CENTRE POINT
A brief encounter with a Rolls-Royce executive
SIMON JENKINS
The admirable, libertarian, pipe-smok- ing Lord Harris of High Cross is waging a campaign against British Rail for its smok- ing ban on commuter trains. The ban, says his lordship, is an offence against civil liber- ty. If smokers who have paid their fares want to join with other consenting adults in contaminating a clearly marked part of a train, that is their business. They are not offending, or harming, anybody else.
I dislike tobacco smoke being blown any- where near me and regard British Rail's ghettoising of smokers an advance on the previous ghettoising of non-smokers. But I accept the force of Lord Harris's argument. Regulation that curtails the liberty of some without appreciably increasing the liberty of others is indefensible. More to the point, a smoking compartment is a minor pollu- tant compared to the far greater one still tolerated by British Rail, that of intrusive noise.
Noise used to be a feature of 'standard- class' travel. Today the cacophony of tape decks and CD-recorders has been sup- pressed into headsets. The pollution has moved forward to the first class. Here the mobile phone has become the bane, accept- ed by the railway in craven deference to the needs of the 'business traveller'.
One day last week an otherwise respectable, dark-haired man of about 40 boarded the 15.00 train from King's Cross to Scotland. He settled down at a table and set out a facsimile of his office desk, an on- board work station, complete with personal organiser, memo pad and telephone. He then began to make calls in a voice that could be heard by some two dozen people in at least half the carriage. He gabbled for two hours, except when British Rail offered the blessed respite of a tunnel.
The man declared himself in many of these calls to be an executive with Rolls- Royce. If the loudest thing in a Rolls- Royce was once the ticking of its clock, it is now the voice of Mr X taking us through his business day. He booked a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong and summoned a driver to meet him at the station. He scolded his secretary and recorded his meetings. Disregarding commercial confi- dence, he then opened apparently abortive negotiations to set up an Internet 'web site' for Rolls-Royce. The call sign for this should be the initials RR or RR*. A patri- otic suppressed cheer went up from my part of the carriage. Unfortunately his Internet agent was a woman with an answering machine mes- sage, who complained that he too was an answering machine. This well-known bind of the telephoning classes seemed to defeat our friend. Down the carriage we were all drawn into this drama. We wondered if this great British company would connect with Internet before Doncaster. We pondered calling Rolls-Royce and suggesting a new agent who was not an answering machine. We rejoiced when the man made a connec- tion, groaned when he failed. We never quite had the temerity to tell him to shut up, praying that he would soon finish. He did not. He was an InterCity peacock dis- playing his tail feathers by means of this pestilential gadget.
Train etiquette is in disarray. In the days of the closed compartment, a passenger in occupation would do anything to stop a stranger entering. This included drawing the blinds on the door and feigning an epileptic fit. My parents used to tell my sis- ter to make faces against the window should anyone approach. It was startlingly effective. But once a stranger had forced an entry, he or she became an intimate. Pic- nics were shared and conversation was either expected or specifically rejected. It was the one venue in which the British expected to converse with those to whom they had not been introduced. Holmes and Watson picked up many a clue from a chance encounter in a railway compart- ment.
No etiquette seems to govern the open carriage. I was once on my way to a party conference with two colleagues round a table for four. As the journey progressed we grew more and more uncomplimentary about a well-known Cabinet minister, not noticing a small dark figure sinking deeper into his briefcase in the fourth seat. Finally the figure could contain himself no longer. 'I have to inform you,' he said, 'that I am the Secretary of State's principal private secretary. I know I am not supposed to say this, but I must. You are misinformed and most unfair.' At this he fell silent.
We were furious. Here were three jour- nalists deliberating on matters of state as if in total confidence, and there was a man party to our discussion, listening but not letting on. Why had he not revealed his identity at the start? we asked. This was all most irregular. In fact, he had behaved with total decorum and we had been absurdly indiscreet. But still I recall feeling bereft of any rule of etiquette to which we could turn.
Mobile phones are worse. They are intru- sive, vulgar and discourteous. Like aids to personal hygiene, they should be used only in private. A conversation between two people face to face does not carry. A one- sided one cannot be ignored. The voice of the speaker rises, as if straining to fill the space between him and his listener, and the lack of a second voice injects suspense into the noise. (The comedian Bob Newhart fashioned this suspense into brilliant tele- phone-call sketches.) I cannot read a book against the beeps and rasps of half a mobile phone call. Silence, like space, is fragile. It is defined by the absence of phenomena, not their presence. At the end of a hard day, nothing knits up care's ravelled sleeve quite like the monotonous rhythms of a railway train. But these rhythms need quiet. If etiquette can no longer supply it, then by-laws must. If Vodaphone and Cellnet are intent on becoming the ghetto-blasters of the middle class, they must be banned from public places. Send them to the lavatory or the guard's van. And leave Lord Harris to smoke his pipe in peace.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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