The Perfect Daughter (21 page)

A quarter of an hour before the train was due out a ticket collector opened the barrier and started grudgingly letting us through. As we shuffled forward a beautiful girl came flying up to the twitchy man and they hugged as if they'd been apart for years. The sailors behind me whistled, a few older women tut-tutted and I mentally crossed another one off my list. When I got to the barrier the inspector took my ticket, punched it and handed it back without a second glance. I'd considered going first class to be easier to find, but all that open space round me wouldn't give them the cover they needed. You had to understand their habits, like rearing pheasants. I walked halfway down the platform, got in at the door of a second-class coach and went along the corridor looking for an empty compartment. It turned out to be too much to ask. Although the train was going to be far from crowded, every compartment had at least one person in it. I glimpsed the sergeant-major sitting back smoking a pipe, looking uncurious and at ease with the world. A little way on from him was a compartment with only a man and woman sitting face to face in the window seats. I opened the door, said good afternoon and settled into one of the seats by the corridor with my bag on my knees. From there, I watched people as they came hurrying along the platform behind their porters, steam from the engine wafting round them. Then, a few minutes to half past, the late arrivals came sprinting, outdistancing the porters who refused to do anything as undignified as break into a run. Doors all along the train slammed like … like rifle shots into corrugated iron. Don't think about that now. Concentrate on what's happening out there. Only a minute to go. The guard stood with his green flag furled, whistle in mouth. A man and his suitcases were bundled in at the door nearest to the barrier. Then the green flag went up, the whistle blew. The couplings made their groaning, wincing sound as the strain came on them and we started moving, first at walking pace then picking up speed. Our carriage must have been nearly at the end of the platform when the brakes came on with a suddenness that sent us rocking forward in our seats and brought a bag thumping off the overhead rack. There was shouting from the platform at the barrier end.

‘It's all wrong,' the woman in the window seat said. ‘If people can't get here on time they shouldn't let them on.'

The man said nothing. I could see he was trying to wedge his false teeth back and looked away to let him get on with it. After a minute or two we started moving again. The platform fell away and there was only an expanse of rails shining in the sun, sooty brick walls on either side. The door from the corridor opened.

‘Excuse me, would you mind if I took one of these seats?'

A clergyman, quite young, curate probably. Surely even the watchers wouldn't …

‘I was in one of the compartments back there but there was a man with a most dreadful pipe and it does so aggravate my chest.'

He smiled and settled on the seat opposite me, considerately halfway between the window and the corridor to give us as much space as possible. The other man anchored his false teeth and stowed the bag back on the rack.

‘My sister's got a weak chest too,' the woman said. ‘Can't stand even the sniff of a pipe.'

You could tell she felt that even a junior clergyman raised the tone of the compartment. We were moving faster now, the grey-and-yellow-brick terraced houses of Bethnal Green flicking past the window. I got a magazine out of my bag and skimmed through it. There was a photograph of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, linked to a forthcoming visit to Sarajevo. I looked up and found the curate staring in my direction. He gave an apologetic little grimace and looked away.

‘You're welcome to a look at the magazine,' I said. ‘I've got plenty of other things.'

He thanked me and took it clumsily, committed to trying to read it whether that was what he wanted or not. We rattled past small factories and a few grimy rivers, then into open country after Brentwood with the fields managing to heave themselves into the corrugations that pass for hills in these parts and sheep grazing. We stopped at Chelmsford where a lot of people got out, including the couple in the window seats, leaving me and the curate alone in the carriage. When the train started again he gave me back the magazine.

‘Thank you. Very interesting.' Again, the apologetic little grimace.

‘Are you going all the way to Harwich?' I said.

‘Oh no, I'm getting out at Colchester.' Slightly shocked, as if I'd suggested some form of dissipation. Then, ‘Are you going to Harwich?'

‘I'm booked through to the Hook of Holland.'

‘Do you know people over there?'

‘A few.'

