Tickets, Please!

'Tickets, Please!'
D. H. Lawrence
1919

There is in the North a single-line system of tramcars which boldly
leaves the county town and plunges off into the black, industrial
countryside, up hill and down dale, through the long, ugly villages of
workmen's houses, over canals and railways, past churches perched
high and nobly over the smoke and shadows, through dark, grimy, cold
little market-places, tilting away in a rush past cinemas and shops down
to the hollow where the collieries are, then up again, past a little rural
church under the ash-trees, on in a bolt to the terminus, the last little
ugly place of industry, the cold little town that shivers on the edge of
the wild, gloomy country beyond. There the blue and creamy coloured
tramcar seems to pause and purr with curious satisfaction. But in a few
minutes-the clock on the turret of the Co-operative Wholesale Society's
shops gives the time-away it starts once more on the adventure. Again
there are the reckless swoops downhill, bouncing the loops; again the
chilly wait in the hill-top market-place: again the breathless slithering
round the precipitous drop under the church: again the patient halts at
the loops, waiting for the outcoming car: so on and on, for two long
hours, till at last the city looms beyond, the fat gasworks, the narrow
factories draw near, we are in the sordid streets of the great town, once
more we sidle to a standstill at our terminus, abashed by the great
crimson and cream-coloured city cars, but still jerky, jaunty, somewhat
daredevil, pert as a blue-tit out of a black colliery garden.
To ride on these cars is always an adventure. The drivers are often men
unfit for active service: cripples and hunchbacks. So they have the
spirit of the devil in them. The ride becomes a steeplechase. Hurrah! we
have leapt in a clean jump over the canal bridges-now for the four-lane

corner! With a shriek and a trail of sparks we are clear again. To be
sure a tram often leaps the rails-but what matter! It sits in a ditch till
other trams come to haul it out. It is quite common for a car, packed
with one solid mass of living people, to come to a dead halt in the midst
of unbroken blackness, the heart of nowhere on a dark night, and for
the driver and the girl-conductor to call: 'All get off-car's on fire.'
Instead of rushing out in a panic, the passengers stolidly reply: 'Get
on-get on. We're not coming out. We're stopping where we are. Push on,
George.' So till flames actually appear.
The reason for this reluctance to dismount is that the nights are
howlingly cold, black and windswept, and a car is a haven of refuge.
From village to village the miners travel, for a change of cinema, of girl,
of pub. The trams are desperately packed. Who is going to risk himself
in the black gulf outside, to wait perhaps an hour for another tram, then
to see the forlorn notice 'Depot Only'-because there is something wrong;
or to greet a unit of three bright cars all so tight with people that they
sail past with a howl of derision? Trams that pass in the night!
This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities
themselves declare, with pride, is entirely conducted by girls, and
driven by rash young men, or else by invalids who creep forward in
terror. The girls are fearless young hussies. In their ugly blue uniforms,
skirts up to their knees, shapeless old peaked caps on their heads, they
have all the sang-froid of an old non-commissioned officer. With a
tram packed with howling colliers, roaring hymns downstairs and a sort
of antiphony of obscenities upstairs, the lasses are perfectly at their
ease. They pounce on the youths who try to evade their ticket-machine.
They push off the men at the end of their distance. They are not going
to be done in the eye-not they. They fear nobody-and everybody fears
them.
'Halloa, Annie!'
'Halloa, Ted!' 'Oh, mind my corn, Miss Stone! It's my belief you've got
a heart of stone, for you've trod on it again.'
'You should keep it in your pocket,' replies Miss Stone, and she goes

sturdily upstairs in her high boots.
'Tickets, please.'
She is peremptory, suspicious, and ready to hit first. She can hold her
own against ten thousand.
Therefore there is a certain wild romance aboard these cars-and in the
sturdy bosom of Annie herself. The romantic time is in the morning,
between ten o'clock and one, when things are rather slack: that is,
except market-day and Saturday. Then Annie has time to look about
her. Then she often hops off her car and into a shop where she has
spied