Father of the Man

by Stephen Benatar

  And the last time he’d seen Neville, Neville had said, “Oh, my dear boy, when you think of all I might have achieved…and then of what I actually delivered. The trouble is, I had so little encouragement. If Joan had only been a bit supportive! But Joan, as you know, never had a single moment for anybody other than herself…”

  Madge too, like Gran, had sunk into senility—although, in her case, it had been a gentle going down; she hadn’t suffered any stroke.

  So, of the treaters, only Maggie survived (and Nathan)…and the man whom Maggie had loved had finally married somebody else; and he’d done it—as he’d even confessed to her, possibly believing this might somehow make things better—solely because of the other woman’s money.

  And the last time he’d seen Jean, merely an hour or so before, she had given one of her increasingly typical sighs. “Oh dear, just another tedious day, I suppose; another non-day in which nothing will be accomplished, apart from our growing older and drawing that much closer to death. Heigh-ho. If I only thought there could sometimes be a little variety in my life! Some excitement! Something vaguely memorable for more than just a day or two.” She smiled: her twisted, brave, self-sacrificing smile.

  “Oh, don’t whine,” he’d said—though only sotto voce—as he had descended the stairs and walked out of the house. “I’m damned if I know what you’ve got to be so miserable about! Damned,” he’d repeated—shouting it—whilst slamming the front door.

  14

  He arrived at St Pancras a little late this evening. The train was already in. There were no guards at the barrier but there were three sauntering separately along the platform. He didn’t believe that they would bother him, yet he still felt like a fugitive, a latter-day Richard Hannay. (This thought faintly pleased him; at one time Richard Hannay had been a hero of his.) With a mixture of boldness and stealth, therefore—not looking to see if any of the guards had spotted him—he made swiftly for the door closest to him. It was the First-Class end of the train. Still feeling furtive he hurried through the interior, fearful as he crossed from one compartment to another, passing doorways, that from the platform supple arms might suddenly reach out for him—the ghostly remnants of a dream he’d had the night before. As always this week, he searched for a seat in the most crowded section, a window seat where somebody would screen him, fence him in, and until he’d found one—settled into it—he didn’t feel properly safe from these double-jointed, elongating arms, sinuous and surrealistic pursuers.

  But it was surprising all the same how you got used to things.

  For the third night in succession it was the conductor with the strawberry mark.

  “It’s all right,” Roger told him. “I saw the Revenue Protection Manager this morning and he says that if I’m travelling illegally tomorrow the police will meet me at St Pancras.”

  “He said that, did he? But what about tonight?”

  “He left it vague about tonight.”

  “Well, you can’t expect to travel free again. I gave you a free ticket on Monday.”

  “I know you did.”

  “No one could have been more amiable than me.”

  “You’ve all been amiable. I wouldn’t deny that for a moment.”

  “You wouldn’t? I just don’t get you.”

  “So you said last night—and the previous night, as well. I don’t get why you don’t get me.”

  “Do you realize that last night the police were waiting for you at Leicester? They must have missed you.”

  “Last night I changed at Loughborough. Sometimes I change at Leicester; sometimes I change at Loughborough.”

  “And tonight? Where will you be changing tonight?”

  “I don’t know. You see, it all depends upon my mood.”

  When they were approaching Leicester the conductor returned, busily, businesslike. “I’ve arranged for the police to be waiting for us here at Leicester.”

  “Sorry to be a nuisance. But I’ve decided tonight to change at Loughborough.”

  “Right. Then I’ll have them there at Loughborough.”

  But he didn’t have them there at Loughborough; or perhaps it was just that the police didn’t wish to be had there at Loughborough. It seemed less like cloak-and-dagger now, despite the bare, windswept platform, the chill drizzle slanting across the station lamps, the shiny pools of light at your feet, the feeling of film noir; less like cloak-and-dagger, more like cat-and-mouse. But still a kind of game, maybe. You played at cat-and-mouse. And, incredibly, it had occurred to Roger this evening that although he didn’t look forward to them he was practically enjoying these confrontations whilst they were in progress; that he no longer felt so shy before an audience (some way from this, indeed, he actually welcomed the presence of one); and that even with threats of the police being bandied about so publicly he no longer felt any great embarrassment. He was changing. At St Pancras, it was true, he’d averted his head and slouched into himself as he was getting on the train, but now he remembered to square his shoulders again, as he had done on several occasions during the course of the day. He liked the thought of change.

  Nonetheless, it came as a relief not to find any policemen standing on the almost empty platform; and he walked right down to the end of it—wanting to put whatever distance he could between himself and their still-possible arrival. Acting on the same instinct he found he was keeping well to the back of it, as though a mere wire fence overlooking a car park could furnish him with cover.

  Yet when he understood what he was doing he quickly moved away from the perimeter. The next thing, he thought, half in humour, half disgust, the next step in degradation, will be to hide out in the Gents.

  Even so, he was glad when out of the greyness of the rain and mist the local train could eventually be heard, seen taking shape; glad there should still have been no scream of tyres upon the asphalt.

