Hilary Fannin: My layer of self-protection has been sandblasted away

The early-morning train was packed, many of the seats occupied by semi-dozing commuters with headphones in their ears and mobiles on their laps. Two erudite schoolboys had removed their electronic devices, however, to have a conversation that, as their enthusiasm for their subject quickened, rang out loud and clear, cutting through the morning torpor.

The subject under discussion was Earth’s magnetic fields, which apparently shield the planet from cosmic rays. It was news to me that the scorched face of our planet, like that of many an old trouper, benefits from a UV-filtering moisturiser, but there was more to come.

According to the excited boffins, Mars had once enjoyed that same cosmic protection too, but it had somehow evaporated. There had, like, totally been life on Mars, they concluded. Billions of years ago, they assured each other, there was thick, viscous water there, and scientists have already found molecules and acids, so there’s no way, absolutely no way, that there weren’t Martians once.

“What happened them?”

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“I dunno. Like, the planet lost its protection and it just burned.”

Unnoticed by the man opposite me, something dropped to the carriage floor. I bent to pick it up, a piece of soft black leather in the shape of a miniature animal hide

The man opposite me was long-legged and expensively dressed in a royal-blue suit and shiny shoes. When his phone wasn’t interrupting him, requiring him — or so it seemed to me — to make on-the-spot decisions about important commercial matters, he was reading from a large book.

I thought I recognised it, a work of science fiction that I’d seen reviewed, about complex wars in dystopian worlds (although whether that class of a narrative can still be classified as fiction is moot).

Unnoticed by him, something dropped to the carriage floor. I bent to pick it up, a piece of soft black leather in the shape of a miniature animal hide, with a three-dimensional imitation mouse’s head attached. It was a curious and exclusive-looking thing.

“My bookmark,” the man explained, taking the item from my hand.

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The young scientists in the next bay of seats were now speculating that some enterprising Martians, forced to abandon their dying planet, might have come to Earth. As their conversation happily deteriorated into speculation about which of their friends looked most like a Martian and might provide the scientific community with the missing link, a man and child boarded the train.

The father, holding the child’s schoolbag, was slightly tired-looking and shadowy-jawed. The child, wearing a school blazer, shorts, knee socks and a long scarf, was, however, wide awake.

While the train made its weary way to the city centre, stopping for no apparent reason on that desolate part of the line where multiple tracks converge and empty trains slump alongside disused sheds, the child invented games for them to play. The father, though at times preoccupied with his phone, which was sporadically demanding his attention, nevertheless played the games the child proposed, involving force fields and superpowers.

Pretty soon we were all teleported to the city centre, where the elegant man in the blue suit packed away his otherworldly read, the schoolboys slouched into their backpacks and the father held his child’s hand as we all disembarked from the train.

Before leaving the station, I turned to see the child being high-fived for his majestic effort

Searching my pockets for my Leap card, I watched the child run to the piano on the platform. The instrument, a thing of joy, has recently been repaired, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, especially when I’m waiting on the opposite platform to go home again in the evening, it is played by some soulful pianist. Heading towards the escalators, I overheard the father patiently suggest that the child might like to play a tune. Expecting to hear, perhaps, a competent rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I slowed my step and was instead treated to the child banging out a gloriously confident, entirely discordant cacophony that rang out on the morning platform.

Before leaving the station, I turned to see the child being high-fived for this majestic effort.

Maybe it’s the time of year, the earlier descent of darkness, the ribboned morning skies streaming orange and pink, maybe it’s the relentless low-level sense of helplessness in the face of world events, but these days I feel as if a layer of self-protection has been sandblasted away. It makes me more exposed, more vulnerable to small moments of beauty seeping through the cracks.

I continued my journey, stepping into a more hopeful day. Dwarfed at the traffic lights by knots of tumultuous youth streaming across the busy road, I went in search of a coffee.