Scrollwork cross design

You walk the platform with a lamp. The rail is cold under your palm. Someone, years back, forged the whole run of it as one vine, each stem rolling into a spiral and each spiral tightening towards its tip, so that no two curls quite agree on how far they go. Halloran said the trick was never to let the tip close completely. A closed scroll, he said, is a door nobody can open again.

You kneel by the loose joint with the tongs and the little flat file. The iron is black and gritty with rain. You work the collar free one turn at a time, the way he showed you, until the vine breathes and sits true. Far down the line a signal clanks and drops. A porter shouts something about the milk van.

When the last coupling is tight you stand, and the lamp throws the whole fence against the wet sleepers: a cross of curling iron, its arms running out into spirals, the upright reaching up into the dark above the tracks. It looks lighter than iron has any right to be. You lock the gate, pocket the key, and leave the lamp burning for whoever comes off the last train.