  And as the comparatively short conveyance pulled in, a smiling black face looked out from the window of one of the carriages.

  This, too, could tie in with the image of film noir.

  “Hope you’ve got a ticket tonight!” The conductor was youthful-looking yet there was a sprinkling of grey in both the frizzy sideburns.

  “No! Sorry!” Roger returned the grin, shut and shook his umbrella, stepped aboard the train.

  Like the platform, there was hardly anyone on it—not, certainly, in this half.

  “I better pretend I didn’t notice you was here.”

  “Won’t you get into trouble for that?” Roger asked. “I ought at least to write down my name again. Oughtn’t I?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “That would show them you’d done something—as much as you were able.”

  “The problem is, you see, last night I didn’t make out no report.”

  For a minute or two they considered this companionably.

  “But you can say you knew the conductor on the InterCity would be doing that,” suggested Roger, finally, “and that you didn’t realize two reports were needed on the same subject.”

  “That’s right. And anyhow, what might happen is, you’d get charged twice over, for both nights. And that wouldn’t be fair, would it? I can’t see how anyone could say as that was fair.”

  “Thank you for being so nice about it.”

  “Well, you’re very welcome, I’m sure.”

  But that, for the moment, was where the niceness ran out. The following morning, when Roger got to the station at nearly half-past-six, the conductor who’d been on the London-bound train the previous day was standing vigil by the guard’s van. Twenty-four hours earlier he had sounded easygoing (“Travelling without a ticket, sir? Eh, we can’t have that, you know”) but of course it was his signal which must have set those half-dozen officials waiting at the barrier; and today he no longer sounded in the least easygoing.

  “That’s him!”

  This, to the much younger, shorter man who stood close to him and who was squat, pug-nosed and could be seen—becaus
e he happened to be scratching his head when Roger first noticed him, with his cap pushed over to one side—to have a corn-coloured crew cut.

  “Yes, that’s him!”

  In just a second the cap was back in place and the wearer of it was now standing close to Roger.

  “You, sir. Do you have a ticket to travel on this train?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “In that case—off the station!” He grabbed Roger’s upper arm; hard.

  Roger tried to shake him off. “It’s okay, you know: the police are going to be waiting for me at St Pancras.”

  “Well, they won’t find you then, will they?” The ignominy of this was that he was such a little man and yet he was propelling Roger so easily along the platform; not that Roger was putting up any resistance, except for his attempt to get back his arm. “It may come as a surprise to you but we have ideas in this country about people who set out to break the law.”

  “We also have ideas in this country about principles of justice.”

  “And you can talk about those all you like—after you end up in court!”

  “And how will I end up in court, unless the police arrest me?”

  “You can sue British Rail. But right now you’re getting off this station! Come on—off this station!”

  Up the steps he pushed him; through the booking hall. When they reached the open automatic doors he administered a final shrug of no little violence.

  “And I wouldn’t show your face round here again—not if you know what’s good for you!”

  Roger felt like saying, “One day, when you’re big enough, you might grow up to be a bouncer.” But he saw three elderly ladies looking at him in perplexity; and since they were different from everyone else who’d been staring, in that their perplexity quickly gave way to a small smile of sympathy, he restrained himself. It wouldn’t, moreover, have been a particularly bright idea.

  He thought afterwards that he should have asked these women for their names.

  But by then they had crossed the booking hall and were probably on one of the platforms.

  Roger caught a bus to Beeston.

  There was no chance, of course, of catching up with the train he had just missed but he didn’t want to do that anyway. The bus journey lasted twenty-five minutes. The station at Beeston had the air of a country one from days gone by, yet Beeston was still a part of Nottingham. He could hardly believe the authorities wouldn’t have anticipated this move of his—after all, it seemed so obvious—therefore again it was The Thirty-Nine Steps syndrome as he walked through the entrance and over and down towards the London side: heart hammering, raincoat collar pulled up, eyes looking mainly at the ground. (So where were those bravely squared shoulders now, that upheld head, that noble chin?) Unfortunately there weren’t many people on the platform—no way to mingle with a crowd—so he sat on a green bench and simply stared at his briefcase, which he’d placed across his lap. When the next InterCity arrived he was back on his feet but supposedly studying a couple of posters as it slowed to a halt…although this again, he realized, was merely an ostrich tactic; he viewed his height once more as a distinct disadvantage. The moment the train had stopped—and not glancing in either direction for heads that might be leaning watchfully out of windows, or for the guard with whistle and flag who might even now be bearing down on him—he hurried to a nearby open door at which a woman was disembarking, with packages and two children. Roger’s hadn’t been a good decision. Although he helped the woman with a suitcase, and with one of the little girls, the ten seconds he had to stand waiting at the door appeared to him interminable.

  But as had happened in London last night, once he was actually on board the train, he felt relatively secure.

  Secure…with a conductor soon to walk along it? Secure…with the Law about to meet him at the other end?

