Then she looked at the tall man’s hands. They were long, brown hands, very clean. ‘Nice hands’ she thought. He wore a very expensive Japanese watch. ‘Japan,’ she thought. ‘I’d like to go to Japan.’ She looked up and she saw the man’s eyes again over the top of his newspaper. This time she did not look away. Green eyes looked into dark brown eyes for a long, slow minute.
After Newton Abbot station the guard came into the carriage to look at their tickets. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘where are we all going?’ ‘This train’s late,’ the man in the brown hat said. ‘Twenty minutes late, by my watch.’ ‘Ten minutes,’ the guard said. ‘That’s all.’ He smiled at Julie. The tall dark man put his newspaper down, found his ticket and gave it to the guard. The guard looked at it. ‘You’re all right, sir,’ he said. ‘The boat doesn’t leave Plymouth before six o’clock. You’ve got lots of time.’ The tall man smiled, put his ticket back in his pocket and opened his newspaper again. Julie didn’t look at him. ‘A boat,’ she thought. ‘He’s taking a boat from Plymouth. Where’s he going?’ She looked at him again with her long green eyes. He read his newspaper and didn’t look at her. But his eyes smiled. The train stopped at Totnes station and more people got on and off. ‘Everybody’s going on holiday,’ Bill said. He laughed. ‘It’s going to be wonderful. No work for two weeks. It’s a nice, quite town, St Austell. We can stay in bed in the mornings, and sit and talk in the afternoons, and have a drink or two in the evenings. Eh, Julie?’ He looked at his wife. ‘Are you all right, Julie?’ ‘Yes, Bill,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m OK.’ She looked out of the window again. The train went more quickly now, and it began to rain. Bill and the man in the brown had talked and talked. Bill told a long story about two men and a dog, and the man in the brown hat laughed very loudly. That’s a good story,’ he said. ‘I like that. You tell it very well. Do you know the story about … ‘ And he told Bill a story about a Frenchman and a bicycle.
