On the Blue Train (22 page)

Now quick, hook through the throat: what horseplay might unfold on the Blue Train? Theft of expensive jewels? Don't struggle. A train. Some doubtful individuals. One at least a thoroughly bad lot, and the others have to seem as if they might be, too. And a girl with grey eyes. A woman,
really, not terribly young anymore, but enchanting to men who know how to see it . . . And?

Very well, just a train carriage. Go from there.

Lord, how agreeable a train journey to the Riviera would be. Victoria Station, the deep blue cars and brown-liveried attendants. The exotic, regimented business of tickets and passports. Hurtling into the green tunnel of Kent, passengers good-humoured from champagne and pleasant prospects. Aromas of fish and Stilton in the dining car. The lament of the Westinghouse brake making you giddy with that intoxication of leaving, part sorrow, part ecstasy.

Enough procrastination! A train carriage . . . Baggage rack, windowsill, wooden panelling. The confounded wooden panelling! Maddening having your eyes frozen on the frame of a picture. Where was the grey-eyed woman?

There, there was Katherine, now, good . . . But just sitting smugly, a slightly unnerving doll. Stubborn, stubborn. You could throttle her. And the train itself remained
too
real . . .

There was nothing on her hook,
rien de rien
. She pitched the notebook across the room, seconds before the maid knocked. Coming in with the breakfast tray, the girl noticed the fallen object with its splayed pages, but did not comment on it.

Gorging herself on toothsome kippers, Teresa wondered if she shouldn't after all go on the Jackmans' pleasure tour. But no, better to be alone. She especially shouldn't run into
Harry—not with that deviant dream lingering. She ordered another pot of tea, and drank as she dressed, in the tweed skirt again, with a white blouse and the mauve cardigan.

A speedy departure after checking with the hall porter for letters and nodding taciturnly at Redhead, who accorded her a taciturn nod in return. Noting something in a ledger, this lady was a strengthening sight, a portrait of dedication to work. Her solid shape only made her appear more dependable and unflappable. She might have been taller but an assertive head of hair compensated for much.

Teresa passed through the crowd around the Pump Room, thinking sparingly, silky thoughts. She avoided the gardens clogged with water-drinkers taking their fifteen-minute turns between doses, and was soon confronting Montpellier Hill. It was the sort you leaned into, the way you leaned into Torquay hills—as if into a stiff wind, with dogged defiance. Prevailing over it, she gazed wistfully through the window of the Imperial Café, but just after breakfast had to be judged too early for cake (she
did
want to keep this improved figure for her husband), and the day would still have been wide open after that.

She had a great need for movement, a horror of inertia, which came on like a fear of asphyxiation. She knew this from her suburban life. From the worst days, when writing was difficult. A sense of slow drowning. Into her mind came
the fine dark roots that had encircled her wrists and ankles at one point in her dream.

Go somewhere. Just go.

Adjusting her cloche hat and gripping her bag securely, she went on to the train station, where—stroke of chance—a train for Leeds was drawing in. That would do for now. Go from there.

Being in the new city, where absolutely no one knew who she was, released the pressure from her lungs. She was mollified.

Teresa ambled and shopped at Schofields, drawn to taupe-coloured items but eventually persuading herself in favour of a midnight-blue dress, a nice classic in light wool. Another pair of stockings. A restrainedly pink foulard. In the department store's restaurant at an appropriate hour—obliged to ask a thin, ancient deaf lady the time as she had no wristwatch now—she consumed leek and potato soup, and dryish roast chicken, neither noteworthy. Later, a similarly pedestrian scone. Usually deploring food that failed to live up to its potential, today she didn't much mind. (She may have been, as she had done during her married life, as she had always done, using food to plug any possible gap.)

It had been dark for some time when she returned to the station. She pondered the boards with the destinations on them, so infused with the atmosphere of departure. The
muscular desire for travel persisted. Still, she didn't see how she could avoid going back to Harrogate, where her husband would soon arrive.

And where there was a room at the Hydro, with its bed and basin, a window regarding Swan Road and a wardrobe full of Teresa Neele's agreeable new clothes. Where Harry was. On the platform it was damply bitter and she tucked her chin into the fur ruff on the coat that had also become familiar, she realised.

No riveting train-related antics occurred to her during the return journey. On the notepad she'd brought along, just to be moving her hand in that way, she wrote:
Darling . . . My darling
. . .

It would be essential to keep track of money, so she made a list of recent acquisitions. She had no trouble recalling the price of each, but the days on which she'd purchased them weren't clear to her. During the first week or thereabouts of a trip, time was roomy, cavernous.

When she entered the Hydro—the grandfather clock recording ten—he was in the lounge, in an armchair by the fire. That was to say, Harry. Not her husband. A phlegmatic girl at the reception desk smiled noncommittally and went back to reading a newspaper.

‘Teresa!' he said, standing.

She would sooner not have endangered her tentative self-command, but she could hardly recoil and turn around. She approached him. Its mussed appearance made you wonder if he'd been running his fingers through his hair, and his eyes, she let herself notice, were enervated and reddish. A forceful odour of tobacco reached her.

