‘If you don’t know her,’ he said, ‘why are you hassling her?’
‘Hassling her?’ said Danny, making a mockery of the word. ‘How come it’s your business anyway, you posh cunt?’
‘I don’t like bullies,’ Kite replied, suddenly very frightened. He was amazed, and oddly humiliated, that he had been identified as posh. If any of these men was carrying a knife they surely now would not hesitate to use it.
‘I don’t give a ratsy fuck what you do and do not like, pal, ken?’
‘Leave him alone,’ said the woman. She had a pronounced West African accent and a desperate look in her eyes.
There was a collective sarcastic sigh, then a long romantic ‘ooooh’ as the three men mocked what she had said. Pete made a kissing sound with pursed lips. A wild, joker’s grin spread out across Danny’s face. Robbie gleefully shouted: ‘They’re in love, Dan. He fancies a fuckin’ black bird.’
Kite was breathing the vodka, the same nauseating chemical stench he remembered smelling a hundred times on his father’s breath. He knew that he only had to survive for another three or four minutes before the train reached the next stop at Maybole and he could get help. There might be more passengers on the platform, perhaps a stationmaster who could get the situation under control.
‘It’s sad what’s going on here,’ he said, trying to reassure the woman with his eyes.
Again Danny pounced on his choice of words.
‘Sad, is it? Are you gonna cry? Is that what’s gonna happen, ya’ fuck?’
If Kite had been less hungover, if there had been two of them, not three, if he had been sure that they weren’t carrying knives, he would have thrown a punch at this moment, just as he had decked Richard Duff-Surtees three years earlier with a sweet right hook at fly-half. But his physical courage deserted him. He knew that he was going to have to stand his ground and try to win the fight with patience and words.
‘I’m not going to cry,’ he said. ‘I’m not frightened by you. I think you’re the ones who are weak. What’s a woman on her own supposed to do when—’
‘A black woman, mind,’ Robbie interjected, but his response sounded oddly feeble.
Pete began to sing the refrain from an advert Kite had seen on the TV for fruit juice: ‘Um Bongo, Um Bongo, they drink it in Um Congo.’ Robbie laughed wildly at this and joined in, saying: ‘Aye, she probably wants a banana.’
‘It doesn’t matter where she’s from or what colour her skin is,’ Kite answered, watching Danny very carefully because he was waiting for him to stand up and strike. ‘There’s three of you. One of her. She’s not causing trouble. Pick on someone else.’
As if Kite had pressed a button, Robbie and Pete immediately stood up out of their seats and turned to him, Danny doing the same and saying: ‘OK, big man. We’ll pick on you then.’
‘No!’ the woman shouted, but she did not move from her seat. Kite backed away, praying that the train, which seemed to be slowing down, was coming into Maybole. The three men had formed a sort of column and were following him towards the back of the train, closing down the space. Kite couldn’t go left. He couldn’t go right. He was trapped. Danny hawked up a ball of phlegm from his lungs and spat it at his feet.
‘Tickets please, gentlemen!’
All of them looked towards the front of the carriage. A ticket inspector had entered at the far end. He was at least fifty and recognised immediately that there was a problem.
‘What’s goin’ on here?’ he shouted.
‘Fuckin’ nothing, man,’ Pete muttered.
‘Just havin’ a wee chat with our pal here,’ said Danny.
They scuttled back like boys caught smoking cigarettes in the woods at Alford, all blank faces and innocence, leaving Kite with a decision either to grass them up or hope that they left the train at Maybole.
‘Are you all right?’ said the inspector. The woman had come out from behind the table and was standing near the central door of the carriage.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine.’
Kite saw the lights of Maybole up ahead. He had never been more relieved in his life.
‘You getting off here?’ the inspector asked. He had directed the question at the woman, but Danny said: ‘Aye, we’re getting off. Nay bother.’
‘My husband is meeting me,’ the woman answered, loud enough for the youths to hear.
Kite realised he was in the clear. Everyone was leaving. The woman would be safe in Maybole. Her husband was probably waiting for her on the platform.
‘OK,’ said the inspector. ‘So let’s get going, gentlemen, please, before I find out any more about what was happening here. Gather your belongings and be on your away.’
Laughing and jostling one another, without a further word either to Kite or the woman, the men opened the door onto the platform and stepped off the train. The woman waited until they were several metres away then spoke to Kite.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You were very brave.’
‘No problem,’ Kite replied. He felt a wave of satisfaction as euphoric as the first surges of Ecstasy on the dance floor at Mud Club. ‘Take care of yourself.’
A white man in a business suit was waiting on the platform, looking up expectantly. Very slowly, the woman stepped down from the train and walked towards him. As he hugged her, Kite saw the woman begin to sob as she slumped in his arms. The ticket inspector turned to Kite.
‘She’s a long way from home,’ he said.
Kite had neither the will nor the presence of mind to find an adequate reply. He merely showed the man his ticket, went back to his bag, and sat down.
An hour later he was in a taxi
