“Just clear off,” I said, reflecting on how cheap it was, after all, to get him out of my sight for an hour or two.
“I can set off for Cambridge tomorrow knowing that all is not darkness in this hard world.” He pocketed some poems. “I never go out without one or two. A couple of days ago I read a few in The Jolly Roger near Tadcaster, and the coins that got thrown at me paid for two pints of Thunderstone’s best brew. They appreciate poetry in the West Riding.”
“If you don’t belt up and go,” I said, “the ale in the pub will get too warm to drink,” at which he almost ran.
I stayed three days, and even then hadn’t kipped myself out. I didn’t want to leave such a comfortable house, with sweet breezes wafting through the half-open parlour window. Along the railway line belonging to me was a shallow bank where fresh cowslips prospered, a yellow zone to lie on till darkness drove me in for food and drink. The grass wasn’t as dry as I had thought, but the wet patch still didn’t bring on a craving to be on my way — though go I had to.
On the morning of departure Clegg set me up with as big a breakfast as could be made in two frying pans. “You’re trying to kill me,” I said.
“You never know where your next meal is coming from, in the sort of adventures you can’t help falling into.”
“I do. I’ve got money. Your plate’s wiggling, by the way. Go to the dentist for another fitting. Tell him to send me the bill. Moggerhanger owes me, so there won’t be a problem paying.” I forked prime Fen bacon onto a slice of fried bread. “And don’t say you can manage. You’ll have lots of time to manage when you’re dead. Just get it seen to.”
He sat for his breakfast. “When will you be back?”
“You know I never can tell. I hope it’ll be soon, that’s all. I’ll be going up by train, so you can drive me to the station.”
I left the remains of my meal for Dismal who, though stuffed already on two tins of Bogie, drew rinds and egg bits into his cavernous mouth. He was such a whale in canine form that if I put my head between his jaws and gave a shout some poor old Jonah would scream that he wanted out.
“Keep the shotgun primed,” I told Clegg when he let me off at the station, “in case the Green Toe Gang call to have a word with me. Don’t let them kidnap Dismal, though. He’ll eat their car as they drive him away in it, which wouldn’t do even his digestion any good.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The train left on time. It sometimes did. It often didn’t, and I waited on the platform half a day. When it did it might come to a halt for three hours somewhere down the line. Now and again some big-headed fare-paying respectable-looking passenger in first-class stopped us after gleefully pulling the cord, looking as smug as if LSD wouldn’t melt in his mouth as a member of the railway Gestapo pushed by on his way to beat to a pulp whoever in steerage he decided had done it.
You could never tell what the delay was about. There was always something. It might be a fault in the heating system, and if so everybody in one carriage would be sweltering, eyes bulging as they undressed nearly to the buff, a few of them hacking at the sealed windows with the metal corners of their briefcases, hoping to get out to fresh air.
In the adjoining carriage there would be people freezing to death, frantically buttoning their overcoats, or fastening newspapers around themselves with their ties if they were properly dressed. A few would begin ripping the seats apart intending to make a fire, survival of the fittest being in full spate.
Those in the connecting space between a hot carriage and a cold carriage, appreciating the golden mean, had to decide between broiling their arses and freezing their faces, or freezing their arse and boiling their face. Under the circumstances the decision came to nothing, because the ticket inspector got there first and, immune to any drastic variations of temperature, charged ten quid to those passengers who wanted to take his place, the amount collected being no inconsiderable addition to the tax-free part of his income.
Sometimes he packed twenty or thirty into the space, till they hardly knew whether they were in the Black Hole of Calcutta or Captain Scott’s tent at the South Pole. One ticket inspector made enough money to retire in five years, after selling the concession to his mate, who made twenty thousand before going off to Tahiti. The company owning the line set the railway police on to find out why such well trained men were leaving their jobs so prematurely. When the reason was explained to the managing director he said he would only allow the transactions to continue if the ticket inspector split the difference in their takings with him — for the benefit of the shareholders of course whom, he felt it was his proud duty to state, he was duty bound to look after.
These by no means unrealistic reflections served merely to illustrate that, since privatisation, anything can happen on a train in England, not necessarily causing injury or death, though cases of that were not unknown.
However, relaxed and easy, I settled back to read The Times and smoke a cigar, but even then we were delayed half an hour because a cow had got onto the line, only removed after an announcement over the tannoy (though barely understandable due to so much static from faulty installation that it sounded as if coming from the middle of Arabia in a sandstorm) asking for someone — anyone, please! — to get out and milk it, which a young woman did with such charming expertise that every passenger applauded when the train grumbled on its way.
A sixty-year-old chap wearing a tweed suit, tie and shining brogues, boarded at the first stop down the line. I had seen him before, though hoped he wouldn’t remember having set eyes on me. He was so close shaven that a line of blood like a thread of red string ran a few inches down one of his cheeks, indicating either an alcoholic, someone who might at any second go off his head, or a chap who’d just come out of the jungle and hadn’t yet had time to burn the leech off his face with the hot end of a cigarette.
He sat opposite, as I’d known he was bound to, and I was halfway through an editorial about Mrs Thatcher before he spoke, in a croaky, manic, accusatory tone which I recalled from when I had given him a lift in Moggerhanger’s Rolls a few years ago on the A1. “What are you looking at me like that for?” he said.
I continued reading, while he played with the silver watch chain across his waistcoat. He was Percy Blemish, the husband of Mrs Blemish who was happily working as the housekeeper at Moggerhanger’s, and who should never have married the bloke whose baleful grey blue eyes wouldn’t stop staring at me. When he wasn’t tormenting his wife with some self-indulgent mental turmoil or other he would talk an unwitting motorist at a service station or transport café on the Great North Road into giving him a lift towards Tinder Box Cottage outside Goole. He always looked respectable, but what I wanted to know was how he came to be on the train instead of joying along in a car and sending the driver mad.
“I’m not looking at you.” I laid my paper down. “But if I am it’s because I’ve seen you before. If you keep on looking as closely at me as you are already you’ll know you’ve seen me before as well.”
His lips wiggled about: “That’s as may be. You were staring at me, though. I would know, wouldn’t I?”
“Normally,” I said, “you go up and down the country cadging lifts from car drivers, so why are you on a train?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“A week ago I saw your wife at Lord Moggerhanger’s, and she was getting on very well, except for worrying about you, which is more than you deserve. She told me she had no idea where you were.”