Free Days of Your Fathers by Geoffrey Household

doors again.
    â€˜Now then, young ladies!’ I said.
    I thought my voice had just the right note of tolerant authority. They thought so, too. They thought I was perfect in the part. One of the girlies hollered:
    â€˜Ooh! Ain’t ’e a duck!
    I trotted back up the train with proper brisk officiousness and shut the doors. They fell in with my absurd wishes. There was no question of a struggle with door handles or direct disobedience; but just as soon as I was a dozen compartments up, the doors began to open behind me – one at a time, as neatly as a line of poppers bursting open from the bottom when you’ve nearly done them up to the top.
    I stood by the locomotive wondering what a guard did next. Hitherto my job had been easy. I had to manhandle the contents of the van, check the waybills, brake whenever I got an S.O.S. from Jimmy and sometimes inspect tickets. With the ordinary mixed bag of passengers points of discipline did not arise and I was accustomed to think myself as good a guard as another. But now I was conscious of being a plain chap in flannel trousers and a sports coat.
    Jimmy said I lacked character. He put his driver’s cap on the side of his head and walked down the platform. He was lean, brown and clean-shaven, a maiden’s dream born and fashioned for a uniform. The overalls of an engine driver were not, however, the right uniform; he looked too much like a film star in a stirring drama of life on the rolling rail.
    â€˜Ladies,’ he appealed, mounting a luggage barrow, ‘you’ve been given a nice day and we have to go back to London. Now be sensible and don’t behave like babies!’
    â€˜A-oh bybies!’ protested a voice, half-yearning, half-insulted.
    Somebody else started a first-class imitation of a baby crying and they all joined in. You never heard such a row. Then they chose to regard Jimmy as the baby (for he was eminently motherable) and the more excitable spirits leaned out of the windows and made gestures of maternity at him.Jimmy turned white and strolled – yes, strolled – back to the County of London . I think they must teach administrators of the African Empire a special walk for the casual entering of cannibal villages. He started the train. They were all safely inside and shut the doors themselves as soon as we gathered speed.
    At Reading the staff of the junction had forgotten the existence of the excursion, and we were held up. But Jimmy didn’t stop. He thundered slowly ahead at walking pace and occasionally, if it seemed likely there might be an obstacle, he reversed, keeping his beloved engine plunging back and forth as if he had been a dutiful gigolo guiding his grandmother through a crowded ballroom. The girlies stuck their heads out and yelled encouragement but didn’t dare to step out on platform or line.
    Once clear of Reading we ran along with professional smoothness. There was no indiscipline except on the part of one young woman who tried to work her way along the footboard to the guard’s van. I spotted her in time, and didn’t try any ‘dear young lady’ on her. I opened fire with a paperweight and shouted that if she didn’t get back into the train I should aim to hit next time. That worked. But my civil authority had gone. We normally obey a bus conductor or a guard or any honest fellow with braid on his cap just as unthinkingly as sheep a dog, but the moment his authority is tested it ceases to exist and passes to the armed forces of the Crown – or to a paperweight.
    At Maidenhead we had to stop; some damned fools were marshalling a milk train and had tied up the line. The girlies flooded out onto the station and started to dance. No passengers were about, only the usual skeleton staff of amateurs. The excitement was still spontaneous, much too spontaneous, but its direction seemed to have been taken over by one Rhoda as ringleader – a magnificent creature, loudly dressed