on people’s vulnerability. When Billy Bolt had died, it was Felix who had comforted and consoled his colleagues, who’d felt bereft without their Billy. Now, as then, Felix stepped up when her team needed her. Death may have snatched another member of the Huddersfield station family, but Felix was determined to be there for those left behind. Karl may have gone, but Felix could still care for the friends he had loved, now he wasn’t there to do it for himself.

Dan found that it was the way Felix would come over to say hello as if everything was normal that he found reassuring. He would be sat at his desk, trying and failing to concentrate, and Felix would come and sit on his papers and paw gently at his bearded face. Her claws would be tucked in, so that she prodded softly at him with her velvet paws.

If he did not respond, she would lean forward and delicately give him a little nibble on his eyebrow, as if to say, ‘I’m here, Dan. Don’t you forget me now!’

As if he ever could.