The Great Railway Bazaar

Easily exercising in neckties, I was tuned to the motion of the train and had forgotten the newspaper billboards I had been reading all morning. Baby Kristin, woman to be charged, and plan to free, stab girl, aged nine, non-lettered, novelist vanishes, and just as well. Then past a row of semi-detached houses we entered a tunnel, and after traveling a minute in complete darkness we were shot wonderfully into a new setting, open meadows, cows cropping grass, farmers haying in blue jackets. We had surfaced from London, a gray sodden city that lay underground. At Seven Oaks there was another tunnel, another glimpse of the pastoral, fields of pawing horses, some kneeling sheep, crows on an oast house, and a swift sight of a settlement of prefab houses out one window. Out the other window a Jacobean farmhouse and more cows. That is England. The suburbs overlap the farms. At several level crossings the country lanes were choked with cars, backed up for a hundred yards. The train passengers were gloating vindictively at the traffic and seemed to be murmuring, Stop, you bitches. The sky was old. Schoolboys in dark blue blazers carrying cricket bats in school bags, their socks falling down, were smirking on the platform at Tunbridge. We raced by them, taking their smirks away. We didn't stop, not even at the larger stations. These I contemplated from the dining car over a sloshing carton of tea, while Mr. Duffill, similarly hunched, kept an eye on his parcels and stirred his tea with the doctor's tongue depressor. Past the hop fields that give Kent a Mediterranean tangle in September, past a gypsy camp, fourteen battered caravans, each one with its own indestructible pile of rubbish just outside the front door, past a farm and forty feet away the perimeter of a housing estate with lots of interesting clothes on the line, plus fours, long johns, snapping black brassiers, the pennants of bonnets and socks all forming an elaborate message, like signal flags, on the distressed convoy of those houses. The fact that we didn't stop gave this English train an air of hurrying purpose. We sped to the coast for the channel crossing, but it was a false drama. Duffill, at his pitching table, ordered a second cup of tea. The black train yards of Ashford loomed and tumbled past, and we were crossing the hummocky grass of Romney Marsh, headed towards Folkestone. By then I had left England behind. So had the other passengers. I returned to my compartment to hear Italians raising their voices, perhaps deriving courage from the assurance that we were at the edge of England. Some Nigerians, who, until that moment, had been only a quartet of bobbing headgear, two Homburgs, a turban, and a beehive wig, became vocal in Yoruba, seeming to spell out each word they used, smacking their lips when they completed a syllable. Each passenger migrated to his own language, leaving the British muttering and averting their eyes. "'Oh, look,' said a woman, unfolding a handkerchief on her lap. "'It's so neat and orderly,' said the man at the window. "'Fresh flowers!' The woman gently bandaged her nose with the handkerchief and snorted on one side, then the other. "'Oh,' said the man, "'War Graves Commission takes care of them. They do a lovely job.'" A small figure carrying paper parcels bound with string walked down the passage, his elbows thumping the corridor window. Duffill. The Nigerian lady leaned over and read the station sign. "'Fokistoon.' Her mispronunciation was like sarcasm, and she looked as unimpressed as Trollope's Lady Glencora. There was nothing she wanted so much as to see Fokistoon. The wind rising from the harbour, which was lead grey and pimpled with drizzle, blew into my eyes. I was squinting with the cold I had caught when the first September chill hit London and roused me in visions of palm trees and the rosy heat of Ceylon. That cold made leaving all the easier. Leaving was a cure. "'Have you tried aspirin?' "'No, I think I'll go to India.' I carried my bags into the ferry and made for the bar. Two elderly men stood there. One was tapping a florin on the counter, trying to get the barman's attention. "'Reggie's got awfully small,' said the first man. "'Do you think so?' said the second. "'I'm afraid I do. Awfully small. His clothes don't fit him.' "'He was never a big man.' "'I know that. But have you seen him?' "'No. Godfrey said he'd been sick. I'd say very sick. Getting old, poor chap. But awfully small.' "'Duffill came over. He might have been the person under discussion. But he wasn't. The elderly gentleman ignored him. Duffill had that uneasy look of a man who has left his parcels elsewhere, which is also the look of a man who thinks he's being followed. His oversized clothes made him seem frail, a mouse-gray gabardine coat slumped over his