Trains and Lovers: A Novel

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “It won’t,” she said tearfully. “Nothing will help now. I can’t face anything or anybody. I just can’t.”

  I tried to persuade her to let me see her, but she would not even tell me where she was. She was not in London, she said, and there was no point in my trying to look for her. She would phone me in a few days’ time, she hoped, but she could not be sure.

  There was more about the scandal in the paper the following day. Her father’s enemies—of whom there was a very large number—had a field-day. He had been convicted of nothing, the papers were at pains to point out, but that did not stop people recounting incidents of his arrogant behaviour. Nobody, it seemed, had a good word to say about him.

  Hermione came back to work the day after that. I wanted to talk about what had happened, as I was keen to tell her that as far as I was concerned what her father had or had not done was nothing to do with her, and certainly nothing to do with my feelings for her. She heard me out, her head sunk in her hands, avoiding looking at me.

  I think it helped. At the end, she allowed me to take her hand and to hold it.

  “You’ve been kind,” she said. “Unlike everybody else. But let’s leave it at that. I can’t bear to talk about it any more.”

  “Is he all right?” I asked.

  “He’s gone silent,” she said. “He barely says a word. And his eyes are glazed, as if he’s concussed.” She lowered her voice. “I think he’ll probably kill himself.”

  I sought to reassure her. “I don’t think so. He must be tougher than that.”

  “No, he’s not. The toughness is all a façade. He’s actually very vulnerable.”

  “Well, maybe this will change him. Have you thought of that? Have you thought that he might become a different person after this?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think he’s just going to give up, that’s all.”

  I said nothing after that. I had no real sympathy for her father; after all, he had been caught out engaged in despicable activities; what was there to sympathise with? And if he was going to be punished, then it was well-deserved and would probably involve less suffering than he had caused for others in his long and ruthless business career. No, I decided, I would certainly not shed any tears for a man like that.

  HERMIONE AND I CONTINUED TO SEE EACH OTHER over the weeks that followed, but she seemed distracted—understandably, in the circumstances—and the passion was cooling. I came to the conclusion that even if we continued with our affair for the rest of the summer, it would not last beyond that. I felt disappointed; I had cherished great hopes for it.

  Then, three weeks after the first disclosures had been made public, I saw him in one of those streets that run west off Regent Street. It was during my lunch hour, and I had decided to make a quick visit to an exhibition that was on at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. I knew that the exhibition would be more crowded at lunchtime, but it only had a few days left to run and I did not want to miss it.

  As I turned a corner, I found myself in front of a shoe shop. Something caught my eye in the window—a pair of monk shoes—and I stopped to look. The shoes were vastly too expensive for me on my student budget, but I could still see myself in them. I studied the shoes, which were brown, buffed to a high gloss. They were beautiful. Then I noticed him through the glass sitting in the shop, a few shoe boxes in front of him. As I noticed him, he looked up and our eyes met.

  My first reaction was to turn my head away and pretend that I had not seen him. But I could not do this. I nodded, and he acknowledged this with a nod of his own head. Then he stood up, said something to the assistant who had returned with a further box of shoes, and came out to speak to me.

  “Oh,” I said. “I was just looking at some shoes and I saw you …”

  “Yes. I saw that.”

  “You’ve found what you were looking for?” It was a trite thing to say, but he seemed not to mind.

  “Later. I’ll find something later. I go through shoes rather quickly for some reason. I think I must be hard on them.” He glanced at his watch. “I wanted to thank you by the way. My daughter says that you’ve been very supportive. Thank you for that.”

  I nodded. “She’s been upset.”

  He nodded.

  Then, without having thought about it, I said, “And I was very sorry to hear that things have been so hard for you. People like kicking people when they’re down, don’t they?”

  He was surprised by my comment. “You don’t think I deserve it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what you’re meant to have done. You haven’t been convicted of anything, have you?”

  He was staring at me. “I’ve been informed that the insider trading charges will not be pursued after all. And as for the matter of the improper allocation of the charity’s contract, what if I were to tell you that I had no knowledge of it, that it was arranged by my assistant, who did not see fit to tell me about it.”

  I looked into his eyes. “If you said that …”

  “Yes, I am saying that.”

  “Then I would give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes. I think I believe you.”

  Our eyes were still locked. “So you don’t think that I’m getting what I deserved? Isn’t that what everybody says?”

  “No.” I took a deep breath. He had asked me a question and I should answer it truthfully. “Some people probably think that. Maybe quite a few.”

  He began to smile. “You’re very direct.”

  “Where I come from, people are direct. It’s like that in Scotland. You speak your mind.”

  His smile broadened. “So I see.” He hesitated before continuing. “I was rude to you, I think. I wrote you off as somebody for Hermione.”

  “I could tell that.”

  “And I was wrong. I want you to accept my apology.”

  I think my surprise showed.

