The Edge (15 page)

We came at last to his office which was basically a roomette like my own: that is to say, it was a seven-by-four-foot space on one side of a central corridor, containing a washbasin, a folding table and two seats, one of which concealed what the timetable coyly called ‘facilities’. One
could either leave the sliding door open and see the world go by down the corridor, or close oneself into a private cocoon; and at night, one’s bed descended from the ceiling and onto the seat of the facilities which effectively put them out of use.

George invited me in and left the door open.

‘This train,’ he said, settling himself into the armchair and indicating the facilities for me, ‘is a triumph of diplomacy, eh?’

He had a permanent smile in his eyes, I thought, much as if he found the whole of life a joke. I learned later that he thought stupidity the norm for human behaviour, and that no one was as stupid as passengers, politicians, pressmen and the people who employed him.

‘Why,’ I asked, ‘is it a triumph?’

‘Common sense has broken out.’

I waited. He beamed and in a while went on, ‘Except for the engineers, the same crew will stay with the train to Vancouver!’

I didn’t to his eyes appear sufficiently impressed.

‘It’s unheard of, eh?’ he said. ‘The unions won’t allow it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Also the horse car belongs to Canadian Pacific.’

I looked even blanker.

He chuckled. ‘The Canadian Pacific and VIA Rail, who work so closely together, get along like sandpaper, good at friction. Canadian Pacific trains are freight trains, eh?, and VIA trains carry passengers, and never the two shall mix. This train is a mix. A miracle, eh?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said encouragingly.

He looked at me with twinkling pity for my lack of understanding of the really serious things in life.

I asked if his telephone would work at the next big stop which came under the heading of serious to me.

‘Sudbury?’ he said. ‘Certainly. But we will be there for an hour. It’s much cheaper from the station. A fraction of the price.’

‘But more private here.’

He nodded philosophically. ‘Come here as soon as we slow down coming to Sudbury, eh? I’ll leave you here. I have to be busy in the station.’

I thanked him for everything and left the orbit of his beaming smile knowing that I was included in the universality of stupid behaviour. I could see a lot more of George, I thought, before I tired of him.

My own door, I found, was only two doors along from his, on the right-hand side of the train when facing forwards. I went past without stopping, noting that there were six roomettes altogether at the forward
end of the car: three each side. Then the corridor bent to the side to accommodate four enclosed double bedrooms and bent back again through the centre of open seating with sleeping curtains, called sections. The six sections of that car were allocated to twelve assorted actors and crew, most of them at that point reading, talking or fast asleep.

‘How’s it going?’ Zak said, yawning.

‘All quiet on the western front.’

‘Pass, friend.’

I smiled and went on down the train, getting the feel of it now, understanding the way it was put together, beginning to wonder about things like electricity, water supply and sewage. A small modern city on the move, I thought, with all the necessary infrastructure.

All the doors were closed in the owners’ sleeping cars (there were almost no open sections in those), the inhabitants there having the habit of privacy. The rooms could have been empty, it was impossible to tell, and in fact when I came to the special dining car I found a good number of the passengers sitting at the unlaid tables, just chatting. I went on through into the dome car where there were three more bedrooms before one came to the bar, which was furnished with tables, seating and barman. A few people sat there also, talking, and some again were sitting around in the long lower lounge to the rear.

From there a short staircase went up to the observation lounge, and I went up there briefly. The many seats there were almost full, the passengers enjoying their uninterrupted view of a million brilliant trees under blue skies and baking in the hot sunshine streaming through the glass roof.

Mr Young was up there, asleep. Julius Apollo wasn’t, nor anywhere else in public view.

I hadn’t seen Nell at all either. I didn’t know where she’d put herself finally on her often-revised allocation of sleeping space, but wherever she was, it was behind a closed door.

To the rear of the dome car there was only the Lorrimores’ private car, which I could hardly enter, so I retraced my steps, intending to retreat to my own roomette and watch the scenery do its stuff.

In the dining car I was stopped by Xanthe Lorrimore who was sitting alone at a table looking morose.

‘Bring me some coke,’ she said.

