Trains and Lovers: A Novel (3 page)

Of course we had no idea of how pretentious we were, and now, when I think back, even if only it’s a year or two ago, I shudder with embarrassment. But perhaps that’s not unusual. Perhaps it’s a healthy sign to feel that way on the contemplation of one’s earlier self; perhaps not to do so is a sign that one has not developed much self-awareness.

In the back of my mind, of course, was the understanding that it would be very unlikely that I would be able to find a job in the art world. I knew that the odds against doing so were discouraging, but somehow I managed to ignore this knowledge. Something would turn up.

And it did.

THEY HAD ALL BEEN LISTENING TO THE YOUNG
man, but it was Kay who had been listening
and
watching. She had looked at his eyes, and noted their colour. She had wondered how she would describe them if she had been writing a diary, which was something she had been thinking of doing on this trip but had not got round to yet. Already many of the memories of the previous two weeks had faded: the smell of that small hotel in St. Andrews; that mixture of bacon cooking for breakfast and the lavender-scented soap in the bathroom; the air from the sea drifting across the golf course; the aroma of coffee in the coffee bar in South Street. She should have noted them down. She should have said something about all that and the light and the hills with sheep on them like small white stones.

She looked at his hands. She could not help it, but she had always looked at the hands of men and wondered how they had caressed the body of their lover. It was unhealthy, she knew, almost a form of voyeurism, but she
could not stop herself. Those hands, she thought, were gentle. They were shy. They would move with hesitation, unsure of themselves.

Would she describe him in her diary as beautiful? Yes, she thought; she would. And how would he describe her? She did not like to think of that. There were twenty years between them, and so she imagined he would not bother to describe her at all. Or was that doing him an injustice? His conversation had been revealing. He had told her about himself and his feelings about his stepfather. He had opened up. Twenty years was nothing.

She waited until he had finished what he was saying. Then she asked: “What turned up?”

IT WAS AN INTERNSHIP, HE SAID. THEY DID NOT
advertise it, but sent out a letter to the head of the department of art history at a number of universities, including Edinburgh. It was for three months, this letter said, and the internship could be held over the summer so as to suit undergraduates who had to get back to their courses in September. The duties were not specified, although the auction house was at pains to point out that interns were given every opportunity to participate in the work of the firm and would not be used as cheap labour.

“You should apply,” said one of my lecturers, who, for
some reason, liked me. I think it had something to do with the fact that I had read one of his books and had told him I found it interesting. That was true: I had enjoyed it and I think he appreciated that.

I remarked that I thought it unlikely I would be chosen. There would be hundreds of applications and presumably they would take only one or two people. “Everybody wants to work there. Everybody.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be defeatist.”

“I’m not. I’m being realistic.”

He pressed me for my reasons, and I told him. “These firms are exclusive. They take people who are a bit …”

“A bit what?”

“Well-connected. They know people. I don’t know anybody.”

He stared at me. “Is that what you think the world is like these days? Is that really what you think?”

I nodded. “I’m from Oban. That’s nowhere. People down there won’t even know how to pronounce it.”

He looked incredulous. “Does that matter? Does it matter if somebody comes from somewhere unpronounceable? And it isn’t really unpronounceable.”

“Plenty of people put the emphasis in the wrong
place,” I said. “It happens all the time. They emphasise the second syllable; but it should be the first.”

He looked serious now. “What a ridiculous conversation, Andrew. Apply, and, if you don’t mind, may I give you a bit of advice? Don’t go through life giving up before you’ve even begun.”

I did as he suggested and sent in an application. To my surprise, I was invited for an interview.

“I told you so,” said my lecturer.

“I’m still surprised.”

There was a hint of a smile. “Well, I know somebody there.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but it was one of those situations where you think one thing and another thing comes out.

“It’s just an interview,” I pointed out.

KAY SMILED. “HE KNEW SOMEBODY?”

“Yes,” said Andrew. “Exactly.”

She shrugged. “That’s the way things are, don’t you think? It’s human nature. We do things for people we know. Everybody does that.”

“But there he was saying the world didn’t work that way. That’s what he said.”

Kay smiled again. “Of course he had to say that. That’s the official position. People don’t admit to doing things in any other way—not these days—but when you scratch the surface, we haven’t really changed very much. Look at the way people try to make points of contact with others when they meet. Look at the way you instinctively try to establish whether somebody you meet for the first time knows somebody you know. Watch people do it.
I’m from such and such a place
. Oh yes? So you know So-and-So?
Yes!
And So-and-So?
No, I don’t know her, but of course there’s So-and-So
. That’s how it works.”

“I suppose so. But why?”

“Because we don’t like impersonality. Maybe …”

David joined in. “Because we had to.”

