To Say Nothing of the Dog (51 page)

Retreat—I Attempt to Ascertain the Station Guard’s Name—Mrs. Mering’s Premonition, Possible Meanings of—Shawls—Aliases of Clergymen—Eglantine Has Her Future Predicted—John Paul Jones—Tea, Unfortunate Revivifying Effects of—Apports—Newspapers—Fans—Yet Another Swoon—Baine to the Rescue—A Shocking Headline

The trip home closely resembled Napoleon’s retreat from Waterloo: a great deal of panic, hurry, and confusion, followed by inaction and despair. Jane nearly got left behind in the scramble for the station, Mrs. Mering threatened to faint again, and there was another cloudburst just as we rolled up. Terence nearly poked Tossie in the eye trying to get the umbrellas up.

Baine was holding the train by brute force. “Hurry,” I said to Mrs. Mering, helping her out of the hansom cab, “the train’s pulling out.”

“No, no, it mustn’t leave without us,” she said, sounding genuinely urgent. “My premonition—”

“Then we must hurry,” Verity said, taking her other arm, and we propelled her across the platform to first-class.

The station guard, still arguing with Baine, gave up at the sight of Tossie struggling with her skirts and her ruffled parasol and helped her board, tipping his hat gallantly. “I know,” I muttered. “Get his name.”

There was no time to find a porter. Terence and I, ignoring the conventions of class, grabbed the hampers, satchel, parcels, rugs, and Jane out of the hansom cab and flung them willy-nilly into the second-class carriage.

I ran back to pay the driver, who tore off as soon as the money was in his hands as if Blücher's Prussians were after him, and ran back onto the platform. The train had started to move, its heavy wheels turning in a slow but mounting acceleration. The station guard stepped back from the edge of the platform, his hands clasped behind his back. “What’s your name?” I gasped, running up.

Whatever he answered, the train’s whistle drowned it out completely. The train began to pick up speed.

“What?” I shouted. The whistle blew again.

“What?” he shouted.

“Your name,” I said.

“Ned!” Terence shouted from the first-class platform. “Come on then!”

“I’m coming. What’s your
name?”
I shouted to the guard and jumped for it.

I missed. My right hand caught the brass railing and I hung there for an instant. Terence grabbed my left arm and hauled me up onto the step. I grasped the railing and turned around. The station guard was trotting toward the station, his head ducked into his pulled-up collar.

“Your
name!”
I shouted into the rain, but he had already disappeared into the station.

“What was that all about?” Terence said. “You very nearly ended up like Anna Karenina.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Which is our compartment?”

“Third back,” he said and started down the corridor to where Verity stood, looking back at the platform, which was now rapidly receding from us. Rain poured down on its empty boards.

“ ‘Thy fate is the common fate of all,’ ” Terence quoted. “ ‘Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary,’ ” and opened the compartment door. Mrs. Mering sat slumped against the cushions in a state of semicollapse, holding a lace-edged handkerchief to her nose.

“Are you certain Tossie’s mother wasn’t the one who had the life-changing experience?” I whispered to Verity.

“Mr. Henry, Verity, do come in and sit down,” Mrs. Mering said, waving the handkerchief. I caught a blast of Parma violets. “And shut the door. You’re causing a draft.”

We came in. I shut the door. We sat down.

“ ‘And homeward bound we wend our merry way,’ ” Terence quoted, smiling at everyone.

No one smiled back. Mrs. Mering sniffed at her handkerchief, Verity looked worried, and Tossie, huddled in the corner, positively glared at him.

If she had had a life-altering experience, she certainly didn’t look it. She looked tired and sulky and damp. Her ruffled organdy was limp and non-fluttering, and her golden curls had begun to frizz.

“We might at least have stayed for tea, Mama,” she said fretfully. “The curate intended to ask us, I’m sure of it. It isn’t as if this were the only train. If we’d taken the 5:36, we’d have had plenty of time for tea.”

“When one has a dreadful premonition,” Mrs. Mering said, obviously feeling better, “one does not stop for tea.” She waved the handkerchief, and I got another staggering whiff of violets. “I tried to tell Mesiel he should come with us.”

“Did your premonition specify it was Colonel Mering who was in danger?” Verity asked.

“No,” Mrs. Mering said, and got that odd, probing-a-tooth look again. “It . . . there was . . . water—” She gave a tiny scream. “What if he’s fallen in the fishpond and drowned? His new goldfish was to arrive today.” She sank back against the cushions, breathing into the handkerchief.

“Papa knows how to swim,” Tossie said.

