Trains and Lovers: A Novel Read online

  I closed my book, stood up and took my overnight case from the rack above my seat. Had I looked out of the window at that point I would have seen that I was at the wrong station, but I did not. Even so, I might have realised my mistake had I looked about me once I was on the platform, but again I did not. One of my shoelaces was undone, and I reached down to tie it. The lace broke, and so I had to re-thread it so that the remaining bit did the work. That took time, and I was conscious as I did so that the train was pulling out of the station. When I stood up I saw the name of the station staring me in the face.

  I felt so foolish. It was not a disaster—my meeting with the clients was not until first thing the following morning, and I knew that I would be able to catch the next train down the line in good time to book into my hotel at my original destination. But it was such an avoidable mistake, and it would mean a wait for an hour or two on an uncomfortable bench.

  There was a timetable on a board a few yards away and I went to look at this. There were several later trains, I saw, but the next one would not stop for another couple of hours. I had alighted, it seemed, at a station that was not important enough for each and every train to call at: many went through without stopping.

  I looked around for somewhere to sit. There was a bench near the steps that led to a footbridge across the line, but it looked rickety and unappealing. My gaze moved down the platform, and then I saw her. She was standing at the entrance to the platform, looking at her watch, glancing anxiously around. It was immediately obvious why she was there: she had come to meet somebody off the train from which I had alighted, only to discover that she was too late, or had got the wrong train.

  There was something about her that drew me to her. She was a complete stranger, but I felt almost as if there was some sort of affinity between us. Without really thinking about it, I started to cross the platform towards her. At first she seemed not to notice me, but then our eyes met. I’ve often thought about that first exchange of looks. What did she think I was doing?

  “You were expecting somebody?”

  She hesitated as she weighed whether to rebuff me. Men did not approach women on railway stations; they just did not. Yet normal human courtesy, which is quite capable of surviving social inhibitions, won through. “Yes. But obviously she’s not coming. That was the London train, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. There were some other people who got off, but I didn’t really see them. Perhaps your friend wasn’t on it.”

  She sighed. “I don’t think she was. It’s infuriating. She’s done this before—changed her mind and forgotten to tell me about it. It’s really inconsiderate of her.”

  I commiserated. “Yes, it must be.”

  “And you?” she asked. “What about you? Going somewhere?”

  I shook my head. “I feel a bit stupid. I got off at the wrong station. So now I have to wait here for almost two hours for the next train to where I want to go.”

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “Bad luck.”

  I looked at my watch and then spoke on impulse. “It’s almost seven,” I said. “And I’m hungry. How about dinner?”

  She was momentarily taken aback. “Me?”

  I gestured to the empty station. “Well, there’s nobody else here, as far as I can see. Yes, you. That’s a pub over there, isn’t it?” I pointed to a building on the other side of the road from the railway station. The Lamb and Flag. There were numerous Lambs and Flags throughout England, and here was one conveniently to hand. “I imagine they do food. How about it?”

  She hesitated, but only briefly. “I have to see somebody at nine,” she said.

  I doubted the truth of this; she needed an excuse to get away if the evening became difficult. “I have to catch my train anyway,” I said. “It’s at nine-fifteen. We’ll have finished by then.”

  She thought for a moment longer before she said, “Yes, why not?”

  We left the station and crossed the road to The Lamb and Flag. “I’m Hugh,” I said. “And you’re …”

  “Jenny.”

  “I’m glad you said we could have dinner. It means I don’t have to sit on that platform counting the minutes.”

  “And I don’t have to go back to my place and be cross with my friend.”

  I remarked that sometimes being stood up could have unexpected benefits, and perhaps this might be such an occasion.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”

  THE PUB WAS NOT AT ALL BUSY—IT WAS THE EVENING of an important football match, England against France—and the pub had held out against television. We chose our meal, which was delivered quickly and was piping hot. The conversation was easy, and within a few minutes we found that we each knew rather a lot about one another. She was a teacher, she told me. She originally came from Durham, and had qualified there, but had moved to Gloucestershire a couple of years earlier. She had done so on a whim, and did not regret it. “I think that if you think too much about things, you can end up never doing anything new,” she said. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Such as inviting somebody for dinner two minutes after you’ve met them?”

  She laughed. “Yes, that sort of thing.”

  She told me that she shared a house in a village with two other teachers, although they all worked at different schools. “We met at an induction weekend,” she said. “One of them had already spotted this house, you see, and wanted somebody to share. It’s at the end of a long lane. The lane is really rather narrow, and so you have to hope that you don’t meet another car when you’re driving along it.”

  “You have to breathe in if you do?”

  “More or less. But that hardly ever happens.” She paused, looking at me searchingly. “And you? Do you share or …”

  I noticed her glancing at my hand. You can always tell when somebody is looking for a wedding ring; it’s usually obvious enough.

  “I share.”

  She nodded.

  “With another chap.”

  It seemed to me that this was the answer she wanted; or it was the answer she wanted—subject to a qualification.

