Train Man

by Andrew Mulligan

  ‘“Ideal for plasterboard,”’ said Michael. ‘I used these—’

  ‘You’re not listening to me,’ said the man. ‘There’s no point trying to flog me something that won’t do the job. I’ve tried them.’

  ‘You need something bigger?’ said Michael. ‘What is the job, exactly?’

  He was trying to be helpful. He was trying to engage, but the man seemed to find the question intrusive.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what the fucking job is,’ he said. ‘They don’t work. They’re crap.’

  ‘They do say they’re for plasterboard.’

  ‘They don’t work.’

  ‘It says here,’ said Michael. ‘“The perfect fix for—”’

  ‘They don’t fucking work, mate! This is what you do, isn’t it? You sell people over-priced fucking crap, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. “What’s the job?” I told you what I wanted, and you try and sell me some… shit you want to sell me.’

  Michael floundered.

  ‘They’re for plasterboard,’ he said lamely.

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ said the man, turning away – and Michael couldn’t think of a reply.

  He stood alone in the aisle, flayed, as the couple left him, and he replaced the packet with a hand that had started to shake. He tidied the area a little, though it didn’t need tidying – and what he didn’t find out until later was that the man had gone straight to the service desk and complained about him. Once again, he found himself sitting with Jo, Tom or Tim – whoever it was this time – having to justify himself, for the accusation now was that he was recommending the wrong item and had been patronising.

  ‘I thought it was the right item,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you have to be very careful,’ said Jo or Tim – who clearly didn’t want him on the team any more. ‘If you’re in any doubt, call one of the guys and get a second opinion. Graeme’s good. He knows a lot about fixings.’

  Yes, he did – Graeme knew everything about fixings, and called Michael ‘Mikey’. Michael had spoken to Graeme several times, and the impression he’d always got was that Graeme knew a lot about every item in the store, because he was one of those men who did every job in his own house, by himself, with infinite patience and total success. He had a soft Scottish accent, and a habit of looking at your toes before his eyes travelled slowly up to your chin, as if he was assessing your weight for a hanging. If they had to do something together, like yard work or unloading, Graeme would always encourage him.

  ‘Try to get under it, Mikey,’ he’d say. ‘Oh, no, no – hold the edge. To you, a little. Turn it! Oh…’

  He always seemed disappointed. Sometimes he operated the big power-saw in the special cutting booth, and he did it so carefully. He’d been trained to slice sheets of chipboard, and Michael nurtured a guilty hope that one day there would be an accident, and he’d have the pleasure of picking up Graeme’s severed hand.

  ‘Is this yours, Graeme?’ he’d say. ‘Where do you want it?’

  Why would he ever call upon a man like Graeme? And as for the big man who’d wanted Instafix, Michael wondered what he’d done to upset him, really? All he’d wanted was to help. Of course, it occurred to him that the man might have received bad news moments before their encounter, or been in the middle of the worst confrontation with his wet-eyed partner, or lost a vast sum of money, or a chance of promotion – or a baby, even… there were a hundred thousand things that could collapse and make you yearn to stabilise yourself by lashing out at a random stranger.

  Still, it hurt – and he was still mouthing the man’s words, here on the train.

  It hurt as he cycled home, and it hurt more because he felt so foolish for being hurt. What should he have said? What shouldn’t he have said? Or was the root of the problem simply his idiot, irritating face that invited abuse? Should he go to work in a mask, and speak through a tube?

  They changed his shifts the next week.

  They didn’t consult him: suddenly he was on six-thirty starts. Suddenly he only had thirty hours instead of the thirty-eight he needed. The next week it was twenty-six: just over two hundred pounds for the week, with so many debts to service. The spores of poverty, there on your fading clothes.

  Work in a pub: bar staff required.

  Work in a café.

