Train Man

by Andrew Mulligan

  He said to the woman opposite, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she said.

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Settle.’

  ‘Settle?’

  Michael raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Somewhere I’ve never been,’ he said.

  ‘You should definitely go,’ said the man to his right – her husband, presumably.

  He sat in Michael’s peripheral vision, so they were shoulder to shoulder. They were both well dressed, and could be brother and sister, or old friends. They could be lovers, too, escaping from the grind of long, tedious marriages having met at the choral society, or a book club – but they looked very much like man and wife, if only because they played cards together, and looked so comfortable. Their clothes were from the same catalogue, and Michael should go to Settle, apparently – the man felt confident enough to suggest it, as if he knew instinctively that Michael would appreciate the place. Michael couldn’t help but wonder if there was any specific reason, and he nearly laughed. He knew he was drunk.

  ‘Nice place?’ he said lightly – and he just managed to prevent the mint flying from his mouth.

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful,’ said the woman – and her voice dipped for the first syllable of ‘beautiful’ to turn it into two. She gave the second that special emphasis, for Settle was clearly very special. A lot of towns and villages were beautiful, but this one, it seemed, was enchanted.

  ‘They haven’t been allowed to spoil it,’ said the man. ‘It’s got its problems, of course it has. Traffic, needless to say, in the summer—’

  ‘But the main street,’ said his wife, cutting in neatly. ‘It’s an absolute picture. They have a flower festival.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s magical.’

  ‘Do you live there?’ said Michael.

  ‘Well,’ said the man. ‘Yes and no.’

  Yes and no? Yes, they did, but no, they didn’t – and did Michael dare get his juice out, just to top himself up? The bag was on his lap, so it wouldn’t be a difficult manoeuvre – but would these two people notice the smell? They wouldn’t suspect the colour, but the scent might alert them to the fact that they were sitting next to someone drinking neat whisky.

  ‘Ah,’ the man might say, as he expanded his nostrils. ‘Do I smell a Tomatin malt?’

  ‘You do!’

  ‘Good man!’

  His hand would be extended, and they would shake firmly.

  ‘I have a flask of my own,’ the man would say. ‘Just here! Untouched!’

  They might suddenly become the firmest of friends, bonded by their relish of good whisky and the whole Highland culture. What was more likely, however, was that the stink of Michael’s surreptitious boozing would mark him out as dangerous or unpredictable. In any case, weren’t they just too wrapped up in Settle and the wonders of the main street where they did and didn’t live? They might not even notice, let alone care.

  ‘We’re buying a flat,’ said the woman. ‘It’s off-plan, and we haven’t quite completed. We’re off for a third viewing.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Michael.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Life’s going to change, then. Do you have family there?’

  Of course he didn’t really want to know. He didn’t want to hear the details – he shouldn’t have asked, and even as he opened his mouth he was full of dread. He was looking harder at the woman, and he saw the brooch she wore, and the necklace, and the ring on her finger. There was nothing ostentatious anywhere, but it all sent the subtle signal of good taste and Southern wealth. How much would an off-plan flat in Settle cost? A lot, obviously – but they could afford it because they both had pensions, and his had been the climax to some well-paid business-orientated job, and he’d probably retired with stocks and shares and a whole investment portfolio that generated thousands of pounds. Why weren’t they travelling first class? Small economies, or maybe the train had no first-class facilities – or maybe it was in the hope of meeting ordinary, down-to-earth people like him. Perhaps a friendship was about to be born after all, that would last until death. Michael would speak at both their funerals, or they would speak at his.

  He reached for his juice carton.

  ‘Pardon?’ he said.

  He had missed something, and he nearly belched.

  ‘We have a grandson,’ said the woman again. ‘He’s at Giggleswick.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Just started.’

  ‘Giggleswick?’

  There was a school at Giggleswick – he’d heard of it for some reason. But was it in Settle?

  ‘Giggleswick,’ he said again. ‘I know the name.’

  ‘He finished his first year this year,’ said the woman. ‘He’s just starting GCSEs.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Michael. ‘Is the school close by?’

  ‘It’s in Giggleswick, yes.’

  ‘Is that a place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A town?’

  ‘Yes. A village, really. Two miles or so from Settle.’

  ‘Oh! So you’ll be on hand to… what? Look after him.’

  ‘Oh, his housemaster does that,’ said the man. ‘We’ll be lucky to see him.’

  Michael produced his glass, and poured himself a measure of whisky. The liquid didn’t bear any resemblance to apple juice, especially in such a small quantity. It came out of the carton differently to juice, and the fumes suddenly seemed so strong they might be flammable. If someone lit a match the glass would fill with fire, and when he put it to his lips it did feel savagely hot. He knew he was sweating, and when he breathed out he knew his breath was toxic. The mint was now in the way of his tongue, so he removed it and put it on the table, where it sat like a small, white pebble.

  ‘Giggleswick,’ he said quietly.

  ‘He’s a boarder,’ said the woman. ‘Absolutely loves it.’

  ‘Is it a boarding school?’

  There was a fractional pause.

