 On January 9, shortly after eleven, on a dark, sleety morning, I saw my dead father on a train pulling out of Clapham Junction bound for Waterloo. I glanced away, not recognizing him at once. We were on parallel tracks. When I looked back, the train had picked up speed and carried him away. My mind at once moved ahead to the concourse at Waterloo Station and the meeting which I felt sure must occur. The train on which he was travelling was one of the old six-seater carriage and corridor type, its windows near opaque, with the winter's accumulation and a decade of grime plastered to its metal. I wondered where he'd come from—Windsor, Ascot? You'll understand that I travel in the region a good deal and one gets to know the rolling stock. There were no lights in the carriage he had chosen. The bulbs are often stolen or vandalized. His face had an unpleasant tinge, his eyes were deeply shadowed and his expression was thoughtful, almost morose. At last, released by the green signal, my own train began to draw forward. Its pace was stately, and I thought that he must have a good seven minutes on me, certainly more than five. As soon as I saw him sitting sad but upright in that opposite carriage, my mind went back to the occasion when—to the occasion when—but no, it did not go back. I tried, but I could not find an occasion. Even when I scrubbed the recesses of my brain, I could not scour one out. I should like to be rich in anecdote, fertile to invent, but there's no occasion, only the knowledge that a certain number of years have passed. When we disembarked, the platform was slick with cold sliding underfoot. The bomb warnings were pasted up everywhere, also the beggar warnings and posters saying, take care not to slip or trip, which are insulting to the public as few people would do it if they could help it, only some perhaps a few attention seekers. An arbitrary decision had placed a man to take tickets, so that was fumbling and further delay. I was irritated by this. I wanted to get on with the whole business whatever the business was going to be. It came to me that he had looked younger as though death had moved him back a stage. There had been, in his expression, melancholy, though it was, something purposive, and I was sure of this.