Free The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes Page A

that’s it, me boy.” His kitbag was stowed between the seats, his mackintosh folded beside him. Ticket, wallet, sponge bag, rubber johnnies, tasks list. Tasks bloody list. He held an eyes-front as the train pulled out. None of that soppy stuff for him: the lowered window, the waving hanky, the piping of the eye. Not that you could lower the window anymore, you just sat in these cattle trucks with other old fools on cheap tickets and stared out through sealed glass. And not that Pamela’d be there if he did look. She’d be in the car park grinding down the wheel-rims on the concrete kerb as she tried to manoeuvre the Astra closer to the token-slot thingy. She always complained that the men who designed the barriers didn’t realize that women had shorter arms than men. He said that was no excuse for playing argy-bargy with the kerb, if you couldn’t reach you should just get out, woman. Anyway, that’s where she’d be by now, torturing a tyre as her personal part in the battle of the sexes. And she was there already because she didn’t want to see him not looking at her from the train. And he was not looking at her from the train because she did insist on adding to his tasks bloody list at the last bloody moment.
    Stilton from Paxton’s as per. Selection of cottons, needles, zips and buttons as per. Rubber rings for kilner jars as per. Elizabeth Arden loose powder as per. Fine as per. But each year there was something she remembered at D-Day minus thirty seconds, something designed to make him go poling across town on some wild goose chase. Find another glass to replace the one that got broken—read, the one that you, Major Jacko Jackson, retired, or rather formerly retired but currently enduring court martial by the NAAFI, broke in a deliberate and malicious fashion after going heavy on the gargling juice. Vain to point out that it was the sort of glass which had gone out of stock even before we bought it second-hand. This year it was, Go to the big John Lewis on Oxford Street and see if they sell the outside bit of the salad spinner which sustained a life-threatening crack when it got dropped by Mister Someone, because the inside still works all right and they might just sell the outside bowl separately. And there in the car park she’d been waving the business part of it at him so that he could take it with him and not buy the wrong size or whatever. Practically trying to force it into his kitbag. Aagh.
    Still, she made good coffee, he’s always given her that. He set the flask on the table and unwrapped the foil package. Choccy biccies. Jacko’s choccy biccies. He still thought of them like that. Was this right or wrong? Were you as young as you felt, or as old as you looked? That was the great question nowadays, it seemed to him. Maybe the only one. He poured himself some coffee and munched a biscuit. The soft, familiar, grey-green English landscape calmed him, then cheered him. Sheep, cattle, trees blown into hairstyles. A loitering canal. Put that canal on a charge, Sarnt-Major. Yes sah .
    He was rather pleased with this year’s postcard. A ceremonial sword in its scabbard. Subtle, that, he thought. Time was when he’d sent cards of field guns and famous Civil War battlefields. Well, he’d been younger then. Dear Babs, Dinner’s on the 17th inst. Keep the afternoon free. Yours ever, Jacko. Quite straightforward. Never did anything like put it in an envelope. Principles of Concealment, section 5b, para 12: the enemy is seldom likely to spot anything placed directly in front of its face. He didn’t even bother to go into Shrewsbury. Just bung the card in the village box.
    Were you as young as you felt, or as old as you looked? The ticket collector, or inspector, or train manager or whatever they called them nowadays, hadn’t given him a glance. Just saw a senior citizen’s midweek excursion return and read him as a piece of no trouble, no interest, some cheapskate who brought his own coffee as a way of