‘Yes, certainly,’ I said, and went to fetch some from the cold locker in the kitchen, thanking my stars that I’d happened to see where the soft-drink cans were kept. I put the can and a glass on one of the small
trays (Emil’s voice in my ear saying, ‘Never ever carry the object. Carry the tray’) and returned to Xanthe.

‘I’m afraid this is on a cash bar basis,’ I said, putting the glass on the table and preparing to open the can.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Things from the bar are extra. Not included in the fare.’

‘How ridiculous. And I haven’t any money.’

‘You could pay later, I’m sure.’

‘I think it’s stupid.’

I opened the can and poured the coke, and Mrs Young, who happened to be sitting alone at the next table, turned round and said to Xanthe sweetly that she, Mrs Young, would pay for the coke, and wouldn’t Xanthe come and join her?

Xanthe’s first instinct was clearly to refuse but, sulky or not, she was also lonely, and there was an undemanding grandmotherliness about Mrs Young that promised an uncritical listening ear. Xanthe moved herself and her coke and unburdened herself of her immediate thought.

‘That brother of mine,’ she said, ‘is an asshole.’

‘Perhaps he has his problems,’ Mrs Young said equably, digging around in her capacious and disorganised handbag for some money.

‘If he was anyone else’s kid, he’d be in jail.’

The words came out as if propelled irresistibly from a well of compressed emotion. Even Xanthe herself looked shocked at what she’d let out, and feebly tried to weaken the impact. ‘I didn’t mean literally, of course,’ she said. But she had.

Mrs Young, who had paused in her search, finally found her purse and gave me a dollar.

‘If there’s any change, keep it,’ she said.

‘Thank you, madam.’

I had no choice but to leave and I made for the kitchen carrying the dollar on the tray like a trophy anchored by a thumb. From there I looked back to see Xanthe begin to talk to Mrs Young, at first slowly, with brakes on, and then faster and faster, until all the unhappiness was pouring out like a flood. I could see Xanthe’s face and the back of Mrs Young’s head. Xanthe, it seemed to me, was perhaps sixteen, but probably younger: certainly not older. She still had the facial contours of childhood, with a round chin and big-pupilled eyes: also chestnut hair in abundance and a growing figure hidden within a bulky white top with a pink glittering pop-group slogan on the front, the badge of youth.

They were still talking when I continued on my way back to my roomette where I sat in comfortable privacy for a while reading the timetable and also reflecting that although I still had no answers to the old questions, I now had a whole crop of new ones, the most urgent being whether or not Filmer had already known the Youngs were friends of Ezra Gideon. Whether the Youngs were, in fact, a target of some kind. Yet Filmer hadn’t chosen to sit at their table; it had been the random fortuitous decision of Daffodil. Perhaps if it hadn’t happened so handily by chance, he would have engineered a meeting. Or was the fact of their friendship with Gideon just an unwelcome coincidence, as I had at first supposed. Time, perhaps, would tell.

Time told me more immediately that it was five-thirty, the hour of return to the dining room, and I returned to find every single seat already taken, the passengers having learned fast. Latecomers stood in the entrances, looking forlorn.

Filmer, I saw at once, was placed opposite Mercer Lorrimore. Daffodil beside him, was opposite Bambi who was being coolly gracious.

Xanthe was still sitting across from Mrs Young, now rejoined by her husband. Sheridan, as far as I could see, was absent. Giles-the-murderer was present, sitting with the Youngs and Xanthe, being nice.

Emil, Oliver, Cathy and I went round the tables pouring wine, tea or coffee into glasses or cups on small trays with small movements, and when that was done Zak bounded into the midst of things, vibrating with fresh energy, to get on with the mystery.

I didn’t listen in detail to it all, but it revolved round Pierre and Donna, and Raoul the racehorse trainer who wanted to marry her money. Zak had got round the pre-empted Pierre-hitting-Raoul-to-the-ground routine by having Donna slap Raoul’s face instead, which she did with a gusto that brought gasps from the audience. Donna was clearly established as the wittering Bricknells’ besotted daughter, with Raoul obviously Mavis’s favourite, and Pierre despised as a no-good compulsive gambler. Mother and daughter went into a sharp slanging match, with Walter fussing and trying to stop them. Mavis, in the end, started crying.

