There was a train due in ten minutes, but this was described as
locale,
which meant that it would stop at almost every station. If he was prepared to wait for fifty minutes, there was an express train going directly to Milan. His instinct was to get away as fast as possible. His reason was against it. If a search was organised up and down the line, every intermediate station would be a danger point. Safer, in the long run, to wait.
It was a nerve-racking fifty minutes, which stretched to an hour, then to an hour and a quarter. David spent part of it in buying himself a panama hat, a pair of sunglasses and a cheap plastic briefcase, and the rest of it in the station buffet replacing lost moisture.
The shadows were already lengthening when a burst of activity announced the imminent arrival of the Bologna-Milano express. An official paced out on to the platform carrying a circular disc on the end of a stick, red on one side and green on the other. A boy wheeled out a trolley covered with drinks, sweets and newspapers. With important sighings and hissings the diesel-electric train slid into the station, and David climbed thankfully on board. He took his seat in the carriage just behind the engine.
The next hurdle was going to be the ticket barrier at Milan Central Station. There would be a lot of neutral observers around, and David reckoned that if any attempt was made to snatch him he could kick up enough fuss to attract attention and make things difficult for his assailants.
In fact, nothing happened at all, and David walked out into the station concourse with a feeling that he was now ahead of the game. Probably the opposition was still beating the coverts round Fontenellato. He hoped that they were getting good and hot. Speed was now going to be more effective than guile. He studied the timetable. The international express for Paris left at eight o’clock. He made for the ticket office. There were no
couchettes
left, but as the result of a last-minute cancellation there was a single
wagon-lit
apartment available. The thought of the privacy and the bed was irresistible. David had plenty of money with him. He booked the sleeper.
The next and most necessary step was to restore a measure of credibility to his appearance. He was aware that he looked more like a tourist who had been for a walk in the countryside than a respectable occupant of first-class accommodation in an international express.
Fortunately the shops were still open, so this was something that could be remedied.
At a men’s outfitters in the Via Bolognese he bought a light travelling coat, a grey felt hat, some shirts and a pair of rather attractive Cambridge blue silk pyjamas. At a chemist’s he replenished his washing-and-shaving kit. Then he selected, to carry his purchases, a flashy-looking imitation pigskin suitcase. To give it a bit of weight he stopped at a kiosk and bought half a dozen magazines and a pile of newspapers.
A final thought occurred to him. A restaurant car, as he had discovered, was due to join the train when it reached Switzerland, and he would be able to have a comfortable dinner—comfortable in every sense, since his immediate troubles would be over. Nevertheless, he stopped at the nearest food store, bought a pork pie, a slab of chocolate and a small bottle of brandy, and stowed them away in his briefcase. Emergency rations, he said to himself just in case he had to try an illicit frontier crossing on foot. He didn’t believe it. It was the gesture of a man who is thankful for a run of luck, but touches wood.
By this time it was a quarter past seven. He made his way back to the station, located his
wagon-lit
and settled down to wait. The minutes passed slowly. He heard other passengers coming in and occupying their compartments. The only thing which struck him as odd was the nonappearance of the
wagon-lit
conductor. This official was usually on hand to check passengers’ reservations, show them to their places and exact a tip.
It was nearly half an hour later that David became aware that something was happening.
He stepped into the corridor, lowered the window and peered cautiously out.
There was a group of half a dozen men on the platform. Two of them seemed to be station officials. The other two had the unmistakable look of policemen. There were three coaches of
couchettes
and
wagon-lits,
of which David’s was the farthest away from the barrier. As he looked, the four men climbed aboard the first of the coaches.
“Search party,” said David. “And they’ll be here inside five minutes.”
There was only one course open to him. He left his new suitcase on the bed and dropped his new hat and coat ostentatiously on top of it. The longer they thought he was somewhere on the train the better. Then, picking up his briefcase, he made his way along the corridor towards the far end of the train.
