Teds Shorts - A Series of Short Stories

The Last Departure 

It was late, the hour when Waterloo Station began to exhale. The last commuters hurried through, their footsteps echoing beneath the iron and glass canopy like rainwater in a cavern. Shops were shuttered, their metal grilles drawn. Only the long, patient announcements and the hiss of departing trains gave the vast concourse a heartbeat. 

At 23:17, beneath the great clock, a man stood waiting. 

He wore a long coat of dark wool, its collar high, its buttons polished. His shoes gleamed though the leather was of a style long vanished from modern pavements. His hair was neatly parted, his hands gloved, and at his waist hung a small silver watch-chain that caught the station’s pale light. 

He might have been any late traveller, save for the way he stood — very still, almost formal, as if posing for a portrait. 

Helen was tired. Her train from Guildford had been delayed twice, and her phone battery was blinking red. She hurried off the platform, tugging her scarf tighter, head bowed against a faint autumn draught that found its way through the concourse. 

She had agreed to meet her partner, Tom, “under the clock” before catching a taxi home. It was a running joke — under the clock, as if they were characters in an old film. But it was tradition now, a small ritual amid the weekday grind. 

She checked her watch. 23:18. No sign of him. 

Then she saw the man in the long coat. 

He was standing directly beneath the clock, hands folded behind his back, eyes scanning the concourse with a calm expectancy. He looked, she thought, rather distinguished. Perhaps a theatre actor, or one of those historical interpreters from the South Bank museums who had forgotten to change before catching his train. His clothes too early for a Peeky Blinders extra. 

Still, something about his stillness made her pause. 

“Excuse me,” she said politely, stepping closer. “Are you waiting for someone?” 

The man turned. His expression was gentle, courteous, his voice low and measured, a cadence from another age. 

“Indeed I am, madam. Though I fear my appointment is somewhat delayed.” 

His accent was old London, clipped yet musical. 

“Ah,” Helen smiled faintly, relieved by his calmness. “Seems to be the night for delays. Are you meeting someone off a train?” 

“Yes,” he said, glancing toward the platforms. “She was to arrive on the Portsmouth service. But the time escapes me, these timetables are not what they once were.” 

Helen followed his gaze. “The Portsmouth trains finish earlier than that now. Last one left over an hour ago.” 

He frowned. “Then I have missed her.” 

There was such quiet despair in those four words that Helen softened. “Perhaps you could call her?” she offered, holding up her phone. “I can check the arrival boards for you.” 

He looked at the device as one might regard a relic from a strange civilisation. 

“Your instrument , it displays the time, does it not?” 

“Yes,” she said, puzzled. “It’s twenty-three twenty-two.” 

“Ah,” he murmured, glancing up toward the great clock overhead. “Then that at least remains true.” 

He smiled faintly, almost wistfully. “I thank you for your kindness, miss.” 

They stood together for a while, an odd pair among the dwindling flow of travellers — the woman in her creased office clothes, the man who seemed sculpted from another century. 

Something about him drew conversation, as if politeness were a shield against the loneliness of the hour. Helen asked if he lived in London. 

“I did,” he replied carefully. “In Lambeth, by the river. A modest lodging, though comfortable enough for a clerk’s income.” 

She smiled. “A clerk? That sounds very Dickensian.” 

He looked at her blankly. “Mr Dickens? Yes, I recall he wrote for Household Words. I met him once, briefly, at my employer’s offices. A spirited fellow.” 

Eleanor laughed softly — then realised he wasn’t joking. 

“Wait, you mean Charles Dickens?” 

“Why, yes,” he said simply. 

She hesitated. His tone was so natural, so utterly sincere, that she felt a faint unease stir. 

“That must have been... a long time ago,” she said gently. 

He tilted his head, studying her. “I suppose it was. Yet the hours seem confused here, as though the station itself suspends them.” 

He looked about, brow furrowing. “When I first arrived, there was no glass roof. Only the soot of engines and the cries of porters. And now —” he gestured toward the LED screens. “these curious lanterns proclaiming destinations I scarcely recognise.” 

Helen’s skin prickled. 

“Are you saying you’ve been here before?” 

He nodded. “Many times. I was to meet her here. Under the clock. It was to be our elopement.” 

She felt the hairs on her neck rise. “Who was she?” 

“Miss Clara Henshaw. She worked at the telegraph office near Blackfriars. We were to leave for Portsmouth together, to take the morning boat to France. I carried the fare in my coat pocket.” 

His gloved hand patted the pocket absently. 

“But she did not come,” he said softly. “I waited. The hour passed. The station grew cold. There was a commotion, a train derailed beyond Vauxhall, they said. I never knew whether she was aboard.” 

His eyes clouded. “And then... nothing. Only the sound of the clock.” 

Helen swallowed. The sounds around them, tannoy, footsteps, the metallic echo of a cleaner’s trolley all seemed distant now. 

“May I ask,” she said quietly, “what year that was?” 

He met her gaze, unflinching. “Eighteen hundred and seventy-one.” 

Helen forced a small laugh. “You’re— you’re very committed to the role.” 

“Role?” 

“Yes, your story, you must be rehearsing something? A performance?” 

He regarded her gravely. “Performance?” 

His confusion was genuine, almost childlike. 