She asked him: “Had to what?”

“Because we had to co-operate. That’s deep in the genes. We had to co-operate with one another and so we needed to know whether the stranger was a threat. Survival—that’s what it is. Survival.”

I sound like a socio-biologist, he thought, with one of their reductive explanations that made all of life about hunting or mating—scientific ancestor worship, as one of his friends had put it.

She thought about what he had said. Had to co-operate?
Not any more? She glanced at Andrew. “And then?”

I’M NOT SURE HOW MANY PEOPLE APPLIED, BUT
it was quite a few. In the end, they took three people that summer. Apart from me, there were two girls, one from the University of Sussex and the other from Oxford. The one from Oxford was called Hermione, and she lived in London. She was tall and very striking-looking. She had that look about her that gave you the impression that she had just had her hair done, and her skin, and her clothes—everything, in fact. She wore jeans that first day, although the letter they had sent us had been very clear on the point. We were not to wear jeans to work.

She noticed that I was looking at her legs and she leaned over and whispered. “They’re not jeans. Not really.”

“What are they then?”

“They’re moleskin. Not from real moles, of course. It’s a sort of cotton. Jeans are denim, aren’t they?”

I felt somehow privileged that this person seemed to be recruiting me as an ally. “Of course,” I said. “I didn’t think they were jeans. Well, I did, actually.”

“But now you know they’re moleskin.”

“Yes.”

She smiled at me. “They can be a bit stuffy. Even Tommy.”

“Who’s Tommy?”

She seemed surprised at the question. “Our new boss.”

“You call him Tommy?”

She shrugged. “He’s my godfather. He’s a sweetie.”

THE GIRL FROM SUSSEX WAS INTERESTED IN MODERN
art and moved off to work in the department that dealt with that. That left Hermione and me in Old Masters and British Nineteenth Century Art, which was exactly where both of us wanted to be. From her point of view the attraction was the nineteenth century, on which she was writing her second-year dissertation at Oxford; from mine it was partly the period—I was very interested in the seventeenth century at that stage—and partly the fact that I would be working there with Hermione. I had fallen in love, you see. I had fallen in love the moment I saw her; the instant she looked at me; as soon as she had leaned forward and told me that moleskin was different from denim. There’s a song somewhere—I forget who sang it—which asks whether you believe in love at first sight and then gives the
answer that yes, it happens all the time. Of course it does. In fact, has it ever occurred to people that love at first sight might be the rule rather than the exception? How many people fall in love gradually rather than on the first occasion they meet the other person?

THIS QUESTION, POSED ALMOST RHETORICALLY
, had a noticeable effect on each of them. Kay frowned, and looked intensely at the young man, as if to coax an answer out of him. But he said nothing, and his question hung in the air. The other young man, Hugh, looked down at the table that separated the seats on one side from those on the other. There was a magazine on this, and he moved it slightly, lining it up against the edge of the table. David allowed his gaze to move out of the window. He caught sight of a boy standing on a river bank; but it was very fleeting, as the train was moving faster and the world outside had speeded up correspondingly.

I REMEMBER EXACTLY WHERE I WAS WHEN I
admitted to myself that I was in love with Hermione. It was not when I first saw her, even if that was the point at which I fell in love; there is a difference, I think, between falling in love and knowing it. You know it when you surrender to the feeling; you put your hands up and say, “That’s it,” or something like that. I suppose it must be the same with any of the admissions that one makes. There comes a time when people say, “All right, I’m a crook” or “I admit it, I’m a drunk.” Not all of them say that, of course, but some do. And not everyone says to themselves, “I’m in love,” but I did.

It was at the end of my second day at the auction house. Although Hermione and I were working in the same department, I saw little of her in that first day or two, as she had immediately been assigned the task of doing research on a painting that somebody had brought in for valuation. Most of the paintings that came in the door unannounced
were of no interest, and there was one member of staff who did the initial screening of these. He was the most tactful person in the building, or so everyone said, and he could turn people away with such skill that most of them went off feeling better than they had when they came in. They still had their painting, of course, and knew that it was not going to be accepted for auction, but somehow they managed to be pleased with this result. Nobody ever worked out exactly how he did it; somebody suggested that it was through a subtle form of hypnotism; others said it was simple charm.

But even if most of those who came in from the street were turned away, nobody was ever discouraged from bringing things in. Stories were told of how a few years earlier a Rembrandt drawing had been brought in by a woman who was carrying it in a plastic shopping bag, along with some sausages bought in the supermarket. And then there was the Turner watercolour that somebody else had been keeping in a biscuit tin. The tin was not quite large enough, and so the owner had folded the edge of the Turner. “I had to,” she said. “You have to keep these things in a tin, you know. The light damages them.”