The Edge (37 page)

I went with them. The two groups greeted each other without fuss. The race train lot seemed to take it for granted that the Canadian would stop in time. They didn’t discuss flares, but hot boxes.

The journal-box which held the near side end of the rearmost of the six axles of the horse car had overheated, and it had overheated because, they surmised, the oil inside had somehow leaked away. That’s what was usually wrong, when this happened. They hadn’t yet opened it. It no longer glowed red, but was too hot to touch. They were applying fresh snow all the time. Another ten minutes, perhaps.

‘Where’s George Burley?’ I asked.

The race train baggage handler said no one could find him, but two sleeping car attendants were still searching for him. He told the others that it was a good thing he’d happened to be travelling in the horse car. He had smelled the hot axle, he said. He’d smelled that smell once before. Terrible smell, he said. He’d gone straight forward to tell the engineer to stop at once. ‘Otherwise the axle would have broken and we could have had a derailment.’

The others nodded. They all knew.

‘Did you warn any of the passengers?’ I asked.

‘What? No, no, no need to wake them up.’

‘But … the Canadian might not have stopped …’

‘Of course it would, when it saw the fusees.’

Their faith amazed and frightened me. The Conductor of the Canadian said that he would radio ahead to Kamloops and both trains would stop there again, where there were multiple tracks, not just the one. Kamloops, he thought, would be getting worried soon that the race train hadn’t arrived, and he went off to inform them.

I walked back behind the horse car and boarded the race train, and almost immediately met George’s assistant who was walking forwards.

‘Where’s George?’ I said urgently.

He was worried. ‘I can’t find him.’

‘There’s one place he might be.’ And please let him be there, I thought. Please don’t let him be lying miles back in some dreadful condition beside the track.

‘Where?’ he said.

‘In one of the bedrooms. Look up the list. In Johnson’s bedroom.’

‘Who?’

‘Johnson.’

Another sleeping car attendant happened to arrive at that point.

‘I still can’t find him,’ he said.

‘Do you know where Johnson’s room is?’ I asked anxiously.

‘Yes, nearly next to mine. Roomette, it is.’

‘Then let’s look there.’

‘You can’t go into a passenger’s room in the middle of the night,’ he protested.

‘If Johnson’s there, we’ll apologise.’

‘I can’t think why you think George might be there,’ he grumbled, but he led the way back and pointed to a door. ‘That’s his.’

I opened it. George was lying on the bed, squirming in ropes, fighting against a gag. Very much alive.

Relieved beyond measure, I pulled off the gag which was a wide band of adhesive plaster firmly stuck on.

‘Dammit, that hurt, eh?’ George said. ‘What took you so long?’

George sat in his office, grimly drinking hot tea and refusing to lie down. He was concussed, one could see from his eyes, but he would not admit that the blow to his head that had knocked him out had had any effect. As soon as he was free of the ropes and had begun to understand about the hot box, he had insisted that he and the Conductor from the Canadian had a talk together in the forward dome car of the race train, a meeting attended by various other crew members and myself.

The despatcher in Kamloops, the Canadian’s Conductor reported, had said that as soon as the race train could set off again, it would proceed to Kamloops. The Canadian would follow ten minutes later. They would also alert a following freight train. The race train would remain at Kamloops for an hour. The Canadian would leave Kamloops first so that it fell as little behind its timetable as possible. After all the journal-boxes of the race train had been checked for heat, it would go on its way to Vancouver. There wouldn’t be any enquiry at Kamloops as it would be past three in the morning – Sunday morning – by then. The enquiry would take place at Vancouver.

Everyone nodded. George looked white, as if he wished he hadn’t moved his head.

The race train’s engineer came to say that the box had been finally opened, it had been dry and the oily waste had burned away, but all
was now well, it was cool and filled again, it was not dripping out underneath, and the train could go on.

They wasted no time. The Canadian’s crew left and the race train was soon on the move again as if nothing had happened. I went with George to his office and then fetched him the tea, and he groggily demanded I tell him from start to finish what was going on.

‘You tell me first how you came to be knocked out,’ I said.