  “I mean it,” he said. “I want to say sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And as for Hermione …”

  I stopped him. “I think that it’s cooling off. On her side, anyway …”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’d be very happy if it continued.”

  I smiled. “So would I. I really like her …”

  “I can tell that.”

  There was a moment of silence. I felt awkward, and wondered how long this encounter would last. He showed no signs of wanting to bring it to an end.

  “I think that she might be pleased to hear that I approved of you.”

  I hesitated. I did not want him to interfere—and neither, I imagined, did Hermione. “I’m not sure …”

  “Not that I’m going to get involved. It’s her affair.”

  “Yes.”

  He offered his hand for me to shake. I took it.

  “Now I’d better go back in there and get those shoes.”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed suddenly to think of something. “Which shoes were you looking at?”

  I pointed at the monk shoes in the display. “I’ve always liked that style.”

  He took hold of my arm and led me towards the door of the shop. “They’re yours. On me.”

  “I can’t …”

  “Of course you can.”

  KAY CLAPPED HER HANDS TOGETHER. “OH, VERY nice! Very nice! A happy ending. Or at least, I assume it was a happy ending …”

  “It was. Hermione and I are still together. Everything’s going well. I’m going to marry her eventually—I just know it.”

  “But does she? Does she know it?”

  “I think she suspects it.”

  “And what about her father? What became of him?”

  “She said he changed a bit. Not altogether, but she said that she thought he was different. He had had a shock, I think, to discover that so many people hated him. That had some effect.”

  “It sometimes does.” She looked at me enquiringly. “And now?”<
br />
  “I’ve graduated.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And what next?”

  “They gave me a job at the auction house. A real job. That’s what I’m going to.”

  “You must be very pleased. You said that it was very competitive.”

  “It is. But Eleanor backed me. She said that that business with the train swung it.”

  “Ah! So missing a train can have major consequences.”

  “You could say that.”

  NEAT, THOUGHT DAVID. A NEAT ENDING. IN LOVE. Out of love. A new job. Begin again. Find somebody else. But it’s not always that easy to find somebody else, and you may not want to because the person you found earlier was the person you wanted to be with. And so what did you do? You got on with your life and tried not to think too much about it. And you could develop a particular trick—a trick that he had never discussed with anybody else but which worked. You took pleasure in the happiness of others. It was that simple. You may not have had what you want in life, but many did, and that was something to bear in mind. So I’m glad for you, Andrew, that you had that summer and that it was so good for you and that you got the job you wanted.

  But he remembered this: the following summer, making the trip to Maine and finding that his boat, upturned in a neighbour’s boathouse to keep it safe over the winter, was covered inside with cobwebs. He had cleared these out with an old broom, bringing to an end the intricate cities that spiders had spun for themselves. And then, with the boat launched, he had allowed the current to take him, rocking the boat and twisting it in its eddies, until he was level with the point where he drew close with the house belonging to Bruce’s family. From the river there was a view of the yard at the back, and the tree under which the professor of mathematics parked his grey car. There was no sign of life; they came irregularly, Bruce had said; his father was given to acting on whim, and might just as easily suggest that the summer be spent in somewhere unpromising—they had holidayed one year in Pittsburgh, which was hardly getting away at all, but which had coincided with an opportunity he had been given to teach a summer school there.

  The next day, he did the same, with the same result. The house and its yard had a slightly dishevelled look to it, as some of the summer houses did. It could have done with a lick of paint; it could have done with somebody cutting back the blackcurrant bushes that were taking over and obscuring the fence; presumably the professor of mathematics was above all that.

  Then, the following week, when he had concluded that Bruce was spending the summer somewhere else, he saw the grey car under the tree and noticed that the door of the back porch was open. He stopped rowing, and let the boat drift. His heart was pounding as he slipped the oars back into the rowlocks and began to row himself home. He would give it an hour or two—they might just have arrived—and then he could ride past the house and drop in because he had seen the car. He did not want Bruce to think that he had been watching.

  But Bruce revealed that he, too, had been anxious. “I was hoping you’d be here,” he said. “I wanted to do some fishing. I thought maybe you’d been and gone again.”

  The words thrilled him. I was hoping you’d be here.

  There followed ten days in which they shared their boats, fished, or went for burgers at the diner. Bruce seemed to enjoy his company, but there remained at the back of David’s mind the fear that this friendship meant far more to him than it did to Bruce. Bruce spoke of other high school friends and of a girl in Princeton whose mother worked in his father’s department and of whom he wanted to see rather more. They planned to go to New York some day to see some people she knew.

  “You could come to my place in New York,” said David. “Any time. Bring her.” He hoped that Bruce would come by himself, but he said this out of politeness.

  “Maybe,” said Bruce. “We’ll see. She’s got her own ideas. She’s full of them.”

  “Such as?”

  Bruce shrugged. “You know how girls are. They think differently.” He paused, and looked at David. “You must know some girls round here … How about we go and see them? How about that?”

