SETTING THE AGENDA
[EXTRACT]
It has been cold blue sky all day but, as the fast-train pulls away from the stop between the hills, mauve clouds loom like mountains towards us, nose first. Simla puts her boot heel on the seat edge, and starting just below her knee, undoes and pulls out the long lace like she's paging her way through a thick newspaper, looking for a piece she remembers somewhere down the bottom in the middle. When she's done the same with the left boot, she hangs them to dry off the back of the seat in front, rests her heel on her knee, and picks damp clumps of black and gold tiger tights fluff from between her toes.
A fat trilby pensioner across the aisle buys a lager from the trolley, spits the ring-pull and cheersing the can to us, says, "Life goes on." Simla does between her other toes then puts her feet inside my duffle bag. When Trilby sees her rolling up, he gulps his swig so foam spills over his lip down his pink-ginger jowl, pig-eyes the sign, "This's a no smoking carriage."
Simla sticks the match-thin rollie in her teeth, "This fag's no' smoking either."
The man looks down to his hunched wife, whose Christmas pudding hat bobs half up the seat. She peeps up at Trilby but he looks out of the window. It's dark enough now for his eye's to catch mine in the reflection, so he reads the label on his can and has another slug, sweats. He doesn't like us. The wife nods at me like she ought to say something but there's nothing she can think of, and goes back to picking at her sandwich nest of foil. The train's too hot.
The further we get from the snow clouds, the deeper the snow on the ground. It's been weeks now, every day clear blue skies, but you wake up in the morning and there's three or four more inches of the stuff. Each day comes on a plate, the way it is, the way it stays. Tucker says tonight it'll turn to rain. Then we're in a tunnel and I see this guy in a suit get up for the bog from the seat facing away from us behind Trilby and Pudding Hat. When he comes back, still waving his hands around to dry, I nudge Simla, nod for her to clock him.
"Mm?"
"The Target."
She sneaks another look over the seats, shapes an "Oooh!" pulls up my hood and tugs it across my face, then lifts my arm over her and we pretend we are asleep, lying into each other the way we never do for real sleep since she lost the baby.
At the last stop, Trilby and Pudding Hat fuss their plastic bags together and we let people fill up the aisle behind the Target before we get up and off to hang around on the freezing platform until he's off the bridge, the other side of the station, and onto his connection. Simla heels out her fag, asks,
"You think he saw us?"
"Sure he saw us, but he doesn't know it'll be us."
"What's us?"
"You and me." There's a beat missing.
From the bus, we see the pub too late and get to walk back a stop. Tucker's my old Italian tutor. Fortiesh, tweed jacket, tan chinos and loafers, always a blue linen shirt. A square tan face with lines round his eyes like he's screaming but his lip line's thin and straight. The fruit machines reflect off his big round wire glasses, he's talking to a pear-shaped guy, belly hanging out from blue nylon overalls, all over with dust. They turn to the draft from the door and Tucker holds out an arm.
"Danny, Simla, meet our delivery man, Bob."
Bob holds up his caked hand to advise against a shake, Tucker and Simla kiss, he asks her, "How're the boots?"
"They make my feet sweat."
Then he hugs me, ruffling deep down my back like it's good to see me again. I go to the bog while Simla does her prising the life-story act on Bob. Tucker get's the pints, bringing four in a grip that makes him walk squat.
"So, how is it out there, raining yet?"
"Freezing."
"It'll rain, it'll rain. Forecasters know Jack shit."
Simla asks Bob, "So what happened after the army?"
Tucker pulls bags of nuts from his pocket and rabbits them from his hand. I tell him, "The Target was on the train."
"On the train eh? There's irony." He nibbles. "Get the money?" Nibbles. "For the tickets?" Nibbles. "Alright?" Wipes salt off his lips, his knees.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
Simla's telling Bob she knows how it was from her Dad, the Major, beating the shit out of her Mum for not taking orders. Bob says, "Oh I never went for that stuff, violence like, just drifting, drifted off like, and I wasn't no officer neither, just a driver."
I ask, "Tanks?"
"Yes. No, I mean fuel. Petrol tankers."
Simla tries to pull him on again, "So you drifted off … " But it hangs there, all of us looking at Tucker as if he's going to say something. He just sits and hums Raindrops keep falling... Simla bends forward to take Bob's eyes, "Drifted off to …" and Bob unravels his drift.