Cupid's Dart David Nobbs

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.who had travelled this route exactly a year and seventeen minutes ago.I laughed at this caricature of my pedantry, laughed out loud, which made my travelling companions uneasy, which gave me a little stab of wicked satisfaction.I smiled at them.I wondered how they had managed to find a bed strong enough to stand up to their ungainly couplings, but I didn't say anything about that, of course.I said, 'I wouldn't have laughed like that a year ago, before I'd met her.I've a lot to thank her for.That's why I've made this journey really.'They looked frightened.There were forty-five miles to go before we reached London, and they were beginning to think I was unhinged, and they were stuck with me on that crowded train.I thought of the waiter in the snobby French restaurant, that first night, and I leant across the table towards them.'I'm out on parole,' I said, 'but I have to report in every week.'They retreated into their blubber in horror.How she would have laughed.It made me sad to think of how she would have laughed.TWOYoung women had spoken to me before, of course.They had said, 'Can I help you, sir?' and, all too frequently, 'There you go', and recently, to my chagrin, a couple of times, 'Would you like this seat?' But I couldn't remember any young woman speaking to me as if she was interested in me.Not even Rachel, in all the seventeen months of our sterile and abortive relationship.This young woman got on the train at Stoke-on-Trent, and walked slowly down the carriage, looking for a seat.The train was rather full, but I had a table to myself.There is.or was.something about me that deterred other travellers.The seats near me were always the last to go.That pleased me, but it also hurt me somewhat.I am more sensitive than people imagine.She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, on which was the legend, 'Townsend Tissues', below which was a thoroughly off-putting picture of a large man with a beer belly sneezing into a tissue.She was carrying an overnight bag, and she gave me a little smile as quick as a snake's tongue.Her first remark didn't really count.It was, 'Is anybody sitting there?'I looked across the small table, on which some notes for my lecture were strewn, and said, 'I have an uninterrupted view of the frankly rather dull upholstery.I think I can safely deduce, therefore, that nobody is sitting there.'I was appalled by my pedantry.What on earth had possessed me? But it seemed to wash over her.'Thanks,' she said.She reached up to put her bag on the rack.As she did so she revealed a few inches of smooth young flesh below her T-shirt.The top of a tattoo peeped shyly out of her jeans, like a cautious cat.There was a jolt as the train started abruptly.She sat down more quickly than she had intended, and gave another quick little smile, but this one had elements of a grimace in it.I found myself smiling back, which surprised me.I'd never been known for smiling.'There's no risk of anybody ever calling you Smiler Calcutt, is there?' Rachel had once said.Or, more probably, at least twice.Her dry comments on my failings used to come round on a fairly short loop.The train slid slowly out of Stoke's suitably sombre station.The young woman.girl? (how should I think of her? What age was she? Twenty-five? I had so little experience of judging ages, especially young women's ages) looked out of the window.I found myself doing the same, but I saw nothing, and I soon went back to my notes.I found that I could no longer concentrate.I was too aware of her.She sighed, stood up, lifted her bag off the rack, opened it, removed a magazine from it, closed it, and put it back on the rack.'A disorganised mind,' I thought dismissively, my first brief interest fading.She began to read her magazine.The train gathered speed.I tried to gather my thoughts.I couldn't.It wasn't going well.It didn't really matter, there were several weeks to go before the lecture, but it made me feel uneasy.I was, in truth, just beginning to be gripped by a still distant fear – that, having been given my great chance to show the academic world something of my innate brilliance, I would discover that I had nothing to say.I became aware that she had looked up and was studying me.This was extraordinary – extraordinary that she should be studying me, and extraordinary that I should sense it.I had never been intuitive.I looked up too and met her eye.That also surprised me.Why on earth should I have looked up? Why on earth should I be interested in her, once it was established that she had a disorganised mind?That was when she came out with it, her question, her three monosyllabic words, which she would surely not have bothered to say if she hadn't been at least slightly interested in me.'What are you?'I was so surprised that for a moment even these three simple words made no sense, but I pulled myself together.'Ah!' I said.'Good question.Funny you should ask me that.I'm a philosopher.I have devoted a lifetime to the painful process of finding it harder and harder to answer even such apparently simple questions as "What are you?"''No,' she said 'I meant, "what sign?"''Sorry?''What star sign?''Ah.Sorry.Er.Virgo.'It was absurd, at my age, to feel ashamed of my star sign.'Virgo, eh? Oh yeah!' She laughed.There was no cruelty in her laugh, and I noticed how good her teeth were.I'd have struggled to remember the colour of Rachel's eyes, yet here I was noticing this young woman's teeth!'But I'm on the cusp,' I said, as though this made things better.'I'm on the pill,' she said.I smiled, carefully hiding my alarm at her directness.'Virgo!' she repeated.'I ain't never met many virgos.Bet it's not very appropriate.''Oh well.' I let my remark hang in the air.I found that I didn't want her to know how appropriate it was.It's not exactly fashionable to be a virgin at fifty-five, in the twenty-first century, in sex-mad Britain.I wished that I was braver, less inhibited, less self-conscious.If only I could have said, quite casually, 'It's very appropriate actually', the whole embarrassment would have been over in seconds.How complicated I make life for myself.I hoped my face wasn't revealing any of these thoughts to her.I welcomed the little two-tone ring that precedes public address announcements the world over.'Good afternoon,' said a slightly stilted male voice over the Tannoy.'My name is.' There followed two words spoken so swiftly that nobody could catch them.People are so familiar with their own names that they see no need to speak them distinctly.'.and I am your customer services manager for this journey.For those customers who joined the train at Stoke, this is the 2.48 Virgin train for London Euston.''Shouldn't be on this train if it's for virgins, eh?' she said.I feared for a moment that I would blush.I felt that I must offer her some comment, to show that I was not being unfriendly or snobbish, but what could I possibly say to her? I couldn't even make small talk to my fellow dons, people of the same sex and similar age.What could I say to a young girl at least thirty years my junior?'Probably not many people should be,' I said, gamely entering into her little joke.'You can say that again,' she said.I didn't.I hadn't been too proud of saying it the first time.But I had to say something.'So,' I asked, less than brilliantly, 'what are you? What sign?' I tried to look as though I cared.'Guess.''Oh.well.it's not the kind of speculation I habitually.Aries?''No! Never in a million years.' She laughed.'Leo.''Ah! Lion-hearted!''Of course.Sorry, I'm interrupting, ain't I?''No.No.Not really.The.er.the train of thought's been pretty well broken [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne