The Quiet Man

A Romantic Notion

You’d glance at everyone in this carriage and know at least a dozen stories you could tell me about them. Even the tube is a wonderland of information to you, a jumble of habits and mistakes just sitting there on stiff seats, all too casually written on bodies and clothes, waiting to be observed by you.

But it’s only me, now.

To me it’s all just awkward waiting, the scraping sound of the carriage eking along the track, and too many bodies in one place. There are umbrellas dripping on the floor. And people, in their various shapes and sizes, their perfumes, shampoos, body odor and deodorants, we’re trying to avoid looking at each other. Cattle shoved into a pen. Shuffling feet. That’s all I can see.

You see, but you don’t observe. Your constant criticism. Well, all right. I can try.

The man in front of me is wearing glasses. Nothing unusual in that. Lots of people need glasses. He has poor eyesight, maybe he has astigmatism. Brown frames, bit of gold on the edges. No deductions there; it’s all just stating the obvious. He needs glasses.

Yes. A sound analysis, John. But I was hoping you’d go deeper.

His shoes are wet, like mine are. Nothing interesting there, either: it’s raining, there are puddles to walk through. That doesn’t tell me anything other than he walked to the tube station, like I did. There’s no story to tell in that.

It’s not about stories, John. The facts are what’s important.

He’s reading some sort of almanac. Who reads almanacs? Farmers? He doesn’t look like a farmer.

Well, what does a farmer look like when he’s in central London? He’s not going to get on the tube wearing grass-stained tweed and heaving a pitchfork, is he. Well, maybe he would: you got on the tube with a harpoon once. Absolutely covered in pig’s blood. God, the looks you must have got. I can only imagine.

You took the tube that morning, and you texted me, six times. I remember. I still have them.

The station is filthy, why is that?
Dispatching a mad pig is tedious business, who knew. Are you still asleep? Wake up!
It smells like piss in here.
Standing across from a counterfeiter with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, should I call Lestrade? Too boring.
Check the papers, I need another case. I need one, John. Find me an interesting case.
People are so rude. Why must they be so rude?

I found those texts after I got dressed and put the water on. I laughed at them over my breakfast. You ran off without me in the middle of the night after I told you to piss off and let me sleep. But by morning you were on your way home again. Inexplicably on the tube. I smiled as if you could see me. I picked up the paper.

It’s unbearably sad, somehow, the memory of that breakfast: me alone in the sitting room with a cup of coffee and the paper, my phone in my pocket with fresh texts from you on it. And you on your way home. It feels sad, and I don’t know why.

There’s a warmth I remember. It was sitting in the pit of my stomach, reaching up into my chest; a kind of feeling of warmth I didn’t think was special until you left me and it was gone. I was happy.

There was a flicker of a thought I had, a half-thought, really, reading through those texts that morning: I laughed, and thought that you must miss me.

Did I?

I don’t know.

Maybe I was just bored. You know I was bored: I was bored and empty, I needed a case. The pig was useless.

Yes. Maybe that was it.

But that morning I thought you might miss me. For a moment. I half-thought it.