Better Than Fiction 2 (12 page)

I
was on my way home from a literary festival in the southeast of England and I took a seat in a first-class ‘quiet zone’ carriage. In a complicated act of willful blindness, I conned myself into believing that the festival (which was no more than a circle of tents in a wet field and which didn’t pay me a fee) had paid for a first-class ticket so I could read and rest during the five-hour journey home.

Before the trouble started, I was disproportionately happy: I love trains and stories and films set on trains, and one of my dominant daydreams goes like this:

Not long after boarding, the meal was served (smoked salmon with capers) and the inspector came to my table. Less than an hour later, she called the police and asked to have me ‘forcibly removed for failure to carry a valid ticket.’

‘Madam, your ticket isn’t valid for travel in first class.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’

‘You need to purchase a valid ticket.’

She was squat and square with the orange teeth and fingers of a heavy smoker. And yet, she was beautiful, had the kind of implausibly blue eyes I’d seen only once before when I met a Serbian boy in Starbucks.

‘Can’t I just move to standard class?’ I said.

I didn’t want to move and lose this rare mood of peace and privilege, the feeling that an oubliette on the Orient Express would no doubt bring.

‘You can’t move seats whenever you feel like it, and you’ve already eaten half the meal.’

‘How much is first class?’

She pushed buttons on a dusty machine strapped to her belt.

‘£179.73.’

I had about £20 in my wallet and less than £300 in my credit account. I couldn’t afford first-class silence, this soft wide seat far from businessmen with mobiles who are fond of saying, ‘Moving forward… We need to drill down… To be fair… I think you’re boiling the ocean on this… At the end of the day… We need to get our ducks in a row…’

There’d be no silence now, no chance of sleep or reading undisturbed by gangsters drinking beer and eating KFC from buckets, probably boneless banquets – all the chicken, none of
the evidence.

‘I haven’t got enough money,’ I said. ‘Can’t I just move?’

‘Madam, as I’ve repeatedly said, you can’t just eat the meal and what-have-you and then change carriages whenever you feel like it.’

I wanted to reason with her but she’d likely hate me more if I said that my desire for first-class train journeys started around the time I lived in a council estate and first read
Strangers on a Train, La Bête Humaine
by Zola, and Chekhov’s stories.

‘What happens now?’ I said. ‘I can’t pay and you won’t let me move.’

‘You’ll be fined and escorted from the service by transit officers.’

Transit officers? This puffer-fish hated me for reasons of an order more perverse than professional and when she left me alone to check tickets in the next carriage, I read some Chekhov for comfort:

In a second-class smoking compartment five passengers sit dozing, shrouded in the twilight of the carriage. They had just had a meal, and now, snugly ensconced in their seats, they are trying to go to sleep. Stillness. (‘A Happy Man’)

She was back. No chance of stillness now. No chance of sleeping with my head on the bath towel I’d taken from the motel room (which had no biscuits) and no looking out the window at howling winds buckling fences, security lights flashing on and off in porches of empty houses; no chance now for watching scenes sucked back at speed with just time enough to notice that sheep aren’t in the habit of running.

I put my books in my suitcase and stood.

‘You can’t leave,’ said the inspector.

‘This is so fucking bloody-minded.’

‘Please don’t use that language at me, madam.’

‘I’m swearing at the situation, not you,’ I said.

A man sitting a few rows behind came to my table, sat, introduced himself and, as though the inspector wasn’t there, chatted a while about overzealous and officious ticket collectors.

‘I’ve seen trouble like this before,’ he said, ‘and I’ve written several letters of complaint.’

The man was Mr W, a semi-retired solicitor, mostly conveyancing law, but he knew (he said) that this inspector was ‘out of bounds both legally and ethically’ and he asked for her name and rank.

‘I’m the train manager,’ she said. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Well, then, you should know that I happen to agree with the young lady here that this situation is ludicrous.’

She coughed.

‘And,’ he said, ‘I’d like to pay for the young lady’s ticket.’

This wasn’t the first time I’d encountered an extraordinary act of kindness. My life has been spiked by regular bouts of obscene luck: in early childhood neighbours and relatives willing to rescue me, in school a teacher who took me from my cruddy home and let me live with her while I finished my final year of school, and later, a professor who part-funded my scholarship to study law at the University College Dublin.

I refused Mr W’s offer. He insisted.

‘You can’t buy her ticket anyway,’ said the inspector.

‘Why on earth not?’ said Mr W.

‘’Cos she’s not the valid ticket holder, is she?’

‘You’re being unreasonable,’ said Mr W, ‘and you’re on very thin ice legally speaking.’

She shrugged. ‘Let’s see what the transit police have to say about that,’ and went to the vestibule and called for ‘immediate
reinforcement.’

I put my head on the table, like a child might: If I couldn’t see her, then she couldn’t see me and I might stay this way and not lift my head till I was home.

Before the second bell, while Podtyagin is standing at the refreshment bar, drinking seltzer water, two gentlemen go up to him, one in the uniform of an engineer, and the other in a military overcoat.

‘Look here, ticket collector,’ the engineer begins, addressing Podtyagin. ‘Your behaviour to that invalid passenger has revolted all who witnessed it.’ (‘Oh! The Public’)

The train pulled into the next station, a transit cop boarded, came to my seat, and stood so close that the winter came in a gust at my face.

‘That’s her,’ said the inspector, and then she left.

‘I’m officer B.L,’ said the transit cop. ‘Madam, do you understand why I’ve been called at this time?’

‘I just want you to know,’ I said, ‘that I’m sorry for this waste of your time.’

