Father of the Man (3 page)

No. That was unfair, he thought. After all, it was a Sunday afternoon; such complicated business over a rail warrant was possibly quite rare. Nor was British Rail responsible for his general lack of awareness. Nor for the baby’s mucus. Not even for that wretched sinking feeling which grew daily more weighty in the pit of his stomach.

Well, not
wholly
responsible, anyway…he managed a tight grin.

But for the moment he felt as though it were.

The dwarf, in red lumberjacket and shiny black sneakers, who could barely reach the round portion in the window through which you were supposed to speak—and, momentarily, Roger felt guilty and ungrateful: how could he ever have supposed his own life to be difficult?—the dwarf was quickly seen to. So was the young mother, who looked strained, desperate, ground down, beaten. And where, he’d wondered, was
she
going, in what kind of room, amidst what degree of comfort, would she finally find some sort of refuge—and, likewise, what chance of any healthy, innocent childhood could ever exist for her baby? But what might he himself do about it; how could he possibly interfere? Potentially insult her by offering money? For he couldn’t offer her anything else, not even very much of that. He could—and did—say a silent prayer, but the fact he had only belatedly thought of it showed he didn’t basically have a lot of trust in the power of prayer.

And then, pretty soon getting back to his own problems (of course!), he knew it didn’t really help, at least not for very long, his trying to concentrate on others who were worse off than himself; you merely had to think of Cardboard City or of all those thousands who spent the night in shop doorways, often in temperatures that must be freezing, even inside a sleeping bag…He often imagined how he would feel if he were homeless. By God, it had been bad enough during the time he’d lived in a bed-sitting-room, in Hampstead. That had been in the first year after his parents removed to Nottingham. The room had been small but it had been adequate—bed, wardrobe, table, wooden chair—and, no, he had not been cold. But he hadn’t managed to make any friends and he’d hated having to return to London early every Sunday evening; had invariably been close to tears, the complete and utter milksop. He was a Cancer, a crab, just like his mother: a home-lover, not happy when he hadn’t got the things—or, rather, the people; things didn’t matter to him much—the people round him that he loved. He was a little boy. He was twenty-four years old and yet a little boy. When Mrs Whittaker-Payne had asked him on Friday why on earth he commuted he had felt ashamed, as though the truth were immediately self-evident:
Because I miss my mummy and daddy
.

At the moment, however, even if he were a little boy he was an angry little boy. He’d spent over fifteen minutes in the queue and not simply had it seemed longer, far longer, but if he didn’t throw off his present bad mood he would probably waste more of his time when he got home. And he had no right to be in a bad mood. So much for trying to enter into the trials of the pair who’d been immediately in front of him! So much for asking God to shower his blessings down on
them
and to instil in himself a profound and lasting gratitude! (And
at once Lord
, he had meant,
at once
! In both cases.) Besides, he had no right to be in a bad mood, not even on other grounds; the delay hadn’t been the clerk’s fault.

And now, as he walked up to the window, he reminded himself of this.

“I want to inquire about my season ticket,” he said. “I’m afraid it expired yesterday. Would it be possible, please…I mean, I think it is possible…to extend it by six days? By the six days I lost when you were all on strike this year.”

The clerk replied: “Those six days will be added to your new season ticket, sir.” He was perfectly polite but he sounded bored; bored yet impatient. It was nearly as though he’d yawned or as though he’d looked over Roger’s shoulder and already said, “Next, please.” Making up for lost time. There were a couple more in line he could have been saying it to.

“But I don’t want a new season ticket,” said Roger. “I only need those six days.”

“No season ticket, no extension. But you can put in for a refund.” The young man rubbed the lobe that had no earring.

To Roger this sounded like a typically bureaucratic way of saying the same thing. “Okay. I’d like to do that, please.”

“Six pounds a day,” said the clerk.

“Excuse me? I don’t quite follow. What’s six pounds a day?”

“The amount of the refund.”

“No, I’m sorry, I’ve explained myself badly. I’ve got to go to London just another six times, then I’m finished. So in a way, yes, I do need a new season ticket, but only one that’s going to see me through this coming week. Therefore all I need to ask you for—in place of an extension—is a six-day pass, starting from tomorrow.”

