Therapy by David Lodge Read Free Book Online

through the day too, if it was a weekend. Christ, just writing that down brings it all back: snatching sleep lying on a bunk fully dressed in ankle-bruising boots and neck-chafing battledress under the glare of a naked electric light bulb, and then being roughly woken to gulp down sweetened lukewarm tea, and maybe some cold congealed eggs and baked beans, before stumbling out yawning and shivering into the night, to loiter for two hours by the barrack gates, or circle the silent shuttered huts and stores, listening to your own footsteps, watching your own shadow lengthen and shorten under the arc-lamps. Let me just concentrate for a moment on that memory, close my eyes and try and squeeze the misery out of it, so that I will appreciate my present comforts.
    Tried it. No good. Doesn’t work.
     
    I’m writing this on my laptop on the train to London. First class, naturally. Definition of a well-off man: somebody who pays for a first-class ticket out of his own pocket. It’s tax-deductible of course, but still... Most of my fellow passengers in this carriage are on expenses. Businessmen with digital-lock briefcases and mobile phones, and businesswomen with wide-shouldered jackets and bulging filofaxes. The odd retired county type in tweeds. I’m wearing a suit myself today in honour of the Groucho, but sometimes, when I’m in jeans and leather jacket, with my tramp’s haircut falling over the back of the collar, people glance suspiciously at me as if they think I’m in the wrong part of the train. Not the conductors, though — they know me. I travel up and down a lot on this line.
    Don’t get the idea that I’m an enthusiast for British Rail’s Inter-City service to London. Au contraire, as Amy would say (she likes to pepper her conversation with foreign phrases). There are a lot of things I don’t like about it. For instance: I don’t like the smell of the bacon and tomato rolls that pollute the air of the carriage every time somebody brings one back from the buffet car and opens the little polystyrene box they micro-wave them in. I don’t like the brake linings on the wheels of the Pullman rolling stock which when warm emit sulphurous-smelling fumes, allegedly harmless to health, that creep into the carriages and mingle with the smell of bacon and tomato rolls. I don’t like the taste of the bacon and tomato rolls when I am foolish enough to buy one for myself, somehow suppressing the memory of how naff it was last time. I don’t like the fact that if you ask at the buffet for a cup of coffee you will be given a giant-sized plastic beaker of the stuff unless you ask for a small (i.e., normal) size. I don’t like the way the train rocks from side to side when it picks up any kind of speed, causing the coffee to slop over the sides of the plastic beaker as you raise it to your lips, scalding your fingers and dripping onto your lap. I don’t like the fact that if the air-conditioning fails, as it not infrequently does, you can’t ventilate the carriage because the windows are sealed. I don’t like the way that, not infrequently, but never when the air-conditioning has failed, the automatic sliding doors at each end of the coach jam in the open position, and cannot be closed manually, or if they can be closed, slowly open again of their own accord, or are opened by passing passengers who leave them open assuming that they will close automatically, obliging you either to leap up every few minutes to close the doors or sit in a permanent draught. I don’t like the catches in the WC compartments designed to hold the toilet seats in an upright position, which are spring-loaded, but often loose or broken, so that when you are in mid-pee, holding on to a grab handle with one hand and aiming your todger with the other, the seat, dislodged from the upright position by the violent motion of the train, will suddenly fall forwards, breaking the stream of urine and causing it to spatter your trousers. I don’t like the