‘That’s not at issue here and we need—’

‘But you shouldn’t have been dragged out in the dead of night in the middle of a freezing blizzard.’

‘No need to apologise, madam. Just a touch of wind and hail.’

‘Okay, but could you please write that down.’

He frowned. ‘Write what down?’

‘Write down that I’ve made a full apology.’

‘Madam, can you confirm that you’ve refused to purchase a valid ticket?’

‘I’m not refusing. I can’t afford it and I offered to move as soon
as I realised I didn’t have a first-class ticket.’

‘At what time was that?’

‘We were no more than ten minutes into the journey,’ said Mr W. ‘Just a mile or two beyond M station.’

‘But you aren’t holding a valid ticket. Is that correct?’

‘Officer,’ said Mr W, ‘did that overzealous inspector happen to inform you that I offered to buy a ticket on this young lady’s behalf, and that I was refused and furthermore—’

Mr W was interrupted by an announcement:
‘N Trains apologises for the delay which is due to the matter of a passenger in violation of the requirement of travelling with a valid ticket during transit who is presently in the rear carriage of the train being escorted from the service by transit police. On behalf of N trains I do apologise for this unforeseen delay. Our estimated arrival time…’

The inspector came back, her shoulders higher, her hair brushed and a badge pinned to her black jacket: N Trains Manager. She stood beside the transit cop and said, ‘So, where do we stand?’

‘The customer says she can’t pay and made a mistake and back near M and that she offered—’

‘She still needs to be removed immediately, or—’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said.

Mr W said there were ‘no grounds whatsoever’ for my removal.

(A few weeks later, Mr W sent a letter to N Trains – copied to me – alleging, among other things, ‘maltreatment of elderly and infirm passengers’ and ‘the appalling conduct by the train manager’ and then I understood that what he did that night was an act of kindness and a certain enjoyment in taking revenge.)

The inspector and transit cop chatted in the vestibule and the cop came back alone.

‘Madam, the Metropolitan Police will alight the service at the
next station and—’

‘This can’t be happening,’ I said.

‘You will then be processed, fined, removed from the service, and taken into custody.’

I needed to urinate.

The transit cop left and Mr W gave me his business card, and said, ‘Don’t hesitate to call me if you need advice.’

‘Thank you.’

We were silent a moment. I was nervous and he offered me a drink.

‘The cop forgot to ask for my ID,’ I said.

‘That’s right, and since you’re not in an allocated seat, you’re a person unknown. Even to me.’

I smiled.

‘Maybe I should make a move while I can,’ I said.

Mr W shook my hand, wished me luck, and, as he stood, said, ‘Do what you need to do, young lady, but if it comes to it, I’d advise you not to resist arrest.’

I packed my case and went to the bathroom in the next carriage. The cops would be on the lookout for ‘a Caucasian female, approximately five-foot-seven, thirty-to-forty-years-old, long dark hair, red lipstick, wearing a green poncho and …’

I stuffed the poncho in my case and replaced it with a dark jacket; wiped away my make-up and tucked my black hair inside a grey beanie. When the engine slowed, I moved to the final carriage – the caboose – and when the doors opened, I stepped into the darkness and pelting rain.

There were three Met Officers on the platform talking to the inspector who pointed at carriage B – at my table. Two cops got on the train and the third stayed outside on watch. There was no cover on the platform, the Northern night was deep in dark, and
hard rain flew sideways, all of which made identification tricky, though not impossible.

Running would give me away, but I had to move, and fast, and so I did. About a half-dozen passengers moved toward the exit and the coffee shop where an awning gave the only shelter on the platform. I merged with these passengers and asked a man for the time and smiled for no reason and asked him if his watch was waterproof, for the illusion we might know each other, might be man and wife.

As I walked, I passed within a body-length of the cop ‘on watch,’ but he did no more than slackly gaze at the rainy windows. The cops inside must have known that I’d done a runner, or maybe not. Perhaps they thought I was in the buffet-car buying a snack, or fixing my lipstick in the bathroom. Maybe they hadn’t counted on a person like me doing a runner – not a well-dressed woman in her mid-thirties who read ‘literary’ books, spoke in a posh voice with an accent hard to pin down, of no fixed address or nationality.

I stood under the cafe awning and a woman said, to nobody in particular, ‘This bloody weather. I need to pick up my youngest from her granny’s.’

‘I’m in a mad rush too.’ I said. ‘And I hate being late.’

She didn’t ask where I needed to be.

‘It’s so cold,’ she said. ‘I just want to go in there and get a hot chocolate with piles of those mini marshmallows.’

I looked at the cop ‘on watch’ and though he hadn’t moved, he was on his two-way, and that could mean trouble

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘Being cold to the bone makes you hungry for sugar.’

She smiled.

‘Oh, this rain’s infernal – when will it ever stop?’

I didn’t tell her I love rain; that I like living in the North because it rains often, and rains all ways and most days, sideways, up-ways and hail-ways.

‘It’s so icy,’ she said. ‘It better not start snowing.’

I didn’t say that I love snow in the city, or that I like storms and howling winds, how the air smells at 3am when I wake early; how strange it is that I don’t feel sleepy, but more alive.

The woman moved away from me to stand under the light so she could fix a broken spoke in her umbrella. I stayed close to her but didn’t mention all the reasons I love the snow, how things mostly ignored are noticed when it snows: a dormer window on the sixth floor of those flats by the newsagents, the troughs and chains outside a pub where horses were tethered in the 1800s. And how laughter is louder in the wake of snow, and cats leap and twist as though in fright when they see that their small paws make wide dark holes and for a while they’re confused, or think they might be bigger than they knew.