Two altercations in one day reveal a strange inconsistency in official attitudes to the purchase of train tickets, writes MICHAEL HARDING
AS I WAS getting on the train at Mullingar, I happened to walk into a carriage where an altercation was taking place between the ticket inspector and some passengers.
Two Nigerian women, with two children, were arguing with the man who examines the tickets because they had only one pass between the two of them.
The “pass”, so they claimed, entitled a mother and a partner to travel to and from hospital with a sick child. The younger woman had two children with her: a young boy of about four, happily playing in the aisle, and a sickly child in a buggy. She explained to the inspector that her sister was travelling with her instead of a husband or partner.
The inspector wasn’t impressed. He insisted that her sister should have her own ticket.
The train driver was ordered not to pull out of the station. Clearly, this was a very serious matter.
Then another official arrived, wearing a peaked cap. He explained to the woman that she must do as his colleague had directed. But the woman kept saying that she was entitled to travel, and that she would sort out the ticket problem in Dublin.
“You’d want to get off the train now,” he said, “or you’ll be put off if you don’t pay.”
She didn’t budge.
“You’ll have to appreciate that this is a train,” he declared.
“I do appreciate that,” she said, smiling.
“Now now,” he said, “You’re getting cheeky, and if you continue like that I’ll call the guards and get you off the train.”
Now she really laughed. I suppose she thought no one would throw a woman with a sick child off a train while they were on their way to a hospital in Dublin. Or perhaps she thought “cheeky” was an odd word to use among equals.
“You can laugh all you like,” said the senior man, with the peaked cap, “but my colleague is entitled to do his job.”
And already the train had been held up 10 minutes at the platform.
Two other officials of the train company, in brightly coloured jackets, had arrived in the aisle, making a gang of four; all observing the altercation with great intensity, as if they anticipated an ugly situation.
The ticketless woman needed to buy a return ticket. But she hadn’t enough money.
“Give her a single,” the inspector said, and so they sold her a single ticket.
Which meant she would have to buy another single ticket at Connolly Station, to go home.
But to be fair and balanced, the ticket collectors on the train are not always so merciless about enforcing ticket regulations. In fact, occasionally they do show enormous compassion.
I was dozing on the way home that evening, enjoying the usual frisson of intellectual conversation that fills the air on the Sligo train, while the man beside me, at the window seat, wearing a suit and clutching a briefcase, talked to a countryman opposite him. “What do you make of the recession?” the businessman asked, a little white and withered in the face.
The other fellow, a robust, red-faced and cheerful gentleman, said: “What about it? I had a boiled egg this morning, and I had the same boiled egg last week, and with the help of God I’ll have the same boiled egg next week.”
By the look of his shabby green overcoat and greasy black cap, the countryman didn’t have much money for anything beyond boiled eggs, while the man in the suit had a face so withered that I suspected he had been recently shaved of every penny he ever possessed.
Across the aisle a lanky boy, about 19 years old, stretched over a table, sleeping on his arms. When the inspector arrived the boy proffered a ticket and the inspector said: “That’s out of date.”
The boy said he didn’t realise that.
The inspector said: “You couldn’t get through the barrier at Connolly with that ticket! Did you jump the barrier?”
The boy said he didn’t know how he got through.
The inspector said: “You must pay, or you will be put off the train.”
The boy said he couldn’t pay.
And then a great flood of compassion welled up in the ticket inspector’s breast, because he just said: “I’ll let you off this time with a warning, but don’t let it happen again.”
The inspector moved on, and the boy went back to sleep.