Life Goes On Read Free Page A

he was a plumber, but some of the snooty British thought he was only a window cleaner.
    Yet he looked too genuine to be an impostor. His eyes, blue in white, spun like catherine wheels. With an effort he stood upright. ‘I’ll see what I can do about your change.’
    We heard him dance his way along the corridor. ‘Stoned out of his damned mind,’ Nail-filer said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Even public servants. At least they’re still changing the guard at Buckingham Palace.’
    â€˜For the moment,’ I said, not wanting to be unsociable. He didn’t turn his gaze from the window, and I noticed in the reflection that he held a map inside his newspaper on which he made pencil marks when a bridge, a cutting, a level crossing and, on one occasion, a pub swung close to the line. ‘Are you planning another Great Train Robbery?’
    Even in the glass I saw him turn white. The porcelain flash spread to the back of his neck, and to the knuckles of both hands. It was his business, not mine. Probably no one else would have cottoned on. He smiled as if I must be loony to say such a thing, but he wasn’t reading that map for nothing, and that was a fact. Maybe he was doing a correspondence course from the Train Robbery Polytechnic, several of which must have opened in the last few years.
    I don’t know why I had been so awkward with the ticket collector. I had the right change, and could only put it down to the fact that I hadn’t been to bed with another woman since before I married Bridgitte. I had banged a few on rugs and carpets, and behind summer hedges (and even on one occasion an aunt of Bridgitte’s had had me in Holland), but never actually in bed. No other explanation seemed possible or desirable, except that such unnecessarily bloody-minded conduct helped to pass a few minutes on an otherwise boring journey. Or maybe it was those little flashes of grey hair which made me act the way I did. Cheating made me feel young.
    He put a folded map sheet away, and took another from his large sheer-leather hundred-quid briefcase, which was a far cry from the black plastic executive mock-up with a tin lock that I carried. I marvelled at his concentration. Sweat stood on his forehead. He wiped his cheeks, mopping the flood rather than the source. Anyone capable of such assiduous observation would certainly command a job whose salary allowed the purchase of such a briefcase.
    The sun gleamed on factories as the train clawed its way closer to London. Well-kept houses reminded me that England was still wealthy, in spite of what the newspapers and the government wailed on about. Evidence of rich people made me feel better, though whenever I was on my way out of London the same fact depressed me.
    The pin-headed, short-haired, well-shaven man sitting opposite put away his newspaper. ‘Of course, it’s entirely up to you, and I don’t want to interfere, but what’s the point of having a ticket which doesn’t entitle you to the proper seat? You must know it’s impossible to avoid paying.’
    Just as I had whiled away a few minutes during my teasing of the ticket collector, so this nail-scraping fop was trying to pass the last half hour of our journey by a bout of moral finger-wagging, especially now that he had solved his calculations on the map. Having guessed his game, I could be courteous in reply. ‘You might think so, old man, but I haven’t coughed up yet.’
    He laughed, as if he couldn’t wait to see me do so. The fact that I failed to place him irritated me so much that I wanted to smash his mug to pulp. Then I twigged that beneath the old veneer he was ineradicably working class. He couldn’t fool me, who was neither ashamed nor proud of having come from the mob, though my father was said to be descended from a long line of impoverished landowning wankers.
    A lid of dark cloud stretched across the sky, a luminous