It Shouldn’t Happen In First Class

So I’m sitting there on the train this morning, in first class, on a journey from Milton Keynes to London for a connection on to Bristol. I don’t highlight the fact that I was travelling first class because I want to appear snooty, or even draw attention to the fact that I was sat in first class, more because I feel it is absolutely, fundamentally, crucial to the story I am about to recount.

Usually first class carriages aren’t particularly busy down to London, and on trains that are considered ‘slow’ (because they stop at more than just two intermediate stations), you hardly get anyone travelling first class. But today was very different: it was packed. This is because an earlier, faster, train had cancelled and so naturally everyone spilled onto the slower train I was on, resulting in not just people standing in standard class, but first class too.

Anyway, the train pulls away, stops at the next station and more people pile on, and gradually the spare seats that there were in first class begin to disappear. In front of where I was sitting was a row of two seats, with a chap sitting on the aisle side with no-one next to him in the window seat. At the next station, Leighton Buzzard, a couple get on and futilely try to find two seats in the first class carriage together. Of course there was absolutely no chance, but they tried to find the next best thing – two seats adjacent to one another across the aisle.

Except that in order to achieve their desired seating arrangement, with a free aisle seat across the aisle from the chap in front of me, he would need to move across to be beside the window. So the lady, a black woman with a fur-collared coat, politely asked the man if he wouldn’t mind moving across to be by the window so that she are her travelling companion could continue their conversation across the aisle; I think this was a perfectly reasonable request and furthermore one that was very polite and hardly brusque.

The chap refused in a very impolite, and very brusque manner. The black lady with the fur-collared coat was clearly taken aback by what had genuinely been a very polite and hardly brusque enquiry, and asked the man why it was that he could not – or would not – move across to the window seat. He responded tersely that it was none of her business. And so, with a theatrical sigh, the woman conceded that she was not going to be able to continue her conversation with her travelling companion, and asked if the gentleman wouldn’t mind – if it wasn’t too much trouble – standing up so that she could slide into the window seat. Begrudgingly, the man stood up and allowed her to take the seat next to him, however his body language would hardly suggest a compliant attitude.

The black woman with the fur-collared coat could obviously detect the chap’s body language and proceeded to adopt the tried-and-tested behaviour of the defeated traveller – mutterings and harrumphs under her breath, just loud enough for those around, including the obstructive chap, to hear her annoyance. Seconds after departing Leighton Buzzard, the black lady with the fur-collared coat’s travelling companion asked, across the aisle, whether she wouldn’t mind passing him his paperback novel that she was carrying in her handbag. She obliged, making another theatrical gesture by leaning over, into the obstructive chap, and snapping her arm across him, within centimetres of the end of his nose to hand the book across the aisle. This, the black woman with the fur-collared coat clearly felt, was a small victory over the obstructive chap.

Something of a lull settled over the warring travellers, and we continued our steady journey through the Chiltern Hills and down toward London. A sense of calm and order was once again restored to the normally dignified and respectful first class carriage, and I very nearly forgot that there had ever been a dispute between the black woman with the fur-collared coat and the obstructive chap sitting in front of me.

Until, that is, we arrived at Euston. The train pulled in, the ticket inspector reminded us to make extra sure that we all had our bags and other belongings with us when departing the train, and we all shuffled to our feet, collected our bags and other belongings and readied ourselves for the next parts of our respective journeys. And it was at the point where the doors were opened and we started filing out, that the conflict sparked off once again.

The obstructive chap slid out from under his tray table, stood up and grabbed his bag and herringbone overcoat from the luggage rack above the black woman with the fur-collared coat’s head; he made his way to the door dividing the carriage between the upper and ‘lower’ classes, and was about to set off to wherever it was he was going; the black woman with the fur-collared coat’s companion called him back angrily – ‘Take your rubbish with you so that she can get out of her seat will you?’. I looked between the seats and the obstructive chap had indeed left his tray table down, upon which was an empty Costa Coffee paper cup and Daily Mirror preventing the black woman with the fur-collared coat from extracting herself easily from her seat by the window.

‘No! I won’t!’ sneered back the obstructive chap. (I had just been reading a book on the Sex Pistols, and the obstructive chap’s nihilistic remark had much in keeping with the erstwhile Johnny Rotten’s attitude about it.) But the black woman with the fur-collared coat’s companion insisted that he come back and remove his rubbish. Clearly a little shamed by this public reprimand in front of his fellow travellers, the obstructive chap did indeed oblige, but it was clear that he did this not out of common decency toward the black woman with the fur-collared coat, but because in fact he wasn’t done with the argument. I’d like to say, for effect alone, that he swept the rubbish onto the floor and cried ‘There! Happy now?’ but he didn’t; he just collected up the litter and put it into a litter bin; but as he did so, he offered what he thought was the final word on the argument.

‘By the way, the reason that I wouldn’t move is because I have a bad leg and need to stretch it out! And for you to ask why I wouldn’t move was private and none of your bloody business!’ He then turned on his heels, and with legs that hardly looked sore at all from where I was standing, strode purposefully off the train.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. But it wasn’t actually even over yet.

The train being over-busy, there was something of a queue at the ticket barriers, which took about ten minutes to fully get through to the other side and which very nearly caused me to miss my connection to Bristol. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the layout of Euston Station – sadly I am over-familiar with it – but when you come up from the suburban lines on platforms 8 – 11, there’s a ramp which heads down to the Northern and Victoria underground lines.

For some reason, despite sitting halfway along the train, I ended up being one of the last passengers to get through the exit barriers, by which time the ramp down to the Northern and Victoria lines was virtually empty. To my surprise, on the ramp were the obstructive chap with the gammy leg, the black woman with the fur-collared coat and her companion. And they were still rowing. I couldn’t pick up everything they were saying, mainly because by this time I was running up the ramp to try and make my connection from Paddington to Bristol. But the last thing I heard was the obstructive chap with the gammy leg pointing an angry digit at the black woman with the fur-collared coat while addressing her travelling companion thus : ‘You want to keep her under control!’.

Quite what happened next I have no idea, as by then I would have been pegging it along Euston Road, but I would rather hope that the black woman with the fur-collared coat’s travelling companion smacked the obstructive chap with the gammy leg squarely in the chops to valiantly defend the black woman with the fur-collared coat’s honour, and would perhaps be completely justified in doing so.

Honestly, this sort of thing just shouldn’t happen among first class travellers, should it?