Trains and Lovers: A Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Alexander McCall Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon Books, an imprint of Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh, in 2012.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Excerpts from “Night Mail” and “Heavy Date” by W. H. Auden appear courtesy of Edward Mendelson, Executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden, and Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  McCall Smith, Alexander, [date]

  Trains and Lovers / Alexander McCall Smith.

  pages cm

  eISBN: 978-0-307-90855-1

  1. Railroad travel—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6063.C326T73 2013 823’.914—dc23 2012042073

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Jacket design and illustration by Christopher Silas Neal

  v3.1

  This book is for

  Christine and Rachel Taylor

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  “I THINK THAT’S A FISHING BOAT.”

  It was. He saw it from the train, but not for more than a minute or two, as the line followed that bit of coastline only for a short time before it suddenly swerved off, as railway lines will do. The view of the North Sea was lost, and trees closed in; there was the blue of the sea one moment and then the blurred green of foliage rapidly passing the window; there was slanting morning sun, like an intermittent signal flashed through the trees.

  THIS IS THE STORY OF FOUR PEOPLE, ALL STRANGERS to one another, who met on that train, and of how love touched their lives, in very different ways. Love is nothing out of the ordinary, even if we think it is; even if we idealise it, celebrate it in poetry, sentimentalise it in coy valentines. Love happens to just about everyone; it is like measles or the diseases of childhood; it is as predictable as the losing of milk teeth, or the breaking of a boy’s voice. It may visit us at any time, in our youth but also when we are much older and believe we are beyond its reach; but we are not. It has been described as a toothache, a madness, a divine intoxication—metaphors that reflect the disturbing effect it has on our lives. It may bring surprise, joy, despair and, occasionally, perfect happiness.

  But for each person who is made happy by love, there will be many for whom it turns out to be a cause of regret. That is because it can be so fleeting; one moment it may take our breath away, the next it may leave us bereft. When it does that, love can be like a haunting, staying with us for year after year; we know that it is gone, but somehow we persuade ourselves that it is still there. The heart has more than its fair share of ghosts, and these ghosts may be love, in any of its many forms. I knew one who fell deeply in love at nineteen—smitten, overwhelmed; astonished to find that all he wanted to think about was the other; unbelieving, at first, that this had happened to him. Thirty years later, he found the person he had loved, to whom timidity, if not shame itself, had prevented him from declaring his feelings, regularly coming to him in his dreams. So much had happened in those intervening years, but none of it had been shared, as life had taken them in very different directions. Nobody would choose to be in love like that, to hold on so strongly to something that was no longer there. Yet we admire such instances of tenacity, finding nobility in loss and in the way in which some people bear it.

  If it were not for the train journey on that day, these four would never have met. Journeys may be like that, may bring together people who would otherwise never have known of each other’s existence. In that respect, long journeys have something in common with military service or boarding school, or even the shared experience of some natural disaster. Such things bring us into contact with people we would never have encountered but for the sharing of danger or unhappiness.

  Journeys are not only about places, they are also about people, and it may be the people, rather than the places, that we remember. Those with whom one shares a carriage on the Trans-Siberian Railway may well be remembered, even if the names of the places in which the train stops are soon lost. Of Kirov, Perm, Omsk and Ussuriysk, all of them stops on that long journey, most travellers, other than the locals, will probably remember only Omsk—for its sheer, prosaic finality, and for the fact that of all possible railway stations in the world, we are here in one called Omsk. I know nothing of Omsk, but it seems to me that its name is redolent of ending, a full stop; not a place for honeymoons or rhapsodies. Omsk.

  Or Adelstrop. Yes, I remember Adelstrop, for the train stopped there in the heat—that is Edward Thomas. The poet was on a train journey into rural Oxfordshire, at a time when there was still an England of quiet villages and hedge-bound fields, and when a train might unexpectedly draw to a halt at a small place and there might be birdsong audible behind the hissing of steam. Nothing happens there, other than the stopping of a train and the escape of pent-up steam, but it brings home how suddenly and surprisingly we may be struck by the beauty of a particular place and moment.

  Edward Thomas was not alone in sensing the poetic possibilities of the train. Auden’s “Night Mail” is entirely concerned with a rail journey: This is the Night Mail crossing the border / Bringing the cheque and the postal order. You can hear the train in those lines; you can feel its rocking motion.

