I wish George Eliot or Alan Bennett had been with me in the Ryanair check-in queue
‘I’ll tell you, Janet, if I was 23 an’ ’ad a nice, good-lookin’ young man, I’d not be here on ’oliday with you. Don’t get me wrong — it’s been a lovely holiday — but let’s be honest. If I was your age and ’ad the chance, I’d be walkin’ along the beach, alone with my young man.’ I often wish I were Alan Bennett — or at least that I had his talent for overhearing real English spoken by real people, then stitching together what he has remembered into sustained prose, with weight, shape and a story. George Eliot, too, whose verbatim English rural conversations in Silas Marner are small masterpieces suggesting a village culture little changed in a century and a half — she would have known how to paint these glimpses into a wider canvas.
But I only ever gather tiny fragments — unconnected, hanging in the air — and, smiling to myself and vowing to write them down later, forget. Looking at an old appointments diary the other day I saw one snippet I did record, but at the end was an ‘etc’ and I cannot now remember the et cetera. It began with a woman on a bus, talking to her friend: ‘“And she’s been that ill she’s ’ad to go into ’ospital; and she’s ’ad all ’er livers out”, etc’. But the et cetera? That et cetera is the novel, the play, the monologue, the short story. That’s where Bennett begins, and where I fizzle out.
Last week, however, I did write something down: I took a full note. The woman whom this column began by quoting was on a flight from somewhere in Europe (let us be unspecific and change the names, just in case) to Doncaster. As we stood together in the check-in queue and her conversation with Janet caught my ear, I quietly pulled out my diary under the guise of writing down some appointments, and started to take notes.
She was in late middle-age, fat-legged, big-bottomed and with the sort of chest that illustrates the use of the word ‘bosom’ as a collective noun. But I must not be unkind: dressed in black Lycra trousers and a turquoise top whose bodice was under some strain, she had by no means let herself go. I liked her: she and her tinted hair and kindly, snub, undistinguished, jolly face. She would have been a very pretty young woman once. She would have turned heads. Her young friend Janet was in her early twenties, thin, pale and rather plain: a little like Alice in The Vicar of Dibley, but taciturn.
‘It’s nice to ’ave a young man, Janet,’ she continued, ‘you really should, you know.’ Fleetingly Janet’s face betrayed a flash of despair, as if to say: thanks — but I’d love one and it’s not for want of trying.
‘Now where would where we went — [she named a tourist attraction] — be from ’ere?’ ‘South, I think; or south-west,’ ventured Janet.
‘Oh don’t tell me about north and south and east and west and them things. If our plane crashed and you was relyin’ on me to lead us to safety we’d be finished, dear. Mind you I do know from television that we should find the rivers and follow them downstream to civilisation.’ I hope they didn’t see me smiling at the thought of the aftermath of a Ryanair crash somewhere over northern France, with my fellow passenger from Doncaster leading us, in Lycra, to civilisation by finding a river and following it downstream. She’d as likely as not have got us to Paris by nightfall.
A friend in prison, whom I visited not long ago, has always had complete recall of conversations overheard, and a talent for Midlands accents. During the visiting hours he kept us laughing until it was time to leave. Illustrating the astonishing ignorance of most of his fellow inmates, he recounted a conversation he had overheard between two fellow prisoners, one of whom (untypically, he said) had looked at the front page of a newspaper.
‘Did you see that ship’s run aground at Blackpool, in storm?’ ‘Do ships stop at Blackpool, then? I didn’t think they did.’ ‘They don’t. It were wrecked.’ ‘Where was it goin’?’ ‘Liverpool, I think. It were comin’ from Belfast.’ ‘Where’s Belfast?’ ‘I don’t rightly know. Ireland, maybe?’ ‘Is that in Northern ’emisphere?’ ‘Er... I’m not sure. But Liverpool’s in Southern ’emisphere. I’m sure o’ that.’ But back to my Doncaster woman, overheard. We left her planning for the eventuality of a plane crash....
‘Anyway we won’t crash, and it’s been a lovely week with you for company. I’ve never missed home once. I don’t mind being away. Frank and me are... well, comfortable now. And he likes the space, and having the ’ouse to ’imself, and I like a little break. He doesn’t really miss me, you know. I don’t mind. But I was 23 too, once, you know, an’ I do remember. The young men... oh it was lovely.’ Again, a moment of pain on Janet’s face, quickly banished. Brightening up: ‘We’ve had a good time together, anyway. And we’ve been all over. Everything except bungee-jumping!’ ‘Ooh count me out of bungee-jumping. I’m the wrong weight. Too ’eavy. I wouldn’t trust the elastic.’ ‘Don’t be silly! They make sure the bungee-rope’s strong enough.’ ‘No, no, dear: my elastic.’ She glanced down at her bosom and rolled her eyes skyward. ‘Wouldn’t that be embarrassin’ — what with everyone lookin’? And hangin’ upside down, too.’ She and Janet were shaken with giggles.
The more this woman spoke the more my first inclination, which had been to mock, fell away. She was a candid, tolerant, selfdeprecating and — in her way — rather witty person. Though undiplomatic she was kind-hearted. She and Janet had been on every coach tour the package holiday had offered, and she was brimming with wonder and appreciation at the things she had seen. Those overheard exchanges were full of humour, witting and unwitting, but also of pathos. I don’t know Frank, and never will, but I know he’s a fool for not holidaying with his wife. She was tremendous fun.
Alan Bennett or George Eliot could make something of these characters. That exchange would be the beginning, not the end of the story. But all I could do was take a note.
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