The Edge (35 page)

When everything was scoured, polished and put away, we left Angus unbelievably beginning to make breads for breakfast. I stood in the lobby for a while, watching the dining car slowly clear as everyone drifted off to the dome car lounge for laughter and music. The Lorri-mores had all gone, and so had Nell and the Unwins and the Youngs. Out of habit I began to collect, with Oliver, the used napkins and tablecloths, ready to put out clean ones for breakfast, and presently Nell came back and sat down wearily where I was working.

‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, ‘Xanthe doesn’t know what has thrown her parents into such a tizzy. She says it can’t have been something Mr Filmer said in the lounge before cocktails because it sounded so silly.’

‘Did she tell you what he said?’

Nell nodded. ‘Xanthe said Mr Filmer asked her father if he would let him have Voting Right, and her father said he wouldn’t part with the horse for anything, and they were both smiling, Xanthe said. Then Mr Filmer, still smiling, said, “We’ll have to have a little talk about cats.” And that was all. Mr Filmer went into the dining car. Xanthe said she asked her father what Mr Filmer meant, and he said, “Don’t bother me, darling.’ ” Nell shook her head in puzzlement. ‘So anyway, Xanthe is now having a good time in the dome car lounge and the rest of the family have gone off into their own car, and I’m deadly tired, if you want to know.’

‘Go to bed, then.’

‘The actors are all along in the lounge having their photos taken,’
she said, dismissing my suggestion as frivolous. ‘They came up trumps tonight, didn’t they?’

‘Brilliant,’ I said.

‘Someone was asking Zak who had tried to kidnap which horse at Toronto station.’

‘What did he say?’ I asked, amused. It was the loosest of the loose ends.

‘He said it had seemed a good idea at the time.’ She laughed. ‘He said they’d had to change the script because the actor who was supposed to play the part of the kidnapper had broken his arm and couldn’t appear. Everyone seemed to be satisfied. They’re all very happy with the way it ended. People are kissing Donna and Mavis. Mavis is wearing the jewels!’ She yawned and reflected. ‘Mr Filmer didn’t have any dinner, did he? Perhaps I’d better go and see if he’s all right.’

I dissuaded her. Antacids were taking care of it, I said. What one could give a man for a sick soul was another matter.

From his point of view, he had made his move a fraction too early, I thought. If he hadn’t already made the threat, the play wouldn’t have had such a cataclysmic effect either on him or on Mercer. Mercer might have been warned, as I’d intended, might have been made to think: but I couldn’t have foreseen that it would happen the way it had, even though Filmer’s smirk and Mercer’s gloom had made me wonder. Just as well, perhaps, that I hadn’t known about the cats when I invented the theft of the jewels. I might have been terribly tempted to hit even closer to home. Tortured horses, perhaps?

‘What are you hatching now?’ Nell demanded. ‘You’ve got that distant look.’

‘I haven’t done a thing,’ I said.

‘I’m not so sure.’ She stood up. She was wearing, in honour of the banquet, a boat-necked black lace blouse above the full black skirt, a pearl choker round her neck. Her fair hair was held back high in a comb, but not plaited, falling instead in informal curls. I thought with unnerving intensity that I didn’t want to lose her, that for me it was no longer a game. I had known her for a week and a day. Reason said it wasn’t long enough. Instinct said it was.

‘Where are you staying in Vancouver?’ I asked.

‘At the Four Seasons Hotel, with all the passengers.’

She gave me a small smile and went off towards the action. Oliver had finished clearing the cloths and was laying clean ones, to leave the place looking tidy, he said. I left him to finish and made my way up
the train to talk to George Burley, passing Filmer’s closed door on the way.

The sleeping car attendant was sitting in his roomette with the door open. I poked my head in and asked how the passenger was, who’d asked for the antacid.

‘He went up the train a while ago, and came back. He didn’t say anything, just walked past. He must be all right, I guess.’

I nodded and went on, and came to George sitting at his table with his endless forms.

‘Come in,’ he invited, and I took my accustomed seat. ‘I showed that photo,’ he said. ‘Is that what you want to know about?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s definitely on the train. Name of Johnson, according to the passenger list. He has a roomette right forward, and he stays in it most of the time. He eats in the forward dome car dining room, but only dinner, eh? He was in there just now when I went up to the engine, but he’d gone when I came back. A fast eater, they say. Never goes for breakfast or lunch. Never talks to anyone, eh?’

