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protected by a green transfer: LADIES ONLY. Having only just caught my connection, I fell panting into the silent disapproval of three tweeded ladies; though my fear was cooled less by their silence than by my disappointment that the compartment contained no special appurtenances indicative, however obliquely, of just what it was that made women different.
    One afternoon, rolling home as usual on the 4.13 from Baker Street, I had finished my prep and my thoughts, and was staring at the purply-red skeleton map of the line, which occupied the central slot beneath the luggage-rack. I was checking off the stations like rosary-beads when a voice on my right said
    ‘Verney Junction.’
    He was an old sod, I thought; dead bourgeois. The embroidered sun shining out of his slippers was the nearest he got to energy and life, I thought. Bet he was syphilisé . Pity he wasn’t Belgian. He might be Belgian. What had he said?
    ‘Verney Junction,’ he repeated. ‘Quainton Road. Winslow Road. Grandborough Road. Waddesdon. Never heard of them,’ he stated, sure that I hadn’t. Old sod. Well, too old to hate really. Commuter’s uniform; umbrella with a gold spoke-ring; brief-case; looking-glass shoes. The brief-case probably contained portable Nazi X-ray equipment.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Used to be a great line. Used to have … ambitions. Heard of the Brill Line?’ What was he after? Rape, abduction? Better humour him, otherwise six months and I’d be plump and ball-less in Turkey.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Brill Line from Quainton Road. All the Ws. Waddesdon Road. Wescott. Wotton. Wood Siding. Brill. Built by the Duke of Buckingham. Imagine that. Had it built for his own estate, you see. Part of the Metropolitan Line for thirty years now. Do you know, I went on the last train. 1935, ’36, something likethat. Last train from Brill to Verney Junction. Sounds like a film, doesn’t it?’
    Not one that I’d go to see. And certainly not if he asked me. He must be a rapist; anyone who spoke to kids on trains obviously was, ex hypothesis . But he was a rickety old fugger, and I was on the platform side of the train. Also, I had my umbrella. Better talk him out of it. They sometimes turn nasty if you don’t talk to them.
    ‘Ever been first class?’ Should I call him Sir?
    ‘This was a grand line, you know. The Extension Line they used to call it’ (was he getting dirty?) ‘this part out from Baker Street to Verney Junction. There used to be a Pullman car’ (was he getting round to my question?) ‘right up until Hitler’s war started. Two Pullman cars in fact. Imagine – imagine a Pullman car on the Bakerloo Line.’ (He laughed contemptuously, I sycophantically) ‘Two of them. One was called the Mayflower . Can you imagine that? Can’t remember what the other one was called.’ (He tapped his thigh with a bunch of fingertips; but this didn’t help. Was he getting dirty again?) ‘No, but the Mayflower was one of them. The first Pullman cars in Europe to be hauled by electricity.’
    ‘No, really? The first in Europe?’ I was almost as interested as I pretended to be.
    ‘The first in Europe. There’s a lot of history in this line, you know. Heard of John Stuart Mill?’
    ‘Yes.’ (Of course not)
    ‘Do you know what his last speech in the House was about?’
    I think I must have shown that I didn’t.
    ‘The House of Commons. His last speech? It was about the Underground. Can you imagine that? The Railway Regulation Bill, 1868. An amendment was moved to the bill making it obligatory for all railways to attach a smoking carriage to their trains. Mill got the bill through. Made a great speech in favour of it. Carried the day.’
    Jolly good. It was jolly good, wasn’t it?
    ‘But – guess what – there was one railway, just one, that was exempted. That was the Metropolitan.’
    You would have thought he’d been down there himself voting in eighteen whatever.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Ah. Because of the smoke in the tunnels. It’s always been