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‘Would you like to read my Angling Times?' said Mr Barrowclough. He was the other screw.
Now that was an opening I couldn't refuse. I could see the headlines screaming at me from the front page. ‘And now -The 2p Lugworm!’ Full of full-frontal salmons and the price of cod inside no doubt. I reached across to take the magazine. As I did the Scottish nurk snatched it out of my hand.
‘God Almighty,' he says. 'Molly-coddling him already. You seem, Mr Barrowclough, to forget what prison is for. He’s got a debt to pay to society, and that debt doesn’t include reading informative magazines.'
With that he settles back into his seat with a last jerk of his neck. Yes, just like a turkey.
The other screw looked just as surprised as I did. I fell silent for a minute or two and gazed out of the window at North London’s back gardens. Then I thought of the long journey ahead with no reading material or television and I thought, Well, we have got to do something to pass the time, haven’t we? I looked at MacKay out of the comer of my eye and said very casually, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with C.' Now for some unknown reason he took that very personal. Leaning across and wagging a finger he said, ‘Watch it, Fletcher, watch it,' he says.
‘It was cuffs, handcuffs I had in mind, Mr MacKay. Oh, sorry, I should have said HC, that would have been more fair.'
Don’t come the old soldier with me,’ he says.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, I says.’
‘Any more trouble with you and I'll . . .'
‘Let me guess,’ I says. ‘You’ll wait till we pick up speed at, say, Hemel Hempstead and chuck me out of the window. Then put it down to attempting to escape.'
This offended the other one's sense of fairness. *Oh, he wouldn't do that,’ he says.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ I says. 'Couldn’t spell Hemel Hempstead. He’d wait till we got to Rugby.'
I felt sure that MacKay and I were going to have a right old game with each other in the months to come. I could tell by the look he was giving me that I was going to be one of his favourite targets.
‘Look,’ said Barrowclough. ‘There’s a long journey ahead, let us not conduct it in a feeling of hostility and aggression. Why don’t we all have a nice cup of tea?’
‘Oh yes,1 I says. 'A cup of tea solves all nasty expertiences as my old Mother used to say. And I’ll have one of those individual fruit pies if they’ve got any.'
Rob Roy gave me a hard look, he wasn’t sure whether I was in fact having a go at him or not. Anyway, he decided that it is a good idea and off he strutted leaving us alone in our first-class compartment with the blinds pulled down so as not to offend the eyes of the gentry with a glimpse of a convicted felon.
I thought, this should give me an opportunity to find out some valuable information about old misery-guts. The number one priority in dealing with two screws is to inject a little bit of bother between them. Divide and rule. So nodding towards the door I says, ‘He's a laugh, ain’t he? Sort of casual like. He plays it careful, won’t be drawn.’
‘I expect it's with him being a Scotsman and having to miss Hogmanay,’ he says.
‘Scot is he? I’d never have guessed,’ I replied. But the sarcasm goes right over his head.
'Oh yes, and they do take it very seriously, the Scots.'
Yeah, well they’d take any excuse for drinking seriously, wouldn’t they? Nothing social about their drinking habits, is there? With them, it’s like a religion. They don’t enjoy a few glasses of the old vino, oh, no, they drink to get drunk. And, whereas other people having reached that state get a little warm and sentimental, or as in my case, randy, your Scot, all he wants is to fight and smash a glass in someone’s boat-race. Only one thing worse than a drunken Scot and that’s a sober one, an' we’ve just seen one of them, haven’t we?’
I settled back in my seat feeling the power of having got that off my chest. He sat there blinking through his spectacles, sucking his teeth before saying unhappily, I'm Scots on my mother’s side.'
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