Free Father of the Man by Stephen Benatar Page B

differences in speed, the pauses, new beginnings—above all, maybe, the idea that this was something which people ought to do in private; if he’d been trying to write an essay the scrapings would have speedily grown strident, he’d have visualized powdery nail settling imperceptibly like flurries of fine dust, and if it chanced that he’d just eaten, his tightened stomach muscles would unfailingly have produced indigestion. Travelling on British Rail had taught him as nothing else had ever done the extent of his neuroses. Previously, he had never dreamed how fidgety the fare-paying public could become; never stopped to consider the potential foot-swinging, finger-tapping, head-scratching, throat-clearing—the list could probably be extended to cover, in an average-sized hand, at least one side of an A4 sheet out of his own writing-pad; and at spot number one on that list, without argument—yes, this would undoubtedly have taken first prize—the nose-picking. The nose-picking. He realized that in most cases this was merely a nervous mannerism, but the number of apparently respectable, professional, middle-class men—for some reason it was nearly always the men—who just couldn’t leave their noses alone and who would as often as not, following their stealthy or thoroughly unconcealed excavations, revolve the ball of their thumb against the tip of their index finger was, to use the Prime Minister’s front-page vocabulary, ‘astounding’, ‘astonishing’, ‘appalling’. Roger sometimes felt as if he were travelling on a sea of snot; in need of fresh air; in need of his bath; in need of a psychiatrist.
    But tonight neither the nail-scraper nor her companion, who every few minutes was playing with her hair, pushing it back and prodding it and smoothing it, had any power to disturb him. Or perhaps the two of them simply cancelled one another out—irritations were more bearable when they came at you in pairs, or even droves; on occasion you had no option but to smile, life was so ridiculous. Yet at times, too, its absurdity could arouse not wan amusement but deepest self-contempt: the person sitting next to you could search for bogies unremittingly, or cough, or sniff, or swing their hair, hiccup, whatever—then your eye might slip from the crossword, as had happened only last week, to where the stop press informed you of a seven-year-old boy who’d been left paralyzed and almost blind as the result of an operation blunder. Dear God.
    He slowly put away his biro; leant back and closed his eyes; half-listened to a conversation about the women’s respective offices and about a new boss who was proving unreasonably petty on the subject of personal phone calls and the timekeeping of his staff. “Suppose he feels he’s got to thrown his weight around. The plonker.” The woman giving herself a manicure kept moving her legs and knocking against his shins or shoes.
    Ten minutes later a man of roughly his father’s age took the seat beside him, raised the lid of his black attaché case and withdrew a double foolscap page of squared paper, the inside spread covered with figures and columns and coloured underlinings. He was quite possibly an accountant; even looked like Roger’s stereotypical idea of one: a thin-lipped, sharp-angled kind of face, short hair carefully parted and combed flat, with every plastered strand attesting to the individual passage of the comb. He wore pince-nez. Roger had hoped for someone who looked less correct.
    The train began to move.
    Incredibly, despite everything, he must have dozed. When he opened his eyes the women had miniature bottles of gin in front of them and tonic water and plastic beakers containing lumps of ice. The emery board lay on the table. He blinked bemusedly, then lifted his arm until the cuff edged back. They had been travelling for almost half an hour.
    The conductor came into their carriage before the train reached Wellingborough: first stop on this evening journey.