I have read somewhere that when and/or if railway fares are increased it will cost a man travelling with his wife and two children (the children being half-fares) as much as twenty pounds to take third-class return tickets to St. Ives.
Presumably this refers to the Cornish St. Ives, and to show how serious the problem will be for quite large families I need only refer my readers to the well-known poetical riddle which is generally supposed to refer to the Cornish St. Ives too. It will be seen at once that in the case of a septuagamist going to or returning from St. Ives with his family the cost will be vastly greater, even if no special luggage rates are leviable for the carriage of excess cats.
Fortunately there is a much nearer St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, and if I was going to St. Ives at all, with or without encumbrances, I should certainly choose that one. As a matter of fact the Huntingdonshire St. Ives is a very pleasant place indeed, with a lot of red-and-yellow cattle standing about, if one may take the authority of the County Card Game in these matters. It is almost as pleasant as Luton, where there is a fellow in a blue smock with side-whiskers and a reaping-hook, and Leicester, which consists solely of a windmill and a house where Richard III. slept on the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field. Not a word about Ramsay Macdonald.
But we are not talking about Ramsay Macdonald and the County Card Game; we are talking about Sir Eric Geddes and his railway fares, and talking pretty sharply too. What is to be done about this monstrous imposition? And how are we going to show the Government that you cannot play about with ozone as you can with margarine and coal? If only all passengers were prepared to act in concert it would be easy enough to bring Sir Eric to his knees. The best and simplest plan would be for everybody to ask at the booking-office for a half-fare, stating boldly that his or her age was exactly eleven years and eleven months. It might not sound very convincing, of course, even if you had a red-and-black cricket-cap on the back of your head and covered your beard or what not with one hand; but a constant succession of people all demanding the same thing would most certainly cause the booking-clerk to give way. It might occur to him besides that, since so many people insisted on giving their wrong ages for the pleasure of fighting in war-time, they had a perfect right to do the same for the pleasure of travelling in peace-time; and in the case of the women his reputation for gallantry would be imperilled if he had the impudence to doubt their word.
But would everybody be prepared to take up this strong and reasonable line? I doubt it, and we must turn to the consideration of other economical devices.
One plan which I do not honestly recommend is travelling under the seats of the railway compartment, like Paul Bultitude in Vice Versa. I say this partly because the accommodation under the seats is not all that it ought to be, and even where there is no heating apparatus a tight fit for large families, and partly because you have to face the possibility that your tickets may be demanded on the platform at the other end. Nor do I favour the method invariably adopted by people in cinema plays, which is to sit on the buffers or the roofs, or conceal yourself among the brakes or whatever they are underneath the carriages. Unless you drop off just before the terminus, which hurts, the same objection arises as in the under-the-seat method; and in any case you are practically certain to be spotted not only by the officials of the railway company concerned but with axle-grease.
It is of course possible to travel without concealment and without a ticket either, merely discovering with a start of surprise when you are asked for it that you have lost the beastly thing. But this involves acting. It involves hunting with a great appearance of energy and haste in all your pockets, your reticule, your hatband, the turn-ups of your trousers, The Rescue (for you certainly used something as a book-marker) and finally turning out in front of all the other passengers the whole of your note-case, which proves that you cannot have been going to stay at the "Magnificent" after all, and the envelopes of all the old letters which you were taking down to the sea in the hopes of answering them there; and even after that you have to give the name and address of somebody you don't like (say Sir Eric Geddes) to satisfy the inspector.
On the whole I think the best way is the one which I mean to adopt myself at the earliest opportunity. Let us suppose that you are going to Brighton. At Victoria Station you will purchase (1) a return ticket to Streatham Common, (2) a platform ticket. The platform ticket entitles you to walk on to the platform from which the Brighton train starts, and, when it is just moving out and all the tickets have been looked at, you will leap on board. This brings you to Brighton, and all you have to do there is to accost the man who takes the tickets in a voice hoarse with fury. "Look here," you will say, "I had an important business engagement at Streatham Common, worth thousands and thousands of pounds to me, and one of your fool porters told me a wrong platform at Victoria. What are you going to do about it?" Now you might think that the porter would reply, "Come off it, Mister; you don't kid me like that," or make some other disappointing and impolite remark; but not a bit of it. Bluster is the thing that pays. First of all he will apologise, and then he will fetch the station-master, and he will apologise too, and after a bit they will offer you a special train back to Streatham Common, probably the one the King uses when he goes to the seaside. But you will of course refuse to be pacified and wave it away, saying, "Useless, absolutely useless. Now that I am in this awful hole I shall spend the night here. But I shall certainly sue your Company for the amount of the business that I have lost."
That is what I mean to do, and with slight variations the ruse can be applied to almost any non-stop run. Now that I have given the tip I shall hope to find quite a little crowd of disappointed business men round the station exits at holiday time when and/or if railway fares are increased.