Jill Read Free Page B

dusk in autumn. The sky had become stiff with opaque clouds. When they were clear of the gasometers, the wagons and blackened bridges of Banbury, he looked out over the fields, noticing the clumps of trees that sped by, whose dying leaves each had an individual colour, from palest ochre to nearly purple, so that each tree stood out distinctly as in spring. The hedges were still green, but the leaves of the convolvuli threaded through them had turned sickly yellow, and from a distance looked like late flowers. Little arms of rivers twisted through the meadows, lined with willows that littered the surface with leaves. The waters were spanned by empty footbridges.
    It looked cold and deserted. The windows of the carriages were bluish with the swirls of the cleaner’s leather still showing on the glass, and he confined his eyes to the compartment. It was a third-class carriage, and the crimson seats smelt of dust and engines and tobacco, but the air was warm. Pictures of Dartmouth Castle and Portmadoc looked at him from the opposite wall. He was an undersized boy, eighteen years old, with a pale face and soft pale hair brushed childishly from left to right. Lying back against the seat, he stretched his legs out and pushed his hands to the bottom of the pockets of his cheap blue overcoat. The lapels of it curled outwards and creases dragged from the buttons. His face was thin, and perhaps strained; the expression round his mouth was ready to become taut, and a small frown lingered on his forehead. His whole appearance lacked luxuriance. Only his silky hair, as soft as seeding thistle, gave him an air of beauty.
    He had been travelling all day and was hungry because hehad had no proper lunch. When he started out that morning from his home in Lancashire, he had had two packets of sandwiches in his pockets, made the night before by his mother. The egg sandwiches were wrapped in white paper and the ham in brown; they were each tied firmly, but not tightly, with string. But at a quarter to one he was sitting in a full compartment, with no prospect of changing for fifty minutes, and as he was shy of eating in front of strangers he looked anxiously at the other passengers to see if they were going to produce food themselves. They did not look as if they were. One man pushed out to take lunch in the dining-car, but the others—two elderly ladies, a beautiful girl and an old clergyman who was reading and annotating a book—all sat on placidly. John had not travelled much before and for all he knew it was considered bad manners to eat in a public carriage. He tried to read. But at one o’clock he had grown desperate and had slunk along to the lavatory, where he locked himself in and bolted a few of his sandwiches before a furious rattling at the door made him cram the rest out of the ventilator, noisily flush the unused water-closet and go back to his seat. His return might have been a prearranged signal: the shorter and fatter of the two old ladies said: “Well!” in a pleased way, and produced a leather shopping-bag, from which she took napkins, packets of sandwiches, small fruit pies, a thermos flask, and they both began to eat a small picnic. Meanwhile the beautiful girl took out some coarse-looking rolls and cheese in silver paper, and even the old clergyman was crumbling biscuits into his mouth, with a handkerchief stuffed into his collar. John hardly dared to breathe. He could sense the old ladies exchanging glances, and sat miserably turning the pages of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , waiting for what he knew must come—the charitable offer of food. And sure enough, in five minutes he felt a nudge, and saw the shorter and fatter of the two leaning across, holding out a packet in a napkin. She had a rosy face and her false teeth were bared in a smile.
    “Would you care for a sandwich, my boy?”
    The beat of the train obliterated some of her words, but her gesture was eloquent.
    “Er—no, thank you—it’s very kind of