Remember, you aren't sure you can trust him.

‘Where have you been?' he demanded, with the offended righteousness of a wife reproaching a husband for coming home tardily.

‘Please lower your voice. I've been to Leeds shopping.'

‘Leeds!' he retorted, as though finding this preposterous.

She made for the lift and he followed. She must have felt she owed him proof because she raised a hand to show him the shopping bags. They boarded the lift, and the ascent commenced.

‘
Leeds
?' He was becoming more pliant. ‘What did you buy? Can I carry those?'

‘This and that. No thank you, they're quite light. Well, I'm tired, so I'll be saying goodnight.'

They'd alighted on the first floor. Harry accompanied her to her room. Awkward.

‘'Night, Teresa.' But he continued to stand sentry by the door. He laughed. ‘God, I'm just relieved!'

He ran a hand through his hair. The compulsive gesture moved her. And some of the warmth of the queer dream
returned—yet she was as apprehensive as she'd been that morning, waking. Steady, she said to herself. This man she had kissed knew who she was. She opened the door.

‘Sorry,' he said, moving out of her way, only the length of a short step.

She could have gone in then without another word. ‘Relieved? I don't see why you should be.' He was leaning against the wall by the door now. The pose seemed to reflect not false casualness but a frank requirement of support. There was a looseness to him tonight. ‘Have you been drinking?'

‘Not a drop.' He laughed again. ‘I was imagining things, that's all.'

‘Imagining things—about me?'

‘I was afraid,' he murmured.

‘Afraid? Whatever of?'

He exhaled heavily. ‘Afraid you might . . . do something to yourself.'

She snapped, ‘I don't know what the devil you mean.' Knowing, of course.

She had the irrational idea that he would hear her heart beating. She almost slammed the door but instead she looked at him. His eyes were frightfully dark and disordered in that face both slim and deep. She felt fatigue, then, the zing of her nerves, and a kind of fellowship.

‘Well, we'd mentioned . . . Casablanca, and . . .' He shook
his head. ‘I've been miserable these last days. And bushed. Though I did finally sleep last night.'

There was a silence that she fancied transparent, free of artifice or design. Two exhausted people occupying the same corner of space. Her resolve to resist him was softening. She was perilously close to inviting him in.

‘I know I had no right to be—worried—you'd hurt yourself,' he was saying ramblingly.

‘Because of a flippant conversation? Or because of who you suspect I am?' She felt something of a child's fury, rather directionless and passing. She dropped her voice, which had risen. ‘You presume to know me?' She was attempting not to watch his mouth, with its full bottom lip. She would not reveal herself.

‘No, listen. I don't mean to presume anything. And I don't
care
who you are. Officially, that is. I really don't. The newspapers—it's all a matter of perfect indifference to me.' His eyes were downcast. ‘I shouldn't have told you I loved you, either. Precipitate, stupid. Which doesn't mean those aren't my feelings.' She remained mute. ‘We don't have to discuss that. But I'd like you to know your welfare is important to me.'

‘Why should my welfare be in danger?' she asked bumpily. She had inadvertently released the doorknob, which she had been holding.

The door swung open and they looked into her room. A fire had been laid but did not burn. His eyes travelled
to the bedside table, and he seemed to blanch. Swiftly, she pulled the door to again.

‘Look here. I owe you an explanation. Well, there's a story I'd like to tell you that might help you understand my . . . concern. If you'll hear it. I've never told it to anyone, you see, but I want to tell you.'

His voice had gained a heated intensity that scared her. I must close the door on him, she decided, though she could not bring herself to refuse this request. ‘Very well, but you should go now. We can talk tomorrow. Perhaps not here at the hotel. Bettys? Eleven o'clock tea?' He would let her close the door on him, wouldn't he?

At last he nodded. ‘Tomorrow, then. Thank you.'

His voice resembled the voice in her dream, as she was remembering it. She did not know if it was the voice of someone she could lean on. He had not yet turned to go when she closed the door.

18

1922 TSS
Aeneas

One night during the long sea journey that conveyed them to Australia, her husband returned to their cabin at around ten. This was usual, the later entertainments not his cup of tea. She stayed on with the mission at the captain's table to listen to an after-dinner concert the Autumn Sighs had decided to bestow on them, despite being rather tight. Their stamina, considering, was admirable. Such silly evenings were no doubt so festive because by now it was dawning on them that the principal talent of the major, their director on the Empire Tour, lay in passing himself off as an expert through wild improvisation. This, along with his highly mutable humours, lent things a madcap tone that led one to wonder how successful they could possibly be in cultivating trade relations in the interests of the upcoming Empire Exhibition in London. Thoroughly amused by it all, she justified her
enjoyment of the revelry by telling herself it was her job as the wife of the financial adviser to the mercurial major to be a good sport. Wanting to play her part that night, she'd even taken a glass of burgundy and, with heroic persistence, finished it. She supposed it was the very act of floating that made what happened on board a ship seem to flow with a peculiar current.