The Cardinal Rules

          This evening I went for a quiet drink at the Fitzroy Tavern with Ed. It wasn’t so much fun. I spent the entire time distracted by thoughts of the last week, and wondering whether I ought really to be drinking alcohol at all. Ed wanted me to go on more adventures but I wasn’t interested. I think he’s beginning to think of asking me to move out…

 

*

 

            We took the tube home. As the lights of the tube filled the tunnel and flooded the platform where we stood I felt a number of people assemble around us. Subconsciously I arranged my position on the platform so that I’d be to the opposite side of the tube door from the direction most alighters would need to go; I’d be first on.

            As the last of the passengers alighted and passed by I made to get on. A girl opposite me tried to do the same, at exactly the same time. There was a moment of awkwardness as I realised common manners demanded my retreat. This logic of decent society was battered and eventually beaten by the time-worn effect of London Underground experience. I made to get on again.

            Ed grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me back. He leaned past me, smiled at the girl and said, “Sorry, please excuse my friend, he’s a terribly impertinent dickhead.” The girl walked on and sat down. I looked at Ed with an expression of pure shock. Naturally he was right, although his expression of it did posses a certain oxymoronical hypocrisy, but my shock originated from my knowledge of Ed’s character. He was far more the Londoner than I, indeed he’d been the one to first school me in the ways of tube travel: elbows out; get in first at all costs.

            Ed and I walked in and sat down next to one another. I looked across at him expectantly. He leaned closer and spoke, “You broke the two Cardinal Rules mate,” he informed me. “Number one: always exhibit the highest standard of manners when the cost of the said behaviour is free.”

            Free? I looked about me. Every seat in the carriage was taken but not one person stood. There were precisely as many people as seats. There’d been five of us outside and five free seats. I looked back at Ed.

            “Exactly,” he said.

            “And number two?”

            “Never fail to demonstrate impeccable manners when the object and recipient of them is a hot chick.”

            Ed looked across at the girl in question and at that moment she briefly looked up (I wonder if she hadn’t heard the whole exchange). Ed winked; the girl took a sudden studious interest in her textbook. Ed grinned at me.