  Work from home, on the telephone, perhaps? It just didn’t matter now, but he had tried. Deliver newspapers. Deliver leaflets. Stop people in the street and get their views on particular products. Work with children, work with the sick – you seemed to need years of experience to do either of those things, but cleaning pubs and houses? That kind of job was easy enough to find. He was offered work by a firm called Mina’s Cleaners, and the manageress contracted him to spend two hours cleaning a pub six miles from where he lived, starting at half past five so he could get to another – three miles beyond – at quarter to eight. Four hours’ work would bring in just under forty pounds, and if he did it every day that would double his income if he could persuade the DIY store to give him shifts that started at eleven.

  Jo was away, so the acting team leader – that was Tim or Tom again – changed things in Michael’s favour. So began a week of cleaning and… it didn’t matter.

  It just didn’t matter, but why did people use toilets so that their excrement smeared the entire bowl and seat? How did vomit get on walls, behind the pipes? Why did the pub have so much brass to polish, and why was the hoover so lacking in suction even after he’d emptied it and checked every single joint?

  One of the pub managers phoned Mina.

  ‘I don’t think he’s been in,’ he said. ‘It’s a bloody mess.’

  Mina relayed this faithfully, and Michael explained that he had been in, and he’d spent two hours doing his job as the landlord slept upstairs. Yes, he’d missed the brass plaques on some of the doors, but only because the women’s toilets had been particularly foul, and someone had moved the mop. He’d given up hunting for that, and cleaned the floors on his hands and knees, but the landlord thought he hadn’t been in – or that’s what he claimed, because he resented paying Mina her commission and wanted a confrontation. Michael was thus sucked into another world of anger and accusation, but this one had real shit and sick – and when Jo returned she put him straight back on early mornings.

  ‘I can’t do them,’ said Michael.

  ‘You’ve got to be flexible,’ said Jo.

  ‘I have another job,’ said Michael.

  ‘Everyone wants to avoid the early shifts,’ said Jo. ‘You have to do your bit—’

  ‘But I’m getting too many.’

  ‘You’re getting no more than anyone else.’

  ‘That’s not how it feels.’

  ‘That’s how it is, Mike. That’s the truth. If you can’t do early mornings, you can’t be on the team.’

  The team. Last one to be picked, and first to be let go. He couldn’t vault the horse, and he couldn’t even dive off a platform in front of something as huge as a train, or sort himself out at Crewe – so Mina paid him, deducting money for an insurance scheme he hadn’t known about. And it just didn’t matter – for the world is a beautiful place, and the woods and fields spread to the horizon getting ready for sunset, so you must not let yourself be dragged down by small-minded people. The whisky was so full of old oak, and you had to rise above calamity as you crept back into your flat and listened to someone else’s TV through the floor and the sound of their hacking cough. You could try, couldn’t you? You could reach out, perhaps, and offer cough medicine, forcing a friendship out of that. One day he hadn’t turned up at the DIY store, and the next day he was late.

  Then he went in and sat for too long in the rest area.

  Then he took too long to stack the fence-posts.

  Then he ignored someone.

  It was the only way he could fight back, and meanwhile he had gone for a Health MOT and dismantled a wedding, and could they have married, really? It had seemed like just another fantasy, which is why h
e drifted into it and had finally woken up.

  The station they’d arrived at was busy, and the carriage started to fill up even as he wondered if he’d got the sequence of events wrong, and perhaps the fence-post incident had been before his long stint in the rest area, for he was too close to tears. A young girl sat next to him, and when he went to speak she thought better of it – perhaps she had spotted a more comfortable seat, or she smelled liquor… Michael doubted that, because his juice carton was back in his bag, and he’d just started another mint. Now he was somewhere else, and there was a great big mosque that looked grand, gold and new.