I looked at the passengers’ faces. Even though they knew this lot were all actors, they were transfixed. Soap opera had come to life within touching distance. Racing people, I’d always thought, were among the most cynical in the world, yet here some of the most experienced of them were moved and involved despite themselves.

Zak, keeping up the tension, said that at the last of our brief stops at minor stations he had been handed a telex about Angelica’s missing friend Steve. Was Angelica present? Everyone looked around, and no, she wasn’t. Never mind, Zak said, would someone please tell her that she must telephone Steve from Sudbury, as he had serious news for her.

A lot of people nodded. It was amazing.

Dressed in silk and ablaze with jewellery, apparently to prove that Donna’s inheritance was no myth, Mavis Bricknell stumbled off towards the toilet room at the dome car’s entrance saying she must repair the ravages to her face, and presently she came back, screaming loudly.

Angelica, it appeared, was lying on the lavatory floor, extremely dead. Zak naturally bustled to investigate, followed by a sizeable section of the audience. Some of them soon came back smiling weakly and looking unsettled.

‘She can’t really be dead,’ someone said solemnly. ‘But she certainly looks it.’

There was a lot of ‘blood’ all over the small compartment, it appeared, with Angelica’s battered head in shadow beyond the essential facility. Angelica’s eyes were just visible staring at the wall, unblinking. ‘How can she do that?’ several said.

Zak came back, looked around him, and beckoned to me.

‘Stand in front of that door, will you, and don’t let anyone go in?’

I nodded and went through the crowd towards the dome car. Zak himself was calling everyone back into the dining room, saying they should all stay together until we reached Sudbury, which would be soon. I could hear Nell’s voice announcing calmly that everyone had time for another drink. There would be an hour’s stop in Sudbury for everyone to stretch their legs if they wanted to, and dinner would be served as soon as the train started again.

I went across the clattering, windy linkage space between the dining and dome cars and stood outside the toilet room. I wasn’t actually pleased with Zak as I didn’t want to risk being identified as an actor, but that, I supposed, would be a great deal better than the truth.

It was boring in the passage but also, it proved, necessary, as one or two passengers came back for a look at the corpse. They were good humoured enough when turned away. Meanwhile the corpse, who must have had to blink in the end, could be heard flushing water within.

When we began to slow down I knocked on the door. ‘Message from Zak,’ I said.

The door opened a fraction. Angelica’s greasepaint make-up was a pale bluish grey, her hair a mass of tomato ketchup.

‘Lock the door,’ I said. ‘Zak will be along. When you hear his voice outside, unlock it.’

‘Right,’ she said, sounding cheerfully alive. ‘Have a nice trip.’

Angelica left the train on a stretcher in the dusk under bright station lights, her tomato head half covered by a blanket and one lifeless hand, with red fingernails and sparkling rings, artistically drooping out of concealment on the side where the train’s passengers were able to look on with fascination.

I watched the scene through the window of George Burley’s office while I talked to Bill Baudelaire’s mother on the telephone.

The conversation had been a surprise from the beginning, when a light young female voice had answered my call.

‘Could I speak to Mrs Baudelaire, please?’ I said.

‘Speaking.’

‘I mean … Mrs Baudelaire senior.’

‘Any Mrs Baudelaire who is senior to me is in her grave,’ she announced. ‘Who are you?’

‘Tor Kelsey.’

‘Oh yes,’ she replied instantly. ‘The invisible man.’

I half laughed.

‘How do you do it?’ she asked. ‘I’m dying to know.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Of course, seriously.’

‘Well … say if someone serves you fairly often in a shop, you recognise them when you’re in the shop, but if you meet them somewhere quite different, like at the races, you can’t remember who they are.’

‘Quite right. It’s happened to me often.’

‘To be easily recognised,’ I said, ‘you have to be in your usual environment. So the trick about invisibility is not to have a usual environment.’

There was a pause, then she said, ‘Thank you. It must be lonely.’

I couldn’t think of an answer to that, but was astounded by her perception.

‘The interesting thing is,’ I said, ‘that it’s quite different for the
people who work in the shop. When they get to know their customers, they recognise them easily anywhere in the world. So the racing people I know, I recognise everywhere. They don’t know that I exist … and that’s invisibility.’