Stamboul Train Read online

  ‘A doctor.’

  She opened her eyes in astonishment and the world cleared. It was she who was lying in the corridor and the stranger who bent over her. ‘Did I faint?’ she asked. ‘It was very cold.’ She was aware of the heavy slow movement of the train. Lights streamed through the window across the doctor’s face and on to the young Jew behind. Myatt. My’at. She laughed to herself in sudden contentment. It was as though, for the moment, she had passed to another all responsibility. The train lurched to a standstill, and the Jew was thrown against the wall. The doctor had not stirred. If he had swayed it was with the movement of the train and not against it. His eyes were on her face, his finger on her pulse; he watched her with a passion which was trembling on the edge of speech, but she knew that it was not passion for her or any attribute of her. She phrased it to herself: If I’d got Mistinguett’s legs, he wouldn’t notice. She asked him, ‘What is it?’ and lost all his answer in the voices crying down the platform and the entrance of blue uniformed men but ‘my proper work.’

  ‘Passports and luggage ready,’ a foreign voice called to them, and Myatt spoke to her, asking for her bag: ‘I’ll see to your things.’ She gave him her bag and helped by the doctor sat up against the wall.

  ‘Passport?’

  The doctor said slowly, and she became aware for the first time of his accent: ‘My bags are in the first class. I can’t leave this lady. I am a doctor.’

  ‘English passport?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right.’ Another man came up to them. ‘Luggage?’

  ‘Nothing to declare.’ The man went on.

  Coral Musker smiled. ‘Is this really the frontier? Why, one could smuggle anything in. They don’t look at the bags at all.’

  ‘Anything,’ the doctor said, ‘with an English passport.’ He watched the man out of sight and said nothing more until Myatt returned. ‘I could go back to my carriage now,’ she said.

  ‘Have you a sleeper?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you getting out at Cologne?’

  ‘I’m going all the way.’

  He gave her the same advice as the purser had done. ‘You should have had a sleeper.’ The uselessness of it irritated her and made her for a moment forget her pity for his age and anxiety. ‘How could I have a sleeper? I’m in the chorus.’ He flashed back at her with astonishing bitterness, ‘No, you have not the money.’

  ‘What shall I do?’ she asked him. ‘Am I ill?’

  ‘How can I advise you?’ he protested. ‘If you were rich I should say: Take six months’ holiday. Go to North Africa. You fainted because of the crossing, because of the cold. Oh yes, I can tell you all that, but that’s nothing. Your heart’s bad. You’ve been overstraining it for years.’

  She implored him, a little frightened, ‘But what shall I do?’ He opened his hands: ‘Nothing. Carry on. Take what rest you can. Keep warm. You wear too little.’

  A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement. The station lamps sailed by them into darkness, and the doctor turned to leave her. ‘If you want me again, I’m three coaches farther up. My name is John. Dr John.’ She said with intimated politeness, ‘Mine’s Coral Musker.’ He gave her a little formal foreign bow and walked away. She saw in his eyes other thoughts falling like rain. Never before had she the sensation of being so instantly forgotten. ‘A girl that men forget,’ she hummed to keep up her courage.

  But the doctor had not passed out of hearing before he was stopped. Treading softly and carefully along the shaking train, a hand clinging to the corridor rail, came a small pale man. She heard him speak to the doctor, ‘Is anything the matter? Can I help?’ He was a foot shorter and she laughed aloud at the sight of his avid face peering upwards. ‘You mustn’t think me inquisitive,’ he said, one hand on the other’s sleeve. ‘A clergyman in my compartment thought someone was ill.’ He added with eagerness, ‘I said I’d find out.’

  Up and down, up and down the corridor she had seen the doctor walking, clinging to its emptiness in preference to a compartment shared. Now, through no mistake on his part, he found himself in a crowd, questions and appeals sticking to his mind like burrs. She expected an outbreak, some damning critical remark which would send the fellow quivering down the corridor.

  The softness of his reply surprised her. ‘Did you say a priest?’

  ‘Oh no,’ the man apologized, ‘I don’t know yet what sect, what creed. Why? Is somebody dying?’

  Dr John seemed to become aware of her fear and called down the corridor a reassurance before he brushed by the detaining hand. The little man remained for a moment in happy possession of a situation. When he had tasted it to the full, he approached. ‘What’s it all about?’

