There was a bombing plane flying low overhead. For a minute or two it seemed to be keeping pace with the train. Two vulgar kind of blokes in shabby overcoats, obviously ercials of the lowest type, neer vassers probably, were sitting opposite me. One of them was reading the Mail and the other was reading the Express. I could see by their mahat they』d spotted me for one of their kind. Up at the other end of the carriage two lawyers』 clerks with black bags were keeping up a versation full of legal balohat was meant to impress the rest of us and show that they didn』t belong to the on herd.
I was watg the backs of the houses sliding past. The line from West Bletchley runs most of the way through slums, but it』s kind of peaceful, the glimpses you get of little backyards with bits of flowers stu boxes and the flat roofs where the women peg out the washing and the bird-cage on the wall. The great blabing plane swayed a little in the air and zoomed ahead so that I couldn』t see it. I was sitting with my back to the engine. One of the ercials cocked his eye at it for just a sed. I knew what he was thinking. For that matter it』s what everybody else is thinking. You don』t have to be a highbrow to think such thoughts nowadays. In two years』 time, one year』s time, what shall we be doing when we see one of those things? Making a dive for the cellar, wetting s with fright.
The ercial bloke put down his Daily Mail.
『Templegate』s winner e in,』 he said.
The lawyers』 clerks were sprouting some learned rot about fee- simple and peppers. The other ercial felt in his waistcoat pocket and took out a bent Woodbine. He felt iher pocket and then leaned across to me.
『Got a match, Tubby?』
I felt for my matches. 『Tubby』, you notice. That』s iing, really. For about a couple of minutes I stopped thinking about bombs and began thinking about my figure as I』d studied it in my bath that m.
It』s quite true I』m tubby, in fact my upper half is almost exactly the shape of a tub. But what』s iing, I think, is that merely because you happen to be a little bit fat, almost anyone, even a total, stranger, will take it frao give you a niame that』s an insulting ent on your personal appearance. Suppose a chap was a hunchback or had a squint or a hare-lip—would you give him a niame to remind him of it? But every fat man』s labelled as a matter of course. I』m the type that people automatically slap on the bad pun the ribs, and nearly all of them think I like it. I never go into the saloon bar of the at Pudley (I pass that way once a week on business) without that ass Waters, who travels for the Seafoam Soap people but who』s more or less a permanen the saloon bar of the , prodding me in the ribs and singing out 『Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling!』 which is a joke the bloody fools in the bar never get tired of. Waters has got a finger like a bar of iron. They all think a fat ma have any feelings.
The ercial took another of my matches, to pick his teeth with, and chucked the box back. The train whizzed on to an ire. Down below I got a glimpse of a baker』s van and a long string of lorries loaded with t. The queer thing, I was thinking, is that in a way they』re right about fat men. It』s a fact that a fat man, particularly a man who』s been fat from birth—from childhood, that』s to say—isn』t quite like other men. He goes through his life on a different plane, a sort of light-edy plahough in the case of blokes in side-shows at fairs, or i