Life Goes On Read Free

knack of seeing all at a glance. Whoever the man worked for had put him through the aptitude tests and psychological probings of a foolproof selection board, but I knew they had boobed in the most basic way because they had never been in jail as a prisoner.
    I was disturbed from watching the smoke of my morning cigar drift through the fitful sunshine by the ticket collector standing at the door. The passenger opposite gave his ticket to be punched.
    â€˜Thank you, sir.’
    He then went back to his vacant gaze out of the window, continuing his manic manicure. I noticed how startled he was on hearing the collector say to me: ‘You can’t travel on a second class ticket in here, mate.’
    I had set out that morning determined not to cheat, lie or commit any action while in London which would offend those principles which Bridgitte had tried to instil in me. She had taught me how much better it was not to lie or cheat, even if it meant, she said, losing all idea of your own identity. I realised how much she had gleaned from her former psychologist husband and – too late – that she wasn’t as dreamy as she looked.
    â€˜Is this a first class compartment?’ I asked, as if it was no better than a pigsty that had been used by humans for far too long. He was a middle-aged man, and fair ringlety hair fell to his shoulders from beneath a Wehrmacht-style hat. He pointed to the window. ‘It says first class, don’t it?’
    I wanted to pull his earring. ‘I suppose it would have to before somebody like me would notice.’
    He leaned against the door, and yawned. ‘That’s the way it is, mate.’
    Under the circumstances he couldn’t be anything but honest, and do his job. The nail-filing man opposite, for all his preoccupation with the landscape flying by outside, took in every shade of the situation. And I, if nothing else, had my pride, which was all that ten years of peace had left me with. I took a twenty-pound note from my wallet. ‘How much extra?’
    He looked at the few foreign coins, plastic tokens, luncheon vouchers and Monopoly notes from his pockets. ‘Can’t change that.’
    I reached for my executive-style briefcase. ‘I’ll write you a cheque.’
    â€˜It’d be more than my job’s worth to take a cheque.’
    â€˜You’d better see what you can do about changing this legal tender, then.’ I crumpled the note into my waistcoat pocket and went back to reading a report in the newspaper about a woman of eighty-six who had murdered her ninety-eight-year-old husband with a knife. ‘He got on at me once too often,’ she said in court, hoping the beak would be lenient. Then she spoiled it: ‘Anyway, I’d always wanted to kill the swine.’
    The judge sentenced her to fourteen years in jail. ‘A worse case of premeditated murder I’ve never come across.’
    â€˜I’ll get you when I come out,’ she screamed as they dragged her down to the cells.
    The ticket collector, reluctant to move, took a packet of chewing gum from his trouser pocket and put two capsules into his mouth. He lounged as if he had no work to go to, changing weight from foot to foot, happy enough to look at himself in the mirror above the seats. He swayed with the train, as if he’d not been long on the job and didn’t care whether he had it much longer. I took a whisky flask from my briefcase and held it towards him. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
    â€˜No thanks. Not that as well. It’d blow my mind. A train trip’s enough for me.’
    I wondered if he wasn’t one of those scoundrels who, after buying a cap and clipper in Woollie’s, hopped the train near a station, collected excess fares, then jumped off in time for the up-train. He did it every day for six months, and spent the rest of the year in Barbados. The millionaires there wondered where he got his money. He told them