  Another child peered at him through the gap in the seats in front, and someone nearby spoke at length to a person in the office querying a detail about a drawing which Michael had no choice but to try to follow, because it seemed to involve the distance from the eaves of the roof to the top step and whether or not the distance could be legally decreased. Perhaps phone reception was bad, because the man spoke with exceptional clarity:

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Take a look at BS1319. 1.3.1… What? No, what does it say? No, look at what’s in parentheses…’

  He wouldn’t ever reach Glasgow, let alone the Highlands – that was most definitely off now, because this train wasn’t going to either. Where would he get off? If he got down at the next stop, he could probably make it home – but home wasn’t home, which didn’t matter because… He was luckier than many. Once again, the train was slowing down – had he gone to sleep? The fields had been ploughed up and turned into scrapyards – they were going backwards past a lorry park, where drivers had abandoned dozens of long containers. Haphazard wire fencing had been strung all around them, and the brambles were thriving. Over a bridge they went – over an inky canal, too narrow now for barge traffic. Soon they were amongst carpet warehouses and factory outlet stores, and there were no people to be seen. There were jaunty flags, though, and banners advertising sales: this was his country. This was the country he’d learned to navigate, and was lucky to live in.

  His parents had set him on his feet, to toddle into this future.

  When they came to the next station, he saw it was busier than the last, and he at once saw Amy with a pushchair, and Ryan from the flat below. There was a girl who resembled his next-door neighbour from childhood, and the old woman could have been his poor, dead mother so he closed his eyes and tried to breathe through his mouth. The guard told everyone to remove luggage from seats, pointing out that a cancelled train had made this one extra busy. He apologised for that. He was sorry, because he knew everyone’s journey was being inconvenienced – but he was powerless. What could he do? He sounded like a nice young man, who genuinely cared – if he’d had the power to pull a few extra carriages from the sidings and bolt them on, he would have done so. His Northern voice was polite and genuine: Michael knew that if he communicated all his problems to such a man, the man would listen. He’d clasp his shoulder, and say with absolute sincerity, ‘Let me get you a form, Mike. Do you have access to a computer, Micky? Because you might find it easier to go through our website. You can get up to half your money back, Michael, sir – Sir Michael – if you just lay your burden down.’

  Michael smiled.

  A man in a brown kurta sat down next to him, studiously avoiding eye contact, his beard and dress announcing the fact that he was Muslim. He had fat, hairy fingers which he used to hold his thighs.

  ‘Busy,’ said Michael.

  ‘So busy,’ replied the man softly.

  Silence. On they went, backwards. He wanted to hold this man’s hand – it was so much bigger than his own.

  ‘They cancelled a train,’ he said – his voice working almost normally, except that it had a rasp he didn’t recognise.

  ‘Every week they cancel trains,’ said the man. ‘I take this train on this day, at this time, every single week. Most times, I don’t get a seat.’

  He laughed to himself, and Michael looked at him wondering for the hundredth time about the significance of beards, and why God wanted people to grow them. If it was a badge of virility, that seemed primitive. If it was homage to the prophet, or simply a gesture that said, ‘I believe in this particular nonsense…’ surely both were good, sound impulses that connected you to an almost infinite number of people with similar needs?

  It was the beard of a patriarch: a triumphant beard, grey as a squirrel.

  ‘They take my money,’ said the man. ‘I say, “Please give me a seat. Can I not expect a seat?” “Sorry,” they say. “We have had to cancel a train, or… some other service is running late, or slow – there is overcrowding today. So sorry.”’

  He shook his head.

  ‘“We do not guarantee you a seat,”’ he said. ‘That’s what they said to me once. “We cannot guarantee seats.” “Can you guarantee air?” I said. “Can you guarantee we will not suffocate?”’

  He laughed.

  ‘You know, this train should not be stopping.’

  ‘Stopping where?’ said Michael.

  ‘Anywhere. This was the non-stop service, but they turn it into the stopping service. You cannot make timely progress, because of me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure—’

  ‘This is the stopping service now. We will stop everywhere.’

  ‘Right.’

  A silence fell.

  ‘Are you going far then?’ said Michael.

  ‘No,’ said the man. ‘Only to the next station. Where are you going?’

  ‘All the way. North.’

  ‘North where?’

  ‘Newcastle.’

  The man laughed.

  ‘That’s a long way.’

  ‘A couple of hours, I think.’

  ‘And what will you do in Newcastle? You have family there?’

  ‘No. I’m just… doing a bit of business. Then home again. South.’