  She took no notice, appealing to the only friendly presence she was left with. ‘I’m not sick like that, am I?’

  ‘What intrigues me,’ the stranger said, ‘is his accent. You’d say he was a foreigner, but he gave an English name. I think I’ll follow him and talk.’

  Her mind had worked clearly since she fainted; the sight of a world reversed, in which it had been the doctor who lay beneath her needing pity and care, had made the old images of the world sharp with unfamiliarity; but words lagged behind intuition, and when she appealed ‘Don’t bother him,’ the stranger was already out of hearing.

  ‘What do you think?’ Myatt asked. ‘Is he right? Is there a mystery?’

  ‘We’ve all got some secrets,’ she said.

  ‘He might be escaping the police.’

  She said with absolute conviction, ‘He’s good.’ He accepted the phrase; it dismissed the doctor from his thoughts. ‘You must lie down,’ he said, ‘and try to sleep,’ but it did not need her evasive reply, ‘How can I sleep with that woman and her stomach?’ to remind him of Mr Peters lurking in his corner for her return and the renewal of his cheap easy harmless satisfactions. ‘You must have my sleeper.’

  ‘What? In the first class?’ Her disbelief and her longing decided him. He determined to be princely on an Oriental scale, granting costly gifts and not requiring, not wanting, any return. Parsimony was the traditional reproach against his race, and he would show one Christian how undeserved it was. Forty years in the wilderness, away from the flesh-pots of Egypt, had entailed harsh habits, the counted date and the hoarded water, nor had a thousand years in the wilderness of a Christian world, where only the secret treasure was safe, encouraged display; but the world was altering, the desert was flowering; in stray corners here and there, in western Europe, the Jew could show that other quality he shared with the Arab, the quality of the princely host, who would wash the feet of beggars and feed them from his own dish; sometimes he could cease to be the enemy of the rich to become the friend of any poor man who sought a roof in the name of God. The roar of the train faded from his consciousness, the light went out in his eyes, while he built for his own pride the tent in the oasis, the well in the desert. He spread his hands before her. ‘Yes, you must sleep there. I’ll arrange with the guard. And my coat—you must take that. It will keep you warm. At Cologne I’ll find you coffee, but it will be better for you to sleep.’

  ‘But I can’t. Where will you sleep?’

  ‘I shall find somewhere. The train’s not full.’ For the second time she experienced an impersonal tenderness, but it was not frightening as the first had been; it was a warm wave into which she let herself down, not too far, if she felt afraid, for her feet to be aware of the sand, but only far enough to float her without effort on her own part where she wanted to go—to a bed and a pillow and a covering and sleep. She had an impression of how grace came back to him with confidence, as he ceased to apologize or to assert and became only a ministering shadow.

  Myatt did not go to find the guard but wedged himself between the walls of corridor and compartment, folded his arms and prepared to sleep. But without his coat it was very cold. Although all the windows of the corridor were shut, a draught blew past the swing door and over the footboard joining coac
h to coach. Nor were the noises of the train regular enough now to be indistinguishable from silence. There were many tunnels between Herbesthal and Cologne, and in each the roar of the express was magnified. Myatt slept uneasily, and the rush of the loosed steam and the draught on his cheek contributed to his dream. The corridor became the long straight Spaniards Road with the heath on either side. He was being driven slowly by Isaacs in his Bentley, and they watched the girls’ faces as they walked in pairs along the lamplit eastern side, shopgirls offering themselves dangerously for a drink at the inn, a fast ride, and the fun of the thing; on the other side of the road, in the dark, on a few seats, the prostitutes sat, shapeless and shabby and old, with their backs to the sandy slopes and the thorn bushes, waiting for a man old and dumb and blind enough to offer them ten shillings. Isaacs drew up the Bentley under a lamp and they let the anonymous young beautiful animal faces stream by. Isaacs wanted someone fair and plump and Myatt someone thin and dark, but it was not easy to pick and choose, for all along the eastern side were lined the cars of their competitors, girls leaning across the open doors laughing and smoking; on the other side of the road a single two-seater kept patient watch. Myatt was irritated by Isaacs’ uncompromising taste; it was cold in the Bentley with a draught on the cheek, and presently when he saw Coral Musker walking by, he jumped from the car and offered her a cigarette and after that a drink and after that a ride. That was one advantage with these girls, Myatt thought; they all knew what a ride meant, and if they didn’t care for the look of you, they just said that they had to be going home now. But Coral Musker wanted a ride; she would take him for her companion in the dark of the car, with the lamps and the inns and the houses left behind and trees springing up like paper silhouettes in the green light of the head-lamps, and then the bushes with the scent of wet leaves holding the morning’s rain and a short barbarous enjoyment in the stubble. As for Isaacs, he must just put up with his companion, although she was dark and broad and lightly clothed, with a great nose and prominent pointed teeth. But when she was seated next to Isaacs in the front of the car she turned and gave him a long smile, saying, ‘I’ve come out without a card, but my name’s Stein.’ And then in the teeth of the wind he was climbing a great stair with silver and gilt handrails, and she stood at the top wearing a small moustache, pointing to a woman who sat sewing, sewing, sewing, and called out to him: ‘Meet Mrs Eckman.’

