The children went off through the opened front door, and I said to the wife, 'I'm not sure you should be beating that carpet with washing still on the line.'

I said that just to see the look she would give me, but she didn't take the bait. Instead, still beating, she said, 'Mr Buckingham has been riding the railway again.'

'Oh Christ,' I said.

'On his departure from the station -'

'Which station?'

'Any station… He found that the carriage door had been left unfastened by the company's servants…'

'Which company?'

'You won't put me off… Mr Buckingham endeavoured to fasten the door himself, and…'

Mr Buckingham didn't exist but I could picture him quite easily. He had pop eyes, a red face, and a thin moustache; he looked permanently put-out and was always ready to fly into rage. He was smartly dressed, in clothes often dirtied by the negligence of whatever railway company had the ill-luck to carry him, according to terms and conditions that might or might not have been correctly set out or somehow indicated on the backs of their tickets. He carried a portmanteau (containing valuable items) which was regularly mislaid or damaged by the company's servants. Everything he did was reasonable, or reasonably foreseeable, or so he said, and everything the company did was unreasonable, or so he also said.

'In endeavouring to fasten the door,' said the wife, who had now left off beating the carpet and was enveloping herself in linen as she took down the laundry, 'Mr Buckingham injured himself -'

'Seriously, I hope.'

'And he is contemplating suing. What are his prospects of success?'