It was the highlight of every term and every holiday for Carruthers, coming like a no man’s land between the two: the journey with Miss Fanshawe to their different homes. Not once had she officially complained, either to his mother or to the school. She wouldn’t do that; it wasn’t in Miss Fanshawe to complain officially. And as for him, he couldn’t help himself.
‘Always Beaune on a train,’ he said now, ‘because of all the burgundies it travels happiest.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the waiter said.
‘Thank
The waiter went, moving swiftly in the empty dining-car. The train slowed and then gathered speed again. The fields it passed through were bright with sunshine; the water of a stream glittered in the distance.
‘You shouldn’t lie about your age,’ Miss Fanshawe reproved, smiling to show she hadn’t been upset by the lie. But lies like that, she explained, could get a waiter into trouble.
Carruthers, a sharp-faced boy of thirteen, laughed a familiar harsh laugh. He said he didn’t like the waiter, a remark that Miss Fanshawe ignored.
‘What weather!’ she remarked instead. ‘Just look at those weeping willows!’ She hadn’t ever noticed them before, she added, but Carruthers contradicted that, reminding her that she had often before remarked on those weeping willows. She smiled, with false vagueness in her face, slightly shaking her head. ‘Perhaps it’s just that everything looks so different this lovely summer. What will you do, Carruthers? Your mother took you to Greece last year, didn’t she? It’s almost a shame to leave England, I always think, when the weather’s like this. So green in the long warm days –’
‘Miss Fanshawe, why are you pretending nothing has happened?’
‘Happened? My dear, what has happened?’
Carruthers laughed again, and looked through the window at cows resting in the shade of an oak tree. He said, still watching the cows, craning his neck to keep them in view:
‘Your mind is thinking about what has happened and all the time you’re attempting to make ridiculous conversation about the long warm days. Your heart is beating fast, Miss Fanshawe; your hands are trembling. There are two little dabs of red high up on your cheeks, just beneath your spectacles. There’s a pink flush all over your neck. If you were alone, Miss Fanshawe, you’d be crying your heart out.’
Miss Fanshawe, who was thirty-eight, fair-haired and untouched by beauty, said that she hadn’t the foggiest idea what Carruthers was talking about. He shook his head, implying that she lied. He said:
‘Why are we being served by a man whom neither of us likes when we should be served by someone else? Just look at those weeping willows, you say.’
‘Don’t be silly, Carruthers.’
‘What has become, Miss Fanshawe, of the other waiter?’
‘Now please don’t start any nonsense. I’m tired and –’
‘It was he who gave me a taste for pale ale, d’you remember that? In your company, Miss Fanshawe, on this train. It was he who told us that Beaune travels best. Have a cig, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘No, and I wish you wouldn’t either.’
‘Actually Mrs Carruthers allows me the odd smoke these days. Ever since my thirteenth birthday, May the 26th. How can she stop me, she says, when day and night she’s at it like a factory chimney herself?’
‘Your birthday’s May the 26th? I never knew. Mine’s two days later.’ She spoke hastily, and with an eagerness that was as false as the vague expression her face had borne a moment ago.
‘Gemini, Miss Fanshawe.’
‘Yes: Gemini. Queen Victoria –’
‘The sign of passion. Here comes the interloper.’
The waiter placed sherry before Miss Fanshawe and beer in front of Carruthers. He murmured deferentially, inclining his head.
‘We’ve just been saying,’ Carruthers remarked, ‘that you’re a new one on this line.’
‘Newish, sir. A month – no, tell a lie, three weeks yesterday.’
‘We knew your predecessor.’
‘Oh yes, sir.?’
‘He used to say this line was as dead as a doornail. Actually, he enjoyed not having anything to do. Remember, Miss Fanshawe?’
Miss Fanshawe shook her head. She sipped her sherry, hoping the waiter would have the sense to go away. Carruthers said:
‘In all the time Miss Fanshawe and I have been travelling together there hasn’t been a solitary soul besides ourselves in this dining-car.’
The waiter said it hardly surprised him. You didn’t get many, he agreed, and added, smoothing the tablecloth, that it would just be a minute before the soup was ready.
‘Your predecessor,’ Carruthers said, ‘was a most extraordinary man.’
‘Oh yes, sir?’
‘He had the gift of tongues. He was covered in freckles.’
‘I see, sir.’