It was a long train. By the time he reached the head of it, he had put eight more coaches between himself and the pursuit. The engine had not yet been backed into position. The far end of the platform was dimly lit. David stepped out of the carriage and dropped down on to the line in front of the front coach.
His train was on the outer of six lines. He crossed the other five lines carefully and regained the far platform. He had two choices. To get back on to the station concourse and mingle with the crowd or to get on to the train which was standing farther down the platform.
It was a
locale,
second-class carriages only, and it was crowded enough to suggest that it was ready to start. David looked at the destination board. Lodi—Piacenza—Parma—Reggio Emilia—Bologna—Firenze.
“The hunted fox,” he said, “when hard-pressed, will sometimes find safety by doubling directly back on his tracks.”
He boarded the train, choosing a carriage which was already occupied by an Italian family. A mother, a father, a small girl, a smaller boy and a very small baby. Also a grandmother, a formidable grenadier with a moustache and a bonnet. David inserted himself between the father and the small girl, and the train moved off.
It seemed, to start with, that his intrusion was going to be resented, but, as happens on such occasions, the advent of mealtime broke the ice. Under the supervision of the grandmother a basket of provisions was brought down from the rack, portions of chicken leg and pasta were distributed, two bottles of wine were uncorked and an agreeable picnic got under way. David produced his own food and was invited to share in the wine. In return he distributed pieces of his chocolate, a gesture much appreciated by the boy, who coated his mouth and chin with a brown layer.
In the middle of the meal a ticket inspector arrived and prepared to take a serious view of the fact that David had boarded the train without a ticket. The grandmother took up the cudgels on his behalf. Whether this was because she approved of David or simply because she enjoyed an argument was not clear. She went straight over to the attack. There had been a long queue at the booking office, but only one of the ticket windows had been open. Why was that? If there was a long queue waiting, why was the second window not open? Was it because they were short of staff? It could hardly be that, when one considered the price one paid for a ticket—
At this point the inspector gave up. He accepted the money David was offering him and withdrew, slipping on a grape which the boy had dropped—an accident which caused general satisfaction.
By the time the train reached Bologna, David had discovered the names of the three children and of three other children who had been left at home, and had entertained them with an account of his misadventures on a walking tour in the Italian Alps. Between Bologna and Florence the children and the grandmother fell asleep, the mother cross-examined David about the cost of living in England and the father about the religious beliefs of the Welsh.
On arrival at Florence complicated arrangements had to be made to disembark the family. David, having one hand free, offered to carry the baby, an offer which was gratefully accepted. He walked out of the station and accompanied his new friends to the family flat in the Via Torta. They parted on the doorstep with expressions of mutual esteem, and David made for the nearest telephone booth. It was ten minutes short of midnight, but he did not think that the Aldinis were people who went to bed early.
Clarissa answered the telephone herself. She seemed pleased and unsurprised. Certainly there was a bed available. She couldn’t guarantee how soon he would get into it, as there was a bit of a party going on.
It turned out to be, apart from Clarissa, an all-male party, consisting of two architect colleagues of Carlo Aldini; a man with a bushy red beard, whom David supposed to be an artist, but who turned out to be the Assistant Procurator Fiscal of Glasgow; and a serious young man in steel-rimmed glasses whom David diagnosed, correctly this time, as an American professor.
It was the sort of party where everyone talks at once. David had now got his second wind. He talked to one of the architects about the scandal of modern office building, to the Procurator Fiscal about football and to the professor about a new theory that Shakespeare was the illegitimate son of Henry the Eighth. It was three o’clock when he tumbled into bed, wearing pyjamas borrowed from his host, and eleven o’clock when he opened his eyes to find Clarissa standing beside the bed with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“You could have something more elaborate if you liked,” she said, “but actually it’s nearly lunch time. And you can borrow Carlo’s shaving things—that is, if you don’t happen to have brought any with you.”
