Towards Another Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

Haaaaaa, Haaaaa in a deep exhalation of steam, and releasing from a side valve where their ears would be, had they ears, sudden high-pitched jets and spurts in a white thread of scream. On the platform the people moved through smoke, their silhouettes vague, their bodies merging one with the other, their Scottish voices muffled and smokefilled. When Grace followed the arrow to the enquiries department to make sure of the platform and destination of her train, the clerk leaned over the worn counter and said gloomily, running his finger up and down the smudged column,
    —Platform seven, arriving at Relham six-eight pm. Central Station.
    He looked accusing.
    —But didn’t you read the notice outside?
    —Oh yes, Grace said.—But I wanted to make sure.
    The clerk sighed.
    —Yes, they all do, they can’t trust it in print, they have to hear it spoken. Illiteracy.
    Suddenly afraid that even the clerk was not certain, that after all, trust in the printed word had to begin somewhere - perhaps the clerk was not so sure, that here she was, a migratory bird, standing waiting at St Pancras for the train to Relham, and perhaps there would be no train, or perhaps there would be such a crowd that there’d be no room for her.
    —Can I book a seat? she asked urgently.
    —What? When the train leaves in half an hour’s time? Oh no, oh no, that would be daft. Too late to book.
    Slowly Grace walked back to her seat near Platform seven. A young woman sitting near zipped open a briefcase, withdrew a sheaf of papers, took a pencil, and with her pencil poised over the first page she turned towards Grace and smiled.
    —I wonder, she began.—That is, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?
    Without waiting for an answer she ran her pencil beneath question one on the cyclostyled sheet,
    —Will you tell me, are you at all aware of the Campaign to sell the New Fellas Cornflakes?
     
     
     
     
    The train was crowded with passengers. It didn’t seem fair that so many were travelling in such weather. They should have stayed home, Grace thought resentfully, finding a corner seat and rubbing clear her small share of window, settling herself to her usual railway dreaming. Suddenly there was a commotion in the corridor, the door was thrust open, and a man and woman, breathless, clutching luggage, burst in, and sat facing each other, the woman in the seat beside Grace.
    Slowly the train began to move.
    —We just found out in time, the woman said.—Our carriage would have come off at Derby!
    —We didn’t know, the man put in.—There was no one to tell us, the train is so crowded we grabbed the first seats we could find. We might have been taken off at Derby!
    —Just think, the woman murmured.—To be left behind at Derby!
    To them, Derby seemed such a dire fate that Grace looked sympathetic and said, in a suddenly unconvinced tone,— This carriage goes as far as Relham . . . doesn’t it?
    They assured her that the guard had assured them that it did, and once the fact was settled, the other passengers in the carriage (an open one with tables and dust-smelling crimson upholstery) who had been drawn into the whirl of excitement and uncertainty, withdrew, disengaging themselves one from the other, to preserve what was left of their privacy.
    The woman opened a paper bag and took out a pear which she peeled and quartered. She gave one piece to the man and offered one to Grace.
    —No thank you.
    —Come on.
    —No thank you, no really, no.
    The man looked up from his newspaper.
    —Come on, you’re the only one not having a piece.
    —Oh, all right, thank you very much, that’s very kind of you.
    Grace ate her slice of pear, rubbed clear the misting window and gazed out at the neverending rubbish dump which was the landscape approaching the Midlands but which, as they travelled further north, was obscured by continual snowfall until at last the train moved in a white translucent landscape, as if they journeyed on the face of the