  ‘Very long way,’ repeated the man, laughing again. ‘I go to my father’s house, just fifteen minutes. Back again, to and fro – I’m a taxi driver.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Twelve years. Before that, a foundry. That is what my father did also.’

  ‘Where are you from, originally?’

  ‘Pakistan.’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘That’s somewhere I would love to go.’

  ‘Then go you must. What is to stop you?’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Go tomorrow.’

  Michael laughed and the man laughed.

  ‘There’s nothing, in some ways,’ said Michael. ‘But – I don’t know. Fear of getting lost, perhaps, and… not knowing the language.’

  ‘You don’t speak the language?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Why is that a problem? You will find, everywhere you go, everyone speaks English. And wants to speak English. You will be very popular! People will queue up to practise their English with a real English gentleman.’

  ‘Do you go back?’ said Michael.

  ‘Of course. Every two years.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘The most beautiful country in the world. Apart from this one.’

  He turned suddenly, and smiled.

  ‘Go, my friend – please. Before you die.’

  19

  Michael wanted to be silent, but the man was staring at him as if waiting for the next question.

  The smile slowly faded, and he looked away. As for the train, it had found another bridge, and this one took them past factories and factory yards. Most seemed to have closed, but it was hard to say for some had the occasional vehicle outside. The sun really would be setting soon, and they passed a great stack of tyres.

  ‘We lived in a very rural part of the country,’ said the man, not needing the question after all. ‘My father’s house. Very large house, with a lot of land. He was a wealthy man.’

  ‘Why did he come to England?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The man laughed.

  ‘We ask him that question, my brother and
me. He came when I was ten years old, my brother was eight. “Why did you bring us here, Daddy?” That is always the question. He was rich, but there was no money, and the farm was very poor. He took a job in the foundry and two weeks ago… he died.’

  ‘He died?’

  ‘Ninety-three years old. He died in the hospital.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Now we have to go back, of course – to have the memorial. We bury him here, but the memorial will be a very big programme, near Lahore.’

  ‘You have a big family?’

  ‘Me? I do, yes. My father had just two boys. I have five. Two girls, five boys.’

  ‘That’s a lot of mouths to feed,’ said Michael. ‘How old are they?’

  ‘My oldest is twenty-eight. My youngest is at school, still. Sixteen.’

  Michael found himself nodding.

  He knew very little about Islam, but all his expectations were being confirmed, and he wondered how he could ever penetrate such an extraordinary culture. He would be asking questions for ever. Why this? Why that? The man spoke good English, but Michael presumed he spoke his own language at home, and was no doubt more eloquent and comfortable speaking it.

  ‘You grew up in Pakistan,’ he said.

  ‘On the farm, yes,’ replied the man.

  He laughed.

  ‘My brother and I, and our friends. We would set off early in the morning with a little food. My mother would not see us again until sundown. That was in the holiday, that was… if we had no chores. Playing all day. Swimming. Walking. Climbing.’

  ‘Fighting?’

  ‘Fighting? No. Yes. Sometimes – I don’t know.’

  They sat in silence again, and Michael pondered the things he was curious about. He had heard that Muslim boys and girls were required to commit large sections of the Koran to memory, and he wondered why. Was the book like a manual, offering advice when you faced a moral question? Or was it simply a demonstration of love for the text? Were the children working from the original, in Arabic? If so, there was even less hope for him, because he’d have to learn a whole new alphabet. He’d have to read from right to left, too, which would turn him into a child again, unable even to decipher letters – sounding out syllables that had no meaning. He could kneel and stand, and put out his arms, but he would never be part of it, so Islam would not save him. The man would soon become impatient with his stumbling misunderstandings, and Michael would be alone. Physically, the man was very big, and his laugh was surprisingly merry. It had a teasing quality, and Michael could imagine him telling filthy jokes, which didn’t quite square with a religion that always seemed so serious, with strict disciplines and unsmiling faces. This man was a version of Steve from the council – the volunteer fireman – but without the malice. Both were men of total, terrifying certainty.