Oh for heaven’s sake! Come on Ben, get a grip. You don’t have to keep asking me to make the decisions for you. I would probably have given the cat some tea and found a blanket for the cardboard box, but if I suggested that then I would once again start assuming responsibility for someone else’s actions. And I didn’t want to do that any longer.
I was already getting into the swing of being away from the daily routine, of seeing new things and enjoying the possibilities I could see in front of me. I didn’t want to be dragged back to the old way of thinking. I didn’t want that old life to impinge on this one. It was a new freedom, and I was enjoying it. Surely I was allowed a couple of weeks off?
5
Gare Austerlitz railway station certainly looked practical, with arched windows and ranks of bicycles chained up in racks outside. A gloomy staircase led up to platforms, where local turquoise and white trains sped off busily every few minutes, taking Parisians home or perhaps out for the evening to have some fun.
We found noticeboards where trains were leaving for exciting destinations and stared at them hungrily. Orléans, Briançon, Châteaudun and most excitingly Nice. We were booked to travel on the Intercités de Nuit – the sleeper train.
Eventually after a lot of false starts and bickering, we found the right platform, an empty bench and sat down. The train which we assumed was ours was there, but all the doors were locked. Never mind, it wouldn’t be long until we boarded and the next part of our adventure began.
Harriet pulled out her plastic wallet of notes and our tickets to recheck the details. We all had the necessary information on our phones but we had long ago decided that she was the most responsible of us, was used to herding groups of students about and should be our unofficial tour leader.
‘We are going first class, but don’t get too excited. It’s not theOrient Expresswith mahogany panelling and turn down service with a chocolate on your pillow,’ she said.
‘Nor will there be any murders, I hope. Or strange Belgian detectives,’ Anna added.
‘It’s a four-berth couchette, numbers 41, 42, 45 and 46, but I booked the whole compartment for us, otherwise we might have had a fourth person in with us.’
‘And it might have been a mysterious Russian princess with a penchant for Goethe and depressing poetry which she would sit up and read all night to us,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen that film far too many times.’
More people arrived on our platform, groups of students laughing and play-fighting, hardy-looking couples with walking poles and huge backpacks, a few family groups with small children with their own little zebra-striped suitcases. Perhaps they were on their way to visit relations for a holiday by the sea, or maybe they were going home after spending a week with a terrifyinggrandmèrein her child-unfriendly apartment in Saint Germain des Près.
I wondered if people looked at us in the same inquisitive way and wondered what three grey-haired women were doing on their own, what they would have thought of us, if indeed they saw us at all.
At last, a uniformed guard with a smart peaked cap with a red band around it came to unlock the doors and we all surged politely forward, all keen to get on and see what it was like.
The students went in a different direction, perhaps towards the reclining seats further down the train where they would have to sit up all night. But then they were young and more flexible than us.
We went to the first-class area where we found a serviceable, clean but rather dull compartment which looked absolutely nothing like theOrient Express. It was decorated in red and grey, with three of the four bunks set up, plastic bags filled with sleeping stuff and some little free gift pochettes. Even at my age this was very exciting indeed. I’d always been a sucker for that sort of thing.
Harriet and I were first in and plonked our bags on the two lower berths.
‘Shotgun. You’re the smallest, Anna, you can climb up to the top bunk,’ Harriet said firmly. ‘And with my knee…’
Anna clambered up the metal ladder and sat with her feet dangling over the edge.
‘Oh, you and your flipping knee! It’s not that bad up here actually,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope these support straps don’t collapse during the night.’
There were our nice little amenity kits to investigate which came complete with a bottle of mineral water. There were earplugs, an eye mask and even some rather shapeless, grey sleep socks. There wasn’t really anything to do then except investigate the bedding, click the reading lights on and off and wait for the train to move.
After a while we went out into the corridor again to pull the window down and look out at the platform where people were still boarding the train. After that I went to walk the length of a few carriages, catching glimpses of people trying to fit into the six-berth couchettes and arguing about their luggage, the lads sitting in the reclining seats with their filled baguettes and jumbo packs of crisps laid out across the tables. They had a giant bottle of cola, some beer cans and a multipack of chocolate bars too. I’d noticed that young men were always eating. Any hour of the day or night, they were always hungry. There were bicycles chained up on a bike rack too which they looked at protectively as I walked past.
And then I went back into our couchette where Harriet was adjusting the support bandage around her knee and Anna was sitting on my bed looking at a map. Then, hoping for some entertainment, we read the instruction board on the back of our sliding door. There were things about evacuation plans in case of emergencies, not smoking, locks and details of the air-conditioning, so we fiddled with all those switches again until one of the surrounds fell off and we wedged it back on again with some tissue paper. At the end of the corridor was a loo and washroom, which we also investigated.
‘There’s no dining car?’ Anna said.
‘No, I did tell you. But I do have this,’ Harriet said, pulling out a plastic bottle of red wine from her backpack.
‘And I have these,’ I said, displaying a tube of Pringles.
‘And we have these,’ Anna said, and she pulled out a bag of Smarties and a pack of playing cards with pictures of dogs on the back, ‘so we are set for a jolly evening. We can play poker!’
‘I haven’t played that for years,’ I said.
‘Even better.’ Harriet smiled.
* * *