‘I don’t like it,’ I said.

George chuckled. ‘Wait till you hear the worst.’

‘What’s the worst?’

‘My assistant conductor – he’s one of the sleeping car attendants up front – he says he’s seen him before, eh?’

‘Seen him where?’

George watched me for effect. ‘On the railways.’

‘On the—do you mean he’s a
railwayman
?’

‘He can’t be sure. He says he looks like a baggage handler he once worked with on the Toronto to Montreal sector, long time ago. Fifteen years ago. Twenty. Says if it’s him, he had a chip on his shoulder all the time, no one liked him. He could be violent. You didn’t cross him. Might not be him, though. He’s older. And he doesn’t remember the name Johnson, though I suppose it’s forgettable, it’s common enough.’

‘Would a baggage handler,’ I said slowly, ‘know how to drain a fuel tank … and uncouple the Lorrimores’ car?’

George’s eyes gleamed with pleasure. ‘The baggage handlers travel on the trains, eh? They’re not fools. They take on small bits of freight at the stops and see the right stuff gets off. If you live around trains, you get to know how they work.’

‘Is there a baggage handler on this train?’

‘You bet your life. He’s not always in the baggage car, not when we’re going along. He eats, eh? He’s always there in the stations, unlocking
the doors. This one’s not the best we’ve got, mind. A bit old, a bit fat.’ He chuckled. ‘He said he’d never seen this man Johnson, but then he’s always worked Vancouver to Banff, never Toronto to Montreal.’

‘Has the baggage handler or your assistant talked to Johnson?’

‘My assistant conductor says the only person Johnson talks to is one of the owners who raps on Johnson’s door when he goes along to see his horse. He went up there this evening not long ago, and they had some sort of row in the corridor outside my assistant’s roomette.’

‘George! Did your assistant hear what it was about?’

‘Important, is it?’ George said, beaming.

‘Could be, very.’

‘Well, he didn’t.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘He said he thought the owner told Johnson not to do something Johnson wanted to. They were shouting, he said, but he didn’t really listen, eh? He wasn’t interested. Anyway, the owner came back down here, he said, and he heard Johnson say, “I’ll do what I frigging like,” very loudly, but he doesn’t think the owner heard, as he’d gone by then.’

‘That’s not much help,’ I said.

‘It’s easier to start a train going downhill than to stop it, eh?’

‘Mm.’

‘It’s the best I can do for you.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘We do know he’s on the train, and we know his name may or may not be Johnson, and we know he may or may not be a railwayman, and I know for certain he has a violent personality. It sounds as if he’s still planning something and we don’t know what. I suppose you are certain he can’t get past the dragon-lady?’

‘Nothing is certain.’

‘How about if you asked the baggage handler to sit in with her, with the horses.’

He put his head on one side. ‘If you think she’d stand for it?’

‘Tell her it’s to keep the horses safe, which it is.’

He chuckled. ‘Don’t see why not.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Sicamous is coming up. I’ll go up there outside, when we stop. Three or five minutes there. Then it’ll be time to put the clocks forward an hour. Did your Miss Richmond remember to tell everyone?’

‘Yes. They’re all on Pacific time already, I think. Getting on for midnight.’

We had stopped towards the end of dinner in a small place called Revelstoke for half an hour for all the cars to be refilled with water. At Kamloops, a far larger town, we would stop at two in the morning
very briefly. Then it was North Bend at five-forty, then the last stretch to Vancouver, arriving at five past ten on Sunday morning, a week from the day we set off.

We slowed towards Sicamous while I was still with George.

‘After here, though you won’t see it,’ he said, ‘we follow the shoreline of Shuswap Lake. The train goes slowly.’

‘It hasn’t exactly been whizzing along through the Rockies.’

He nodded benignly. ‘We go at thirty, thirty-five miles an hour. Fast enough, eh? Uphill, downhill, round hairpin bends. There are more mountains ahead.’

He swung down onto the ground when the train stopped and crunched off forwards to arrange things with the baggage handler.

It was snowing outside: big dry flakes settling on others that had already fallen, harbingers of deep winter. The trains almost always went through, George had said.

