30

Toothbrush. Flannel. Shaver. Woolly jumper.

George started packing a suitcase, then decided that it was not quite outward bound enough. He dug Jamie’s old rucksack out of the roof space. It was a little scuffed, but rucksacks were meant to be scuffed.

Three pairs of underpants. Two vests. The Ackroyd. Gardening trousers.

This was his kind of holiday.

They had tried it once. Snowdonia in 1980. A desperate attempt on his part to remain earthbound after the horrors of the flight to Lyon the previous year. And perhaps if he had had stouter children or a wife less addicted to her creature comforts it might have worked. There was nothing wrong with rain. It was part and parcel of getting back in touch with nature. And it had let up most evenings so that they could sit on camping mats outside the tents cooking supper on the Primus stove. But any suggestion of his that they go to Skye or the Alps in subsequent years had been met with the rejoinder, “Why don’t we go camping in North Wales?” and gales of unsympathetic laughter.

Jean dropped him off in the town center just after nine and he went straight into Ottakar’s where he purchased the Ordnance Survey Land-ranger map number 204, Truro, Falmouth and Surrounding Area. He then popped into Smiths and bought himself a selection of pencils (2B, 4B and 6B), a sketchpad and a good rubber. He was going to get a pencil sharpener when he remembered that the outdoor shop was only a couple of streets away. He went in and treated himself to a Swiss Army knife. He could sharpen his pencils with that, and be prepared to whittle sticks and remove stones from horses’ hooves should the need arise.

He arrived at the station with fifteen minutes to spare, picked up his ticket and sat on the platform.

An hour to Kings Cross. Hammersmith and City line to Paddington. Four and a half hours to Truro. Twenty minutes to Falmouth. Then a taxi. Assuming the seat booking worked between Paddington and Truro and he didn’t find himself squatting on the rucksack outside the toilet, he could get a couple of hundred pages read.

Shortly before the train arrived he remembered that he had not packed his steroid cream.

Not that it mattered. It was a treatment for eczema. Eczema was a trivial thing. He could be covered in the stuff and it wouldn’t be a problem.

The phrase “covered in the stuff” and the attendant image were not ones he should have allowed to enter his head.

He looked up at the monitor to see how long it was before his train arrived but saw, instead, a disfigured tramp sitting on the adjacent bench. The near side of his face was composed entirely of scab, as if someone had recently worked it over with a broken bottle, or as if some kind of growth was eating its way through the side of his head.

He tried to look away. He could not. It was like vertigo. The way the drop seemed to be calling you.

Think of something else.

He twisted his head downward and forced himself to concentrate on five gray ovals of chewing gum pressed into the tarmac between his toes.

“I took a trip on a train and I thought about you.” He sung the words quietly under his breath. “I passed a shadowy lane and I thought about you.”

The disfigured tramp got to his feet.

Dear God in heaven, he was coming this way.

George kept his head down. “Two or three cars parked under the stars, a winding stream, moon shining down…”

The tramp walked past George and zigzagged slowly down the platform.

He was very drunk. Drunk enough to zigzag onto the line. Too drunk to climb back off the line. George looked up. The train was arriving in one minute. He pictured the tramp keeling over the concrete lip, the squeal of brakes, the wet thump and the body being shunted up the rails, the wheels slicing it like ham.

He had to stop the tramp. But stopping the tramp would involve touching the tramp, and George did not want to touch the tramp. The wound. The smell.

No. He did not have to stop the tramp. There were other people on the platform. There were railway employees. The tramp was their responsibility.

If he moved round the station building to the other platform he would not have to see the tramp dying. But if he moved to the other platform he might miss the train. On the other hand, if the tramp died under the train it would be delayed. George would then miss the connection to Truro and have to sit next to the toilet for four and a half hours.

Dr. Barghoutian had misdiagnosed Katie’s appendicitis. Said it was stomachache. Three hours later they were whisked through casualty and Katie was on an operating table.

How on earth had George forgotten?

Dr. Barghoutian was a moron.

He was massaging an inappropriate chemical cream into a cancer. A steroid cream. Steroids made tissue grow faster and stronger. He was massaging a cream which made tissue grow faster and stronger directly into a tumor.

The growth on the tramp’s face. George was going to look like that. All over.

The train pulled in.

He picked up his rucksack and launched himself at the open door of the nearest carriage. If he could only get the journey started quickly enough he might be able to leave the rogue thoughts on the platform.

He slumped into a seat. His heart was beating the way it would have beaten if he had run all the way from home. He was finding it very difficult to sit still. There was a woman in a mauve raincoat sitting opposite him. He was beyond caring what she thought.

The train began to move.

He looked out of the window and imagined himself flying a small aircraft parallel to the train, like he did when he was a boy, pulling back on the joystick to clear fences and bridges, swinging the plane left and right to swerve round sheds and telegraph poles.

The train picked up speed. Over the river. Over the A605.

He felt sick.

He was in the upturned cabin of a sinking ship as it filled with water. The darkness was total. The door was now somewhere below him. It didn’t matter where. It led only to other places in which to die.

He was kicking madly, trying to keep his head in the shrinking pyramid of stale air where the two walls met the ceiling.

His mouth was going under.

There was oily water in his windpipe.

He put his head between his legs.

He was going to throw up.

He sat back.

His body went cold and the blood drained from his head.

He put his head between his legs again.

He felt as if he were in a sauna.

He sat up and opened the little window.

The woman in the mauve raincoat glared.

The scab would strangle him with evil slowness, a malign, crusted appendage feeding off his own body.

“I peeked through the crack, looked at the track, the one going back…”

Camp beds? Walks along the Helford? Pints round the fire with Brian? What in heaven’s name had he been thinking? It would be a living hell.

He got out at Huntingdon, staggered to the nearest bench, sat down and reconstructed that morning’s Telegraph crossword in his head. Genuflect. Tankards. Horse brass…

It was ebbing a little.

He was dying of cancer. It was a horrible thought. But if he could just store it over there, in the Thoughts About Dying Of Cancer box, he might be OK.

Gazelle. Miser. Paw-paw…

He had to catch the next train home. Chat to Jean. Have a cup of tea. Put some music on. Loud. His own house. His own garden. Everything exactly where it was meant to be. No Brian. No tramps.

There was a monitor to his right. He got gingerly to his feet and moved round to the front so that he could read it.

Platform 2. Twelve minutes.

He began walking toward the stairs.

He would be home in an hour.