7. 1110 a.m. [Unscheduled] Halt Briouze
11:10 a.m. [ unscheduled ] HALT brIOUZE
We anticipate the future as if it were too slow in coming, as if to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to halt its rapid flight. We are so foolish that we wander in times that are not ours, without thinking of the only one that is.
BLAISE PASCAL,
PENSéES (1670)
As they pull into Briouze, reversing steam to slow down, Victor Garnier grasps the situation at a glance. On a siding waits a lone train carriage with fresh varnish and curlicues and station staff flapping about; a local engine must have hauled it this far. So the Express’s unscheduled stop was arranged at the last minute not to pick up some rich passenger but to allow him to hitch on. “Private carriage,” Victor calls to his driver as the train’s noise lulls.
Guillaume shakes his head, incredulous, as they glide to a standstill.
“Speed up again?” Victor suggests, poker-faced. “Leave him in our dust?”
Guillaume grins. “You would, wouldn’t you? And that’s why they’ll never let you be a driver.”
The real reason Victor won’t apply for a promotion is that then he’d no longer be Guillaume’s stoker. As a driver, he’d glimpse Guillaume only now and then in large stations with parallel tracks.
He cranes his neck to look at the glossy carriage, a fancy toy. “Why can’t his nibs just plonk his arse down on sprung velvet?”
Guillaume snorts. “Thinks his farts don’t smell.”
The two rollers spend every second night in their room across from Granville Station, cots butted up against each other as snug as engine and tender. They sleep in the fug of each other’s feet, so Victor can’t tell Guillaume’s smells from his own anymore. This is Company policy, to keep driver and stoker closer than brothers, because both speed and safety depend on the two knowing each other like catcher and flier on a trapeze.
All along the convoy, people’s heads are popping out like moles. Passengers jump out, and a dozen or so go around the back of the rudimentary station to relieve themselves. (The women will find they’re out of luck.)
There’s the senior guard grousing with the Briouze men halfway down the platform. Guillaume leans past Victor and shouts, “Time’s a-wasting, Mariette. We’ll shunt forward, you hook it on our tail.”
Mariette calls back, “No, we’re uncoupling halfway along so Monsieur Christophle’s car can be with First Class.”
Victor protests, “Even if it makes twice the work for us?”
“Wants to be warm and safe in the middle, like the youngest brother on a winter night,” Guillaume mutters, staring at his watch as if his goggled eyes could somehow hold back the minute hand.
This Christophle must have given the stationmaster a fat tip, and the crew won’t see a sou of it.
Victor takes his shovel and scoops some black fragments off the footplate to occupy himself. Running calculations, as ever. The hunger of Engine 721’s furnace depends on the tonnage she’s pulling but also on the slope. If Victor doesn’t anticipate each upgrade on the route and boost the flames before his mate requires that surge of puff, she’ll mount sluggishly or even stall (imagine the shame!). And if Victor’s caught off guard by the next downgrade, when she’ll start freewheeling, the pressure will be too high, and he’ll have to vent expensive steam so it won’t build up and burst the boiler, either scalding the two rollers or blowing them to smithereens.
He does what he can with the coal the Company sends him, dampening it from his water bucket to keep down the dust and prevent it from caking. He cracks or slices the lumps so the pieces will burn at an even rate. But the hard mathematics of his job means that it costs a kilo of coal to turn six litres of water to steam, and more coal than that if there are impurities. The railways have covered France so fast, and every decade the new trains are heavier and longer and move faster, so French coal’s in chronically short supply, and much of it is dirty—yet if Victor and Guillaume use up the 721’s whole allowance of the stuff, the Company cuts down their blasted bonus to nothing. It’s only October; in the cold months it takes more fuel to feed a fire, so their forty percent shrinks away fast.
Restless, Victor jokes to try to lift his driver’s mood: “Maybe the bigwig’s a leper, can’t bear to be seen by fellow passengers.”
“Or horribly scarred,” Guillaume contributes.
“The Man in the Iron Mask!”
Léon Mariette suddenly appears on the step below, his boots still shiny; does he polish them between stations? “By the way, Pellerin, it’s no business of yours to tell me how to lay out the components of my train.”
The two rollers cackle. “ Your train?” Victor asks.
“You’re in charge of the engine, but my responsibility covers everything and everyone on the—”
“You’re just the passengers’ nursemaid,” Guillaume tells him.
It’s an old argument; they’re all just killing time.
A whistle from behind prompts Victor to lean out. “Unhooked,” he reports to his mate. “Stationmaster’s waving us forward to make some room.”
Guillaume applies a little steam to nudge the front half on.
Like a chopped worm , Victor thinks. (He was the kind of kid who had to satisfy his curiosity about such things.)