I thought I might as well see how the revelries were going but it seemed that, unlike after the Winnipeg race, most people were feeling the long evening was dying. The lounge in the dome car was only half full. The observation deck was scarcely populated. The poker school, in shirtsleeves, were counting their money. The actors had vanished. Nell was walking towards me with Xanthe whom she was seeing safely to bed in the upper bunk behind the felt curtains.

‘Goodnight,’ Nell said softly.

‘Sleep well,’ I replied.

‘Goodnight,’ Xanthe said.

I smiled. ‘Goodnight.’

I watched them go along the corridor beside the bar. Nell turned round, hesitated, and waved. Xanthe turned also, and waved. I waved back.

Gentle was the word, I thought. Go gentle into this good night … No, no! It should be, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ Odd how poets’ words stuck in one’s head. Dylan Thomas, wasn’t it?
Do not go gentle into that good night …
because that good night was death.

The train was slowly going to sleep.

There would be precious little peace, I thought, in the minds of the Lorrimores, father, mother and son. Little peace also in Filmer who would know now from Johnson that the departure of Lenny Higgs had robbed him of the lever to be used against Daffodil; who would
have doubts at the very least about Mercer’s future reactions; who would know that Cumber Young would find out soon who had taken Ezra Gideon’s horses; who would realise he was riding a flood tide of contempt. I wished him more than an upset stomach. I wished him remorse, which was the last thing he would feel.

I wandered back through the train past George’s office, which was empty, and stretched out in my own room on the bed, still dressed, with the door open and the light on, meaning just to rest but stay awake: and not surprisingly I went straight to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of someone calling ‘George … George …’ Woke with a start and looked at my watch. I hadn’t slept long, not more than ten minutes, but in that time the train had stopped.

That message got me off the bed in a hurry. The train should have been moving; there was no stop scheduled for almost an hour. I went out into the passage and found an elderly man in a VIA grey suit like George’s peering into the office. The elderly man looked at my uniform and said urgently, ‘Where’s George?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘We’ve got a hot box.’ He was deeply worried. ‘George must radio to the despatcher to stop the Canadian.’

Not again, I thought wildly. I went into George’s office, following the VIA Rail man who said he was the assistant conductor, George’s deputy.

‘Can’t you use the radio?’ I said.

‘The Conductor does it.’

The assistant conductor was foremost a sleeping car attendant, I supposed. I thought I might see if I could raise someone myself, as George would have already tuned in the frequency, but when I pressed the transmit switch, nothing happened at all, not even a click, and then I could see why it wouldn’t work … the radio was soaking wet.

There was an empty coffee cup beside it.

With intense alarm, I said to George’s assistant, ‘What’s a hot box?’

‘A hot axle, of course,’ he said. ‘A journal-box that holds the axle. It’s under the horse car, and it’s glowing dark red. We can’t go on until it cools down and we put more oil in.’

‘How long does that take?’

‘Too long. They’re putting snow on it.’ He began to understand about the radio. ‘It’s wet …’

‘It won’t work,’ I said. Nor would the cellular telephone, not out in the mountains. ‘How do we stop the Canadian? There must be ways, from before radio.’

‘Yes, but …’ He looked strained, the full enormity of the situation sinking in. ‘You’ll have to go back along the track and plant fusees.’

‘Fusees?’

‘Flares, of course. You’re younger than me … you’ll have to go … you’ll be faster.’

He opened a cupboard in George’s office and pulled out three objects, each about a foot in length, with a sharp metal spike at one end, the rest being tubular with granulations on the tip. They looked like oversized matches, which was roughly what they were.

‘You strike them on any rough or hard surface,’ he said. ‘Like a rock, or the rails. They burn bright red … they burn for twenty minutes. You stick the spike … throw it … into the wooden ties, in the middle of the track. The driver of the Canadian will stop at once when he sees it.’ His mind was going faster almost than his tongue. ‘You’ll have to go half a mile, it’ll take the Canadian that much time to stop …. Hurry, now … half a mile at least. And if the engineers are not in the cab …’

‘What do you mean,’ I asked aghast, ‘if they’re not in the cab?’

‘They aren’t always there. One of them regularly flushes out the boiler … the other could be in the bathroom …. If they aren’t there, if they haven’t seen the fusees and the train isn’t stopping, you must light another flare and throw it through the window into the cab. Then when they come back, they’ll stop.’