Immediately, the woman in the seat to his left leaned over and said to Jack that she was on her way for a check-up at the hospital. The ticket collector was flirting with her in the window seat. He winked at Jack. He had a round whiskey face and small eyes. His tie was undone and his mouth was set in a tight bow of short temper. The ticket collector did not want his conversation with the woman interrupted. But as the woman talked away to Jack, the ticket collector became a ticket collector again. He dropped his drunken leer. Jack ordered more drink from the trolley boy.

“Whoopah!” cheered the woman, “you started it, you might as well finish it.”

And she ordered a drink for herself.

“The cure is wonderful,” Jack said.

Jack moved over and the trolley boy sat down. They began talking of rabbits.

“It’s rare that I meet someone employed by the railroad,” said Jack, thinking to himself, this lad must be a Taig like me. The conductor is not. The woman may be.

“Don’t mind that fucker,” said the trolley boy, “that just went through the door.” He spoke with a mild trace of self-consciousness, dropping to a whisper because of what they were speaking of.

“Don’t say anything,” he whispered.

“I better push on,” he said loudly and stood. He put a free bottle on the table in front of Jack. A girl student, with blond cropped hair, dropped into the seat beside him. He wondered could she smell the stale sweat from him. She took out a notebook, then a calculator. It struck Jack that there were three or four voices working away in his head simultaneously, though he had no wish to talk to anybody at all. Nor to listen. Stations sped by, Lough Neagh passed like another sea to the right. Time wound down the distance.

The ticket collector appeared again.

“Tickets!” he called. “Tickets! Tickets!”

He disappeared from view.

“I think,” said the woman to Jack, “that I know him to see.”

“I think he’s from Fitzroy,” another woman answered. “What’s wrong with you anyway?”

“It’s my ticker,” she explained.

The girl looked up from her book, then down again. Tiredness fell on him. His head bumped against the window. The white plastic cups rocked on the table. He heard the miniatures striking against each other on the returning trolley. The plates linking the carriage buckled. To people on trains this happens, he said to himself.