Three for Two

I am firmly ensconced within the train carriage; with book, coffee, and iPod, as we pull into to Basingstoke. A few stragglers get on. It’s a weekday, post peak time ticket prices and rush hour, not yet lunchtime for shoppers and idle travellers. The platform clock and my watch both say 10:26. Perfect. I have two seats to myself facing the direction of travel rather than against it, the difference – to me - between planing some tropical saltwater on waterskis, and sitting in a silent car being towed the long way home.

It’s a few hours to Liverpool yet, but I have provisions, coffee and a pack of gum. I am safe and wise. Omniscient with the speed and straightness of my travel planning. The stragglers take their seats, as the electric doors, - once a thing of Captain Kirk, now the provision of Richard Branson – beep and shudder closed, as if annoyed. The woman who sits across the aisle, facing into me and away from our destination, messes around in her handbag.

Phone, vaseline, and Treebor extra strong mints all emerge from her dark poppins bag. No hatstand, I think. She pulls out a novel, carelessly kept, from within. I don’t know the author but the cover is glossy and the yellow price promotion sticker is still on the front cover. It says “Three for Two!” in big letters, except it doesn’t, it says “3 for 2!” and even the use of numbers annoys me. I am hurtling towards this woman at seventy miles an hour, but I am getting no closer and she hasn’t taken the three for two sticker off her book! What carelessness, I think, does she not realise? Has she rushed into the shop, and already running late, bought the first thing to hand for her long journey. Even were this the case, she now has time to rectify her mistake, surely she saw the big sticker when she took the book out of her bag. It sits there, like L-plates on a Porsche, glowing and showing her folly. I am inexperienced, it says, I am easy to please, I have little critical faculties. I am a victim of marketing and advertising.

Even worse, has she noticed the sticker, either after her purchase, or when she just picked up the novel, and doesn’t care enough to have removed the sticker? Apathy possibly explains, but such it’s little effort to fix such a gaping faux pas. Maybe she doesn’t realise the significance of her actions, maybe she likes three for two’s, she finds them ‘useful’ when she goes to buy books, a twice a year event for her. Summer holidays and Christmas time. ‘After all’, I imagine her thinking, ‘with the sticker on it’s easier to return’.

She’s a member of a book club, and whilst giving appreciative remarks at meetings designed to please, craves the easy hit of the latest chick lit success instead of something with sharper teeth. A quick thrill of easy associations and pleasing resolutions, like eating squirty double cream direct from the can. Holding down the nozzle and, mouth open wide, gorging on the plasticky froth hitting the tongue.

As someone who refuses to buy novels which, once adapted into movies, are re-released with new covers, I do not understand. As someone who buys from local bookshops for three quid more. In an attempt to halt the vague grazing colonisation of my high street. Who, should they be forced to buy from a big chain, refuses the identikit salesgirl’s offer of a plastic bag, lest he feel branded with it like cattle. So I can’t stop looking at this woman, content, head bobbing in motion with the train, like a thousand tiny affirmations. I am furious, and I am thinking hard, as if to transmit to her brain, “Don’t you SEE? What you are doing? You shame yourself and pass guilt onto me”

But she merely turns the page and eats a flapjack. No doubt that in doing so, she spills crumbs into the pages.
I take books seriously, and once purchased, refuse to allow any of them to be sold to charity shops or at car boot sales. I refer to them not as my books but as my ‘library’ and carefully select the titles at the most visible levels of shelving in order to impress visitors and guests. Embarrassing books go at the top of the shelves, or in dark corners or stacks.

On holiday, when you get to those places which have a pleasingly patchwork collection of novels left by a succession of travellers for the benefit of those who come after themselves, I steal the choicest titles and take them home, where others take hotel towels, I’d take the free bible if I didn’t already have one.

They mean a lot, books, I’ve always believed you can tell a lot about a person from their favourite book, or from what they’re reading on a train. I’m not a snob and I don’t think it’s shallow to judge this way. It’s no worse than buying someone a drink in a bar because you like the way they’ve done their hair. Surely, it’s better to fall for someone’s favourite book than for the fact you can see the outline of their breasts beneath that top? Anything interesting - and I by that I don’t mean highbrow, War and Peace is just as bad a favourite novel (so passé, so easy) as Bridget Jones’ Diary – or original can mark that person out as themselves, interesting or original. Worth getting to know, open to new ideas or information. I look for people who I can talk to about things that matter, things I think matter anyway, meaty things like stories and themes and emotions, that if we don’t have the courage to reveal from ourselves, then at least we can play behind these characters. Chances are someone who likes good books is someone who can hold a conversation. Is someone who’s going to have more of an opinion on the current events of the day then on the current events in Coronation Street.

