TOTHILL’S EXCITING EVENING

The art deco wine emporium was in the half-dark as Tothill drove into the car park. He stopped and asked for a case of Bulgarian soave. He put it in the boot of his car. When he arrived at his flat, he found his two cats lying on the back of his sofa. He smiled. He liked his cats. One, white, often slept with his paws on the shoulders of the other, a small tabby.
He picked up a photograph from the table. It showed a meeting room from a plush servicemen’s club. Wellington’s portrait glowered down from the wall. He had once been a member there and had taken the photograph as a keepsake.
He examined the morning mail. There was a brochure for a new kind of electric car. You had to plug it in at night. He wondered where the dealer had got his name. Tothill wasn’t the sort of person you would normally associate with electric cars.
He looked out of a window at the rear of the flat. A long ribbon of rail stretched as far as the eye could see, interrupted only by a quadrant down distant signal. This section of railway had not as yet converted to colour signalling. Daylight was fading fast.
Down the road, the lights were shining brightly in the old station. A suburban train sat in the up platform, waiting for the scattering of passengers that would use it. The station clock showed half-past seven. This was a magnificent baroque artefact, 150 years old, two-sided, finished in gold leaf, its roman numerals making a bold statement as to the relentlessness of time. The platforms were almost deserted. The dusk filtered through the splendid glass rotunda above the station concourse, squeezing every last drop of light from the remains of the day. Tothill appreciated the thrilling sunset with its colours of mauve, pink and gold. He would have walked down to his bench in the back garden to observe it, except that the evening was chilly and he didn’t like the cold.
Instead, he went to the kitchen and glanced at his calendar. He needed to check the date. He was sure his tax return was due. The calendar hung from a galvanised nail. It sported a picture of a statue of a lioness reclining in a park somewhere. The lioness looked smug.
There was the usual clamour outside the front door of his apartment. The demolition men had pulled down an old petrol station and had discovered the remains of an ancient factory beneath. The archaeologists were scrabbling around for hidden treasures. There was talk of a file being found, a putty-knife and some old rivets. Tothill thought that they would be presented to the Peoples’ Museum in the town, to go on show with all the other bits of rubbish that were on display.
He went to the television and switched on the news. There was a piece about St Pancras station. He thought this was a cathedral amongst railway stations. The gothic masterpiece had been restored so that it could carry Eurostar trains to the continent. He wouldn’t mind going to the continent sometime, just to see what it was like.
He got up and went over to the mirror. He saw a big, fat, blubbery face with a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of an impressive beak. Little piggy eyes, truncated ears and sparse sandy hair made up the picture. It wasn’t desperately attractive.
He picked up the newspaper and read the classified advertisements. Someone was selling a rare, very tiny and very blue Fiat 500. Tothill might have been interested in buying it. He believed that he could certainly get into the vehicle, but he had his doubts as to whether he would ever get out again.
He looked over at the settee. The little tabby was now lying on its back with its feet sticking up in the air. He often slept like that, when he was deeply content and deeply asleep.
Tothill poured himself a glass of whisky and reached for the remote control. This was just too much excitement for one evening for a bachelor boy with an outstanding pile of ironing to do.