Part 2: Last time we left our owl-loving hero Craig in a field near the irredeemable rusty wreck of his old bicycle, late for college and tender about the elbow.

He had just met The Mysterious Man in the Stripy Coat.

It was cold outside, and there was condensation on the window. Craig traced a drip of moisture as it jerked its way down the glass.

He felt the cold, smooth wetness beneath his fingertip, and, resting his forehead against the window, he felt the freezing dampness trickle over his eyebrows.

The train jerked again, cracking Craig's head sharply against the misty glass of the window, through which he could foggily make out dark trees flashing by, and rolling green hills way off against the horizon. Small toy-like sheep grazed on the sodden grass.

Craig watched sadly.

One of the sheep was staring straight at him, he thought. He gave a tentative wave. The sheep looked startled for an instant, then shook it's head and bowed to kiss the dew once more.

Craig didn't like sheep much. He didn't really like any animal who's name was both plural and singular.

"Here is some sheep." "There are a fish."

He winced as he remembered his humiliation, many years ago, the day after he had learnt that his dear mother would not return from Blackpool, when he had written those absent minded sentences in his ragged Exercise Jotter as Miss Dog had pointed out figures on her Animal Board.

James Last had glanced at what he had written and laughed loudly, brashly, confidently, leading the rest of the class in a childish chorus of scorn at Craig's shattered musings. Miss Dog had shooshed the class into silence and had kindly stepped over to look at Craig's Jotter.

"Do you not think," she surveyed the class with flashing eyes "that Craig shows us that the rules of language are but arbitrary? Craig has unlocked the chains of Grammar from his mind. He shows you all how mindless you are. Do you not see the irony, the poetry, the power of what he has written?" she asked passionately. "Besides, his mother's just died, so leave him alone.

Craig winced again as the train forced his damp head against the glass. They had gone silent then, he remembered, their eyes shrouded in their reading books. Miss Dog went back to the Animal Board through the silence.

Later in the playground as the rain hissed down on Craig's gloom, he had become aware of James Last clicking across the streaming black tennis court from a muted delegation of his classmates. Craig realised for the first time just how often James Last wore tap shoes to school. He hated James Last more at that moment than he ever had.

James Last was standing a conciliatory distance from him. James Last was a shimmering apparition through the driving rain. He was a prescient ghost of his future self. No one was in any doubt, least of all him, that he would be a great success at whatever he chose to pursue. He could speak. He could smile. He was one of the people teachers would leave alone because there was no admonition magnificent enough to crack his own self-illusion.

He was waiting in state to emerge as an all-conquering butterfly. Craig knew that he was destined to be forever attached to James Last. Craig would always be what James Last feared to see when he looked at himself in the mirror, and James Last could not let Craig go.

"I'm sorry," said James Last.

It was the first and the last time.

James Last was not sorry, and never would be, not on Craig's account. Not on anybody's He was deputed the task of collective condolence because he had a silver tongue, and was a balm to the school's ten year old conscience.

Craig knew he knew more than James Last would ever know. He could see that James Last would always be happier than him. He was happy with success. He could solve problems with manly directness and move on. James Last would never be sad because he felt he had no business to discover what sadness was. He would never think, but he would never weep.

He would end up on television, no one had any doubt, least of all him.

"That's all right," said Craig.

There was a pause.

"Thankyou," Craig added, because he knew that was what James Last expected he deserved. It didn't matter to him that he'd sold his dignity and the memory of his mother to James Last, since James Last was destined to be a success at whatever he chose to pursue, and Craig would only ever be an incidental tragedy to which James Last had, with characteristic compassion, offered succour and friendship in half a page of character-defining episodes from early life in James Last's biography, "it's A Fair Game For A Smiler"

James Last's tap shoes snapped away lightly to collect congratulations and organise another game of chain-he from which Craig would be left out on compassionate grounds.

Which eased their consciences yet further since they didn't have to think of a reason why they should leave him out this time.

Another jerk, and Craig was jolted from his reverie. There was a cough from beside him. A hacking, choking, gurgling cough that lasted for several seconds longer than Craig could stand. He saw now why the man wore the stripy coat at all times. He had taken out his handkerchief and was staunching the tide of moisture over the stripes over his chest.

Craig looked away. He did not adapt well to change, particularly when change was forced upon him.

He thought of his crooked little father bent over at his strenuous profession. He wondered if his crooked little father was wondering where he'd got to, but he could imagine that his crooked little father was working too strenuously, becoming ever more crooked, to wonder about Craig. It was scant comfort to Craig that all the while his crooked little father toiled, he grew ever more professional.

"What's the time?" asked the stripy man finally.

Craig looked at his watch, as he had so often in past. And he knew it had been in the past because time never comes round again, and his watch was in the best position to tell him so. Of course, for his watch, time did come round again; round and round forever. And though the watch never changed, time went by.

"It's about half past nine," he told the old man truthfully

It occurred to him that his crooked little father would probably not be wondering where he had got to because he would simply assume he was at college. He was moved by his crooked little father's innocence. Emboldened, he asked,

"Do you think my bike will be fixed?"

The old man gazed at him sharply.

"I think that might prove a little difficult," he breathed.

Craig looked down at his rusty bicycle.

It lay in shattered fragments on the floor of the railway carriage, an irredeemable, rusty wreck.

To be continued...