  ‘Yes,’ came the reply.

  ‘So he lives there, really? That’s his home.’

  Michael was aware of the burning round his gums.

  ‘You’ll see him for weekends, I hope. He’ll need somewhere for weekends, so this… place of yours. It could be just the thing.’

  The woman was looking at the mint, and Michael could see that she knew what he was drinking. He could sense her distaste, and he felt his hand shaking slightly. Perhaps she had known from the moment he sat down – from the thin, cheap waterproof he was wearing, and the jumper underneath it. From his watery eyes, and his nose and cheeks – they carried the early signs of bursting blood vessels. He could pass for the dignified professional only until he was sitting still, and now he was the object of the woman’s merciless scrutiny. Her eyes were blue, just like Monica’s.

  ‘Weekends are for sport,’ said her husband.

  ‘Are they?’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh, he’s rugby mad,’ said the wife.

  ‘Same as his father.’

  ‘Same as you.’

  Michael smiled. ‘Wonderful,’ he said.

  The little dance had come to an end. They had both communicated everything, and were now heavy with self-satisfaction.

  ‘So what do you do, my friend? And where are you going?’

  That was a pair of questions neither he nor she would ever ask.

  ‘Tell us about your grandson, if you have one.’

  They wouldn’t ask that, either – so Michael told them.

  He said, ‘I don’t have a grandson.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. But I suppose… Giggleswick. That’s a private school, isn’t it? Like Eton. I suppose—’

  ‘Oh, it’s not like Eton,’ said the man.

  ‘No?’

  Michael turned his head, and looked at the profile beside him. The man had white hair, which was neatly cut – the fringe healthily full and pushed back in a wave. He had skin that suggested an outdoor life – a b
oat, probably, like the man who’d been on his way to Bristol Marina. This chap was almost certainly the type who sailed, and would be on the committee of some sailing club which would be just up from his house overlooking some estuary – and there was something in the way he’d said, ‘It’s not like Eton,’ that suggested he had intimate knowledge of the place, perhaps because he’d been there as a boy. Had he been a youngster, kneeling on the cold floor of some traditional old classroom as his housemaster sat open-legged in front of him? Had he possibly even been the housemaster, his poor wife still in blissful ignorance? Or was that all simply myth, prejudice and prurience? The old, unfunny joke about public school: ‘Backs to the wall, lads! Sir’s coming!’ The man was carefully not looking at him, so Michael tried again, desperate to haul his mind away from the sexual images that flashed and flashed again, leaving him blind and empty-headed. This man had never performed oral sex on anyone, and if he had it didn’t matter. Or perhaps it did.

  ‘No,’ said Michael loudly. ‘I don’t have any children at all.’

  The woman said nothing, and nor did he. What was there to say, now they knew he was drunk? They couldn’t really ask him why not, and commiseration would have been presumptuous. A light-hearted ‘Lucky you!’ would have been misplaced, because for all they knew Michael was alluding to the fact that he’d had children once, and they had all been burned alive or murdered, which accounted for his descent into alcoholism.

  ‘How much does your flat cost?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ said the man quietly. ‘Too much.’

  ‘It must be an expensive area, Settle. Is it more than a million?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The, er…’

  ‘I thought you were buying it. Have you not agreed a price?’

  The man finally looked at him and smiled. ‘Yes. But it’s just not something I want to discuss,’ he said politely. ‘It’s a bit… you know. Personal.’

  ‘Confidential?’

  ‘There’s nothing confidential about it, but—’

  ‘What are the school fees at Eton? Giggleswick, I mean.’

  ‘They… vary.’

  ‘Expensive, though.’

  ‘Not cheap.’

  ‘Then there’s all the other expenses,’ said Michael carefully, working to disguise the tremor in his voice. He was working hard, anxious to avoid rudeness. All he wanted was polite normality. ‘Uniform, I expect. Cricket bats. Rugby kit. Food and drink, and trips to France. Outings to… where do they go? Museums, I suppose. The zoo.’

  He poured more whisky.

  ‘I expect there’s a lot of expense,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t have children. My wife wanted them, passionately.’

  He turned back to the woman.

  ‘I said I just don’t think it’s practical – from a financial point of view. We could have had them. It wasn’t as if… there were obstacles. She had ovaries, after all.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I had what I needed. But… in the end, you have to make a decision. One girl, one boy. One of each. Or none of each, and I decided – we decided, with the expenses – no children for us. So she… left me, and we decided not to get married after all. We hadn’t been together that long, but we knew it wouldn’t work, so she went her separate way. I’m going up to the Highlands, now. Changing at Preston, possibly – or I might go a bit further. Change somewhere else, and change everything.’

  ‘A long trip then,’ said the woman.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Michael. ‘Where are you going?’

  There was another short, charged silence.

  ‘You’re off to Settle,’ he said. ‘You told me that. What’s your… what’s your grandson’s name?’

  A tiny pause, then, ‘Percy.’

  ‘Oh, Lord. I suppose…’

  He floundered.

  ‘Does he get teased about it?’