“Fine,” said the clerk. “Ninety pounds fifty, then.” He seemed to be waiting for Roger to hand over that amount of money.

Roger simulated laughter. “No, don’t forget this is a refund!”

“Yes. A refund of six pounds a day. Making thirty-six pounds in all. Which means your weekly season will now cost you…” he hesitated “…only fifty-four pounds fifty.”

“So the fare is roughly thirteen pounds a day,” said Roger, after a rapid calculation, “and you’re offering me back six?”

“If you want to look at it like that.”

“Do you think that’s fair?”

“Nothing to do with me.”

No, of course it wasn’t, but surely the man could have shown some glimmer of sympathy. They were approximately the same age. Yet, instead, his patience seemed as strained as it must have been when dealing with the soldier. “Sunday bloody Sunday!” he might say, when he was next in a position to unwind. “
What
an afternoon I’ve had! You wouldn’t believe it!” And for a moment Roger simply stared. Then he turned away, without another word. He didn’t know what more to say and definitely ‘thank you’ wasn’t going to be an option.

He sat down limply on one of the wooden benches nearby. He felt numb.

After about five minutes, however, he went down to the station manager’s office, which was situated between platforms four and five. It was red-bricked, had an entrance on either platform—though one said Private—and small, opaque windows through which a stack of empty cartons could be seen, a clipboard propped against the glass, and a couple of rubber plants. He knocked, then entered without hearing a response. The room was far from spacious. There were white walls; an old bicycle leaning against one of them; polystyrene tiles on the ceiling. In the centre of the place stood a desk that had a litter of paperwork scattered over its glass top. Two middle-aged officials had clearly been chatting companionably: one sitting behind the desk, the other with his bottom perched on a corner of it, tearing with his teeth at a thumb cuticle. They looked at Roger in a friendly and inquiring manner. When he explained that he wanted to speak to the station master, the one with the cuticle rose and said he ought to be getting back to his work anyway. Roger had to move over, to make room for the passage of a fairly striking girth. The official nodded amiably.

The one who was left wasn’t in uniform. He wore a brown suit. Brown tie. He was a slight man; had a long narrow face and a long narrow nose. Gingery hair surrounded a bald pate which reflected the light—there was an illuminated square, glass-covered, amidst the polystyrene. Still seated, he prompted Roger to disclose his problem.

“I didn’t realize,” answered Roger, “there was going to be a problem. Otherwise, you see, I wouldn’t have left it so late. I’m sorry about that.”

In fact, it had all seemed so simple and straightforward. The neatness of the six days owing and the six days required…Roger had viewed this almost as a sign that everything was
meant
.

He told the man, less succinctly than he’d hoped to, exactly what the trouble was.

“And if you can’t extend my ticket I was wondering if I couldn’t…you know…have a…whether you couldn’t just give me some kind of a pass.” He shrugged, and again gave an apologetic smile.

“Wish I could,” said the station master. “But even if something like that were possible—which I doubt—I’d still have to get authorization from our area office at Derby.” He pursed his lips slightly and looked at the two plants on the windowsill as if speculating on whether or not they needed water.

“Excuse me, then, but…but couldn’t you give them a ring?”

“What, on a Sunday? No, no, they don’t work weekends.” The very idea that anyone should think they did appeared to fill him with wonder and amusement and even a touch of pity. Now his glance travelled towards the bicycle. Roger imagined an ironical lift to the eyebrow: perhaps he was envisaging low handlebars and seeing himself bowling along country lanes on this bright October afternoon instead of sitting in a poky office poring over paperwork.

“So what do I do tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to pay.”

“But I haven’t any money.”

“Borrow some.” There could have been the hint of a question mark but certainly no more than a hint. Perhaps absentmindedly, he had picked up a pencil and was now rolling it beneath his right palm, back and forth across a small uncluttered space of desk. A poor substitute for freewheeling down an autumn hillside—maybe with your wife and children. The interview had not contained the friendliness it promised. Nor any feeling of genuine goodwill.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Better stay home, then. You haven’t got much choice.”