  The conductor this morning was one he hadn’t seen before. The other three passengers at Roger’s table held out their tickets without pausing in their conversation. Roger smiled somewhat wearily at the man, preparatory to launching yet again into his explanation—was there any ticket inspector on this line who still didn’t know of it?—but unexpectedly the conductor simply smiled back, nodded and moved on, evidently under the impression he must have looked at Roger’s ticket earlier.

  Roger was about to call him back.

  Checked himself.

  The barrier at St Pancras was totally unguarded.

  He just walked through it and away.

  Yet he was over an hour late for work. He’d telephoned before leaving the station—spoken to Rose (“Oh, you’re going to catch it, mister, if there’s any justice left in this world you’re going to catch it!”)—but after he’d deposited his mack, umbrella and briefcase in the basement he went back to the ground floor, looked up at the gallery and said, “Mr Cavendish, may I have a word with you?”

  “I think perhaps you better had. Pray step up into my office, if you’d be so kind. As a matter of fact I, too, was about to seek the favour of an interview.”

  Roger climbed the aged, ladder-like wooden stairs—“the steep-and-narrow,” Mr Cavendish called them, “for those amongst us who have difficulty in going straight”—and worked his way along the cramped balcony until he reached his manager’s desk. On the wall there were many framed cartoons dating back to the time of Rowlandson and Jonas Hanway, and among the items which had to be negotiated during his progress was another large desk, over which Dickensian clerks had no doubt crouched whilst perching on their high stools and attesting by the industrious scratching of their quills to the propinquity of the founder; a cupboard full of receipt books which, though still in use, were so venerable they gave the Temple Bar telephone exchange; and a rack of horn-handled crooks for shepherds, of whom there weren’t a great many left in the vicinity. There was also, lying on the floor, a long carton containing swordsticks (the most magnificent of these boasting a dragon’s head carved, lacily, out of ivory) and an ordinary-seeming black umbrella which likewise concealed a blade, far less impressive but still extremely lethal; these were just for show, on request, since a new law had belatedly prohibited their sale, although the price of the dragon stick, nearly fifteen hundred pounds, had in itself proved quite restrictive—Roger, as so often, caught his ankle on the box. He gave a grimace and saw Rose, who was standing looking up at him expectantly, snigger in partial sympathy. “Yeah, I’ve done that, as well; it really hurts, don’t it?”

  When Mr Cavendish spoke to Roger, however, he made no attempt to modulate his voice. “They say little pitchers have large ears; but I don’t think they can have seen what’s happening to Rose’s. Have you noticed how her ears have grown since she started to work here—that is, if we can speak of it as work? I’m sure they didn’t make me think of Babar when she first came for interview.”

  “Oh, go on with you, Mr Cavendish. You’re just saying that. You know I never try to listen.”

  “In that case, Rose, I shudder to imagine where we’d be if you really put some effort into it.” He sent her down to the ladies’ end of the shop, to open up each umbrella on two of the racks and give it a thorough dusting. She protested volubly…but went.

  “Now then, Mr Mild. What did you wish to see me about? Being presented with a good alarm clock as your leaving gift?”

  The use of surname only further underlined the fact his boss was in a waggish and indulgent mood. He certainly didn’t appear to believe that Roger had lost interest since the previous Monday. The auspices were favourable.

  “No,” he said. “I’m having trouble with British Rail.”

  Mr Cavendish replied: “And you think that makes you special? Please don’t try to brag. Do you know how long it took me to get home last night?” Home was merely Watford.

  Roger listened, expressed sympathy—but was rebuked: “I don’t want sympathy; I want outrage; unqualified outrage!”—and then, hoping for a little of this himself, started to narrate his own story.

  Mr Cavendish
became less droll.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Why didn’t you tell me? I could have given you the money.”

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t.”

  “Now I feel angry. As you know, I was prepared to make allowances when I thought your lack of punctuality was due to signal failures and the like—”

  “I never told you that. Except on Monday. When it was.”

  “But if you’re held up tomorrow and the weather’s bad…People who are keen on principles seldom seem to mind how much they inconvenience anyone around them.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite fair.” There was a trace of sulkiness in Roger’s tone.

  “Which is another thing. I don’t care very much for this streak of arrogance that I’ve begun to see in you lately. And no future employer is going to care very much for it, either.”

  “Why is it arrogant to stand up for your rights?”

  “I get the feeling you may almost be enjoying yourself. So I wonder if you’re doing it entirely for the proper reasons…” He paused. “Anyway. Listen. I’m giving you the money. No travelling any more without a ticket. How much will you need?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Why not? What good do you think you’re doing? For you or anybody else?”

  Roger shrugged.

  “I warn you,” said his manager. “If you use that phrase again—‘not fair’—I shall probably want to clobber you.”

  And my mother would fully sympathize. (No, but she wouldn’t really, not at heart, any more than Mr Cavendish himself really meant it.) “If I gave up now it would seem as though they’d beaten me. And talk about anticlimax…all that wasted effort…wasted emotion…Besides which. I’m sorry but I genuinely think that it’s important.”