Then the clock above them chimed the half-hour. The sound was deep, resonant,  though, she realised with a start, the modern clock had no chime. 

He flinched slightly, as though struck by memory. “I hear it still,” he murmured. “That night, it marked the hour, and I... I thought perhaps she was delayed. I waited again the next evening, and the next. Always the same hour. Always under the clock.” 

His voice broke. 

Helen felt tears rise. “You’ve been waiting all this time,” she whispered. 

He looked at her with sudden clarity. “Tell me, madam — this place, this Waterloo, is it the same as once it was?” 

“In name, yes,” she said softly. “But everything else has changed.” 

He looked around once more, his gaze passing over the bright ticket machines, the rolling adverts, the departing stragglers. 

“So much light,” he said. “And yet so little warmth.” 

Then, quite suddenly, his expression shifted. “But you, you see me.” 

“Of course I do.” 

“No,” he said quietly. “Others pass by and do not. They walk through me as through mist. I thought them rude. But now...” 

He turned his hands before him, studying them as though for the first time. His gloves were spotless; the skin beneath was faintly translucent, the veins silvery, like frost beneath glass. 

“I feel no chill,” he whispered. “No weight.” 

His watch-chain trembled faintly. The little silver timepiece at its end opened of its own accord, its face stopped at 11:24. 

Helen felt her heart thudding. “You said that was when, when she didn’t come?” 

He nodded slowly. “The train was to leave at that moment. I remember hearing the whistle, running forward to see if she was aboard, and then—” 

He faltered. 

“And then what?” she asked. 

“There was steam... shouting... and a sudden blow, as though the world itself had struck me down.” 

He looked up at her, eyes wide with dawning comprehension. 

“I did not board the train, did I?” 

Helen could not speak. 

“I did not go with her,” he said again, voice breaking. “Nor she with me. We are both gone from that place.” 

He looked about wildly, as if expecting to see the years themselves peel away. “How long have I wandered here?” 

She found her voice. “A hundred and fifty-four years.” 

He drew a slow breath that stirred no air. “Then I am... I am no longer of your world.” 

Helen reached out instinctively, her hand brushing his sleeve. For an instant she felt texture, wool, smooth and cool and then nothing, as if her hand had passed through smoke. 

He looked down at where her fingers had been, a faint, sad smile touching his lips. 

“So it is true,” he murmured. “I am only memory.” 

For a while, neither spoke. The concourse emptied further. The loudspeakers announced the final departures; a cleaner swept the far tiles, oblivious. 

Helen felt the weight of the moment settle, the enormity of being witness to someone realising his own death. 

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I wish I could help.” 

“You already have,” he replied. “You have spoken to me. Seen me. I believe that is all I sought, to be seen once more, before the hour turned.” 

He looked upward toward the clock again. The hands crept toward midnight. 

“When the hour strikes,” he said quietly, “I think I must go.” 

“Where?” 

He smiled faintly. “Where all time goes into the silence between ticks.” 

He took out his watch, still open in his hand, and turned it so she could see. The hands now moved again, slow but steady. 

“It seems time has forgiven me,” he whispered. 

Helen felt tears on her cheeks. “You’ll find her,” she said. “Wherever you go.” 

He met her gaze, and for a moment his features softened, the tension of years dissolving. 

“I believe I already have,” he said gently. “She was kind, as you are kind. It is enough.” 

The clock above them began to toll midnight. 

One... two... three... 

With each chime, his outline grew fainter, as though the sound were drawing him away. 

Four... five... six... 

He lifted his hand in farewell, and for an instant, the concourse lights dimmed. 

Seven... eight... nine... 

His voice, barely a whisper: “Tell her I waited.” 

Ten... eleven... twelve. 

The final chime faded into the rafters. 

Where he had stood, there was only the faint scent of rain and old coal, and a small silver watch upon the tiles, its hands resting peacefully at twelve. 

Helen bent to pick it up, but as her fingers touched the metal, it dissolved like mist. Only the faint warmth of its shape lingered on her palm. 

She stood there for a long time, staring at the empty space beneath the clock. Then she drew a long breath, wiped her cheeks, and turned toward the exit. 

Outside, the taxis waited in neat lines, engines idling. The city was quiet, washed in sodium light. 

When she climbed into one and gave her address, the driver glanced at her in the mirror. “You alright, love? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

She smiled faintly. “Something like that.” 

As they pulled away, she looked back through the glass. 

For a moment, perhaps no more than imagination, she thought she saw a figure standing once more beneath the clock, a woman this time, in a pale shawl, her eyes searching the crowd. 

Then the car turned the corner, and Waterloo was lost to view. 

Long after, when Helen spoke of that night, if she spoke of it at all , she found herself doubting what she had seen. The mind finds its own ways to fold the impossible into reason. 

Yet whenever she passed through Waterloo, even at the busiest hour, she could not help but glance upward at the clock. 

Once, years later, as she hurried through on a stormy November evening, she thought she saw two shapes beneath it, a man and a woman, hand in hand, their faces turned toward one another with quiet peace. 

No one else seemed to notice. The crowd parted around them as water parts around a stone. 

Then the tannoy called the next departure, and they were gone. 

Helen smiled to herself, and for reasons she could not name, felt lighter as she walked on.