By now I was sure he wasn't my fish, so I threw him back into silence and hid behind
The Times.
I'd told him I was booked through to the Hook of Holland, as I try not to lie unless people deserve it. The ticket was in my bag, but that wasn't the same thing as going there. I was almost certain that the initials would move in on me before the boat sailed. On one hand, they might think it useful to follow me on to foreign soil and catch me delivering a package to my supposed accomplices. On the other, what could they do about it in Holland, Germany or Switzerland? Evidence of an intention to go abroad would be enough for them and they'd have that as soon as I walked through the customs shed at Harwich. There'd been an outside chance that they'd confront me at Liverpool Street but that hadn't suited them. If they were on the train with me they must deliberately be keeping their distance. It would be easy enough to find me if they wanted me. From their point of view, it might be easier to wait until Harwich.

*   *   *

We stopped for a long time at Colchester and took on water. The curate wished me
bon voyage
and left. I saw the sergeant-major figure marching along the platform towards the exit, which meant every one of my guesses had been wrong so far. When we pulled away from the platform I still had the compartment to myself. By now the heat was making me drowsy. I got up and walked along the corridor, peering shamelessly into compartments as I passed, but I knew I'd entirely lost faith in my ability to spot them. A few of the compartments had blinds drawn on the corridor side against the sun that was already well down in the west. It was quarter past nine by my watch. We were due into Parkeston Quay at Harwich at five to ten. My stomach churned. I was in for it now, with no stops scheduled between Colchester and Harwich. Even if you've been running around inviting the beast to pounce, it's hard to look forward to it. I went over in my mind for the hundredth time what I'd say, what I had to do to make them understand. We started slowing down. Surely not there already? I let down the window, smelt salt in the air and heard seagulls. There were fields of long grass stroked sideways by the breeze off the sea, gleaming like a lion's mane in the setting sun. We stopped alongside a platform. The sign said ‘Manningtree'. Nearly journey's end, but we weren't meant to stop there. We were on the estuary of the River Stour with Harwich Harbour at the end of it. I hung out of the window, trying to see if there was anything happening. A few heads were looking out of other windows. Nobody got in or out. There was nothing but the seagulls and the bumps and clanks of machinery cooling. I went back in the compartment and waited, wondering why we'd stopped there, looking out of the window on to the track. After a while there were steps along the corridor, loud and heavy, breaking the hush that settles inside a stopped train. The steps came to a halt at the open doorway of my compartment.

‘Excuse me, madam, are you for Harwich?'

A middle-aged ticket inspector, forehead sweating from his heavy uniform, a hat several sizes too small for him balanced on top of his head like a pat of butter on a teacake.

‘Yes.'

‘Train splits here, madam. This half goes on to Ipswich. Back half goes to Harwich.'

‘They didn't say anything about this at Liverpool Street.'

‘I'm sorry, madam.'

The regulation satchel slung at his waist was new, with a powerful smell of leather coming off it. He looked at me and waited. His face was surprisingly tanned for a man who worked inside but it had a blank, official look as if he always did what he was told. In his schooldays he'd probably been the ink monitor.

‘May I take your luggage, madam?'

The hand he stretched towards my bag was tanned like his face and looked stronger than it needed to be for punching tickets.

‘No thank you. I'll carry it myself.'

He stood back to let me out then followed me along the corridor. A door to the platform stood open.

‘That way, madam.'

‘Can't we just walk along the corridor?' It's such a suffocating feeling, handing yourself over to other people, that I was already kicking against it.

‘They've already uncoupled the carriages, madam.'

He said ‘madam' with a gulping sound. I was getting tired of it. We walked side by side down the platform. A few people inside the train looked at us curiously.

‘What about these other people?'

‘All going on to Ipswich, madam.'

He was right about the carriages being uncoupled. There was a gap between the main body of the train and the last two, both first class. The back one of the two had blinds pulled down over the windows. I looked up the line to the north and saw a cloud of steam and under it an engine shunting backwards towards us.

‘That's the one for Harwich, is it?'

‘Yes, madam.'