  “The flat’s got two bedrooms,” I added. “So I decided to share it. It helps with the rent.”

  She nodded again, and the conversation moved on. She asked me what I was doing on the train, and I explained about my visit to the clients. “They need to have their hands held,” I said. “We sell them software, and it’s easy enough to use it. They could fix all their problems themselves, but they don’t bother. They have to get us to show them how to do it.”

  “There are children exactly like that,” she said. “They need you to show them everything. And then there are ones who don’t.”

  I asked her about the friend she had been expecting. “She’s a sort of cousin,” she said. “She’s a physiotherapist, but she’s really scatty. It’s always the same. When some guy asks her out, she forgets about everything else. You’d think that she could simply call me on her mobile and tell me. You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

  I asked her how we got on before mobile phones were invented. What did people do?

  “They wrote letters. They found phone booths.”

  “It seems so long ago. It seems so impossible.”

  I looked at my watch. “I mustn’t miss the next train.”

  I was not prepared for what she said next. “You could always come to our place and stay there.”

  I looked down at the beer I had ordered, unsure as to how to take her remark. Was this that kind of invitation? And if it was, how should I react? She had only known me for a few minutes and she was asking me to stay with her. What sort of person would invite a complete stranger to come home with her? I thought perhaps I had led too sheltered a life.

  My surprise had an effect. “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” she blustered. “I wasn’t propositioning you.”

  This relieved the tension. “I didn’t think you were.” This, of course, was not strictly true, but I had to say it to spare her feelings.

 
“We’ve got a couch,” she went on. “It’s for visitors.”

  I took a sip of beer. I did not want to say goodbye to her just yet. “I could stay on the couch,” I said. “It would be better than the hotel I’m booked into. I don’t like hotels anyway.”

  “And I could drive you there tomorrow,” she offered. “It’s the school holidays and I wasn’t planning to do anything much.”

  We were sitting quite close to the bar, and I noticed that the landlord, who had been polishing glasses, had been listening to our conversation. He was smiling, as if to himself, and I knew that he had heard. As I looked in his direction, he gave me a wink. It was a conspiratorial sign, of the sort that one male may exchange with another when one of them has succeeded in the pursuit. I resented this; I wanted to point out to him that the situation was not as he imagined it—I had not been pursuing Jenny. This was simply a friendship. But then I realised that perhaps the wink was capable of another interpretation. Perhaps it was intended to say I’ve seen this before. Perhaps he wanted to say This is how she operates.

  I looked at her. It was unlikely. It was highly unlikely.

  “You don’t have to,” she said suddenly. “It was just that I didn’t want you to feel that you had to catch a train again when you’ve just got off one.”

  I smiled at her. “I accept. Thanks very much.”

  THE NEXT MORNING I TELEPHONED THE CLIENTS and asked them whether it made much difference to them whether I arrived that or the following day. They replied that it was moderately more convenient to them for it to be the following day, and that settled it. I suggested to Jenny that we go off somewhere and have lunch, and she agreed that this would be a good idea. “And dinner too,” I said.

  “No, I’ll cook for you,” she said. “I’ll do …” She trailed off. “I don’t really know what you like. But whatever it is, I’ll cook it for you.”

  “Salmon steaks, salad and new potatoes.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind,” she said.

  We had our lunch, and our dinner, and when she ran me to the station the next morning we had already planned for her to come up to Edinburgh, where I lived. It was a long journey, and I wondered about the viability of a long-distance relationship, but we could talk to one another on our computers and in her job she had long holidays. But there was no question in my mind. I had found the right person. This was the woman for me. I was one hundred per cent sure. She was the one.

  EDINBURGH WAS THE REAL BEGINNING, I SUPPOSE. Then there was London, where we went a couple of months ago. And after that there was Paris. By that stage we had decided that I would move to London if I managed to find a suitable job. She could stay where she was, but it would be far easier to see one another when we were separated by a train journey of two hours rather than one of four. Everything was going well—we were completely compatible, as far as I could make out—and we felt quite comfortable in one another’s company. The only thing that worried me was what happened in Paris. That was a difficult moment in our relationship. Why? It was all about trust.

  Kay sighed. “There was somebody else?”

  “There had been somebody else …”

  She sighed again. “Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? People don’t make a clean break. They let things fade away and then, when they take up with somebody else, their ex is still hanging about somewhere, hopeful, perhaps, that things will start again. It gets messy.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.”

  She looked surprised. “So what was it like?”

