London Transports by Maeve Binchy Page A

statements, they had never even known what she was talking about. Suddenly Lisa knew. It was the reassurance game, it was trying to say “it’s all right.”
    Lisa felt like shouting it out aloud this very moment. She had an urge to tell the boy with the red hair that her father had been a local government official, that her mother had been a nurse, that her mother’s father had owned a chemist’s shop. She wanted to say it in a voice so clear and loud that he would hear it, before he left for his checkup, so that he would realize how lucky he was to have gotten a girl from such good stock who was so willing to play along in a shabby game with him. That it was against her training, her background, her…well her kind of people. She wanted him to know, without having to spell it out, that she was better than he was, better in the way that older people valued things, that she had come from respectable people. His father had worked in the potteries, that much she knew and only that.
    Of course he had married into money, and why shouldn’t he, a bright boy like him? Any family would have been delighted to have him as a son-in-law. Would her own family have liked him? Yes, her father would have admired him, her mother would have been a bit boringly embarrassing about stock, but she would have accepted him. However, she’d have liked him to know, if only there were some way of telling him indirectly, that her family wouldn’t have fallen over themselves in gratitude…that he’d have had to make an effort to be accepted.
    Lisa’s head cleared and she looked at the boy again.
    “I don’t feel very well,” she said, feeling she owed him some explanation of why she was standing there looking at him wildly.
    “Do you want to sit down, darling?” he asked kindly, and pushed out a stool for her. He looked a bit worried and even embarrassed. His customer had turned out to be a nut case. That’s what he must be thinking, Lisa told herself miserably.
    He gave her a cup of very sweet coffee from his little orange flask. Over the rim of the cup she looked up at the hotel. Was there any chance that he would be looking out the window and would see her sitting down, drinking coffee there? Would he be worried, would he rush down to know if she felt faint? What would she say if he did? But as the hot sweet coffee went down inside her chest, Lisa had another feeling too. No, he wouldn’t be looking out the window, straining for a view of her crossing the road.
She
did that kind of thing, he didn’t. She was the one who would look hopefully out the window of the flat at home to see him turning the corner in the evenings. If she was the late one home, he was always reading or looking at television. He never stood at windows. He wouldn’t be looking down.
    “I feel much better, thank you ever so much,” she said to the red-haired boy.
    “You still look a bit shaky, love,” he said.
    “Could I sit here for a little bit?” asked Lisa, more to please him really than because she wanted to. She thought he would like to feel he was doing her a service. She was right, he was delighted. He moved the stool back against the railings and lit her a cigarette while he talked to two Americans and sold them a wall hanging with Big Ben on it.
    “When they get home they’ll probably have forgotten what city Big Ben is in,” he said. He didn’t think much of Americans, he told her. Scandinavians were educated people, Americans weren’t. He asked her if she was going to be in London for long.
    “My husband is going to Harley Street for a checkup today,” she said cosily. “It may depend on what he’s told. But I think we’ll be here a week.”
    She wondered whether she was going mad, actually mad, at the age of thirty-five. It did happen to people, they started telling the most fantastic, unreal tales and nobody noticed for a while, then they had to go and have treatment.
    “Harley Street today, a Saturday?” said the red-haired boy