Train strain
Jeremy Clarke
Bank holiday Saturday afternoon and I’m standing in a jam-packed railway carriage bound for Cardiff in Wales. If I lift my head, my face is in my nearest neighbour’s face, so I’m contemplating my feet. A Welsh woman somewhere is holding a long and intimate telephone conversation in a voice loud enough for all in the carriage to follow it. ‘My little one-stop shop? Is that what he called me? I’ll kill him. If I’m his little one-stop shop, then he’s Kwik Fit — and you can tell him I said that.’ I’m going to Cardiff to look at a Citroën Picasso. I’ve just looked over one at Southampton, but it wasn’t any good. The advert had more or less said that the car had been previously driven by a nervous nun and was as good as new, if not better. But it was a shed. There were fag burns on the seats, the electric mirrors weren’t working, the driver’s electric window ditto, and the odometer had obviously been tampered with. The previous keeper had left a couple of his CDs in the car: Motorhead’s Ace of Spades and Wake Up Dead by the US thrash band Megadeth. So the gearbox was probably shot as well. And although the fortunes of the British National Party are presently in the ascendant, I’m not sure I’m quite ready yet to drive around in a car with the letters BNP on the licence plate. ‘I’m open to offers,’ said the seller, sensing my disappointment. ‘I’ll give you a fiver to drive me back to the station,’ I said.
Both the Southampton and the Cardiff Citroën Picassos I’d seen advertised in last week’s edition of the Auto Trader. You can catch a train from Southampton to Cardiff — changing just once at Romsey — so the journey was simpler than I imagined. It took for ever, though. In 1914, one train every minute carried the British Expeditionary Force through Romsey station, bound for Southampton docks and the transport ships waiting to ferry it across the Channel to France and Belgium. Today, however, the railway company in charge tries to fit a similar amount of people into a two-carriage hopper train that leaves about once an hour.
‘He’s using me, Faye, I know he is. Typical man. It’s his cousin I really like. No, not him — he’s mental. The other one. Michael. Lovely eyes. Eyes. What did you think I said? I’d be open all hours for him. He’d only have to ask. He’d only have to look at me, to be honest.’ To create a welcome distraction from this woman’s telephone conversation, I manoeuvre a hand into my pocket and fish out my phone. I call directory enquiries then book a cab to meet me at Cardiff station. The man who takes the booking promises to be there in person to meet me. ‘You’ll easily recognise me because I’ve only got one arm,’ he says. ‘And I’ll be wearing a blue William Hill baseball cap. William Hill the bookies? I’ve got a soft spot for the horses.’ Is the cab horse-drawn? I ask him. ‘If only,’ he says.
He’s waiting for me at the station: one arm, blue hat, just like he said. He waggles his stump cheerily at me. It’s a 20-minute drive to the sales yard. His sister has a Citroën Picasso and a very nice car it is, too. And so how many miles on the clock has the Picasso I’m going to see got on it? I can’t remember exactly. It’ll be in the advert, I say, feeling for my copy of the Auto Trader. But I no longer have it with me. I’ve left it on the train.
The taxi driver takes the loss of my Auto Trader much more badly than I do. Previously ebullient, he’s now disconsolate. He urges me to buy another because if I can’t remember the claims made for the car in the advert, I’ll be at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating a fair price. I’m not buying another Auto Trader, I tell him.
Outside a newsagent shop he pulls over. He’s just nipping in to buy a ‘dirty book’, he says. Two minutes later he comes out of the shop at a fast walk, jumps in the car and we drive away at speed. Half a mile up the road, all smiles again, and steering with his stump, he pulls an Auto Trader out from under his jumper and hands it to me. This unbelievably sympathetic human being has only gone and nicked a copy for me using his one good arm.
The Cardiff Citroën Picasso didn’t live up to its billing either. After criss-crossing the country I got home, finally, at about midnight. Today is Monday. I’m no longer thinking about Picassos. I’m now thinking about getting a Vauxhall Vectra. So, apart from meeting that splendid taxi driver, what a waste of a May bank holiday Saturday that was.
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