ceiling 88 feet above the floor) and led me through a heavy door into an undecorated downstairs duplication of the grandeur upstairs, a seemingly endless basic domain where the food and laundry and odd jobs of the trains got seen to. There was a mini power station also, and painting and carpentering going on all over the place.
'This way,' she said, clattering ahead on snapping heels. 'Here is the uniform centre. They'll see to you.' She pushed open a door to let me through, said briefly, 'Here's the actor to the staff inside, and with a nod abandoned me to fate.
The staff inside were were good-natured and equally efficient. One was working a sewing machine, another a computer, and a third asked me what collar size I took.
There were shelves all round the room bearing hundreds of folded shirts of fine light grey and white vertical stripes, with striped collars, long striped sleeves and buttoned cuffs. 'The cuffs must remain buttoned at all times unless you are washing dishes.'
'Catch me, I thought mildly, washing dishes.
There were two racks of the harvest gold waistcoats on hangers. 'All the buttons must be fastened at all times.'
There were row on row of mid-grey trousers and mid-grey jackets tidily hung, and boxes galore of grey, yellow and maroon striped ties.
My helper was careful that everything he gave me should fit perfectly. 'VIA Rail staff at all times are well turned out and spotlessly clean. We give everyone tips on how to care for the clothes.'
He gave me a grey jacket, two pairs of grey trousers, five shirts, two waistcoats (which he called vests), two ties and a grey raincoat to go over all, and as he passed each garment as suitable he called out the size to the man with the computer. 'We know the sizes of every VIA employee right across Canada.'
I looked at myself in the glass in my shirtsleeves and yellow waistcoat, and the waiter Tommy looked back.
I smiled at my reflection. Tommy looked altogether too pleased with himself, I thought.
'Comfortable?' my helper asked.
'Very.'
'Don't vary the uniform at all,' he said. 'Any variation would mark you out straight away as an actor.'
'Thank you.'
'This uniform,' he said, 'trousers, shirt, tie and vest, is worn by all male service attendants and assistant service attendants when on duty. That's to say, the sleeping-car attendants and the dining-car staff, except that sometimes they wear aprons in the dining car.'
'Thank you.' I said again.
The chief service attendant, who is in charge of the dining car, wears a grey suit, not a vest or an apron. That's how you'll know him.'
'Right.'
He smiled. 'They'll teach you what to do. Now, we'll lend you a locker for these clothes until Sunday morning. Collect the clothes and put them on in the changing room here before boarding, and take your own clothes with you on to the train. When you've finished with the VIA uniform, please see that we get it back.'
'Right,' I said again.
When I'd put my own clothes on once more, he took me along a few passages into a room with ultra-narrow lockers into which Tommy's clothes barely slotted. He locked the metal door, gave me the key, showed me the way back into the Great Hall and smiled briefly.
'Good luck,' he said. 'Don't spill anything.'
'Thank you,' I said, 'very much.'
I went back to the hotel and had them arrange a car with a driver to take me to Woodbine, wait through the afternoon and bring me back. No trouble at all, they said, so as it was a nice bright autumn day with no forecast of rain I curled my hair and put on some sunglasses and a Scandinavian patterned sweater to merge into the crowd at the races.
It actually isn't easy to remember a stranger's face after a fleeting meeting unless one has a special reason for doing so, or unless there is something wholly distinctive about it, and I was reasonably certain no one going on the train would know me again even if I inadvertently stood next to them on the stands. I had spectacular proof of this, in fact, almost as soon as I'd paid my way into the paddock, because Bill Baudelaire was standing nearby, watching the throng coming in, and his eyes paused on me for a brief second and slid away. With his carroty hair and the acne scars, I thought, he would have trouble getting lost in a crowd.
I walked over to him and said, 'Could you tell me the time, sir, please?'
He glanced at his watch but hardly at me and said, 'One twenty-five,' in his gravelly voice, and looked over my shoulder towards the gate.
'Thank you,' I said. 'I'm Tor Kelsey.'
His gaze sharpened abruptly on my face and he almost laughed.
'When Val told me about this I scarcely believed him.'
'Is Filmer here?' I asked.
'Yes. He arrived for the lunch.'
'OK,' I said. Thanks again.' I nodded and walked on past him and bought a race-card, and when in a moment or two I looked back, he had gone.
The racecourse was packed with people and there were banners everywhere announcing that this was the opening event of The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train's journey. Race Train Day, they economically said. There was a splendid colour photograph of a train crossing a prairie on the race-card's cover. There were stalls selling red and white Race Train T-shirts, with a horse face to face with a locomotive across the chest. There were Race Train flags and scarves and baseball caps; and a scatter of young ladies with Support Canadian Racing sashes across their bosoms were handing out information leaflets. The PR firm, I thought with amusement, were leaving no one in any doubt.
I didn't see Filmer until just before the Race Train's special race, which had been named without subtlety The Jockey Club Race Train Stakes at Woodbine. I'd spent some of the afternoon reading the information in the race- card about the owners and their horses and had seen that whereas all the owners were on the train's passenger list, none of the horses were. We would be taking fresh animals to Winnipeg and Vancouver
Filmer wasn't on the race-card as an owner, but Mrs Daffodil Quentin was, and when she came down to see the saddling of her runner, Filmer was with her, assiduous and smiling.
Daffodil Quentin had a big puff-ball hair arrangement of blonde curls above a middle-aged face with intense shiny red lipstick. She wore a black dress with a striped chinchilla coat over it: too much fur, I briefly thought, for the warmth of the afternoon sun.
There was hardly time to identify all the other owners as the pre-race formalities were over much more quickly than in England, but I did particularly look for and sort out Mercer Lorrimore.
Mercer Lorrimore, darling of the glossy mags, was running two horses in the race, giving it his loyal support. He was a man of average height, average build, average weight, and was distinguishable chiefly because of his well-cut, well-brushed full head of white hair. His expression looked reasonable and pleasant, and he was being nice to his trainer.
Beside him was a thin well-groomed woman whom I supposed to be his wife, Bambi and in attendance were a supercilious-looking young man and a sulking teenage girl. Son and daughter, Sheridan and Xanthe, no doubt.
The jockeys were thrown up like rainbow thistledown on to the tiny saddles and let their skinny bodies move to the fluid rhythm of the walking thoroughbreds. Out on the track with the horses' gait breaking into a trot or canter they would be more comfortable standing up in the stirrups to let the bumpier rhythms flow beneath them, but on the way out from the parade ring they swayed languorously like a camel train. I loved to watch them: never grew tired of it. I loved the big beautiful animals with their tiny brains and their overwhelming instincts and I'd always, all over the world, felt at home tending them, riding them and watching them wake up and perform.
The Lorrimore colours were truly Canadian, bright red and white like the maple leaf flag. Daffodil Quentin's colours weren't daffodil yellow but pale blue and dark green, a lot more subdued than the lady.
She and Filmer and all the other owners disappeared upstairs behind glass to watch the race, and I went down towards the track to wait and watch from near where the lucky owner would come down to greet his
