Train Man Read online

  ‘I don’t have my wallet with me, but—’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I have the ticket, look. I can tell you what the parcel is – it’s just a cream.’

  The man had shaken his head, weighed down with the responsibility of preventing fraud and theft – a responsibility people like Michael would never understand, especially if they were foolish enough to ignore simple, clearly written instructions.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘Ignorance is no plea, MacMillan. I think we need a little chat, once you’ve had your lunch.’

  ‘Did Tracey give you lunch? Did it fit?’

  Michael was nodding his head again.

  He stared at the landscape, trying to remember the name – not of the post-office man, but of the human-resources manager. It might have been Jill, or Jean or Joan. Certainly a ‘J’. She was heavy in her chair, like Monica, but whilst she appeared to be sympathetic, there was a toughness under the sympathy before which Michael wilted. His energy left him.

  ‘Please don’t sack me,’ he wanted to say. ‘I can do better. You have to understand that I am not incompetent, or gross – I just need a little time. We all need a little time, don’t we? My mother’s dead.’

  Of course, if he’d said that she would have said, ‘In fairness, you’ve had quite a lot of time. You’ve had years, Michael, and I’m sorry about your mother.’

  ‘She’s just died. I’m an orphan.’

  ‘You’re a what?’

  ‘My father’s dead, too. A while ago – so that means I’m an orphan, and the world is so… unforgiving.’

  ‘You’re a grown man, Michael.’

  ‘That’s what I’m not, Joan – and I know I’ve had time off but I didn’t realise what was happening to me. Aren’t you just a tiny bit responsible for my welfare, as my employer? You see, I think I’m ill.’

  ‘Go to a doctor, then.’

  ‘About what? About how long I find myself sitting in the office doing nothing, being grossly incompetent? What can a doctor say?’

  He had taken time off, of course he had – but those who are ill often put a lot of work into pretending they’re not. Looking back, he hadn’t simply been poorly, or overworked. He had been… terminally distracted – and this was all before he met Amy, and got other strange, sad jobs. He couldn’t blame Joan or Jean or anyone else, least of all his mother. He’d been distracted, as he was distracted now because the woman opposite had a bag of sweets and suddenly he wanted to know what they were. They were in an old-fashioned paper bag, as if they had gone back in time together to the 1970s when things came in bags, having been weighed out on scales. The newspaper shop where he bought his selection was owned by a man called Mr Moorhouse: Moorhouse was the name above the door, and it sold sweets, magazines, and a few books and toys.

  When he went to the grammar school he no longer passed Moorhouse’s, because he took the train, with James and Luke. There was a bus, but the train was faster. Six years of grammar school had prepared him for two years of college and then various clerical jobs, hopping from an estate agent’s to an accountancy firm, from which he’d moved to the county council. There he had served the people. There he had proved, over time, to be grossly incompetent in that service – so incompetent that he could not be helped, even after fourteen years of slow, inefficient and finally destructive non-service. He was approaching fifty, and the human-resources manager – Jo, or Jean – had sat with him and his union rep because things had finally come to a head. Things couldn’t go on the way they were going, and for his own protection, for his own health… what she wanted to do was protect him from the pressure, as if he was being brought back from a war. It was as if the conflict had proved too much and he was too shell-shocked to perform his duties.

  No hospital bed behind the lines, though.

  No bandages round his head, and no pretty nurse to tell him he was through the worst of it as she put bluebells into the flower vase. No relationship forming slowly, for they were both shy, and had suffered so much.

  ‘Hold me.’

  His mother had said that, and there’d been no nurse at all, sadly, and his GP had always struck him as rather abrupt. Some people were abrupt, out of shyness. If you’re shy, you develop strategies to conceal it – you learn to be rude and brisk, and Dr Bonnermorgan had so many patients who were genuinely, visibly sick… his waiting room was full of them. There were five doctors in all, and every one of them saw steady streams of people with diabetes and arthritic complications – there were so many ways of being diagnosably, properly ill. Michael had sat opposite a man with a huge dressing over his eye, whilst a young woman had a wheezing baby that seemed too sick to even cry. The baby had to take priority – there was nothing more heartbreaking than a baby with an illness. Michael would have been abrupt too, if anyone had come between him and a dying child, so he had nothing but sympathy for Dr Bonnermorgan’s shy aggression and his natural disgust for malingering charlatans who needed to shake themselves awake and stop fantasising about bluebells.