‘I can’t remember. I was walking up to see the engineers.’ He looked puzzled. ‘First thing I knew, I was lying there trussed up. I was there for ages. Couldn’t understand it.’ He hadn’t a chuckle left in him. ‘I was in Johnson’s roomette, they said. Johnson did it, I suppose. Jumped me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Heaven knows.’ I told George about Johnson’s attacking me and how I’d left him, and how I hadn’t seen him anywhere on the way back.

‘Two possibilities,’ George said. ‘Three, I suppose. Either he buggered off somewhere or he’s getting a ride on the Canadian right now.’

I stared. Hadn’t thought of that. ‘What’s the third?’ I asked.

A tired gleam crept into George’s disorientated eyes. ‘The mountain where we stopped,’ he said. ‘That was Squilax Mountain. Squilax is the Indian word for black bear.’

I swallowed. ‘I didn’t see any bears.’

‘Just as well.’

I didn’t somehow think Johnson had been eaten by a bear. I couldn’t believe in it. I thought I must have been crazy, but I hadn’t believed in bears all the time I’d been out there on black bear mountain.

‘Know something?’ George said. ‘The new rolling stock can’t easily get hot boxes, the axles run in ball-bearings, eh?, not oily waste. Only old cars like the horse car will always be vulnerable. Know what? You bet your life Johnson took most of the waste out of that box when we stopped in Revelstoke.’

‘Why do you say oily waste?’ I asked.

‘Rags. Rags in the oil. Makes a better cushion for the axle than plain oil. I’ve known one sabotaged before, mind. Only that time they didn’t just take the rags out, they put iron filings in, eh? Derailed the train. Another railwayman with a grudge, that was. But hot boxes do happen by accident. They’ve got heat sensors with alarm systems beside the track in some places, because of that. How did that Johnson ever think he’d get away with it?’

‘He doesn’t know we have a photo of him.’

George began to laugh and thought better of it. ‘You kill me, Tommy. But what was my assistant thinking of, sending you off with the fusees? It was his job, eh? He should have gone.’

‘He said I’d go faster.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose he was right. But you weren’t really crew.’

‘He’d forgotten,’ I said. ‘But I thought he might have warned the Lorrimores …. and everyone else … to get them out of danger.’

George considered it. ‘I’m not going to say he should. I’m not going to say he shouldn’t.’

‘Railwaymen stick together?’

‘He’s coming up to his pension. And no one was as much as jolted off their beds, eh?’

‘Lucky.’

‘Trains always stop for flares,’ he said comfortably.

I left it. I supposed one couldn’t lose a man his pension for not doing something that had proved unnecessary.

We ran presently into Kamloops where the axles were all checked, the radio was replaced, and everything else went according to plan. Once we were moving again, George finally agreed to lie down in his clothes and try to sleep; and two doors along from him I tried the same.

Things always start hurting when one has time to think about them. The dull ache where Johnson’s piece of wood had landed on the back of my left shoulder was intermittently sharply sore: all right when I was standing up, not so good lying down. A bore. It would be stiffer still, I thought, in the morning. A pest for serving breakfast.

I smiled to myself finally. In spite of Johnson’s and Filmer’s best efforts, the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train might yet limp without disaster to Vancouver.

Complacency, I should have remembered, was never a good idea.

It was discomfort as much as anything which had me on my feet again soon after six. Emil wouldn’t have minded if I’d been late, as few of the passengers were early breakfasters, but I thought I’d do better in the dining car. I stripped off the waistcoat and shirt for a wash and a shave, and inspected in the mirror as best I could the fairly horrifying bruise already colouring a fair-sized area across my back. Better than on my head, I thought resignedly. Look on the bright side.

I put on a clean shirt and the spare clean waistcoat and decided that this was one VIA Rail operative who was not going to polish his shoes that morning, despite the wear and tear on them from the night’s excursions. I brushed my hair instead. Tommy looked tidy enough, I thought, for his last appearance.

It wasn’t yet light. I went forward through the sleeping train to the kitchen where Angus was not only awake but singing Scottish ballads at the top of his voice while filling the air with the fragrant yeasty smell of his baking. The dough, it seemed, had risen satisfactorily during the night.

Emil, Oliver, Cathy and I laid the tables and set out fresh flowers in the bud vases, and in time, with blue skies appearing outside, poured coffee and ferried sausages and bacon. The train stopped for a quarter of an hour in a place called North Bend, our last stop before Vancouver, and ran on down what the passengers were knowledgeably calling Fraser Canyon. Hell’s Gate, they said with relish, lay ahead.