  And then there is the poet Kenneth Koch, who while travelling in Kenya came to a railroad crossing at which this sign was posted: One train may hide another. This was meant, of course, as a warning to drivers of the fact that the train you see may not be the only train to reckon with, but it also meant, as Koch points out in his poem, that there are many things in this life that conceal other things. One letter may mean another is on the way; one hitch-hiker may deliberately hide another one by the side of the road; offer to carry one bag and you may find there is another one hidden behind it, with the result that you must carry two. And so on through life. Do not count on things coming in ones.

  Trains may hide one another, but they may also hide from us what they have in store—the meetings, the disclosures, the exchanged glances, the decisions we make or the insights that strike us on a journey. Trains are everyday, prosaic things, but they can be
involved in, be the agents of, so much else, including that part of our human life that for so many far outweighs any other—our need for love—to give it and to receive it in that familiar battle that all of us fight with loneliness.

  THERE WERE FOUR PEOPLE SITTING TOGETHER on this train—three men and one woman. One of the men, wearing a corduroy jacket, was somewhere in his late forties, as was the woman seated opposite him. His name was David, and the woman was called Kay. She might have been a bit older—in her fifties, perhaps. David was well-groomed; there was an expensive look to him, as there sometimes is to people who lead sheltered lives, who have always had everything provided for them. The other two were young men, both somewhere in their twenties; one, Andrew, with dark hair and eyes of a rather unusual colour; the other, Hugh, tousle-haired, was well-built—he looked as if he might be good at the playing of a boisterous contact sport.

  The journey on which these people met, the journey from Scotland to England, is not a particularly long one—four or five hours, depending on how many stations are stopped at. But four hours is long enough for conversations to develop and for people to reveal to others something of themselves. A friendship may be conceived in four hours; a short book finished and put away; a life remembered.

  The train links Edinburgh with London. It leaves Edinburgh behind it and begins its journey over the rich farmland of East Lothian. Then there is a coast, which brings the sight of cliffs and sea-birds; and the North Sea, which was still and smooth that day under the clear morning light. Andrew, seated at the window, looked out and saw a boat ploughing across the field of blue, and he said to the woman seated next to him, the first thing that any of them said that day: “I think that’s a fishing boat.”

  She looked at him, and saw a young man in his mid-twenties, not much more than that, rather slender, but not slight. She noticed his eyes, which were that striking shade of green that some people are blessed with and that in some lights could appear almost grey. She thought that she had once met somebody who looked like him, but she could not remember where or when it was. It was unlikely that it was this particular young man, as she was in Scotland, so far away from home, which was in Perth in Western Australia. And Andrew, from the way he spoke, was Scottish.

  “Yes,” she said. “A fishing boat.” And then she added, “I suppose there are still some fish left. Enough for a few boats here and there.”

  He nodded and then he looked at her. He was never sure with people who sounded like that. They might be Australian, but they might equally well be New Zealanders, and he had been told that New Zealanders were sensitive about being taken for Australians. He was not sure if it worked the other way round; he could not think of why the big should be put out by being taken for the small. It was easy, of course, to understand how the small might feel that way.

  “You’re …,” he began.

  “My name is Kay.”

  “Andrew.”

  “I’m from Perth. Not the Perth here in Scotland, but the one in Australia. Our Perth.”

  He smiled. “The one that’s nearer Singapore than it is to Sydney?”

  She said, “Yes. We can get to Singapore very quickly. Bali too.”

  This incipient conversation, still at the level of the sort of small talk that travellers engage in—and rarely get beyond—was listened to by the two others in the group of four seats. David noticed, as had Kay, the colour of the young man’s eyes. He looked at them again. He said, “I’ve been in Singapore.”

  Andrew turned to look at him. He sounded American, but then he remembered what he had thought about Australians and New Zealanders. Canadians did not like to be taken for Americans; disparity in size, of course—it was the same sensitivity.

  So he said, “You must be Canadian.”

  David shook his head. “American. But close enough, I suppose—at least in my part of the world, New York State. We’re almost in Canada up in Buffalo.”

  And this was the signal for the other young man, sitting opposite Andrew, to say, “I’ve always thought that Buffalo is a wonderful name for a place.”

  “Have you?” said David. “For us, it’s just our place. You get used to names, don’t you?” This young man, Hugh, who was English, smiled. “I’m sure you do,” he said. He paused, and then began, “You’ve been …”

  “At a conference,” said David. “A conference in Edinburgh. And now I have to go home. A night in London, and then the flight home.”

  Now Kay turned to Andrew, “Are you going to London?” The train stopped at Newcastle and York, and sometimes stations in between. People went to these places too.

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated. “May I ask why?”

  Andrew did not mind the question. “I’m going to start a job.”

