2.
It seems to me that there may come a day when steam locomotives and overnight sleeper trains are no more, and people travel from London to Scotland in a jiffy, rather than overnight. When that day comes, I wonder if there will be dewy-eyed romantic types who will eulogise about the “Golden Age of Railway Travel.” If you’re reading this in such a future, and someone says that to you, you can tell him from me that he is an ass.
The only real wonder about travelling on a train in which you are intended to sleep is the sheer impossibility of actually doing so. They place signs beside the railway line at intervals that say ‘WHISTLE’, and, when he sees it, the driver obediently hauls on the whistle chain and the engine lets out an ear-piercing shriek at precisely the moment when Bertram W Wragg might have fallen asleep.
Then there is the pointwork at Crewe Junction. Trains don’t traverse the pointwork at Crewe Junction. They lurch, bounce, and judder through the pointwork at Crewe Junction. The fact that the wheels scream as if every devil in hell has been unleashed is moderately academic, as the occupant of every bunk will have already been deposited on the floor by that time.
A bitter pill to swallow, when one has been torn from one’s own featherdown mattress and the deposited in this torture chamber by the icy hand of fate. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was dressed only in a rather snazzy set of silk pyjamas that I’d happened across at Claridge’s, I’d have said ‘To the devil with Jollyrei and Aunt Eulalia’, and hopped off at Crewe and caught the Up train to London and sanity.
So it was a very sorry specimen of Wragghood who presented himself in the dining car for breakfast the next morning. I ordered plenty of black coffee, and some bacon and eggs without any expectation that it would be anywhere close to that which Jeeves produces. I was right. I gazed morosely at the passing Scottish scenery as my piece of dry LMS toast bounced off the rubbery yolk of my LMS egg, cooked, I suspected, before the train had even left Euston. That’s the Golden Age of Railway Travel for you.
“Mind if I join you, Bertie?”
I looked up, and my heart went on strike for the next six beats. There was only one person in the world who could do that to my heart.
“Barb!” I cried, once the old ticker had restarted, “By Jove! I didn’t know you were on the train! I say, are you all right, old girl?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Bertie. Why do you ask?”
“I thought you sat down a bit gingerly?”
“It’s these railway seats.” That made sense. I flagged down a waiter, warning her off the bacon and eggs as I did so. She ordered coffee and muesli. She didn’t have a bacon and eggs figure, now I thought about it.
Once the negotiations with the waiter had been completed, she gazed at me. Once again, my heart did the Highland Fling, as she asked “So, Bertie, what are you doing travelling to Scotland?”
“Off to see my Aunt Eulalia; she, ah, she telephoned me last night.”
“Did she? Is she ill or something?”
“No, no, she’s as fit as a butcher’s dog, no, the fact is, um….”
“Come on Bertie, spit it out!”
“Well, the fact is, she was rather worried about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, apparently you and Thess dashed off with some Australian blighter!”
“Mr Phlebas is not ‘some Australian blighter’! He is a perfect gentleman. He couldn’t have been nicer to Thess and I. In fact,” she paused for effect, “Thessela is going to marry him!”
I reeled. “Thessela is going to marry Phlebas?”
“You should see her ring! It is truly magnificent!”
I opened and closed my mouth, but no sound came out.
“If you keep on looking like a fish, Bertie, your Aunt will have you pan fried for supper!”
“But….but…..”
“Bertie, do pull yourself together!”
“But’s she’s engaged to marry Jollyrei!”
“She was. That’s off. Phlebas, as you’ll no doubt recall, had a far better wrist action at Madame Messaline’s last year. And he owns a sheep farm the size of Wales.”
“But Jollyrei will be destitute! His estate went west on death duty…Thessela was his only hope!”
I pushed my uneaten bacon and eggs away. Poor Jollyrei. He’d doted on Thessela. And, just because Phlebas was a bit more experienced with a whip, and had a spot more land, she’d handed Jollyrei his cards. Dashed shame.
I sighed. “La donna è mobile,” I said.
“Pardon? I didn’t know you spoke Italian?”
“I don’t,” I said, “It’s a line from an opera. It means ‘women are fickle.’ I was thinking of poor Jollyrei.”
“Don’t give me ‘Women are fickle’, or ‘poor Jollyrei.’ ‘Poor Jollyrei’ wants your guts for garters.”
“Why? I thought he’d been a bit chilly lately, and that was before this blew up. What am I supposed to have done?”
“You only went and told Freddie Threepwood all about that business at Madamoiselle Thessela’s last year, didn’t you? And Freddie felt obliged to inform his mother. You will also recall,” she added dangerously, “that Lady Threepwood and your Aunt Eulalia are thick as thieves!”
I spat coffee all over the LMS’s clean tablecloth. Freddie was Thessela’s brother. Both he and Thess were kept on tight reins by their mother, Lady Threepwood. I remembered getting thoroughly drunk with Freddie at the Drones a few weeks ago. Had I let on about the fun we’d all had a Mlle Messalines whipping club last year, amongst the convivial conversation?
No wonder Jollyrei blamed me for everything! And I was riding towards certain doom! Aunt Eulalia will clap me in irons!
I suppose it can only go up from here then. On the other hand, Bertie is off trying to fix things...
