I don’t travel on the Tube as much these days. New job. New travel nightmares. I’ve quickly become the Reginald Perrin of the office with my daily complaints about the 8.19 from Stratford being delayed by engineering works at Hackney Wick. Still, at least it has confirmed their worst fears about ‘The-idiot-with-a-photograph-of-him-sucking-a-pipe-plastered-all-over-the-Internet’ as I was fondly known before I joined.
Today the even the late train from Stratford was unachievable dream. The Bastards so delayed my first one that the only way of reaching my desk before tea time on Friday, was the Tube followed by a six mile hike.
Of course it was rush hour and ten times the capacity of the trains wanted to get on.
Entirely out of keeping, I found myself squeezed, rather intimately, behind not a sweaty fat man but a striking olive-skinned girl with almond eyes and long, loosely curled hair. She had reversed, quite delicately and as far as I could tell, deliberately into me. She was so close I couldn’t just smell her shampoo, I could tell you the brand.
Now, I have a certain charm, at least I’ve always been able to attract gnarled old gypsies, and a magnetism that could lift HMS Belfast from the water (if only I was interested in dating rusty old battleships), but attention from women, real women, in the flesh, and not paid for, is something of a novelty. In the same way that walking into a room where the wallpaper is made of dog bark and gravity doesn’t exist is a bit a novelty.
We stood holding the same bar. Just as I was wondering how not to embarrass myself, something still more surprising happened: she rested her head against my hand. Unmistakably, laid her cheek against my fingers.
I wondered if she’s fainted and only not fallen because of the crush holding her up. But no, I could see space between her and the people in front. I tried not to breathe on her ear.
I have to say, I was at a bit of a loss. She was resting against me. Resting. Against me. Not in a Public Leaning Post sort of way, but in a comfortably lazy, post-Sunday lunch, sort of way. I can’t say that I felt as comfortable as she did though. Perplexed, wrong-footed, flattered, slightly thrilled even. But comfortable? No.
This was not the first time some stranger had decided I looked like an available pillow - a girl I’d never spoken to flagrantly put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep on a flight from Athens once. I ended up marrying her. I am delighted by that but I wasn’t sure I wanted that to happen again. Besides, I couldn’t be entirely confident T would be pleased.
Now, I don’t want you misunderstand me - I’m as happy as the next man to have an attractive young woman pressing herself against me but I rather expect a little social intercourse beforehand. A meal at least. Preferably a decent courtship, some common interests, a meaningful conversation or two, a shared Knickerbocker Glory. Now I know I’d dozed a little on the train getting in, but as far as I could tell none of that had happened.
And I didn’t know what to do. Thankfully, as always, fate took matters out of my hands. The trained stopped. Sharply.
I hadn’t seen him before. The weasel man. The man with the little pointy nose and tiny black eyes. No more than five feet tall. With a black briefcase in each hand. He wasn’t holding on to anything or anyone. When the train stopped, he didn’t. The man kindly demonstrated a handful of Newton’s Laws and the Cranker technique of Ten Pin bowling. He knocked over most of the occupants like skittles. It felt a little like the time I played Sardines with a coach-load of ladies from the Women’s Institute in a barrel at Niagara.
As we stood up, equilibrium had been restored. She was gone. I was next to a sweaty fat man. For the next nine stops.
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