The track seemed to me to be clinging to the side of a cliff. Looking out of the window by the kitchen door, one could see right down to a torrent rushing between rocky walls, brownish tumbling water with foam edged waves. The train, I was pleased to note, was negotiating this extraordinary feat of engineering at a suitably circumspect crawl. If it went too fast round these bends, it would fly off into space.

I took a basket of bread down to the far end just as Mercer Lorrimore came through from the dome car. Although Cathy was down
there also, he turned from her to me and asked if I could possibly bring hot tea through to his own car.

‘Certainly, sir. Any breads?’

He looked vaguely at the basket. ‘No. Just tea. For three of us.’ He nodded, turned and went away. Cathy raised her eyebrows and said with tolerance, ‘Chauvinist pig.’

Emil shook his head a bit over the private order but made sure the tray I took looked right from his point of view, and I swayed through on the mission.

The lockable door in the Lorrimores’ car was open. I knocked on it, however, and Mercer appeared in the far doorway to the saloon at the rear.

‘Along here, please.’

I went along there. Mercer, dressed in a suit and tie, gestured to me to put the tray on the coffee table. Bambi wasn’t there. Sheridan sprawled in an armchair in jeans, trainers and a big white sweatshirt with the words
MAKE WAVES
on the front.

I found it difficult to look at Sheridan pleasantly. I could think of nothing but cats. He himself still wore the blank look of the evening before, as if he had opted out of thinking.

‘We’ll pour,’ Mercer said. ‘Come back in half an hour for the tray.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I left them and returned to the dining car. The chill within Bambi, I thought, was because of the cats.

Nell and Xanthe had arrived during my absence.

‘My goodness, you look grim,’ Nell exclaimed, then, remembering, said more formally, ‘Er … what’s for breakfast?’

I got rid of the grimness and handed her the printed menu. Xanthe said she would have everything that was going.

‘Has George told you that we’re running late?’ I asked Nell.

‘No. His door was shut. Are we? How much?’

‘About an hour and a half.’ I forestalled her question. ‘We had to stop in the night at Kamloops to get George’s radio fixed, and then we had to wait there for the Canadian to go ahead of us.’

‘I’d better tell everyone, then. What time do we get to Vancouver?’

‘About eleven-thirty, I think.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

I almost said, ‘Be my guest,’ but not quite. Tommy wouldn’t. Nell’s eyes were smiling, all the same. Cathy chose that exact moment to go past me with a tray of breakfasts: or not exactly past, but rather against me where it seemed to hurt most.

‘Sorry,’ she said contritely, going on her way.

‘It’s OK.’

It was difficult always to pass in the swaying aisle without touching. Couldn’t be helped.

Filmer came into the dining room and sat at the table nearest to the kitchen, normally the least favourite with the passengers. He looked as if he’d spent a bad night. ‘Here, you,’ he said abruptly at my approach, having apparently abandoned the mister-nice-guy image.

‘Yes, sir?’ I said.

‘Coffee,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I gave Xanthe’s order to Simone who was stiffly laying a baking sheet of sausages in the oven in silent protest at life in general, and I took the coffee pot, on a tray, to Filmer.

‘Why did we stop in the night?’ he demanded.

‘I believe it was to fix the radio, sir.’

‘We stopped twice,’ he said accusingly. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I expect the Conductor could tell you.’

I wondered what he’d do if I said, ‘Your man Johnson nearly succeeded in wrecking the train with you in it.’ It struck me then that perhaps his enquiry was actually anxiety: that he wanted to be told that nothing dangerous had happened. He did seem marginally relieved by my answer and I resisted the temptation of wiping out all that relief by telling him that the radio had been sabotaged, because the people at the next table were listening also. Spreading general gloom and fright was not in my brief. Selective gloom, selective fright … sure.

Others, it seemed, had noticed the long stops-in the night, but no one seriously complained. No one minded letting the Canadian go on in front. The general good humour and the party atmosphere prevailed and excused everything. The train ride might be coming to an end, but meanwhile there was the spectacular gorge outside to be exclaimed over, the city of Vancouver to be looked forward to, the final race to promise a sunburst of a conclusion. The Great Transcontinental Race Train, they were saying, had been just that: Great.