  WE STAYED IN A SMALL HOTEL NEAR THE ÉCOLE Militaire. It was not the most obvious part of Paris to stay in for a romantic break like that—it was in a quiet street fairly close to the UNESCO headquarters. Most of the other guests, I think, were there for a UNESCO meeting—something to do with the protection of endangered languages. Some of them seemed to be speaking just such languages, I decided, as I found it difficult even to guess what they were. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how when you stay in a hotel almost anywhere all you hear are the major languages—Spanish, German, Russian and so on; you very rarely hear anything that sounds utterly foreign. But they were speaking some of those languages in the hotel that weekend—wonderful, exotic languages, including one that had clicks and whistles in it. As it happened, I knew what that was, as I had read about it. It’s called !Kung. And it has an exclamation mark in front of it. Imagine talking !English or !French with an exclamation mark. It was lovely to listen to—rather like the sound of the wind in the reeds, or a pair of exotic birds talking to one another on the branch of a tree.

  We did all the usual things that visitors to Paris do. I knew the city a bit better than she did, but neither of us was all that familiar with it. We went on the Seine, we spent hours in cafés and restaurants, we walked in gardens. I experienced what I suppose was sheer delight in being there with her. It was one of those times when one is conscious of the fact that there is nowhere else one would wish to be, and nobody else in the world with whom one would prefer to be. I was blissfully happy. Paris makes you feel different. The ordinary you, the you that has to go to work every morning, the you that has to run a household, pay bills, do all of those things—that you is somehow changed into an exciting, artistic, fully alive you. That’s what Paris does.

  I found out all about her. It seemed to both of us to be entirely natural to be sitting in one of the pavement cafés revealing to one another our most intimate thoughts: how we felt about our parents, our brothers and sisters; the things that we liked doing; the books we liked reading; the films we liked. She told me about her life in that town in Gloucestershire and there, in Paris, it seemed somehow exotic, as did my life in Edinburgh.

  We arrived late on a Thursday. On Friday we had dinner in a restaurant in the Latin Quarter, one that I had read up about in a guide to Paris that I had brought with me. On Saturday we found another restaurant—one not mentioned in my guide—that seemed even better. And then we returned to the hotel.

  I knew immediately that something was wrong when we went into the lobby to get the key to our room. There was a group of people who had just arrived—three men and one woman—and they were in the process of checking in. They must have arrived on a late flight, as their suitcases, still with airline luggage-tags on them, were on the floor beside them.

  Jenny had been saying something to me as we stepped through the front door. Then she stopped mid-sentence, staring at the group. I looked at her inquisitively. She had paled and was now half turned away. But she did not do so quickly enough; one of the men in the group had also turned round and seen her. He froze. Then he glanced briefly at me before he turned round again and muttered something to one of his companions.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She ignored my question. “You get the key,” she whispered, “I’ll see you upstairs.” And then she walked very deliberately, with head bowed, through the lobby to the staircase on the other side. I looked back at the group of new arrivals. The man who had looked at us turned his head slightly; he was watching her.

  As I waited to collect our key, they were completing their registration. I stole a few glances at the other man, and I think he did the same for me. He was about my age, I think—thirty-ish—and was of similar build. He had blond hair and one of those faces that one sees in northern European countries, including England—a rather ruddy, open, well-fed look. It’s not Viking—it’s more the sort of look that one finds, say, in the Netherlands. Remember pictures of Dutch boys on packs of butter? That look. I did not like him. I could not put my finger on it, of course, but I think I would have felt uncomfortable in his presence even if he had not caused that reaction in Jenny. They obviously knew one another, and it was equally obvious that there was something between them.

  I collected our key and made my way up to the second floor, where Jenny was waiting in the corridor.

  “What was all that about?” I asked as I approached her.

  She gestured to the door. “Let’s talk in
side.”

  I fumbled with the key but eventually succeeded in opening the door. Once inside, I turned to her expectantly. “Well? That guy?”

  She took off her coat and threw it down on the bed. “He’s called Johnny Bates.”

  “You know him? Well, obviously you do.” I did not intend it, but I think I sounded sarcastic.

  She turned to me with a look of appeal. “Yes, I do.”

  I softened, realising that I was not being sufficiently tactful. She had told me that she had broken up with somebody six months ago and it had not been amicable. It must have been with Johnny Bates.

  I made my apology. “Look, Jenny, I’m sorry. It must be awkward for you. Johnny Bates was the person you were involved with. I should have put two and two together.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  I tried to make light of the situation. “And now he’s here. We go away for a romantic week-end in Paris, and we end up staying in the same hotel as Johnny Bates.”

  She began to recover. She smiled. “We were here first. He ended up staying in the same hotel as us.”

  “In that case,” I said, “let’s forget all about him. No more Johnny Bates.”

  She put her arms about me. “Good idea,” she said.

  WE WERE DELIBERATELY LATE GOING DOWN FOR breakfast the following morning. Neither of us said anything about it, but I think we both wanted to make sure that we would not run into Johnny Bates and his party. We succeeded; we were the only people in the dining room and the staff began to clear the other tables while we were still there. Nothing was said about the previous evening’s awkward encounter, and I was optimistic that it could be completely forgotten. We were going to be out of the hotel for the rest of the day and we were having dinner in a restaurant. On the following morning—Monday morning—we were going to be leaving for the airport at five in the morning, which meant that we were fairly unlikely to run into Johnny Bates again.