Journey to the End of the Night

7 November 2010 Zie Nederlandse versie
by Arnold Jansen op de Haar

Last Thursday I travelled by train from London back to The Netherlands. The advantage of travelling alone is that you can’t help but overhear conversations. On the Eurostar a man was talking into his phone. He was in high spirits. ‘We are on Channel 4 this evening,’ he said, ‘unfortunately I can’t be there.’ Afterwards he made another call. ‘I don’t think we should use the word nuclear tonight...’ He stopped, looked at me and left the carriage.

Travelling through Belgium this sentence stayed with me. Besides everyone was quiet, so I had time to read Philip Larkin’s Letters to Monica. The poet wrote: ‘What frightens me most about marriage is the passing-a-law-never-to-be-alone-again side of it’.

By now I had arrived in The Netherlands. ‘Breda Station’ they announced. The train filled up. Three young men settled down a few seats away. They were members of an elite student organisation.
‘I am so glad I speak RP,’ said one of them in a broad provincial accent.
They continued speaking about ‘manipulating girls’.
‘When you still had a girlfriend you had no problems manipulating girls to sleep with you,’ said one of them. ‘Now you fail to find anyone.’
‘Nowadays I am under much more pressure,’ replied the person who was being addressed.
The young men laughed.
‘You know who is a dream date?’ said another. ‘Lydia.’
‘Lydia!’ exclaimed the two others. ‘That’s pathetic.’
They spoke at length about who was or wasn’t hot and about ‘great tits’.
Their laughter and testosterone caused the seats to shake back and forth.
Suddenly one of the lads turned serious. He addressed the guy opposite him: ‘Do you understand that Simone is only with you because she is still getting over Frank? She simply can’t stand being on her own. When she is through with it, she will dump you, mind my words.’

‘Den Bosch Station’ was announced on the tannoy and the lads got off the train.

A short while later a young couple settled across the aisle. She turned out to be living with someone called Benny. They hadn’t planned to live together so soon but well, finding affordable student accommodation was almost impossible.
‘I have my whole life in front of me to live with someone,’ said the girl, ‘still I decided to go ahead. Besides it is quite roomy: nearly sixty square feet.’
The boy objected that it was all plain sailing when you get on but beware when you fall out. ‘If it doesn’t work out you can always move in with Rob,’ he said.
Yes, Rob was another option, the girl agreed and smiled. The other day she went to see Roos and Dirk. They had sorted themselves. ‘They have loads of space,’ she sighed.
‘And it is at least clean and well ordered,’ said the boy. He seemed to muster up some courage and continued: ‘If worse comes to worse I can give you my spare bed.’
That moment the girl looked at him almost lovingly.
I immediately took pity on Benny, the boy she lived with.

The snooty students would have called her ‘a girl who is easy to manipulate’. ‘In ten years time each one of you will be trapped in a marriage,’ I murmured.

In Nijmegen the student couple alighted only to be replaced by an older couple and an elderly lady. The two ladies tried to outdo each other about their grandchildren’s merits.

This reminded me of Philip Larkin’s poem The Whitsun Weddings. Larkin sat on a train when at each stop more wedding guests piled in. A dozen marriages got under way.

Back at home I read that Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly, aged 53, was told 'to be careful with those wrinkles', nine months before the BBC fired her.

We all age, but the adage is: Young & Hot. Heaven forbid that you were left on the shelf. I suddenly felt like detonating something nuclear.

Names in this column have been made up.

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