bend, the yellow and blue engine hooting. “You keep these,” said Munday, giving Emma the day-return tickets in the empty compartment. She slipped them between the pages of the novel she’d brought, an Agatha Christie from the shelf. Munday had his Times\ he read the Diary, the letters and glanced at the obituaries and then folded the paper flat and held it in his lap, not reading it, his hands spread over it, as Emma’s were on the book that rested on her knees. They faced each other, rocking, only looking out the window when the train slowed down. At Yeovil Junction Emma said, “East Coker is near here. We must drive over some time.”
“East Coker?”
“T.S. Eliot.”
“Of course,” said Munday, but he had no clear idea of what she was talking about.
Breakfast was announced at Sherborne, where a tall severe man whom Munday said must be a classics master stood on the platform with a briefcase and a book in his hand, waiting to board. Emma and Munday left the book and newspaper on their seats to show they were occupied and went into the dining car. Emma had toast and tea, Munday the complete breakfast.
“Why no kippers?” he asked the waiter.
“They do kippers on the busier trains,” said the waiter, whose tight jacket was stiff with starch. “Not on this line, though. Not important enough.”
Munday felt the waiter was getting at him for riding an unimportant line. He said, “I shall write a letter to The Times ”
“They’re rationalizing the catering. We don’t serve more than a dozen breakfasts in all. After Salisbury it’s just coffees. How do you want your eggs?”
When breakfast came Emma said, “He’s forgotten my marmalade.”
“He hasn’t forgotten,” said Munday. “Rationalizing the catering.” He ate methodically, glancing out the window between swallows. There were cows and sheep in the fields, and still fog and mist in some valleys, and vapor the color of the sky hanging in bare branches. He saw a man emptying a pail in a trough; the man paused and looked up at the passing train. Munday saw him clearly, the large-fingered gloves, the peaked cap, the cutoff boots. He knew the man did not see him; he saw a train, only that, but he was completely exposed. Munday felt guilty, observing him in this way, eating his eggs, and he pitied the man for whom a train was an event to relieve his solitude and make him turn away from his work. Then he disliked the man for his curiosity and saw him as a possible thief.
“It’ll be nice to be in London again,” said Emma. “I’ve got so much shopping to do.”
“It’s a bit raw,” said Munday.
Emma looked out the window. She said, “I really, don’t want to go back.”
Munday wondered how he might console her. Nothing came to him. He said, “The day-retum fare is damned cheap.” Then after a while, “They pinched one of my daggers.”
“Depressing people.”
“I’m glad you finally agree with me.” He thought again of the man in the field. He said, “I’m finished,” and pushed his plate aside.
They paid the bill, and the car filled up, but they did not go back to their compartment immediately. They lingered, enjoying the warmth, the breakfast smells of bacon and coffee and the pipe smoke of a man at the next table. The train lurched, gathering speed, cups chinked and the hanging folds of the white tablecloths moved like skirts. Trees and bushy embankments shot past the window. Munday played with the heavy silver. Near Salisbury the landscape opened; it was flatter and the fields they passed seemed to revolve, roughly circular furrows spinning on the skid of the train.
“What about lunch?” asked Munday.
“I’m meeting Margaret at Selfridge’s. We’ll have lunch somewhere, then spend the afternoon together shopping.”
“I can’t imagine her without those sunglasses and sandals.”
“And that yellow cotton dress,” said Emma.
“What’s Jack doing?”
“She says she doesn’t hear from him.”
“Such a scandal there,” Munday said. “All that excitement. Here it seems so ordinary and stupid.”
“W'ill you be seeing Silvano?”
“No time for that. My appointment’s at eleven-thirty.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll just make it And Alec said he’d be at the Wheatsheaf at one. It’ll be good to see him. The last train’s just after seven. Why don’t we meet at that pub in the station at quarter-to?”
“I wish we didn’t have to go back so soon.”
At Salisbury they groped their way to their compartment and found four people in it, but the newspaper and book remained on the vacant seats next to the windows. They watched the people on the platform, some mothers with large clean children, an older woman who looked like any of the ones in the church hall at Four Ashes except that she was distinguished by a copy of the orange Financial Times, rolled like a truncheon in her string bag. Most were women dressed for restaurant lunches, with the soberly elegant clothes that women wear to impress other women, rather than attract men: large hats, gloves, some with neat, damp corsages; they boarded in groups of three and four. One of these entered the Mundays' compartment; she sat smiling and waving discreetly to a woman squeezing down the passage. She had a copy of the Telegraph, which she read in glances, folding it and turning it inside out. The windows steamed up, and this woman perfumed the small space with lavender. Near Woking there was a sign saying stop coloured immigration in neat square letters on a brick wall next to the track. A Daily Express lay on the single empty seat.
It was retrieved by a thin man in a blue nylon jacket when the train drew in to Waterloo.
In the main hall of the station, dangerous with little yellow vehicles towing baggage carts and vibrating with the ponderous throb of announcements of train times and place names, none of which was distinct, Munday showed Emma the pub he had mentioned, and standing near it he thought he recognized the black man he had addressed in Swahili. They parted on the Bakerloo Line, Emma got off at Oxford Circus, Munday continued to Regent’s Park where he walked in a fine drizzle to Harley Street.
The receptionist was prompt; he had introduced himself as Doctor Munday, and though there was another man in the waiting room she said to follow her. She led him down a corridor, past framed eighteenth-century cartoons—one of a toothy man falling violently and spouting a bubble of script caught Munday’s eye. The doctor’s office resembled a study. There was a wall of leather-bound books, a large dark painting of a highland scene, and heavy green curtains. The desk was wide and held a silver inkstand, and the stethoscope which rested on the blotter was the only indication of the work of the dark-suited man who sat fingering it. He rose as Munday entered; the receptionist introduced them, then went out, shutting the door.
“So you were Dowle’s patient,” said the doctor, motioning Munday to a chair. “He wrote me about you. How is he?”
“Just the same,” said Munday. “Full of bluster, and absolutely punishing himself with whisky. They have a new cook at the mission, a Polish priest named Pekachek—mad about cabbage.”
“Dowle and I were at medical school together.”
“So he told me,” said Munday. “Old Father Tom.”
“That what they call him? He was a lad, he was— the last person in the world I’d have thought to go into the priesthood.” The doctor winked. “A great one for the ladies, you know. I suppose with these black women he’s not in any danger of breaking his vow of chastity.”
“Some can be quite lovely.”