  ‘What can we do for you this time?’

  The doctor had a beard. It was neat on his face, so carefully trimmed – but the question asked was so freighted with uninterest and suspicion that Michael could hardly reply.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  Had he laughed? Yes.

  Dr Bonnermorgan had simply gazed at him, and the beard didn’t move because his lips didn’t open – and Michael struggled to explain a sadness he didn’t understand, for he had nothing to be sad about, since bereavement was a station everyone had to pass through – or a tunnel, or simply a long, horrible delay as you waited for the signal to change. It needn’t be a derailment.

  ‘I just can’t seem to get going,’ he said.

  ‘Are you depressed still?’

  ‘No.’

  The doctor got straight to the point.

  ‘Are you worrying about something? Is there something else?’

  ‘No, not really. I just seem to be slowing down.’

  ‘What about counselling?’

  ‘Good Lord. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘You start by going online, or reading a few leaflets. I’ll send you some – there’s good people out there.’

  ‘It’s an idea. Thank you.’

  He’d found himself back in the reception area, aware that compared to whole swathes of the ailing population he was absolutely fine and lucky to be so. From his toes to the crown of his balding head, and all the way out to his unbitten fingernails: he could stand like Jesus on the cross, and there was nothing wrong anywhere on his unblemished, slowly fattening body. Blood pressure? Absolutely fine. Alcohol intake? That was too personal a question, so he’d lied about that.

  ‘What about diet?’

  ‘Fine, doctor. Everything’s fine, actually. Please see the baby. Save the baby, and restore the sight of a truly wounded man. Help the sick for I am a survivor, totally – I have come through, bowed but unbroken.’

  It was Steve, though, who confronted him first – and that was Steve from Building Control, in the same annexe as Monica, but on the floor above. He had no problem remembering Steve’s name, for Steve looked and sounded like a Steve. He was a man who seemed to know everything, and dealt in black and white. He had to know everything, in fact, because people came to him for guidance. ‘I want to convert my loft,’ they’d say. ‘I need to know whether I can do so or not.’

  ‘No, it’s not going to work,’ Steve would reply. Or, ‘Yes, it’s possible. I’d better come and see it. I’d better come and measure the ceiling, to check headroom, and then look at the joists to see if they can take the load – because they probably won’t be structural timbers capable of supporting heavy furniture. No, you will have to employ a carpenter to reinforce everything, and while he’s doing that you’ll have to upgrade your plasterboard to twelve or sixteen mill so it’s a fire barrier, and no, again, no. You’ll have to abandon that chic
spiral-staircase idea, because a chic staircase won’t allow anyone in the bedroom to escape quickly enough should there be a roasting, blazing fire. You can put in a roof window, yes, but not in the south elevation where you want to put it – you won’t get planning permission. Yes, you will need an architect to draw it all up, and you must then submit the application to me and my colleagues on the appropriate forms having paid the appropriate fee. We know the rules, and we don’t ever break them – for your safety. For everyone’s safety. We are not pedantic people, determined to frustrate your dreams – we are the ones you will turn to in gratitude, for your building will not collapse or burn. You will not drown in toxic smoke, gasping for air – because of us.’

  We live by the rules, and keep children safe.

  Steve was a down-to-earth man, and worked for the fire service as a volunteer. He was happy in the company of men, and there was a cheerful ease about him that Michael found curiously intimidating, like the smell of a locker-room. He had once had to pull someone off the electric rail by a level crossing, and had done so with a wooden-handled rake.

  That’s what he said, though he didn’t like to talk about it. Michael couldn’t remember how it had come up, because he would never have said, ‘Steve. Tell me about some awful thing you have seen or done – tell us your worst fire-service story.’

  And where had he found this rake?