It’s sad, but I like to try to predict the booker prize, playing a little game with myself every year where I get a point if I’ve already read a title from the Longlist before it’s announced. I am not afraid to admit I’m the guy who says “oh I read that last year” and secretly loves it inside. I like to be able to lend my books to other people, (provide they look after them of course) I feel good that they can gain from my own quality control filters, like a trustworthy used car salesman, anything I recommend is safe to dive in straight away, no trepidation that those first chapters will tease and jilt you, like a lover, promising the world and showing it to you, before snatching it, brutal and violent, away from your eyes, lurching you off the road and into a ditch.

But this woman, she sits there and reads like someone would a newspaper or magazine. There’s no difference between the two for her, like eating an ice lolly and accidentally devouring the stick at the same time. I want to take her and shout at her. I want to tear her book up in front of her face, I want to lead her, hand in hand, and wade into the water at some deserted beach. Where it’s cold and the wind whips salt into hair and folds of skin, and we would find once we’re under the water, that it’s warmer than the cold air, and we would come up changed.

All I do, though, is quietly seethe and chew another piece of gum. It’s a long way to Liverpool, and I can only hope she’s getting off at Birmingham New Street, or somewhere else soon. Where I shall be free. Endless commuterland streams by the windows, - toward me, away from her – trees and roundabouts and double glazing. Puccinos coffee bars and good rail links.

Does she read before she goes to bed? Her and her lover under a sheet, skin touching down a vertical line, one book each and two lamps. Does she savour the last words of a book in the dark, in the quiet, as they echo against the blank pages and the back cover that follows. I am so much more worthy of that.

She is useless and terrible. Worse, she’s responsible. For all the three for twos, all the ‘summer reading’ and ‘best of british’ promotions. For Richard and Judy’s book club, for Paulo Coelho’s new age bullshit dressed up as sense. For bestsellers that are purchased because everyone else has them. For adult covers of childrens titles. This woman is at fault. Her and millions like her, on tube stations and in Starbucks, spreading their legs on an easy promise of gratification. Picking up the money on the nightstand and walking home the next morning so brazen, short skirt orbiting her hips, high heels echoing down pavements. Smudged makeup and the dull buzz of a hangover. A three for two sticker on each breast. Fuzzy memories she’d rather not have. And then nine months later she gives birth to The Da-Vinci Code.

Our eyes meet for a moment. She knows my hatred and looks away. Annoyed at my discovery I burrow further down into my seat and taking a long slug of coffee, I let the bitterness fully permeate. We pull through waste and woodland, whilst I pretend to be interested in my iPod. A few moments and I allow myself another glance, she’s reading again. Placid. It’s a shame because she’s quite attractive, I concede, if you like that kind of thing. The way her mouth purses up as she sucks on another mint, the colour of her hair in this light.

There’s a crash, and then the whole carriage seems to move a few inches, earthy and guttural. Everyone is jerked across their seats, a few people squeak or grunt reflexively, I knock my coffee over and somehow catch it in the same motion. I imagine wheels coming off rails. I imagine twenty four news and pictures on the internet. A nice memorial. I try to remember what made me take this journey, a funeral, a phonecall, a photograph. I imagine so many things. There’s some grinding metal, and we rattle around for another few seconds, clinging onto arm rests and windows, before another thud, and the train seems to settle.

Recovering, we look around collectively, passengers connected by this shared violence. This invasion of our peace and travel. We are triumphant for our survival, but guilty for our momentary fears. For letting our guard down. The guard comes on the tannoy to apologise for the distress, and I see the three for two woman putting her possessions back into her handbag. She looks up to me, and half smiles with a raised eyebrow that says ‘Phew, I thought that was-’. It’s unfinished, because I know too.

I smile back in collusion, and realise that I am relieved that she is unharmed. She holds my glance, before popping another mint in her mouth and settling back in her chair. I wonder if she’ll stay on the train with me until Liverpool, and think the carriage would seem rather empty without her. I wonder what her voice sounds like, as she opens her book and tries to find her page again. Starting to read, I admit quietly to myself that she looks happy.