The pension club held a monthly quiz. Norman wrote the questions, and everyone knew the final round would contain something about trains. He had worked on the railway and considered timetables a form of poetry.
This month his final question was: “Which station has the longest platform in the country?” Three teams objected. The answer depended on the year, the measurement, and whether abandoned platforms counted. Norman said he had a printed source. Elsie asked when it was printed. He said 1986.
The room debated for fifteen minutes. One man recalled a television program. Another had once changed trains at a platform so long he bought lunch halfway down it. Norman refused to give a hint. His wife, June, sat quietly at the back, knitting.
When answers were collected, the teams had written three different stations. June’s team wrote “Ask Norman’s wife.” Norman marked it wrong. June asked him to read the wording again. He did and insisted it was clear.
“You didn’t ask which one has the longest platform,” she said. “You asked which station has the longest platform in the country. We live next to a very long wooden platform at the village station. It stretches from the ticket office to the old goods shed.”
Norman said length was measured, not guessed. June produced a measuring tape from her knitting bag. Everyone laughed, because Norman had spent years explaining that arguments should be settled with evidence.
On Saturday they visited the village station. Norman, June, and four quiz teams measured the platform in the rain. It wasn’t a record. Norman was relieved. June took down the number anyway. She said the issue was not whether it won, but whether Norman could still ask a question without inviting a technical committee.
At the next quiz Norman promised no trains. The final question asked, “What is the oldest living thing in this room?” Teams named a potted fern, a wooden table, and Norman. Norman said the answer was a plant on the windowsill, according to the label beneath it.
June turned the pot around. The label read “Cutting from June’s plant, 1972.” The cutting itself had been taken last month. The room erupted again. Norman offered to cancel the final round permanently.
Norman’s wife later found his 1986 source tucked into the back of a recipe book. It listed the record for that year, not the present day. He had been defending an answer to a question he had forgotten to date. June framed the clipping and wrote beneath it, ‘Correct once.’
The club secretary proposed a rule that questions must be checked by two people before quiz night. Norman said June would challenge everything. June said she would only challenge what he hadn’t checked. They tried a sample question about the first color of a familiar postbox. Half the group asked which country, which year, and whether it had been repainted. Norman withdrew the proposal before anyone reached for the measuring tape. The secretary wrote a different rule: arguments could last five minutes, unless they were funny.
Elsie stopped him. “Absolutely not. We come for the argument.”
Norman stared at the scorecards. June’s team had written “The question.”
“How can a question be alive?” he asked.
“Yours survive every answer,” June said.
They gave June the prize: a tiny tape measure on a key ring. Norman asked her to check whether it was regulation length.