Night Train
You board a main line train, you sit back comfortably, it starts to move and you listen to the delightful sound that comes from somewhere under your bottom.
It’s the sound of smooth metal rolling over smooth metal, with the regular clunk as the wheels pass over each joint.
You know that within a minute or so the sound will have developed into a soft, brisk clickety-click, clickety-click, accelerating until it dissolves into a delightful and sleep-inducing lullaby.
Yes, I do know that welded rails produce neither clickety nor clunk. The story I am about to tell happened shortly after Noah did his stuff with the Flood, and they didn’t do welding then.
A colleague and I were on our way East, quite a long way East, for a fourteen-day photographic job. We had endured all the usual travelling irritations from London onwards and were at last, with a considerable amount of personal and professional baggage, boarding the night train that would carry us some 500 miles to our destination.
We had expected to get rid of the baggage in the Guard’s van but were very politely turned away. So in our small compartment we stacked it on the narrow racks above our heads and on the floor. By the time we had finished there was barely room to plant a foot.
We sank back into our seats and mopped brows.
The train began to move.
There came that lovely sound. Clunk, followed shortly afterwards by er, ty, and clunk. Slowly, the sounds came slightly more quickly. Then more quickly. We were now travelling at fully twenty miles per hour.
Five minutes later we were still doing twenty. We consulted each other on the likelihood of going a little faster at some point. But it seemed this was to be our speed for the next 499 miles. Still sweating gently from our exertions we grinned at each other and agreed that this was fate. Jack reached into a bag and produced two cans of warm beer.
It was not a good idea. It happened to be Jack’s birthday and we had already rendered ourselves fragile by unwise drinking on the air journey and at the station bar.
With the combination of our weariness and the beer starting to get familiar with the gin, etc, we found ourselves tending to giggle at the least trigger.
Then I had a brainwave. I got my small tape recorder out and found a space on the overhead rack. I pressed the button, wished Jack a happy birthday and the engaging, rhythmic Jacques Loussier Trio began their version of a Bach concerto. Jack was a great admirer of Loussier and he grinned his appreciation. We drank more beer.
As we did so the cassette battery started running out. Loussier on an inexorably dying glissando was so depressing that, with the alcoholic disturbances beginning to take over, the whole thing became funny and we started giggling. It turned into plain hysterics. We rolled, we doubled up, tears flowed copiously.
In the middle of this the compartment door slid open and we controlled ourselves as a friendly and earnest railway gentleman served us fried rice with pieces of meat on plates. These bore clear evidence of earlier repasts. The food was tepid. With this came tepid tea made with condensed milk. The man left.
Then, for no sensible reason, I told Jack that my music teacher had known Elgar.
He exploded, wiped a tear and said, ‘Oh, really? I myself knew Bach quite well.’
‘They used to go for bike rides together.’
He spilt his beer laughing. Almost but not quite yet in control he said, ‘Now let me tell you something. Stockhausen once wrote something for four groups, you see, and each group had to stand in a different corner of the room and each group played a -’
He was unable to continue. I couldn’t see him for tears.
‘Trombone?’ I suggested.
Bright pink and speechless he wagged his head. ‘- a different piece of music,’ he said, and at this point the waiter opened the door and spoke.
‘I am hoping you like your meal?’
Our mental state rendered this the funniest line ever. We howled with laughter. The poor man gaped at us, half smiling and a little frightened. The sound and sight of two middle-aged men doubled up and collapsing in spilt beer obviously left him in no doubt as to the normal behaviour of the Englishman abroad. He left.
Our speed did eventually improve and, many hours later, we arrived at our destination.
We had seriously bad headaches.