As the station crew tow this Monsieur Christophle’s carriage off the siding and fit it between the two sections of the train, more minutes crawl by. Victor feels the crew’s Christmas pay for punctuality shrinking; like an itch in his veins.
The pressure-gauge needle’s tilting over to the right. Merde ; she needs venting. Victor opens the exhaust pipe and lets out a white jet, which forms a cloud around the engine. Watching the expensive steam dissipate, he rolls a cigarette. Crews aren’t allowed to smoke on duty (or drink, or swear), but who’ll see them up here? And it’s not as if they’re wasting time; time’s a-wasting in spite of them, more like. He lights up, takes two pulls, then passes it to Guillaume. “That big cart horse”—gesturing towards a passing wagon—“would it derail us, do you think?”
Guillaume nods. “Without a doubt, size-wise.”
“But would it be stupid enough to stand on the crossing with an express barrelling down? A sheep might be.”
“We’d flick a sheep off the tracks, though,” Guillaume points out.
“Half a dozen sheep in a huddle?”
Guillaume’s scowling over his watch again. “Nearly six minutes behind already.”
Although by any measure Albert Silas Christophle is an important man, the private carriage is for his wife.
“Is it done yet?” Anna, supine on her daybed.
“Almost.” Albert has no idea; how can it be taking the sooty-faced fellows so long to attach a hook? But almost forty years of marriage have taught him the art of vague reassurance.
He had the carriage made with double doors to allow Anna’s bath chair to be carried in at the start of each journey. Her bed’s suspended from the roof to minimise jarring and draped in curtains on three sides to block draughts. The carpet is thick; three centimetres of felt underlay give it a mushroomy feel. Anna has a commode and a sink and a Chinese screen for privacy, handy on today’s journey to keep little André from bothering his grandmother. The five-year-old, tucked between the screen and the window, is whispering to his felt elephant in a tailcoat. Adjustable blinds of gold tapestry exclude all but a fraction of daylight. André’s game involves tapping on the tiny strip of bared glass but quietly enough that his grandfather hasn’t had to scold him.
Albert stares out at the green field—the lush grass of Normandy on which its famous breeds of horses and cattle graze. It reminds him of the legend of a lord who happened across the hot spring at Bagnoles as he was leading his faithful steed into the forest, to let him loose to crop grass for his remaining days. The knackered old stallion leapt into a steaming gorge and came out as lively as a colt. The lord dared to do the same and was transformed into a young man again. How wonderful if the deputy for Orne and governor of the Crédit Foncier bank could find some magical source of renewal and turn his own clock back…
Or Anna’s. Turn it back even one year, to when she was sixty, lively, and happy—or happy enough. Before biliousness, fatigue, fainting spells, aches, and miscellaneous misery. (The doctors can’t agree on a diagnosis let alone a treatment.)
Her skirt stirs, writhes, revolves; it’s the little greyhound. Albert’s wife always seems to wear shadowy hues these days, to match her pet. “Mignonette, stand up!” On the quilt, the dog gets up on her back legs in her travelling cloak, silver collar, and rubber boots. “Very good,” cries Anna faintly. “Walk for me?” The dog manages to lurch around on two paws. “ Brava! ” A tight embrace, kisses.
These circus tricks make Albert sick. The creature was born to run, and this is how she must spend her days? Another thing: Mignonette is so entirely silent that he wonders if the breeder could have cut her vocal cords.
“A train came in through the fireplace,” his wife remarks.
Albert sometimes wonders whether the problem is not Anna’s body but her mind. “What’s that, ma chère ?”
“In my dream, last night, the one I told you I couldn’t remember.”
Sometimes when she rabbits on, he keeps reading the paper and pays no attention. “A train…”
“There was a fire in the grate, but the smoke turned to steam, and it was a train puffing towards me in the air!”
“A very little train?”
“You’re doing it again.” Anna takes off the blue glasses that shield her eyes. “Interrogating me in your mocking, lawyerly way.”
Albert was already a lawyer when she married him, and now he’s a bank governor and a politician too, and will she ever be satisfied? “I’m just trying to picture your dream.”
“I expect I’ll be prostrated for three days after this journey.”
And how will that be different from her usual state?
Limply Anna holds up her book. “This doctor says neurasthenia is a… what’s the term? A side effect of rapid locomotion and instantaneous communications. Modern life is more than our hurried, harried nerves can bear.”
Speak for yourself . Albert’s nerves like locomotion, the more rapid the better. And if Anna believes high-speed transit is so noxious, why has she put him to the trouble and expense of this custom-made carriage?