  Perhaps the line ran past an allotment, or a back garden where the owner was standing by his shed, gathering up the leaves?

  Steve also played rugby.

  He probably had communal showers. Behind Michael’s back, he probably used the foulest language, for contact sport required adrenaline, and adrenaline led to men slashing the air with violent words: ‘Oh, Christ!’ he’d cry, if Michael’s name ever came up. ‘Michael, in Accounts? That shit-for-brains cunt. Fucking Michael…’

  With a pint in his hand, he would speak like that – he might well use that hand grenade of a word. Why not?

  Behind Steve’s back, Michael would say, ‘Ah, Steve. He knows his stuff. He tells it as it is.’

  Behind Michael’s back, Steve would probably make that foul gesture where the index finger and thumb make a circle. He didn’t see Michael as a useful member of the team. Had they been born ten thousand years ago, and encountered each other as members of different hunter-gatherer tribes, Steve would have probably smashed Michael’s skull with a stone and stolen his berries. In the open-plan office of the council, he couldn’t do that. He was usually polite and they did their jobs in a kind of broad parallel, well away from the rugby pitch. It was a Thursday morning when the confrontation took place.

  ‘I’ve just had Limston’s on the phone.’

  Michael was at his desk, and Steve was standing over him.

  ‘Limston’s?’

  ‘Builders’ merchants. They said they put their invoice in two months ago.’

  ‘Right. I can check that, Steve—’

  ‘I’m not asking you to check it. I’m telling you. They just faxed a copy through to me, and it went in two months ago. June the fifth. Then they followed it up with a reminder, and then an overdue notice, and I’ve just had the manager nearly at bloody breaking point because we haven’t paid them. It’s for forty-three thousand pounds. Why haven’t they been paid?’

  ‘I don’t know. It will be in the system, so—’

  ‘It’s not in the system.’

  ‘Then… I’ll have to check.’

  ‘What are you doing with the invoices?’

  He pulled up a chair, and sat down so he was uncomfortably close. Michael remembered the smell of cigarettes and the power of his arms in a short-sleeved shirt that seemed tight. Nobody else was paying any attention, it seemed – but the tone of voice Steve had used in that last question must have alerted everyone within earshot that a power struggle was under way, and a weaker tribesman was about to be vanquished.

  ‘What are you doing, Michael? What are you doing with the invoices?’

  ‘What I always do.’

  ‘Robbie Limston is a friend of mine. He’s asked me to look into this because his bank won’t service the debt any more – you know what that means?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but—’

  ‘It means he’s got to get money from somewhere, fast, or he risks going under. You know how quickly a little firm like that can go under? I mean, he sails pretty close to the wind. There are months when he hardly turns a profit.’

  ‘Steve—’

  ‘Show me the original invoice.’

  There was a very short silence.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Open your folders. Let me see your records for June.’

  ‘I don’t think I can. They’re in ledgers and the ledgers are filed, and—’

  ‘Go and get them.’

  ‘Steve, what are you so worried about?’

  Michael had licked his dry lips, and found that his hands were shaking. The man sitting opposite was not going to be put off and Michael also knew that his own voice was unsteady. He was using Steve’s name too often, and the fact of the matter was too awful to confess: he did know where the Limston invoices were, because they were with a number of other invoices – and they weren’t in the ledger, because he had almost certainly shredded them. Why had he shredded them? That was what he’d hoped to discuss with Dr Bonnermorgan: an inability to cope, despite his absolutely fine blood pressure.

  ‘You’re not doing your job,’ said Steve quietly. ‘I’m worried that you’re not doing your job properly, and… I wouldn’t care, normally. It wouldn’t be my business. But Robbie Limston is a mate, and he’s not going out of business because you’re incompetent. When is he going to get paid?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Look it up.’

  ‘No. I can’t. If you… Look. If you have… concerns. If you have concerns—’

  ‘I do have concerns.’

  ‘In that case—’

  ‘Major concerns. Most of us do.’

  His shirt was too tight. He should never have bought that size.

  ‘Look,’ said Michael. ‘If that really is the case, you have to raise your concerns formally, and properly – and I can do a search right away, but… I can’t do one because you sit there demanding that I do. I will do a search and get straight back to you.’

