The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [36]
This routine was adhered to year in year out with breaks only for holidays, for which Septimus naturally also had a routine. Alternate Christmases were spent with Norma’s parents in Watford, and the ones in between with Septimus’s sister and brother-in-law in Epsom, while in the summer, their high spot of the year, the family took a two-week vacation in the Olympic Hotel, Corfu.
Septimus not only liked his lifestyle, but was distressed if for any reason his routine met with the slightest interference. This humdrum existence seemed certain to last him from womb to tomb, for Septimus was not the stuff on which authors base two-hundred-thousand-word sagas. Nevertheless, there was one occasion when Septimus’s routine was not merely interfered with, but frankly shattered.
One evening at 5:27, when Septimus was closing the file on the last claim for the day, his immediate superior, the deputy manager, called him in for a consultation. Owing to this gross lack of consideration, Septimus did not manage to get away from the office until a few minutes after six. Although everyone had left the typing pool, still he saluted the empty desks and silent typewriters with the invariable “See you same time tomorrow, girls,” and hummed a few bars of “Edelweiss” to the descending elevator. As he stepped out of the great Gothic cathedral it started to rain. Septimus reluctantly undid his neatly rolled umbrella and, putting it up, dashed through the puddles, hoping that he would be in time to catch the 6:32. On arrival at Cannon Street, he lined up for his paper and cigarettes and put them in his briefcase before rushing on to platform five. To add to his annoyance, the loudspeaker was announcing with perfunctory apology that three trains had already been taken off that evening because of a go-slow.
Septimus eventually fought his way through the dripping, bustling crowds to the sixth carriage of a train that was not scheduled on any timetable. He discovered that it was filled with people he had never seen before and, worse, almost every seat was already occupied. In fact, the only place he could find to sit was in the middle of the train with his back to the engine. He threw his briefcase and creased umbrella onto the rack above him and reluctantly squeezed himself into the seat before looking around the carriage. There was not a familiar face among the other six occupants. A woman with three children more than filled the seat opposite him, while an elderly man was sleeping soundly on his left. On the other side of him, leaning over and looking out of the window, was a young man of about twenty.
When Septimus first laid eyes on the boy he couldn’t believe what he saw. The youth was clad in a black leather jacket and skin-tight jeans and was whistling to himself. His dark, creamed hair was combed up at the front and down at the sides, while the only two colors of the young man’s outfit that matched were his jacket and fingernails. But worst of all to one of Septimus’s sensitive nature was the slogan printed in boot studs on the back of his jacket. “Heil Hitler” it declared unashamedly over a white-painted Nazi sign and, as if that were not enough, below the swastika in gold shone the words: “Up yours.” What was the country coming to? thought Septimus. They ought to bring back National Service for delinquents like that. Septimus himself had