‘I wouldn’t have dreamed of it, Charlie.’
‘No, of course not.’
She took the loot bag with her. It did occur to me to wonder what George was going to do for money when he finally got here.
Doris was tucked up in the top bunk when I got back to the compartment. I undressed in the dark and climbed into my bunk, piling my clothes at one end.
After a few minutes Doris said, ‘You lied.’
‘What about?’
‘There was a book in your bag as well as your clothes, a Raymond Chandler – good writer.’
‘I think so too.’ It was The High Window.
After another few minutes I asked, ‘Doris?’
‘Yes?’ I heard her turn over above me.
‘Did you ever see Robert Donat in The Thirty-Nine Steps?’
‘No, why?’
‘He got stuck on the night sleeper to Scotland with a beautiful stranger as well. We’re not the first.’
‘So?’
‘She was a lot friendlier than you are.’
‘He was probably better-looking than you, Charlie.’ I heard her shift in her bunk again. Then she said, ‘G’night.’
After a few minutes she chuckled briefly, and softly. I had no idea what she found so funny, but it was a sound you could learn to live with.
In my head I began to play through all the numbers I knew connected to railway journeys, one after the other, beginning with ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’, and going on to ‘Midnight special’, and all the others. I fell asleep during the second chorus of ‘The Little Red Caboose Behind the Train’. It never fails; even when you have Rita Hayworth’s sister lying a couple feet above you.
We were awoken by the steward at about six in the morning with decent cups of coffee. The train was rattling slowly over Rannoch Moor heading for the station at Fort William.
Over the breakfast kippers she asked me, ‘Tell me again . . .’
‘We stay in Fort William for a night. There’s bound to be a decent hotel – all the hunting and fishing types come up here in the season.’
‘When’s the season?’
‘Not yet, I hope. I don’t want a lot of trigger-happy idiots taking pot shots at us when we climb the hill.’
‘Why can’t we go straight on to the hotel you originally booked us into?’
‘Because we aren’t due to arrive until Sunday. Originally I expected a two-night stop in Fort William. If we stay there, and meet the train on Sunday morning, George might always catch up with us.’
‘What then? We take a cab?’
‘I doubt it. They probably wouldn’t want to drive halfway across Scotland. No, we get a bus.’ Her mouth turned down. I wondered what buses were like in the States.
‘Buses are for poor folk, Charlie. I’ve got a better idea. We can buy a car this afternoon.’
‘For only a few days? Then what will we do with it?’
‘Sell it again, dummy. Trust me, I’ll get more for it than we paid. You ain’t seen me in action yet.’
I looked down over her Alps; one could but hope, I suppose. I’d thought that before.
A small, animated thimble of a woman booked us into the Royal Hotel under the names of Una and Samuel Anders. Doris’s idea. We had become brother and sister: don’t laugh. The Thimble didn’t smile. The church the Thimble attended forbad smiling on Saturdays. Doris had come up with our new names on the spur of the moment, and thought she was being cute – you work it out.
‘Cheque or cash, will it be?’ we were asked.
‘Cash. We don’t have a bank in the UK yet.’ That was Doris.
‘Separate rooms?’
‘If you have them.’
‘But adjoining, of course?’
‘Absolutely. I’d want Sammy to come running if he heard me having one of my panic attacks.’
The Thimble gave us an old-fashioned look. Maybe she’d met brothers and sisters like us before. Her dun-blue woollen dress reached to the soles of her shoes. It made her look as if she glided across the floor on casters. As Doris and I followed her into one of those old cage lifts that were all the rage in the thirties, I was aware of an odd tension in Doris: as if a storm was brewing.
I gave it a thought or two, and then pushed the idea away: she’d tell me whatever it was in her own good time – I knew her that well already.
We had old, dark wood-panelled rooms on the top floor. They smelt of polish, and each had a main door, and another which opened from one into the other. I didn’t go anywhere near that one. I had a pygmy-sized four-poster. A clean but musty-smelling dressing gown was neatly folded on the end of it: the bedcovers were dark tartan blankets a foot thick.
Maybe the dressing gown was a hint, so I went along the corridor to the bathroom and had a shower in an Edwardian bath with lion’s feet. The water was so hot my skin glowed when I stepped out of it. When I reached my room again I threw off the dressing gown, and enjoyed cool air on my skin.
Doris must have heard me, because that was when she barged in through the connecting door. She was wearing most of a dressing gown. A flowing silvery silk job about the size of a jacket, and at least two sizes too small for her. She must have brought it with her. It wasn’t tied or buttoned down the front. That only took a glance.
When she crossed to sit alongside me I asked her, ‘Is that your natural colour?’ Her hair was dark; the colour of port wine.
‘I hope so. Don’t you feel randy, Charlie? This place makes me feel randy – it’s so terribly old.’
‘If old things make you randy, go downstairs and find a grandfather . . . and cover yourself up, woman. You’re just playing with me.’
‘I wasn’t, honey, but I will now.’ She reached out. One hand; long
