The Edge

Yes, it was.

Mrs Young did her best to soothe her, but it was impossible not to respect her fears. She had undoubtedly nearly been killed. Mrs Young told her that the madman who had mischievously unhitched the car was hours behind us in Carder, but Xanthe was beyond reassurance.

Mrs Young appealed to Nell, asking if there was anywhere else that Xanthe could sleep, and Nell, consulting the ever-present clipboard, shook her head doubtfully.

'There's an upper berth in a section,' she said slowly, 'but it only has a curtain, and no facilities except at the end of the car, and it's hardly what Xanthe's used to…'

'I don't care,' Xanthe said passionately. 'I'll sleep on the floor or on the seats in the lounge, or anywhere. I'll sleep in that upper berth… please let me.'

'I don't see why not, then,' Nell said. 'What about night things?'

'I'm not going into our car to fetch them. I'm not.'

'All right,' Nell said. 'I'll go and ask your mother.'

Mrs Young stayed with Xanthe, who was again faintly trembling, until at length Nell returned with both a small grip and Bambi.

Bambi tried to get her daughter to change her mind, but predictably without success. I thought it unlikely that Xanthe would ever sleep in that car again, so strong was her present reaction. She, Bambi, Nell and the Youngs made their way past me without looking at me and continued on along the corridor beside the kitchen, going to inspect the revised quarters which I knew were in the sleeping car forward of Filmer's.

After a while Bambi and Nell returned alone, and Bambi with an unexcited word of gratitude to Nell walked a few paces forward and stopped beside her son, who had done nothing to comfort or help his sister and was now sitting alone.

'Come along, Sheridan,' she said, her tone without peremptoriness but also without affection. 'Your father asks you to come.'

Sheridan gave her a look of hatred which seemed not in the least to bother her. She stood patiently waiting until, with exceedingly bad grace, he got to his feet and followed her homewards.

Bambi, it seemed to me, had taught herself not to care for Sheridan so as not to be hurt by him. She too, like Mercer, must have suffered for years from his boorish behaviour in public, and she had distanced herself from it. She didn't try to buy the toleration of the victims of his rudeness, as Mercer did: she ignored the rudeness instead.

I wondered which had come first, the chill and disenchantment of her worldly sophistication, or the lack of warmth in her son: and perhaps there was ice in both of them, and the one had reinforced the other. Bambi, I thought, was a highly inappropriate name for her; she was no innocent wide-eyed smooth-skinned fawn but an experienced, aloof, good-looking woman in the skin of minks.

Nell, watching them go, sighed and said, 'She didn't kiss Xanthe goodnight, you know, or give her even a hug to comfort her. Nothing. And Mercer's so nice.'

'Forget them.'

'Yes… You do realize the press will be down on this train like a pack of hunting lions at the next stop.'

'Lionesses,' I said.

'What?'

'It's the females who hunt in a pack. One male sits by, watching, and takes the lion's share of the kill.'

'I don't want to know that.'

'Our next stop,' I said, 'will be fifteen minutes at White River in the middle of the night. After the delay, we'll aim to arrive at four-oh-five, depart four-twenty.'

'And after that?'

'Except for a three-minute pause in a back-of-beyond, we stop at Thunder Bay for twenty-five minutes at ten-fifty tomorrow morning.'

'Do you know the whole timetable by heart?'

'Emil told me to learn it. He was right when he said the question I would have to answer most was ‘When do we reach so and so’… and if I were a regular waiter he said I would know the answers, even though we're thirty-five minutes earlier everywhere than the regular Canadian.'

'Emil is cute,' she said.

I looked at her in surprise. I wouldn't have thought of Emil as cute. Small, neat, bright and generous, yes. 'Cute?' I asked.

'I would hope,' she said, 'that you don't think so.'

'No.'

'Good.' She was relieved, I saw.

'Weren't you sure?' I asked curiously. 'Am I so… ambivalent?'

'Well…' There was a touch of embarrassment. 'I didn't mean to get into this sort of conversation, really I didn't. But if you want to know, there's something about you that's secret… ultra-private… as if you didn't want to be known too well. So I just wondered. I'm sorry…'

'I shall shower you with ravening kisses.'

She laughed. 'Not your style.'

'Wait and see.' And two people didn't, I thought, drift into talking like that after knowing each other for such a short while unless there was immediate trust and liking.

We were standing in the tiny lobby between the kitchen and the dining room, and she still has the clipboard clasped to her chest. She would have to put it down, I thought fleetingly, before any serious ravening could take place.

'You always have jokes in your eyes,' she said. 'And you never tell them.'

'I was thinking about how you use your clipboard as chain mail.'

Her own eyes widened. 'A lousy man in the magazine office squeezed my breast… Why am I telling you? It was years ago. Why should I care? Anyway, where else would you carry a clipboard?'

She put it down, all the same, on the counter, but we didn't talk much longer as the revellers from the rear began coming through to go to the bedrooms. I retreated into the kitchen and I could hear people asking Nell what time they could have breakfast.

'Between seven and nine-thirty,' she said. 'Sleep well, everybody.' She put her head into the kitchen. 'Same to you, sleep well. I'm off to bed.'

'Goodnight,' I said, smiling.

'Aren't you going?'

'Yes, in a while.'

'When everything's… safe?'

'You might say so.'

'What exactly does the Jockey Club expect you to Jo?'

'See trouble before it comes.'

'But that's practically impossible.'

'Mm,' I said. 'I didn't foresee anyone uncoupling the Lorrimores.'

'You'll be fired for that,' she said dryly, 'so if you sleep, sleep well.'

'Tor would kiss you,' I said. 'Tommy can't.'

'I'll count it done.'

She went away blithely, the clipboard again in place: a habit, I supposed, as much as a defence.

I walked back to the bar and wasted time with the barman. The intent poker school looked set for an all-night session, the dancing was still causing laughter in the lounge and the northern lights were entrancing the devotees in the dome. The barman yawned and said he'd be closing the bar soon. Alcohol stopped at midnight.

I heard Daffodil's voice before I saw her, so that when Filmer came past the door of the bar I was bending down with my head below the counter as if to be tidying things there. I had the impression they did no more than glance in as they passed, as Filmer was saying ‘… when we get to Winnipeg.' 'You mean Vancouver,' Daffodil said. 'Yes, Vancouver.' 'You always get them mixed…' Her voice, which had been raised, as his had been, so as to be heard while one of them walked ahead of the other, died away as they passed down the corridor, presumably en route to bed.

Giving them time to say goodnight, as Daffodil's room was one of the three just past the bar, I slowly followed. They were nowhere in sight as I went through to the dining car, and Filmer seemed to have gone straight to his room, as there was a thread of light shining along the bottom of his door; but Daffodil, I discovered, had after all not. Instead of being cosily tucked up in her bunk near the bar, she surprisingly came walking towards me from the sleeping car forward of Filmer's, her diamonds lighting small bright fires with every step.

I stood back to let her pass, but she shimmered to a stop before me and said, 'Do you know where Miss Lorrimore is sleeping?'