I nearly undid all the work there and then because I was so angry at being taken for a fool. My geography for this part of the world wasn't the strongest, but I did know which way the sea was. Off to my right, to the east. If the engine backed on to the last two carriages of this train we'd be pointing at right angles to it, northwards. I tightened my grip on my bag, ready to whirl round and run back into the part of the train I'd just left. He wasn't holding me. He couldn't wrestle with me on the platform with a dozen or so people leaning out of windows to watch. Only sanity said at the last minute: ‘Well, you wanted them and you've got them.' I walked on. He opened the nearest door in the two severed carriages and held it for me. When I went inside he climbed after me, opened the door to a compartment and again held it for me.

I said, ‘My ticket's only second class.'

‘That doesn't matter, madam.'

The last shred of doubt went. I tried to look as if I believed him.

‘We'll be going in a minute or two, madam.'

Then he went away down the corridor. A whistle blew and I watched through my stationary window as the rest of the train moved away from the platform, turned right at a junction and headed for Harwich and the Hook of Holland ferry that would steam into the North Sea minus at least one passenger. Then steam from the backward-shunting engine clouded the window and there were the usual jolts and clankings as our two carriages were joined on to it. The ink monitor hadn't been far out. We moved off in just over five minutes.

*   *   *

It was a conventionally luxurious first-class carriage, highly polished dark wood panels, three broad seats on either side with comfortable armrests in between and framed photographs of Clacton and Great Yarmouth above them, silver-grey upholstery that smelled only very faintly of soot. We drew slowly out of Manningtree then picked up speed quickly, which wasn't surprising as the engine had only two carriages to draw. At first we went alongside the estuary with its salt flats and flocks of swans in water turned to a sheet of copper by the setting sun, then inland through deep cuttings between birch woods with the dusk gathering. It was an easy run on a summer evening. All that was wrong with it was that there was no sign of any other passengers. I got up and walked along the corridor to the front of the carriage and there wasn't a man, woman or dog anywhere. When I walked back to where the two carriages joined, intending to check the other one, I found the ink monitor standing there in the shadows, blocking my way. If I'd asked him he might have moved but I doubted it.

‘Everything all right, madam?'

He was less anxious now, rather pleased with himself in fact.

‘When do we arrive?'

‘Soon be there, madam.'

I went back to my seat. The fields were giving way to houses, first just a scattering of them, then terraces. The train started slowing down. We were coming into somewhere, Ipswich probably, where a reception committee would be waiting. What I couldn't understand was why they were going to so much trouble. If they'd wanted to arrest me they could have done it at any time from Liverpool Street onwards. The expense and trouble of this – the Harwich express halted, this train to ourselves – was far out of proportion to anything I'd started, like walking through an ordinary doorway and finding yourself in the ogre's castle. We stopped for a few minutes on a raised piece of track with sidings to the left and a row of terraced houses below, soft gas-light glowing in their windows. Half past ten, the sun down, trees and buildings turning into dark shapes against the afterglow of a long summer's day. When we started moving again we took a turn to the left and crawled slowly across a dark river on a single-track metal bridge then into a large siding with expanses of rails gleaming on either side and mountains of coal where the rails ended. We moved alongside a rough platform made of old railway sleepers that looked as if it was meant for railway mechanics rather than passengers and stopped there with a long sigh of steam from the engine. I went out to the corridor. The ink monitor was standing there and I could smell the sweat coming off him.

‘Any minute now, madam.'

He heaved the words out painfully. I moved towards the door and put my hand on the leather strap that let the window down, knowing very well I wouldn't be allowed to get out but wanting to make something happen. There were heavy footsteps from the carriage I hadn't been allowed to go into and when I looked round reinforcements had arrived. Two men in plain clothes were standing behind the ink monitor. One of them was Yellow Boater, dressed today in pinstripes and bowler and carrying a lamp that sent shadows darting and diving along the corridor. The other man I hadn't seen before. He was older than the other two, tall and thin, with hair more grey than dark, and the look of a senior civil servant or a university don. He didn't stand up straight enough to be a retired military man but crouched slightly, heron-like, looking down his nose over half-glasses.