(T)rain stopped play

Clifford Burden

2006

I awoke to the radio and the sounds of The Timelords singing 'Doctorin' the Tardis and rain against my window. The former sound was a novelty - an unlikely hit that had just topped the UK pop charts - while the latter was the familiar signature tune for a British summer.

Today though, it would take more than a morning shower to dampen my spirits. This was Sunday 3rd July 1988 and I was taking the woman I loved to watch Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg play in the final of the Wimbledon men's singles. The players - and my partner Florence and I - were due on court in just under six hours, weather permitting. Plenty of time, I told myself as I jumped out of bed, for the skies to clear.

We were staying with my parents in High Wycombe, an industrial/market town 29 miles north-west of London, 45 minutes from the capital by train. We reached Wycombe station in time for the 10.30 train, aboard which Florence and I had a carriage to ourselves. We faced each other, sitting near a window. The rain was now bucketing down but I still predicted a brighter afternoon, blissfully unaware of the fact that the barometric pressure over London was at its lowest reading since 1956.

30 minutes into the journey, suddenly tortured by the image of our Wimbledon tickets left in High Wycombe, I casually asked Florence if she had them. She assured me she did. 'Can I see them; not that I don't believe you, I just want to hold them.'

Florence rummaged inside her handbag. I looked on, tense, relaxing only when I saw the tickets, worth £50 but to me priceless. As I took them from Florence's outstretched hand I promptly dropped them, scorning my sudden panic because of course the tickets had nowhere to go but the floor. Or had they?

They behaved as if they were glued together, arrowing vertically towards the angle between the floor and door, wedging in a crack that I wouldn't have known existed if I hadn't been watching, wide-eyed, as they fluttered there in the grip of an unseen force, gradually sliding from sight until they were sucked outside and under the train.

I stared slack-jawed at the crack, willing time to reverse, unable to absorb what I'd witnessed. Florence was laughing, a wonderful laugh, the happiest sound I know, so, even in these extraordinarily unfunny circumstances, I wasn't annoyed. That's love. Or shock. 'Sorry,' said Florence. 'It's just your face.'

I looked at the emergency cord and stood up to pull it. Wait! Did this count as an emergency? Of course! But would others see it that way? I lowered my hand and raced to the window. Wembley Complex station rushed by in a 100-mile-per-hour blur. For the rest of the journey I paced about the carriage muttering 'I don't believe it' and staving off madness. At Marylebone we faced an hour's wait for the next Wembley train, so we hailed a black cab and crawled through teeming rain, delayed interminably - or so it seemed - by flood waters, red traffic lights and slow-moving cars.

At Wembley station I sprinted to the platform, where a quartet of engineers in orange overalls were on their lunch break. I told them my story and they laughed. I still couldn't see the funny side. 'You can't go on the tracks,' said the boss, 'it's illegal and dangerous.' Perhaps he saw determination (or desperation) on my face for he added: 'Not alone, anyway. I'll go with you.'

We set off down the tracks. It was a desperate mission but failure wasn't an option. No tickets meant no Centre Court. Within seconds I was soaked. I looked like I'd been swimming in my clothes. Several minutes into the search, I heard a high-pitch whip crack, remote and muffled, the steel tracks singing the presence of an approaching train, of which I was oblivious until the engineer steered me aside to watch it pass. After five more minutes of sodden searching the engineer said: 'Listen pal, I'm sorry, this is mission impossible, let's go back.'

'Please, we must be close.' I counted 50 steps, then 50 more. The engineer stopped; the end of the line for him. I stopped too, poised to accept failure when - for the second time in an hour - I doubted my eyes and sanity. There, draped over a track, dirty, saturated, miraculously intact, miraculously real, lay a ticket. I shouted, picked it up, waved it and shook the engineer's hand, thanking him. We didn't find the other one but they had been sold as a pair so I knew we needed only one to get into Wimbledon. We hurried back down the track. Florence laughed (again) when she saw my sodden state then cheered and applauded when she saw the ticket.

She put it in her handbag. 'Don't show it to me until we're at Wimbledon,' I said. 'Please. Even if I beg.'

The taxi to Baker Street and Tube travel to Southfields was swift and uneventful. We reached Wimbledon at 2.30pm. The woman at the gate said our tale was the strangest excuse for a lost ticket she'd heard. Perhaps the BBC's Des Lynam might like to interview us? Ignoring the chance for our 15 minutes of fame, we took our Centre Court seats, savouring the atmosphere as late afternoon slipped into early evening and - incredibly - the rain stopped.

Cheers sounded as the covers came off. Roars greeted the appearance of Becker and Edberg. Then a ray of sunshine illuminated the court just before the umpire said the magic word: 'Play!'

It didn't last. We saw 22 minutes and five games of tennis before rain stopped play. We enjoyed every second. The next day Edberg won the match in four sets and Florence and I were there to watch.

Only this time, on the train to London, I didn't ask to see the ticket.