Her sullen suspicion of the railways dates from before her mysterious illness. The Christophles were taking the train back from Vienna, and an obdurate guard who refused to speak any French wouldn’t let the greyhound travel with them and insisted on tying her up in the baggage van. Anna was convinced that her poor Mignonette must have been subjected to the advances of some dog of a common breed that night and she had her repeatedly flushed out with vinegar as soon as they got back to Paris as well as treated prophylactically against fleas and mange. She believes a mésalliance can contaminate a bitch’s litters for the rest of her life despite Albert’s attempts to reason this superstition away.
“Attention!” Anna balances a sugar lump on her pet’s nose. (She must have a supply of them among the bedding, which strikes him as unhygienic.) “Wait… wait…”
“May I have a lump?” André’s oddly large head has come around the Chinese screen.
Anna doesn’t look up. “They’re for Mignonette, who’s in training.”
Albert’s tempted to ask, Wasn’t it you who longed for grandchildren?
“Training for what? To do tricks? She’s not going to be in a circus, is she?”
“Obedience training.” Albert gives his grandson a meaningful look.
“I can do training too, for sugar, Grand-maman. Grand-maman!”
“Keep your voice down,” Albert whispers.
But his wife, clutching her temples, is leaning back on the pillows.
Albert was rather hoping Jules-Félix and Emma Gévelot would offer to take André into First Class with them and keep him entertained. In his experience, the childless can go either way—dote on youngsters or shy away from them. Also, Albert’s guests may be a little miffed at having to take a hired carriage from the Christophles’ lodge to Briouze Station with their friend what’s-her-name and not being invited to share these private quarters on the train. But really, letting six people crowd in here would defeat the whole purpose of an invalid carriage.
Albert and his fellow deputy for Orne have spent the past week at the lodge in Gué aux Biches to get in a bit of hunting. Anna not being up for playing the hostess these days, Emma Gévelot and her friend—or paid companion; Albert still can’t quite tell—had to amuse themselves. Meanwhile, the men bagged a wild boar and two roebucks between them; next time, Albert might propose duck flighting on the marshes.
Oh, come on, when will this so-called Express get going?
Jules-Félix Gévelot tipped the moustachioed guard three francs to unlock the Rear First carriage for them. As the factory owner steps in, out of the corner of his eye he sees someone at the far end—a disagreeable-looking old character with pouched eyes and an untidy beard. But when he, Emma, and Aimée settle into their seats, he realises with rueful amusement that it was his own reflection.
The decor of the car is opulent but it’s not that large, so Jules-Félix is glad he sent their maid and manservant down to Third. “Christophle’s royal litter seems to be taking an age to attach.”
“Don’t be peevish,” Emma tells her husband, propping up her feet on the travel stool he brought along for her. The ladies have to face in the direction of travel because Aimée has a weak stomach. (Both the Gévelots call Emma’s friend by her first name at her request, though the informality still makes him wince.)
“Did I sound peevish?” Jules-Félix likes Christophle perfectly well—he is a sound progressive and not too boastful a hunting companion.
“My dear husband is often rather crotchety on a train due to nerves,” Emma remarks to Aimée.
He lets out a snort, which sounds huffy, he realises, although it’s hard not to after such an accusation.
“Nervous of railway travel? How silly, and you’re not even seventy,” Aimée scolds him.
Twenty years older than the ladies. Jules-Félix bristles. “What has my age to do with it?”
“She means you’ve ridden on trains since you were a boy, so you should be used to them by now,” Emma murmurs. “Your parents might have been worried that their eyes would cross or their brains would be bruised, but you know better.”
“I’m not nervous of riding on a train,” Jules-Félix snaps. A perverse honesty nudges him to add, “Though I can’t say I like the idea of dying prematurely in one.”
“Come now, what are the odds?” That’s Aimée.
He picks one example. “There was a bridge in Scotland recently brought down by high winds that took a train into the river, and seventy-five souls with it.”
“That would seem to prove the danger of bridges rather than trains, no?” Emma asks gravely. “Once home, we must resolve never to cross the Seine again.”
His wife’s gentle mockery manages to make Jules-Félix chuckle. “Mind you, avoiding bridges in Paris would be a splendid excuse to get us out of some tedious dinners.”
She puts a hand on his knee. “You needn’t rush into the Assembly this afternoon, mon cher ?”
Jules-Félix shakes his head. The session opening’s just a formality. “I’m saving my powder for Thursday, when the government’s expecting a challenge over the glassmakers’ strike.”
“Oh, is that still dragging on?”
“The outlook’s very bad,” he tells her. “Extremist troublemakers everywhere—and, it must be said, tyrants putting them down. The police have started arresting the glassmakers’ organizers and bringing in trainloads of scabs from all over France.”
“I don’t suppose you allow unionizing at your factory?”
