The other problem is that, if you can’t get your earphones to work on your laptop, the people in the train carriage around you will hear your entire conversation.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve given an account of an overheard conversation here. So I was glad to hear this one, if only so that I could regale you with it too.
Behind me in my carriage was a man – my apologies, a gentleman, though that term has nothing to do with gentleness and everything to do with class – with what I’d have to say was a perfect example of a plummy accent. That’s an accent that’s rich and round. Not rich as in food, but rich as in bank balance. Round not as in personally fat, but as in being born to live on the fat of the land. It was redolent of the best, by which I mean the most expensive, kind of public school – in Britain, the name we use for the more pricey private schools.
In short, his voice dripped with the kind of confidence that comes of years of study – or at least attendance – at a school designed to train its pupils to the highest and most acute levels of belief in entitlement.
The FaceTime call came in to him at what would have been around 9:00 in the morning in the eastern United States, which was where it was made. The speaker was an American woman and she clearly had financial responsibility for a venture in which she and the gentleman had some kind of association.
“I’m afraid I didn’t realise,” she was saying, “that he would run up $50,000 in costs crossing the Atlantic in just six months. I hadn’t budgeted for that.”
Mumble, mumble, mumble came the reply. It seems he realised he could be heard.
“I understand,” she replied, a little louder, as though trying to beat down unfair criticism, “I’d budgeted that amount for a full year. Can a pilot really run through that sum in just six months?”
Clearly whatever he said next got under her skin a little.
“I know,” she said, “I realise I made a mistake. I realise it was my mistake. Thanks for helping by pointing it out. Thank you.”
Something in her tone suggested that the gratitude she was expressing wasn’t entirely sincere.
I missed the next few exchanges. Firstly, because I was trying to focus on my work a little. Secondly, because you’re not supposed to eavesdrop on strangers’ conversations, are you? And thirdly because, in any case, the train went through one of those super-rattly bits where I couldn’t have heard anything even if I’d tried.
But then suddenly the voices boomed out more loudly than ever. Hers at least.
“Well, Italy comes under my responsibility. Maybe I should go. Though the only place I really like there is Florence.”
Really? We’re writing off Arezzo? Milan? Turin? Rome? Venice, pearl of the Adriatic, for God’s sake?
“I could go there,” she went on,
“Ah,” the plummy one replied, now loud enough to hear him and as plummy as they make them, “if we forced you, you’d be prepared to go there, would you?”
It was rather a flat joke and it was delivered in a flat tone. It missed its mark entirely.
“What? What?” she asked.
He repeated his witticism, which seldom has a good effect even if it starts out supremely witty, and this one hadn’t.
‘Ah,” she said, “yes. I could stand Florence if it becomes absolutely necessary.”
But there was no laugh, no cheerful acknowledgement of humour.
I missed a few more sentences and when I picked up the conversation again, it began to appear that their association wasn’t merely a business one.
“I have to go to work,” she was saying, “I’m just a poor defence attorney having to appear for mere criminals.”
I couldn’t help feeling that the sarcasm was really beginning to ooze now.
“We’ve just got into Market Harborough,” said Plummy Voice.
That was strictly true, as I quickly verified by looking out of the window, but it struck me as not entirely relevant to her comment. It seems she agreed.
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| Nothing remarkable about Market Harborough station And yet Plummy Voice remarked on it |
I didn’t catch his reply but it clearly wasn’t satisfactory.
“Well, you’re dull. I don’t like you either. I don’t like you at all. You’re dull. You’re very dull. No one likes you. You’ll end up alone.”
I’ve got to admit that he struck me as profoundly boring, but then I may not have been predisposed to like him from the moment I first heard his voice.
“I’ve got indigestion,” he answered, which struck me as a remark completely in the same category as “we’ve arrived in Market Harborough”.
“Well!” she cried, and I mean cried, as in shouted, “at least you’ve got that!”
What did she mean? That having indigestion made him marginally less dull? That it meant he had some company? You know, “you’re never alone with indigestion”?
But pretty soon she was being winsome.
“Before I go, you’ve got to say something nice to me. Something really nice.”
A pause.
“You don’t have to say it out loud.”
There was another slightly longer pause. And then she gave a little peal of laughter. Was it silvery? Was it dirty? Was it a cross between the two?
I couldn’t tell. So I was left trying to work out just what he’d said by way of farewell. Still, there are things I don’t need to be explicitly told. My imagination can supply plenty of possibilities.
As I expect can yours.
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