  Coral Musker flung her hand away from the blankets in protest, as she danced and danced and danced in the glare of the spotlight, and the producer struck at her bare legs with a cane, telling her she was no good, that she was a month late, that she’d broken her contract. And all the time she danced and danced and danced, taking no notice of him while he beat at her legs with the cane.

  Mrs Peters turned on her face and said to her husband, ‘That beer. My stomach won’t be quiet. It makes so much noise, I can’t sleep.’

  Mr Opie dreamed that in his surplice with cricket bat under his arm and batting-glove dangling from his wrist he mounted a great broad flight of marble steps towards the altar of God.

  Dr John asleep at last with a bitter tablet dissolving on his tongue spoke once in German. He had no sleeper and sat bolt upright in the corner of his compartment, hearing outside the slow singing start, ‘Köln. Köln. Köln.’

  PART TWO

  COLOGNE

  I

  ‘But of course, dear, I don’t mind your being drunk,’ said Janet Pardoe. The clock above Cologne station struck one, and a waiter began to turn out the lights on the terrace of the Excelsior. ‘Look, dear, let me put your tie straight.’ She leant across the table and adjusted Mabel Warren’s tie.

  ‘We’ve lived together for three years,’ Miss Warren began to say in a deep melancholy voice, ‘and I have never yet spoken to you harshly.’

  Janet Pardoe put a little scent behind her ears. ‘For heaven’s sake, darling, look at the time. The train leaves in half an hour, and I’ve got to get my bags, and you’ve got to get your interview. Do drink up your gin and come along.’

  Mabel Warren took her glass and drank. Then she rose and her square form swayed a little; she wore a tie and a stiff collar and a tweed ‘sporting’ suit. Her eyebrows were heavy, and her eyes were dark and determined and red with weeping.

  ‘You know why I drink,’ she protested.

  ‘Nonsense, dear,’ said Janet Pardoe, making certain in her compact mirror of the last niceties of appearance, ‘you drank long before you ever met me. Have a little sense of proportion. I shall only be away a week.’

  ‘These men,’ said Miss Warren darkly, and then as Janet Pardoe rose to cross the square, she gripped her arm with extraordinary force. ‘Promise me you’ll be careful. If only I could come with you.’ Almost on the threshold of the station she stumbled in a puddle. ‘Oh, see what I’ve done now. What a great clumsy thing I am. To splash your beautiful new suit.’ With a large rough hand, a signet ring on the small finger, she began to brush at Janet Pardoe’s skirt.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, come on, Mabel,’ Janet said.

  Miss Warren’s mood changed. She straightened herself and barred the way. ‘You say I’m drunk. I am drunk. But I’m going to be drunker.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘You are going to have one more drink with me or I shan’t let you on the platform.’

  Janet Pardoe gave way. ‘One. Only one, mind.’ She guided Mabel Warren across a vast black shining hall into a room where a few tired men and women were snatching cups of coffee. ‘Another gin,’ said Miss Warren, and Janet ordered it.

