Three Men On Tour: 12

“You took your time,“ said Harry as I tumbled onto the train. I was breathing heavily and my face was a florid shade of beetroot that closely matched the tie Harry had worn, along with a mustard shirt, to indicate that he was ‘on holiday’. I slumped into the seat next to him and refrained from commenting. To be fair, I was too busy trying to breathe to comment but when I stopped wheezing I was going to give him the benefit of a dignified silence. Across from me, George opened his bag and extracted an odd looking package of greaseproof paper wrapped in cellophane. If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn it was a parcel of sandwiches straight out of Blyton.

“I’ve brought you egg and cress,“ he explained. “I figured you’d probably forget to pack your own.“

“I’m getting ham and pickle,“ said Harry proudly.

“I thought the train left at eight,“ said George, looking at his watch while he handed me the parcel. I took the sandwiches graciously and glanced at my own watch. It was one minute past.

“I don’t know,“ grumbled George, “that’s the problem with this country. No-one has any sense of punctuality. I mean, do they not know how to tell the time or what?“

“What?“ yelled Harry and I gleefully, causing one or two other passengers to look round. It was an old joke and not a particularly funny one, but the humour had long since migrated into comfortable familiarity. We smiled happily at each other and settled down into our own individual spheres of thought.

The train didn’t take long before it jolted into life. Smoke blackened walls flickered past the windows before giving way to panoramas of residential London. I saw rusting playgrounds, streets of boarded up pound shops, basketball courts surrounded by tower blocks and graffiti, never ending sprawls of graffiti. As we emerged from the confines of M25 and bricks and mortar gave way to fields and hedgerows, I found my thoughts drifting. The carriage was warm as an embrace and the rattle of wheels on jointed iron soporific. George was doing a crossword, paper neatly folded, pen poised in thought at his lips. Harry was asleep, his head against the window, his backpack a makeshift pillow. As the horizon drifted past the window I felt very far from London – far from work – far from decisions – far from Alicia. I wasn’t quite sure I understood. Somehow, in the space of an evening, I had gone from bumbling along in a relationship to being engaged to be married. Not that I’d said yes. I didn’t know what to say. Surely I was too young. I still had so much to do with my life. I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t sure I ever would be. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Alicia. I did; I loved her with all my heart. If I did get married, it would be to her, I was sure of it. That wasn’t the problem. It was just … I was engaged to be married, and before the holiday was over, and without losing Alicia, I was going to have to work out how not to be.