‘Wassis name?’ demanded Gary.
It was quite as bad as being accosted by a drunk.
‘Siggy.’
‘Issat short for cigarette?’
I was reluctant to open channels for further conversation. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m allergic to animals,’ said the elderly woman. ‘Perhaps,’ she addressed the man in the astrakhan collar, ‘you’d open the window. I must have fresh air or I can’t answer for my asthma.’
The man stood up and made his way over to the window. As he fought with the little sliding pane at the top, the train careened round a bend and he lurched sideways, knocking the magazine from Gary’s mother’s hand and treading heavily on Gary. For a boy he was a disgraceful cry-baby. It was some time before calm was restored and the readers among us allowed to return to their literature in peace. The elderly woman sat sucking and staring angrily at the heathery mountain with one hand pressed to her chest. I tried to give my whole attention to The Pilgrim’s Progress. Snow blew in through the open window directly on to my lap, and the wind from the motion of the train parted my hair, but I did not dare to protest. Instead I concentrated on the Discourse between Mercy and Good Christiana.
During the next half-hour, as I brushed the snowflakes from my increasingly sodden page, I conceived a great dislike for Mercy, who wept for her carnal relations sinning in ignorance of a better course. Good Christiana, a prig if ever there was one, comforted her, saying – I thought obscurely – bowels becometh pilgrims. I looked this up in the notes at the back. It referred of course to bowels of compassion, nothing to do with digestion, but the vision conjured by this maundering, complacent couple was unattractive, and when they reached the Slough of Despond, through which I had already waded earlier that day with Good Christiana’s husband, suddenly I could stand it no longer. I stood up and hurled The Pilgrim’s Progress through the open window into the whirling darkness. Because it was an ancient copy it fell into at least three hundred separate pages, of which a third blew back in through the window and distributed themselves about the compartment.
‘Tickets, please.’ A uniformed man had slid back the door. His eyes took in the mess. ‘What the bloomin’ heck’s going on in here?’ The elderly lady was brushing off the pages that had landed on her with as much shuddering abhorrence as though they had been cockroaches. ‘There’s a ten-pound fine for littering of railway property.’ His stare roamed round the compartment to rest on each of us in turn.
‘It was the wind,’ I explained. ‘I’ll clear it all up before I get off.’
‘I hope so, young lady.’ The ticket inspector’s already extensive frame seemed to swell with menace. ‘I’ll just have a look at your ticket.’
‘She’s got a rabbit,’ shrilled Gary, pointing at Siggy. ‘In that cage.’
The little swine! I would have liked to have chucked Gary after Bunyan.
‘Ho!’ The ticket inspector advanced into the compartment, trampling on several feet. The elderly woman gave a screech of pain and the man with the astrakhan collar winced and closed his eyes. ‘No Livestock Allowed In Passenger Accommodation,’ the ticket inspector said impressively. ‘You’ll have to put it in the luggage van.’
I summoned all my powers to charm. ‘I’m getting off in half an hour at Haltwhistle,’ I pleaded. ‘And,’ I put extra pathos into my voice, ‘I’ve just had an operation on my foot. It’ll be difficult – almost impossible – for me to fetch him from the van as well as get my luggage off the train. Couldn’t you please, just this once, out of the kindness of your heart, overlook the rules?’ I gave him my ecstatically happy Giselle smile from the beginning of the first act. ‘I’d be eternally grateful.’
‘No,’ said the inspector.
The man was an ass, a lackey in the pay of a hygiene-obsessed bureaucracy. I gave him my furious Titania scowl.
‘I’m sure I’ve caught a flea already,’ complained the old lady petulantly.
‘We done the plague at school,’ said Gary. ‘Teacher said it was fleas that killed everyone. Proberly you’re goin’ to come out in black boils. It looks like a plague rabbit.’ Before I could stop him he had darted forward and stuck his finger into Siggy’s cage. Siggy struck like a cobra. Gary screamed until my hair practically stood on end and his finger became a fountain gushing blood.
His mother lifted her eyes from her magazine long enough to say, ‘Shut it, you little tyke,’ and to give him a hard clout on his ear.
Gary howled and knuckled his eyes with a grubby fist. I saw the man in the astrakhan collar take out his wallet and discreetly press something into the ticket inspector’s hand. It looked like a ten-pound note. All the bluster and bullying went out of the ticket inspector. He grinned sycophantically and touched his cap as the note disappeared into his pocket.
‘Well, sir. Seeing as the young lady’s getting off soon it might be as well to make an exception, bearing in mind as she is a disabled person.’
‘That would be most sensible,’ said the astrakhan collar in a lordly way. There was a trace of something foreign in his accent.
Deferentially the ticket inspector withdrew his paunch and slid the door shut with an air of respectful solicitude.
I examined my benefactor. His hair was very dark and his skin was what people misleadingly call olive, though it was neither green nor black nor in the least oily but a sort of yellow to gold colour. Though he was much better looking than Alex, there was a similarity in the colouring and the long thin nose. Alex’s family were Lithuanian Jews. They lived in a poor but jolly community in Bethnal Green and a group of them always came to cheer his performances. Afterwards they got plastered and homesick together. I wondered if this man was a Lithuanian. Perhaps he was a refugee, as Alex’s father had been. He might be travelling north to find work so he could send money back to his starving family in Sovetsk. Perhaps he did not know the value of a ten-pound note. I imagined him sitting in a grim bedsitter in Carlisle, tears rolling down his face as he counted his remaining change and thought of the feast his hungry children could have enjoyed if only he had known … this flight of fancy was checked when I remembered that astrakhan was exorbitantly expensive.
I rose from my seat and leaned forward to tap him on the knee. He looked at me with black eyes like Alex’s, but unlike Alex’s, his were hostile.
‘I saw you give that man money. You must let me pay you back. I’m afraid I haven’t got enough cash but I could give you a post-dated cheque.’
He held up his hand. ‘Please. The bribe was offered in an entirely selfish spirit. I have already been interrupted in my reading more times than I could count. I have been sat on, trodden on, blown by the wind, snowed upon, had my ears tortured by screams and cryings. I would consider it a sufficient return if you could contrive not to excite any more disturbances.’
He returned his gaze to the printed page. I sat down, feeling thoroughly snubbed.
Gary was still snivelling. Though he was a repulsive child I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.
‘Tell you what, Gary. If you help me pick up all this paper, I’ll give you fifty pee.’
When Gary had collected them we put them in my picnic carrier bag with the sandwich wrappers and other rubbish. I gave him fifty pence.
‘You said a pound.’
‘I didn’t!’
‘You did, you did, you did! A pound!’ Gary began to jump up and down with excitement.
‘I said