The carriage is almost empty. I sit in the elderly persons seats, with more leg-room. I conceal the notice with my coat, an old trick that prevents even older people from asking me to give up my seat to them. I’m not conning anybody, I’m on the right road to ‘elderly.’ I sit here, dressed in a sweatshirt and grey pantaloons, and consider what to do next. So many ideas flashing around in my head, like the ball in a pinball machine, but nothing concrete, nothing I can pin down. I would like to be a published writer, but that’s not about to happen any time soon, so that makes me feel like writing even less. Anyway, if I can’t write, I can certainly read. Raymond Chandler’s excellent Philip Marlowe adventure ‘The High Window’ lies at my elbow. I pick it up and begin to read. My eyes are heavy. I’m tired. So tired.
It was another dull and muggy day, the kind that drains you before you move a yard. I was on a train, going somewhere, but I didn’t have a clue where. The countryside was as featureless as a toad in a smoking-jacket. The carriage was as empty as an undertaker’s hat. There was just one other occupant –a broad. I studied her through the crack in the seats. Short-cropped dirty blonde hair, simple gold stud in her ear, the type of eyeglasses that flash a warning to any hunk daring to try it on. She was plump as a penguin, and about the same age as a tortoise, but her skin retained something of its former sheen. Trouble was, it was the same colour as a wash-leather. It was brazier-hot in the carriage so I mopped my brow with a linen handkerchief that had once been pearly-white, but now looked like the one that had been washed in Brand X. The trolley-man pulled his trolley along. ‘Whaddya want?’ he asked, none too pleasantly, ‘Coffee. Strong. Black. Six sugars.’ ‘You serious?’ ‘No’. ‘How many?’ ‘Don’t take sugar.’ ‘Wise guy, huh?’ He was short, scrawny, with a fringe of hair through which his bald dome poked like a mountain above the tree-line. ‘Cut the lip, Jack, and serve me.’ One or two holiday types wandered down the carriage. A young kid in a baseball hat and corn-coloured hair and an old fool in a pair of shorts. He had enough ear-fuzz to stop a bluebottle in its tracks. He looked as out of place as a kangaroo at a royal banquet. I sipped my coffee. It tasted like boot-polish. I called out to the trolley-man: ’Hey, Jack, what did you polish your boots with this morning?’ He didn’t see the joke. I tossed own the empty carton. It rolled under the broad’s seat. ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing, throwing your rubbish at me.’ She had a voice like an embittered rook. She didn’t stand any nonsense. ‘Sorry,lady, it just kind of fell out of my fingers.’ ‘Aren’t you going to pick it up?’ the tone was some way north of icy. ‘Nope.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘It might be difficult – I haven’t got extendable arms.’ ‘You’re very impertinent,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a diploma in it,’ I replied. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked. ‘Marlowe. Philip Marlowe. I’m a private dick, but I’m hanged if I know what I’m doing on a train going from Scotland to England.’ ‘My name is Elspet Corinne’ she said ‘I’m well known right across the county.’ I couldn’t think of a suitable retort – there didn’t seem to be an answer to that, so I turned my attention to her book. ‘What are you reading?’ She turned to the cover, as if to remind her. ‘It’s called ‘Death of a Call-Girl. It isn’t very good’. ‘Is that the one where a call-girl gets killed, or otherwise dies?’ I asked. ‘Quite a wit, aren’t you?’ she replied. ‘You’re a private investigator, are you?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘I may have a job for you. Someone’s stolen an old and valuable coin from me, and I need someone to find it.’
I came to just as we bustled into the urban sprawl of Newcastle. I put my pen, pencil and notebook away in my haversack, placed my ticket in my jacket pocket, checked that my car keys were secure, and climbed into my raincoat. As I climbed down from the train, a woman with skin like a wash-leather tapped my arm. ‘You left this,’ she said, handing me ‘The High Window’. She had a voice like an embittered rook.