Her unconcern as to the reason for David’s unceremonious arrival was so splendid that it made him laugh. Clarissa laughed too. David thought she looked terrific and in any other circumstances would have invited her to jump straight into bed with him. He rejected the idea regretfully and said, “Sit down for a moment. I’m not going to tell you the story of the last few days, because you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve been engaged in my favourite pursuit of running away. It’s the thing I’m best at.”
“You did tell me that you never went into a restaurant without looking for a way out through the kitchen.”
“I’m looking for a way out now. Out of this God-forsaken country. I’ll need a bit of help.”
“All right,” said Clarissa placidly.
“Nothing criminal.”
“I’m glad about that. Italian prisons are places to keep out of, so my friends tell me.”
“If you look in the breast pocket of my coat you’ll find a passport. That’s the one.”
Clarissa examined it critically. She said, “It seems to belong to a man called Lewis Hobart.”
“A good type. I’m certain he won’t mind lending it to me for a day or two.”
“Won’t he be needing it himself?”
“They don’t bother to look at them at the Italian frontier. Sometimes not even at Calais. It’ll be wanted at Dover, but that’s tomorrow night, and I’ll be back in England by then, I hope.”
“You don’t look much like him.”
“Like enough. In passport photographs it’s only the externals that count. I’ll need a pair of tinted glasses with frames like his. You can buy them at any optician’s. Explain they’re for amateur theatricals. Then see if you can pick up a brown-and-white checked coat, like the one he was wearing when the photograph was taken. And some suntan lotion.”
“Also for amateur theatricals?”
“Right. He’s a bit balder than me, but if I comb my hair right back it should get past. Then you go to that travel agency in the Via Tornabuoni, I forget the name, but it’s next to the American Bank. See if you can book me a sleeper or a
couchette
on the night train from Livorno this evening. The one that goes to Marseilles.”
“In the name of Lewis Hobart.”
“Captain Lewis Hobart. Late of the King’s African Rifles.”
“Anything else?” said Clarissa, who was making a list.
“One or two things. I’ll need another suitcase. And some washing and shaving things. I don’t think I’ll bother about shirts this time.”
“What happened last time?”
“I had to leave them behind. Two shirts
and
a pair of Cambridge blue pyjamas.”
“You’d have looked very tasty in them,” agreed Clarissa.
“Oh, boy,” said David to himself. “This is a girl in ten thousand.”
“You’re a girl in ten thousand,” he said.
The arrival of Carlo saved him from what would unquestionably have been an indiscretion.
When Clarissa got back from her shopping expedition, having got all the things David had asked for, including a
wagon-lit
reservation on the Livorno train, she said, “I couldn’t help noticing that the
carabinieri
were clustered rather thickly round Central Station. They seemed to be particularly interested in English passengers. Why don’t I run you in my car to Empoli? Most of the Florence-Pisa trains stop there. No one will think of watching out for you in a small place like that. Then, if you get out at the stop before Pisa, you can take a bus into the town.”
“A girl in a hundred thousand,” said David.
The first part of the plan went well. He took an appropriate farewell of his guardian angel at the quiet end of Empoli Station platform and by three o’clock in the afternoon had reached Pisa, where he picked up a stopping train for Genoa. There was no sign of the opposition. He had dinner at the station restaurant and by nine o’clock he was sitting on the bed in his
wagon-lit
watching the Mediterranean coast slip past.
On one point he had made up his mind. He would not go to sleep until the train was out of Italy and over the French frontier. He had surrendered his passport and ticket and had filled in the customary declarations. In the ordinary way he would not be disturbed again.
He lay down on top of the made-up bed and devoted thought to the future. If he got back to England undetected, and he thought that the chances were now in his favour, he would have taken an important step forward on the tortuous track that he was following. No. That was wrong. Not forward. Downward. And it wasn’t a track, it was a ladder which he was descending. When you were on a ladder, it was dangerous to look down, particularly when the bottom of the ladder was resting in a pit of warm darkness.