  David looked away. “I don’t really know any. Maybe one or two, but not very well.”

  The subject of the visit to New York was dropped. David thought: It’s another year before I’ll see him again after this. Another year, and then he’ll be here again for only a week or two and it’ll be another year after that.

  He came to him in his dreams. He was by the river somewhere, at a spot where there were trees and a high bank, and Bruce was standing with him on the bank. Bruce was looking at him and smiling, and then he took a step forward and put his arms about him and said, You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, David, you know that? And he felt that there was so much that he wanted to say, but could neither speak nor move. And then Bruce somehow was not there; he just was no longer there, but for a few moments, more precious than any others, he had felt complete union with the boy whom he loved so much that it ached. When he awoke, he felt as if he had been vouchsafed a vision, and the night about him, and all the world beyond the night, was golden and glowing.

  They were together for ten days the following year, and for just under two weeks the year after that. They spoke of college plans. Bruce was applying to Oberlin; he had an uncle who had been there and the uncle, who had a successful engineering business, had offered to pay his tuition.

  “And you, David? What about you?”

  “I’m going to try for Princeton.”

  “Princeton! My hometown. That’ll be great.”

  “Maybe we’ll see one another around.”

  Bruce was uncertain. “Probably not. I’ll be at Oberlin when you’re in Princeton, and in the summer when I’m in Princeton you’re usually here.”

  “I’ll get a job. Maybe I can stay in Princeton over the summer if I’m working.”

  Bruce was doubtful. “It’s not a big place. There aren’t many jobs. There are some coffee bars and so on, I suppose. You could cut grass, that sort of thing, I guess, but it’s not like New York, you know. You’d earn much more in New York.” He smiled and punched his friend playfully on the upper arm. “Princeton. Just think of that.”

  THEY DID SEE ONE ANOTHER IN PRINCETON IN spite of Bruce’s predictions. David made a point of going to college early, several weeks before the academic year began. Bruce had not yet set off for Oberlin and David called him at home shortly after he had arrived. They met in a coffee bar near the university bookstore; David was laden with books from his advance reading list.

  “Philosophy,” said Bruce, picking one of the books out of the bookstore bag. “Is that going to be your major?”

  “Yes. I thought of English, but I decided this was more interesting.”

  Bruce read the title of the book he had picked out. “The Examined Life. What’s this about?”

  “It’s about how we should live our lives, I think. I haven’t read it yet. I flicked through it in the bookstore. I think it’s really interesting.”

  Bruce opened a page at random and read a few sentences. “Yes. Maybe.”

  “Somebody said that the unexamined life was not worth leading. I forget who. But I heard that once.”

  “So you should know what you’re doing? Is that it?”

  David considered this. “I think it’s more than that. Sure, you have to know what you’re doing, but I think it’s more about looking at the things you do and asking yourself why you do them.”

  “That’s what psychology is all about, isn’t it? Is philosophy the same thing as psychology?”

  “No. Psychology comes into it, but I think it’s more about making sense of your life. The bit that I read was going on about how many people lead their lives without ever having any real plan—any pattern. They just do stuff without thinking how it fits with the things they did before or the things they want to do in the future.”

  “So that’s what life should be like? Knowing
what you want? Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  Bruce flicked a few pages. “He says here that people should look at their friendships and ask themselves what the friendships mean to them.” He looked up from the book. “But our friends are just … just the people we get on with. That’s all.”

  David reached for the book. “Let me see.”

  He looked at the page. Our friendships reveal the contours of the self, what we really are; or at least the examined friendship is capable of doing that. He read a few more sentences and then closed the book.

  He looked at Bruce, who was smiling back at him. He wanted to lean forward and embrace him. He wanted to weep. He wanted to say: Can’t you see what I’m feeling? Can’t you? But of course he could not do that. He could never do that. It was not permitted. It was not possible. But most of all, he sensed that what he felt simply was not reciprocated. Bruce did not love him as he loved Bruce. That was the way of it. Oil and water. Salt water and fresh. Different.

  Bruce came back home on a few occasions that first year, and always called David when he did so. They met up, and Bruce took him to parties; he knew a lot of people in Princeton and David acquired some of these friends too. They went to New York together, more than once, and stayed with David’s parents. In the summer of their second year at college, they travelled to Ireland and Scotland together. Bruce’s father was of Scottish extraction—three generations back—and his mother was Boston Irish. He wanted company on the trip that his grandparents were funding, and he invited David.

  They spent three days in Dublin and a couple of days in Kerry. In Kerry they stayed in Dingle, a fishing town, and drank too much Guinness one night in a pub in which they had been listening to some folk singers and a traditional fiddler. They made their way back to the hostel they were staying in, full of music and dark ale.

  “I love this country, you know,” said Bruce. “I don’t want to go back home. Ever.”

  “Me too,” said David. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay. We could both stay. We could buy … buy a farm and live there and raise pigs or whatever. Brew Guinness maybe.”