Think Yourself Lucky Read Online Free Page A

smelling the food in his hand or in his mouth, if not both. The train is coming to a station, and I wonder if it's his, but he's stirring only to plant his feet further apart, presumably in case anyone thinks of sitting opposite. "Conway Park," he says a good deal less distinctly than the recorded announcement overhead. "No use to me. They don't sell my style of shoes in Birkenhead, which. Every sod's but mine."
    "Which style is that? I can't say I'd noticed you had any, Mr Meatface."
    I needn't have bothered asking. I can tell he'll be keeping up his commentary all the way to his destination. He's like a child who can't stop babbling, even while he takes another big-mouthed bite. "It's the arches," he complains, and a half-chewed chunk of burger lands on the seat he's facing. "Doctor says I've got to have the shoes to fit, which. Pity his lot can't pay for them if he says they're for my health."
    Apparently talking isn't enough any longer, and it's time for a demonstration. He plants the carton on the other seat he's opposite and sets about untying the knot on his left trainer. The mammoth task involves hauling the leg towards him with his hands behind the knee and straining his top half forwards over his stomach. "Give it up, you bugger," he snarls. "Don't go messing me about. Just come here, you bastard. Bloody come here."
    He's forgotten to say which for once. Eventually he captures both ends of the shoelace and gasps as he gives them a hearty tug. He treads on the shoe while he releases the foot along with an extra smell that the draught from the open windows can't disperse. "Ah, that's it," he moans, pressing his foot in its discoloured chunky sock against the seat opposite and wriggling his sluggish toes. "Next best thing to a rub off the wife, which. She could do it for a living, her. Don't like to think how she'd leave the house if she ever got a job."
    I can't tell whether he's thinking about the state of the place or saying she's confined there, not that I want to know. Once his foot has finished squirming like an animal in a sack he stuffs it back into the trainer, puffing out more of the stale sweaty stink as he hauls at the tongue of the shoe with both hands. "Get in, you little," he pants. "Get where you're bloody told, which. Get right in."
    "Need a hand, Mr Meatface? I've two here that want to go to work."
    He's too busy gasping and sweating and tugging at his shoe to hear me. At last he triumphs over the trainer and succeeds in tying a sloppy knot. The impromptu pedicure has taken us past one underground station, and I wonder how many the other foot may call for. He seems to think he's made enough effort, however, and slumps back to dig in his bag for a packet of crisps, which don't prevent him from talking. "Here's the shops," he announces as the train halts at the first station under Liverpool. "Hordes of shoes, which. No time to look. I'm everybody's servant, me."
    The crunching of crisps is as loud as his voice. Both seem to need him to keep his mouth open as much as he can, expelling a smell of cheese and onion to join the other aromas he's bestowed on the carriage, not to mention spraying the floor and the seats with crumbs and larger fragments. "Next one for me," he proclaims at the second stop. "Wife's sister coming up from London, which. Can't get the train to us herself. Wants meeting and her bags carried, and the wife's too feeble to help."
    "I thought you said she couldn't leave the house."
    He's already waddling to the doors as the train moves off. He has left more than his mark—footprints on the other seats, the empty plastic bag, the crisp packet unfurling like an artificial flower and surrounded by a generous distribution of its contents, the carton gaping to display the remains of the hamburger and bun still glistening from his last bite, the various smells he donated to the train. "Let's get her done with," he says, only to protest when the carriage lurches. "Watch how you're driving, you.