The Quiet Carriage

Valentina Rojas had chosen the quiet carriage for one reason: she had an essay on constitutional law due on Monday and two hours and twenty minutes between York and London in which to finish it. The sign on the door was clear. No phone calls, no music, no conversation. Frankly, after a week of sharing a kitchen with six other students, it sounded like paradise.

The seat opposite her was taken by an elderly man in a tweed jacket who carried, of all things, a paper newspaper. He nodded politely, unfolded it, and began the crossword with a fountain pen. For the first twenty minutes, neither of them made a sound. Then, somewhere outside Doncaster, he sighed. It was a small sigh, but in the quiet carriage it sounded like a door slamming.

Valentina glanced up. He was frowning at the crossword. Without a word, he turned the newspaper around and pointed at a clue: "Legal decision reached by twelve (7)". Then he raised his eyebrows. She looked at it, thought for a moment, and wrote in the margin, in small capitals: VERDICT? He read it, smiled, and wrote underneath: Annoyingly, yes. Thank you. Mind you, I should have got that one.

She wrote back: Why? He tapped his chest and then wrote: Retired judge. Forty years. Embarrassing, frankly. Valentina had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She wrote: Law student. Second year. So, in a way, you are my future. He considered this and replied: In that case, my condolences.

That was how it began. Over the next hour, the margins of the newspaper filled up. They wrote about York, where he lived, and Caracas, where she had grown up. They wrote about her essay, which, as it happened, was on the independence of judges. Incidentally, he wrote, I once fell asleep during my own trial. Not as the defendant, I hasten to add. As the judge. Long afternoon. She wrote: Did anyone notice? He wrote: Only the jury. And the defendant. And, to be fair, the newspapers.

Not everyone in the carriage was quite so respectful of the rules. At Peterborough a young man in a suit got on, sat across the aisle and immediately made a phone call. "No, listen, listen," he said loudly. "Basically, the thing is, the client wants it by Friday. Well, I mean, obviously." The judge looked at Valentina over his glasses. Then he wrote, very slowly, in the margin: In my professional opinion, guilty.

Valentina covered her mouth with her hand. She wrote: Sentence? He thought about it seriously. Twelve hours in the quiet carriage. No phone. Only a newspaper. She wrote: Isn't that cruel and unusual? He wrote: On the contrary. It would be the making of him. Then the young man said "Anyway, I'll let you go," and then talked for another five minutes, which, as the judge noted in the margin, was a common feature of people who say they will let you go.

Eventually, she did return to her essay, partly because the judge had written: Right. That's quite enough of me. Back to work. Don't make my mistakes. When she asked which ones, he simply underlined the word all. Still, every now and then she would push her laptop towards him and point at a sentence, and he would read it, nod, or, occasionally, cross out a word with his fountain pen on a scrap of paper and suggest a better one. Admittedly, her essay improved more in that hour than it had in the whole of the previous week.

As the train slowed into King's Cross, the carriage filled with the sound of zippers, coats and bags. The silence was, in effect, over. The judge folded the newspaper carefully and handed it to her. "For your records," he said aloud. His voice was deeper than she had imagined. "It's the first time in forty years I've had a conversation in which nobody was allowed to interrupt. I found it rather restful."

"Me too," said Valentina. "Although, to be honest, I think you cheated on the crossword." "Of course I did," he said. "I had an expert witness." And with that he lifted his hat, stepped onto the platform and disappeared into the crowd. She never found out his surname. But she kept the newspaper, and when her essay came back with the highest mark in the class, she pinned it above her desk, margins and all.