Rather than catch a bus back Roger decided to walk. When he opened the front door the smell of baking bread came out to him. His mother was chopping vegetables for a soup; Polly sat begging for pieces of potato peel. “Darling, you wouldn’t like to feed her, would you? Get her out from under my feet?”

By this time Roger had grown calmer. He collected the dog’s bowl and took the tin-opener from the drawer. “Where’s Dad?”

“I think he must have gone upstairs. I think he must be lying down.” Jean’s tone was suddenly so neutral, so audibly neutral, that in fact it wasn’t neutral at all.

“Oh dear.”

“Yes. Oh dear, indeed.” But she made a visibly conscious effort not to elaborate on the point. “Were things all right at the station?”

“What makes you think they wouldn’t be?”

“Nothing whatever. Just an unconsidered turn of phrase, you poor pedantic boy.” She threw a carrot in the bin, as having grown too rubbery even to make soup. Then, possibly alerted by something in the tone of his response, she repeated her question. “Were they?”

“No. Not really.”

“Why? What happened?” Her vegetable knife stopped slicing and she turned to face him with automatic concern.

As he spooned out the dog food and Polly scrabbled excitedly at his trouser leg, her tail lashing frantically, he reported as faithfully as he could the substance of what had been said. “But as I walked home I got more and more bolshie. Even if I have to pay for only one day’s ticket, that’s over forty quid. And it’s so unfair. When they took my money they engaged to give me three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of travel. Consecutive travel.” Roger had rehearsed that phrase.

“I know, love, I know. But it’s no good getting all het up over it. I still have a spot of emergency cash left in the building society. I’ll write you out a cheque.”

“Yet it
isn’t
fair, Mum. I shouldn’t just give in to it. ‘If we can keep you as a customer we’ll certainly pay you back the days we owe! If not—sorry, mate—just thirty-six pounds, not a penny more!’ That’s effectively what they said to me.”

Jean touched his forearm sympathetically, then turned back to her preparation of the vegetables. “Darling, you never seem to learn. All your life you’ve complained that something or other isn’t fair; but what have you ever been able to do about it? The world
isn’t
fair—sooner or later we all have to become resigned to that. So why not follow the man’s advice: just stay at home tomorrow? We’ll go to the cinema…and afterwards have coffee and cake; we can pretend we’re on a date!” At the moment Jean worked only three days a week, in an antiques shop, although she was thinking, regretfully, that she would soon have to look for something better-paid. She laughed; there was a note of excitement in her laughter. “Have we
ever
been to the pictures together, without anyone else in tow?”

But Roger refused to be drawn. He watched Polly, who was by now pushing her bowl right across the kitchen, pushing it with tongue reluctant to acknowledge there was no more left. “And then what happens on Tuesday?”

“
Indiana Jones
,” persisted his mother, “you said you wanted to see it. Oh, darling, do say yes! And I’ll be the one to speak to Mr Cavendish, to tell him you’re not well.”

“
Anything—so long as you never lie!
That’s what you used to say.”

“Oh, Roger, don’t be such a…”

“What?”

“And apart from anything else, my pet, think how embarrassing you’d find it.” However, she didn’t expatiate on what ‘it’ was. “You—who won’t even wear a bright tie in case it draws attention to you. You—who always wear a belt
and
braces.”

“What in God’s name has that to do with anything?” Yet he didn’t wait for an answer. “And, anyway, when do I complain so much about everything being unfair?”

“Don’t say you don’t even realize you do it. I thought you knew yourself better than that.”

“No. Tell me. When do I do it?”

“It’s not important,” said Jean.

“But I want to know.”

She sighed. The excitement had gone out of her. “It’s only over small things. Like when Oscar’s had one of those little strokes of luck he always does seem to be having. Don’t you remember when you said to me, ‘How is it that Oscar keeps finding things—like that Rolex wristwatch which nobody ever claimed—or discovers money in his account which was clearly put there by mistake but just as clearly nobody ever missed? How is it that every time, whatever happens, he comes up smelling of roses?’”

“And you said he was born under a lucky star, that’s simply the kind of person he is.”

Jean was wiping her hands down her flowered apron. “Anyhow, will you come to see
Indiana Jones
with me?”