I saw the note on the mantelpiece
When I got home, rather late,
I knew that something was wrong when I
First saw the open gate,
The house was still and the air was chill
As I called her name, Lorraine,
The note said, ‘Don’t try to follow me,
I’ve caught the evening train.’

I stood for more than a minute
Staring down at her tidy scrawl,
And didn’t breathe for a minute more
‘Til I thought that I would fall,
She’d often threatened to leave me but
I’d put that down to pique,
I stood there now with a furrowed brow
And a future, looking bleak!

I studied the train timetable
Was she going West or North?
The West Express would have left, I guessed,
She’d head for the Firth of Forth,
I backed the car from the garage
Dipped the lights and stepped on the gas,
And headed on up the Great North Road
Beside the railway tracks.

The train was fully a mile ahead
It was lit like a silver snake,
Winding in and out of the bends
And easy to overtake,
I pulled abreast by a hillside crest
To a carriage, just on the rise,
With a single female passenger,
Who sat there, dabbing her eyes.

I knew that the train would stop at York
So I raced on there instead,
Jumped out and ran to the station
While the blood had rushed to my head,
I caught the train as it pulled on out
And I found her on her own,
Weeping free, with her back to me,
She thought she was all alone.

She jumped when I sat in front of her,
And I reached on out, in vain,
‘Why did you even follow me,
I thought that I’d made it plain!’
‘You know I never could let you go,
You mean all the world to me!’
She turned and looked out the window
So I knelt there, down on one knee.

I fumbled deep in my pockets, felt
For the only helpful thing,
Slipped it onto her finger, then
A big brass curtain ring,
She laughed and said, ‘You don’t mean it!’
But her eyes were bright with tears,
And I said after I’d kissed her
That I’d meant to ask, for years!

‘You know that you’ll have to come on home
At five, or six at the most,
No more of your office parties where
I burn and spoil the roast!’
I put my hand on my heart right there
And I quelled her, with a look,
It has to be pretty special when
The master marries the cook!

David Lewis Paget