An oil lamp flickered beside the ballast wagons and a voice answered, ‘Bon, ban.’ He was there waiting for me when I reached the track. ‘Bonjour, M’sieur.’ The lamp was flashed on my face. ‘Ah, but of course. You are Eenglish, no? I am Henri Gaspard.’ As he shook my hand his face showed in the glow of the lamp he held. It was a sad, lined face with a little waxed moustache. Incredibly he wore an old C.P.R. pillbox hat complete with gold braid. The effect in this desolate place was strangely old-world, as though he had stepped out of a print illustrating the dress of a soldier of the Grande Armee. ‘You are only just in time, man ami. We are leaving now.’ He led me to the caboose and waved me in. ‘My ‘ome,’ he said. ‘Entrez, M’sieur.’
He left me then and I swung myself up into the van. Inside it was spotlessly clean and surprisingly cosy. There was a cabin with lower and upper berths on either side, and beyond that a sort of saloon with leather-cushioned seats and a table, and right at the end a wood-fired stove as big as a kitchen range.
Mahogany panels and the oil lamp swung from the roof completed the Edwardian atmosphere.
I sat down, suddenly exhausted. Lying in that dark room in the bunkhouse, thinking of Laroche, I had been afraid I should never make this next stage, and now I was here.
For a long time nothing happened, and then suddenly there were shouts and a whistle blew. I went out on to the platform at the back. Torches flickered along the line and the black silence of the night was suddenly broken by the mournful hoot of the locomotive. Couplings clashed in a rising crescendo of sound that culminated in the caboose being jerked into motion. Henri swung himself up on to the platform beside me. ‘Alors, n’marchons.’
I stayed there, watching the single lit window that marked the airstrip buildings slide past. After that there was nothing, no glimmer of light, no sign of the camp. The jackpine forest had closed round us and there was only the rattle of the wheels on the rail joints and the cold and the black night. I went back into the warmth of the caboose where the oil lamp danced on its hook and Henri stood at the stove brewing coffee.
I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette with him, and then excused myself and went to bed in one of the upper bunks. This time I fell asleep at once and lay like a log, only dimly conscious of the stops and the sound of movement and voices. And after a long time there were shouts and the clash of couplings and I woke up, feeling cold and cramped and sweaty with sleeping in my clothes. And when I rolled over to face the grimy window, I found myself staring out into a cold grey world of Christmas trees all dusted white with snow, and I could hardly believe it.
I clambered slowly down from the bunk and went out to the rear of the caboose. Men were walking along beside the train, winding open the double floor doors of the wagons so that they spilled ballast out on either side of the track as they trundled slowly forward. The rails ran out behind us in two black threads that were finally swallowed up in the white of the jackpine, and when I dropped to the ground so that I could look ahead, it was the same… there was nothing anywhere in that cold, harsh world but the train, a black and lonely intruder.
I climbed back into the caboose, for I wasn’t dressed for this sort of cold. There was nobody else there now and I sat on the lower berth, shivering and looking out through the window. A board with 235 painted on it slid past and shortly afterwards the train clanked over some points and stopped. We shunted backwards then, switching on to another track, and finally came to rest. ‘Le fin du voyage? Henri called to me from the rear platform. ‘Come. I give you to my friend Georges.’
I followed him out of the caboose to find we were on a section of double track. Parked close behind us was a line of old coaches with smoke rising from their iron chimneys. ‘Bunk’ouse train,’ Henri said as we trudged through soft snow already more than an inch deep. ‘You get brekf’st ‘ere.’ He looked down at my shoes. ‘Pas ban,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘You get clothes from store queek, mon ami — or you die, eh?’ And he smiled at me. ‘C’est le mauvais temps. The snow, she come too soon this year.’
We clambered up into the fourth coach. A bare trestle table with wooden benches on either side ran the length of it, and from the far end came the smell of coffee and the sizzle of frying. It was hot like an oven after the cold outside. ‘Georges!’ A big man in a dirty white apron emerged. I was introduced and then Henri shook my hand and left. ‘Breakfast in quarter of an hour,’ Georges said and disappeared into the cookhouse.
A little later men began to pile in, a mixed, half-dressed crowd who filled the benches and sat there, still red-eyed with sleep and not talking. A boy heaped food on the table — steaks and bacon and eggs, great piles of bread, pots of coffee and tea and tin bowls full of cornflakes. It was a gargantuan breakfast eaten hurriedly, the only conversation shouted demands to pass this or that. And then they were gone as quickly as they had come, like a plague of locusts, leaving behind a table full of scraps and the swill bin at the end half full, with their plates piled and their knives and forks in a tub of hot water.
What did I do now? I sat there, finishing my coffee, whilst the boy cleared the debris from the table. Outside the snow was thicker than ever, big wet flakes swirling softly. There was the hoot of a diesel and then the empty ballast train went clanking past the windows. And when it was gone there was nothing but the empty track and beyond that a dreary view of stunted jackpine growing reluctantly out of flat, swampy ground, and everything white with snow. I hadn’t expected the winter to be so early.
And then Georges came in and I asked him how I could get up to Head of Steel. ‘Is anybody going up from here, do you think?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘The boys ‘ere are ballast gang. They’re rail lifting and packing the ballast you just brought up. They ain’t going to Head of Steel. But I guess there’ll be somebody come through with a gas car during the day.’ And he added, ‘You want some clothes? It’s cold riding them little speeders.”
‘Can I get some here?’ I asked. ‘I had to leave in a hurry …’
He nodded. ‘Guess I can fix you up. The boys are always leaving stuff behind. But they’ll be cast-offs mind.’
He went out and a few minutes later came back with a sordid looking bundle. ‘Sort those over an’ take anything you fancy.’ He dumped them on the table. ‘There’s a parka there ain’t at all bad, an’ there a pair of boots look all right.’ He nodded and left me.
The parka was a padded waterproof jacket, black with grease and dirt, and its hood was torn. There was an old fur cap with ear flaps and a pair of gloves with the fingers worn through and waterproof trousers stiff with grease. The trousers were tight and the parka too big, but there was a pair of boots that were a reasonable fit. I went into the kitchen and tried to buy them off him with the twenty dollars Lands had given me, but he said they weren’t worth anything anyway; and after that I went back to the diner and sat there, staring out of the window, watching the track.
But the track remained empty. Nothing came. And now that I was equipped to withstand the weather, the snow stopped and the sun came out.
I was still there when the ballast gang returned for lunch. Halfway through a large steak I thought I heard the hoot of a locomotive. It was a faint, far-away sound, scarcely audible above the noise of fifty men shovelling energy back into their bodies, but I jumped to my feet and went to the door, peering out along the line of the through track.
At first I thought I must have been mistaken. North and south the track was empty, the black lines running out into the nothingness of Labrador. Then it came again, a sad sound carried by the wind, and far down the track to the south my eyes became focused on a small blob that didn’t seem to move, but yet grew steadily larger.