  In a mirror on the opposite wall Miss Warren saw her own image, red, tousled, very shoddy, sitting beside another and far more familiar image, slim, dark, and beautiful. What do I matter? she thought, with the melancholy of drink. I’ve made her, I’m responsible for her, and with bitterness, I’ve paid for her. There’s nothing she’s wearing that I haven’t paid for; sweated for, she thought (although the bitter cold defied the radiators in the restaurant), getting up at all hours, interviewing brothel-keepers in their cells, the mothers of murdered children, ‘covering’ this and ‘covering’ that. She knew with a certain pride that they said in the London office: ‘When you want sob-stuff, send Dizzy Mabel.’ All the way down the Rhine was her province; there wasn’t a town of any size between Cologne and Mainz where she hadn’t sought out human interest, forcing dramatic phrases onto the lips of sullen men, pathos into the mouths of women too overcome with grief to speak at all. There wasn’t a suicide, a murdered woman, a raped child who had stirred her to the smallest emotion; she was an artist to examine critically, to watch, to listen; the tears were for paper. But now she sat and wept with ugly grunts because Janet Pardoe was leaving her for a week.

  ‘Who is it you are interviewing?’ Janet Pardoe asked. She was not at all interested, but she wanted to distract Mabel Warren from thoughts of separation; her tears were too conspicuous. ‘You ought to comb your hair,’ she added. Miss Warren wore no hat and her black hair, cut short like a man’s, was hopelessly dishevelled.

  ‘Savory,’ said Miss Warren.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Sold a hundred thousand copies. The Great Gay Round. Half a million words. Two hundred characters. The Cockney Genius. Drops his aitches when he can remember to.’

  ‘What’s he doing on the train?’

  ‘Going East to collect material. It’s not my job, but as I was seeing you off, I took it on. They’ve asked me for a quarter of a column, but they’ll cut it down to a couple of sticks in London. He’s chosen the wrong time. In the silly season he’d have got half a column among the mermaids and sea-horses.’ The flare of professional interest guttered as she looked again at Janet Pardoe: no more of a morning would she see Janet in pyjamas pouring out coffee, no more of an evening come in to the flat and find Janet in pyjamas mixing a cocktail. She said huskily, ‘Darling, which pair will you be wearing tonight?’ The feminine question sounded oddly in Miss Warren’s deep masculine voice.

/>   ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Pyjamas, darling. I want to think of you tonight just as you are.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I shall even undress. Look, it’s a quarter past one. We must go. You’ll never get your interview.’

  Miss Warren’s professional pride was touched. ‘You don’t think I need to ask him questions?’ she said. ‘Just a look at him and I’ll put the right words in his mouth. And he won’t complain either. It’s publicity.’

  ‘But I must find the porter with my bags.’ Everyone was leaving the restaurant. As the door opened and closed the cries of porters, the whistle of steam, came faintly down to where they sat. Janet Pardoe appealed again to Miss Warren. ‘We must go. If you want any more gin I shall leave you to it.’ But Miss Warren said nothing, Miss Warren ignored her; Janet Pardoe found herself attending one of the regular rites of Mabel Warren’s journalistic career, the visible shedding of her drunkenness. First a hand put the hair into order, then a powdered handkerchief, her compromise with femininity, disguised the redness of her cheeks and lids. All the while she was focusing her eyes, using whatever lay before her, cups, waiter, glasses and so to the distant mirrors and her own image, as a kind of optician’s alphabetic scroll. On this occasion the first letter of the alphabet, the great black A, was an elderly man in a mackintosh, who was standing beside a table brushing away his crumbs before leaving to catch the train.

  ‘My God,’ said Miss Warren, covering her eyes with her hand, ‘I’m drunk. I can’t see properly. Who’s that there?’

  ‘The man with the moustache?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘I have,’ said Miss Warren, ‘I have. But where?’ Something had diverted her effectually from the thought of separation; her nose was on a scent and leaving half a finger of gin in the bottom of her glass, she strode in the man’s wake to the door. He was out and walking quickly across the black shining hall to a flight of stairs before Miss Warren could extricate herself from the swing door. She crashed into a porter and fell on her knees, swaying her head, trying to free it from the benevolence, the melancholy, the vagueness of drink. He stopped to help her and she seized his arm and stayed him until she could control her tongue. ‘What train leaves platform five?’ she asked. ‘Vienna,’ the man said.