  Silence. The train rattling on, but somehow silent – and he wished he’d gone through to the next carriage, and found a forward-facing seat. He couldn’t ask the woman opposite to move, or he could – theoretically – but it would be so intrusive. She’d got there first, after all, but he was rattling backwards to a place he didn’t want to be, and the idea of sitting down next to her seemed positively dangerous.

  ‘It’s a simple question, Michael.’

  Steve’s nose had been broken.

  ‘I’m asking you on behalf of a trusted supplier – when will the Limston invoice be paid?’

  ‘Next week, I should think. They’ve missed this week’s roster.’

  ‘They missed last week. And the week before—’

  ‘For all I know, the original has been… I don’t know, queried. It may have been pulled for further inspection, or analysis—’

  ‘Go and get it.’

  ‘No.’

  Steve had stood up, and Michael imagined him in his fireman’s uniform and how grateful someone would be if he appeared through the flames of his or her burning car. He would yank the door open, and cut the seat belts with a knife. He’d haul you onto his shoulder and out to safety. When you touch the live rail, you stick to it – so people say. If you touch it with the palm of your hand, the voltage makes the muscles contract so you find yourself gripping it. You grip the metal, and all those volts course straight through your body in their rush to earth, flipping you like a puppet. The fillings of your teeth pop out. Your eyeballs turn to liquid and your hair catches fire. The live rail fries you from inside: you actually melt, even as you scorch. Steve had managed to drag someone off, though, wi
th a wooden rake. So Michael sat back, and saw that the woman opposite him had sherbet lemons – he could see the telltale yellow eggs. She caught his eye.

  ‘I’m going to see Linda,’ said Steve.

  I’m going to Crewe, thought Michael. The 14.41 is a through train, and the rails are not electrified. I won’t be electrocuted.

  ‘Linda?’ he said.

  Linda was Michael’s team leader, and she started the inquiry that turned into a search, that mushroomed into an investigation. Michael had lost the invoices, he said – but they knew he hadn’t. He had sat at his desk, unable to see the screen for a fuzz of tears that came from nowhere, and oozed straight back even as he wiped them. When his eyes were dry they were too dry, and he couldn’t concentrate – and the invoices piled up in their folders, deep in the desk drawer to the right of his knees. He had no relationships, but that was hardly Linda’s fault, or Steve’s. His mother was dead, so there was nobody to be proud of his non-achievements, and he had simply run out of fuel. There he was on the hard shoulder with everyone else screaming by, blasting their horns.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask for help?’ she said at some point, in that kindly voice of victory.

  Michael had laughed.

  ‘I didn’t think I needed it,’ he said – and the woman with the sweets looked up, for he had spoken aloud.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m talking to myself.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  He smiled. ‘I’m getting into bad habits. I’m talking to myself.’

  She nodded, and went back to her book. He was about to say, ‘Sherbet lemons, eh?’ when he managed to stop himself, and thought instead about Mr Moorhouse, who’d been questioned by the police about something. The 10.23 was not crowded, so he got up carefully, and moved down the carriage. Why had he sat opposite the director of human resources? He could have found a seat on his own, and sat with James.

  He went through the connecting doors, and felt even more foolish: there were several tables that were completely unoccupied. He could sit facing the direction of travel, with no neighbours at all: he had all four places to himself, and he wished he had a jigsaw puzzle to spread out, or a deck of cards. Did he want a drink now? No, though he ought to have one. Instead of getting drunk he simply sat and remembered Steve and then Linda, and then Elizabeth, staring at his ghost-self in the reflection as he thought about all the other people who inevitably got involved in his sacking. A disciplinary hearing was just like the fuss at school, for once you start the process everyone gets on board and nobody can stop it. The head of year gets involved, and comes round to see your parents: that makes things better, temporarily, and you are – for a moment – important. Not that he had reported Mr Trace: no, the head of year had come round because he was making so little academic progress, and might have to drop two subjects. Had he been unravelling, even then? By that time, Mr Trace hadn’t been teaching him.