  The man said, ‘About what?’ And Michael noticed irritation in his voice.

  ‘About being called Percy,’ said Michael.

  ‘Why would anyone tease him about his name?’

  ‘It’s unusual.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it? How many Percys do you know?’

  He laughed, because it was funny.

  ‘I can’t think of a single one,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice name, I’m not saying it isn’t – and I wouldn’t tease him. But boys, you know – they can be very cruel. They can be very intolerant, and… I can just imagine them… You know – teasing him. No mercy for Percy. But – hopefully, he’d tell someone, wouldn’t he? They have all these helplines, now – counsellors. People believe you, I think, and… My closest friend was – well, it doesn’t matter, really.’

  The man said nothing, and the woman had picked up her tablet.

  ‘Have you got any photographs?’ said Michael. ‘Of the new flat, I mean. Not of Percy, though… how old is he? Young, I imagine.’

  She didn’t speak.

  Michael sat and finished his drink. The silence seemed terribly, tragically heavy to him – for to not answer a direct question was quite a significant rejection, and it meant he couldn’t ask another. He had to be sensitive to the fact that the couple no longer wanted to talk, and that was because he was drunk and had been… Not invasive, but certainly lacking in the good manners he normally upheld in every situation. He had been tactless, and intrusive. He had been stupid, too.

  He said, ‘I’m having a little bit of a problem.’

  He said it quite quietly.

  ‘It’s not really a problem one can talk about. So I don’t. It’s not like… If it was cancer you might just say it. I suppose you wouldn’t. But… I don’t understand why you want me to visit you in Settle.’

  ‘We don’t,’ said the man.

  ‘You did.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘A moment ago you did, but… I just don’t think it’s my kind of place, and I genuinely don’t think I could afford it. Unless things change, dramatically, and there’s not much chance of that. I’m… comfortable. Compared to so many. There was a picture in the paper—’

  ‘Look,’ said the man. ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, but would you mind if we didn’t chat any more?’

  ‘Chat about what?’

  ‘Would you mind if we didn’t?’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘No. Not at all. I don’t think we were talking, really. I don’t think we were having a conversation. You seemed to want to tell me about your personal life—’

  ‘That’s not quite true, but—’

  ‘I don’t think I asked you if you had any grandchildren, and I don’t think I asked where this boy, Percy, went to school – or what his name was. Or if I did, it was because—’

  ‘Let’s drop it, please.’

  ‘Of course. But… when I was at school, they called us by our surnames. Maybe there were lots of Percys and I just never knew. My friend was James, but… Crikey. We called him “Seyton”. James Seyton, and we were very fond of each other. We were good friends, but… we lost touch.’

  Michael closed his eyes, and suddenly felt so weary he thought he might lapse into coma.

  ‘As you do,’ he said.

  If he fell asleep now, the man would have to climb over him when he got off at Settle. Wherever Michael was going would flash by and he would end up on some awful, unknown terminus and have to come all the way back down the same old line, looking at himself in the darkness.

  The man and woman said nothing, but he could feel their anxiety and it made him sad. He had caused them anxiety and embarrassment, and there was no way to put things right: to speak again would make it worse. On the other hand, sitting in a silence that seemed heavy with tension was unbearable. He felt bad, and he knew they did too: they were feeling the same emotions as he was feeling, but they could not find a way of sharing them, or releasing them and that was the saddest thing – how th
ey couldn’t shake hands now. They couldn’t hold each other and weep. He could not turn to this man with white hair and hug him – unless a miracle occurred. No: they would get to Settle, or wherever they had to change, and perhaps they would laugh with relief as they stepped down onto the platform.

  ‘Poor man,’ they would say. ‘Lonely.’

  They would nod, and she would say, ‘Drunk.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Notice what?’

  ‘Didn’t you smell it? He was drinking neat whisky.’

  ‘He wasn’t!’

  ‘He was, darling. It was in his juice carton.’

  ‘Crikey.’

  That would be their explanation of the awkwardness: that the man beside them was an alcoholic, and alcoholics were by their nature embarrassing. They would not think of him again, because Percy was coming to supper – they had a table for three booked in some very nice restaurant, probably an Italian. Boys liked pizza, or Michael had. It had always been such a treat. Percy would arrive, flushed from his exertions on the rugby pitch, a picture of wild-eyed health – like James, in fact. His hair would be mussed from a quick shower, and he hadn’t had time to dry it. He would be young enough to embrace his gran and kiss her, and he would probably hold his grandfather too – what did it matter, who hugged who? James would bring a friend, perhaps – like young Michael – and they would sit at the table together, laughing. They would be teasing each other – Percy-James and Michael, together – as they chose their different toppings; in jeans and casual sweatshirts, or perhaps not? Perhaps they had dressed up for the occasion, and looked grown up in neatly pressed long-sleeved shirts and ties, their collars fastened properly by Mr Trace, who couldn’t stand an untidy boy and would always touch the soft part of your throat, fastening the top button.

  ‘That’s better,’ he’d say, stroking your neck. ‘Come and find me at lunchtime. Have your lunch, and we’ll talk.’