  She waited for him to say more, but he did not. Yet he did not seem to be discouraging her, and so she asked, “What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said.

  I DON’T COME FROM ANYWHERE YOU’D KNOW, SAID Andrew. Just Scotland. Just a place on the west coast, a place called Oban. It’s a harbour town. There used to be fishing boats, and I think there are one or two still going out, but nowadays it’s mostly ferries. You can go by ferry from Oban to the Hebridean islands—to Colonsay, to Mull, to the islands beyond, places like South Uist and Lewis. There are hills and rivers and sea lochs. It’s beautiful, I suppose, but you get used to that and you don’t notice it when you live there.

  My father was one of the local doctors. He died five years ago, and I miss him a lot, you know. I never thought I would. You take your parents for granted, don’t you? My mother remarried after not much more than a year. I found that hard; I know I shouldn’t have done, but I did. That’s another thing about your parents: you don’t want them to have anybody else in their lives. Why should they need that? They have you, don’t they? That’s the way I thought.

  My mother remarried, to a man called Alastair, who owns a company that builds golf courses. Or he owns most of it. He thinks about golf all the time and talks about nothing else. Does she notice it? If she does, then she gives no sign of it and certainly never looks bored. You can always detect boredom, can’t you? It’s there in the eyes, in that rather glazed, unfocused look. You can always tell; and she never looks like that when Alastair talks about who’s playing at St. Andrews or Troon or wherever. I imagine that she’s just very grateful that she found somebody else when there are so few men around—or eligible men, I should say. The moment any man becomes available—through divorce or because his wife has died—he’ll be snapped up immediately. Women plot that, I think. They have lists of available men and then match-make. Don’t smile; it’s true, it really is.

  Alastair did his best. I don’t think he liked me very much—I have absolutely no interest in golf—but he was marrying my mother, after all, and he had to make an effort.

  “Andrew,” he said. “I want you to know that you are always welcome under my roof. You know that, don’t you? It’s your home now, and so any time—any time at all—that you want to come and stay for a few days, just do so.”

  He said a few days, and I noticed that. How can a home be your home if it’s only for a few days?

  My mother had been listening, and understood my response. “Alastair means it, darling,” she whispered. “Sometimes he doesn’t put it quite as he might. He hasn’t got a way with words, as you have.”

  I nodded, but looked away.

  “And I’m sure you can see how important this is for me,” she went on. “We don’t have many chances of happiness in our lives, you know. One or two, perhaps. And so I could hardly turn down his offer, could I? I know that you might feel a little bit … how shall we put it? Possessive?” She looked at me, as if for confirmation of my possessiveness.

  She reached out to touch me. “Boys can feel that way about their mothers,” she said.

  I resolutely avoided her eye. I thought of my father; he would not have liked Alastair. He would not have approved of the golf, n
or of the political sentiments he expounded. My father came from a different culture; he had spoken Gaelic as a boy; he believed in equality; he understood what it was to be poor and on the edge of things, as many of his patients were.

  “I’m happy for you,” I said, forcing out the words.

  She sighed. You can’t deceive your own mother, I thought. That’s the one person, the only one, to whom you will always be transparent.

  “Can one try to be happy?” she now said, looking at me with a discomforting intensity. “You’re the one who thinks about these things, aren’t you? I can’t cope with such questions, but it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? If you have to try to be happy, the seed of happiness simply isn’t there. It’s like trying to be brave, maybe. You can’t be brave if you have to try. Brave people just are.”

  LISTENING TO WHAT ANDREW SAID TO KAY, DAVID thought: Hold on, hold on—you can try to be brave, just as you can try to be anything else you decide to be. You can try to be modest; you can try to be tolerant; you can try to be forgiving, when in your heart of hearts you are none of these things. You can be selfish by inclination and yet be generous when the time comes to give; lots of people are like that. They force themselves to be charitable. Look at all those wealthy types who set up charitable foundations when they suddenly realise they’re getting old and will not be able to take it with them. Are they being generous, or are they simply acting the part? And then he thought: Does it really matter if people think you are something you’re not? No, he decided, it did not. We don’t owe others a duty of sincerity: Why should we?

  ANDREW CONTINUED: THEY WENT AWAY TO GET married, to Portugal, to the Algarve, where Alastair had a house beside a golf course. My mother asked me if I wanted to come, and of course I accepted. But the date they had settled upon was shortly before my university exams, and I would have had to make both the journey out and the return within three days.

  “Naturally, we’ll understand if it’s just too difficult,” she said. “These exams of yours are important, aren’t they?”