Jules-Félix is wary of talking politics with his wife’s friend, who thinks an arch tone makes up for her ignorance. “Ah, it hasn’t arisen. We treat our workers royally—houses with gardens, a shelter for the aged, a nursery where mothers can feed their infants for an hour a day…” Most of the thousand-strong Gévelot workforce are female; those meticulous little hands are best for filling cartridges. “And we haven’t had a fatality in twelve years.” He doesn’t mention the appalling sums his father had to pay the injured and the widowed in the early days.
“They never threaten a strike, then?” Aimée’s really pressing him.
He shakes his head. “If they demanded a raise and cut the firm’s profit margin, they’d risk putting us out of business—they would only be shooting themselves in the foot.”
“With a Gévelot bullet, as it were!”
He grants her a half-smile.
Emma’s already immersed in her book, some yellow-jacketed railway novel, probably sensationalist stuff. Of course, it’s hard to concentrate on anything serious when you’re on the move. The volume Jules-Félix picked up at the Hachette stall when coming down from Paris the other day isn’t much better—a silly story about a machine on which a man can journey through time.
Though that would be worth the discomforts of the trip—time travel! Would Jules-Félix choose to go forwards, out of curiosity? Or backwards, maybe to when he was eighteen, just before his father died and he had to help his mother run the munitions works? The new responsibility was an honour, yes; he inherited a great name and has made it greater. But it was an abrupt departure from boyhood, and the half a century since has passed in a blink.
Not for the first time, Henry’s sunk in self-reproach. That dark young lady—the one who’s preoccupied him since he spotted her getting into the next carriage at Flers—is at this very moment sitting perhaps a metre away behind a thin wall. As long as the train is held up here at Briouze, what’s preventing him from moving to hers and striking up a conversation? Nothing at all—if only Henry had the spunk.
He goes back to brooding about his work, his Lazarus , in particular. In the biblical account, the practical sister mentions that it’s been four days, and her brother is beginning to stink. But then Jesus calls, Lazarus, come forth , and out of his tomb the man walks, shaking off his wrappings. Lazarus the puzzle, the freak, the glory. Henry has difficulty believing literally in the miracle—that the stink turned back to sweet as the cells obeyed the divine command to function again, that Jesus reversed those four days.
A guard’s whistle. The stampede of passengers leaping back in.
The sound galvanises Henry and he finds himself on his feet—“Aha, I believe I see someone I know”—snatching his things from the net. Mademoiselle Guy looks up, puzzled, from The Human Beast as he nods to her and to her boss—Gaumont, was it?
He scrambles out and down and takes five strides along the platform to the steps of the other Second-Class carriage. The whistle sounds again, so he yanks open the door and practically throws himself in.
The young lady’s alone, he’s glad to see, and working at her typewriter—or, rather, frozen over the keys, staring at him. Henry’s muscled in, forcing a tête-à-tête. He musters his French: “Terribly sorry, mademoiselle. My carriage was very crowded.”
“That’s quite all right.” Her voice is sweet, but it’s clear that she wanted to be alone.
Henry fits his limbs into the corner diagonally across from her. What kind of thug is he to have barged in here and trapped her in this tin can with him for the next hour? This is the kind of behaviour that gives Americans a bad name.
The young lady starts to type again, with remarkable speed. Henry shuts his eyes and leans his head back, trying to absent himself and let the atmosphere seal up the rip he’s torn in it.
Mado lets down the window with a thump, sticks out her head, and cranes her neck to see past Rear First to where the new carriage has been hitched on. Her lunch bucket is held steady on the floor, clamped between her boots. She just needs to be quite sure that the one for whom the train’s made the special stop is on board.
“Monsieur,” she calls to the train guard, the younger one with the moustache, “he’s in that fancy carriage, is he?”
“Only one of them is.”
She stares, confused.
The guard points to the private carriage and then the green door of Rear First beside it. “It just so happens we’re honoured by the presence of two parliamentary members for Orne Department today.”
Mado’s heart leaps painfully in her chest. A pair of those bastards, and so close to where she’s sitting. This is a sign: the right day, the right train, and she’s the right one to do it.
Now , she tells herself. She should flip her device upside down this minute, while she’s powered by thrilled conviction. It’s the work of a moment. She reaches down, grasps the smooth cylindrical sides, picks it up, and sets it on her lap. Ready, Mado? Ready at long last?
The guard says something that’s drowned out by the engine’s steam whistle.
“What’s that?” she calls.
“And would you believe, mademoiselle, a third will be getting on at Surdon!”
Mado goggles at him.
A handbell rings farther up the platform. The guard blows the final whistle before climbing into Middle Third with a call of “Tickets, please,” and the train starts to move.
Very carefully, Mado sets her lunch bucket back down on the floor.