“He might have hit his head on the stone edging,” Mrs. Mering said stubbornly. “Something dreadful’s happened. I can feel it!”

She wasn’t the only one. I glanced sideways at Verity. She was looking calmly desperate. We needed to talk.

“Can I fetch you anything, Mrs. Mering?” I said. I wasn’t sure how to get Verity out of the compartment. Perhaps I could get the railway guard to give her a message. I’d cross that railway bridge when I came to it. “It’s rather chilly in here. Can I fetch you a travelling rug?”

“It is cold,” she said. “Verity, go and tell Jane I want my Scottish shawl. Tossie, do you want yours?”

“What?” Tossie said uninterestedly, looking out the window.

“Your shawl,” Mrs. Mering said. “Do you want it?”

“No!” Tossie said violently.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Mering said. “It’s cold in here,” and to Verity, “Bring Tossie’s shawl.”

“Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” Verity said and went out.

“It is cold in here,” I said. “Shall I ask the guard to bring in a stove? Or a heated brick for your feet?”

“No. Why on earth don’t you want your shawl, Tossie?”

“I
want
my tea,” Tossie said to the window. “Do you think I’m aesthetically uneducated?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Mering said. “You speak French. Where are you going, Mr. Henry?”

I took my hand off the compartment door. “I just thought I’d step out onto the observation platform for a moment,” I said, taking out a pipe as proof.

“Nonsense. It’s pouring rain out there.”

I sat down, defeated. Verity would be back in a moment, and we’d have missed our chance. The way we had missed our chance in Coventry.

“Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said, “go and tell Baine to bring us some tea.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, and was out of the compartment before she could stop me. Verity would already be on her way back with the shawl. If I could stop her before she got to the end of the second-class carriage, we could—

A hand reached out of the second-to-last compartment, grabbed my sleeve, and yanked me inside. “Where
have
you been?” Verity said.

“It isn’t easy to get away from Mrs. Mering,” I said, taking a look down the corridor to make sure there was no one coming before I shut the compartment door.

Verity pulled down the shades. “The real question is, what do we do now?” She sat down. “I was sure getting her to Coventry would do the trick. She’d see the bishop’s bird stump, she’d meet Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is-Beginning-With-a-C, her life would be changed, and the incongruity would be fixed.”

“We don’t know that it wasn’t. She may have had her life changed, and we just don’t know it yet. There were those men on the platform in Reading, and the conductor, and the curate. And the one who looked like Crippen. And Cyril. We mustn’t forget his name begins with a ‘C.’ ”

She didn’t even smile. “Tossie didn’t let him come to Coventry, remember?”

I sat down opposite her. “Personally, my money’s on the curate,” I said. “A bit too pop-eyed and pompous for my taste, but then Tossie’s already demonstrated how wretched
her
taste is, and you saw how he was ogling her. My bet is that he shows up at Muchings End tomorrow on some pretext or other—he’s decided to become a spiritist, or he wants advice on the coconut shy, or something—they fall in love, she drops Terence like a hot potato, and the next thing you know, they’re posting the banns for Miss Tossie Mering and the Reverend Mr.—”

“Dolt,” Verity said.

“It’s a perfectly legitimate theory,” I said. “You heard the two of them cooing about the Albert Mem—”

“Doult. D-O-U-L-T,” she said. “The Reverend Mr. Doult.”

“Are you certain?”

She nodded grimly. “Mrs. Mering told me his name when we were getting into the carriage. ‘A well-intended young man, the Reverend Mr. Doult,’ she said, ‘but lacking in intelligence. He refuses to see the logic of the afterlife?’ ”

“You’re sure it was Doult, and not—”

“Colt?” she said. “I’m positive.” She shook her head. “The curate wasn’t Mr. C.”

“Well, then, it must have been one of the men on the platform at Reading. Or Muchings End’s curate.”

“His name is Arbitage.”

“So he says. what if he’s operating under an alias?”

“An alias? He’s a clergyman.”

“I know, and the Church would be particularly unforgiving of youthful misbehavior and misdemeanors, which would be why he had to take an assumed name. And his constantly being at Muchings End shows he’s interested in her. And, speaking of which, what is this peculiar fascination she has for curates?”

“They all need wives to help them with the Sunday school and the church fêtes.”

“Jumble sales,” I muttered. “I knew it. The Reverend Mr. Arbitage is interested in spiritism,” I said to Verity. “He’s interested in vandalizing old churches. He’s—”

“He’s not Mr. C,” Verity said. “I looked him up. He married Eglantine Chattisbourne.”

“Eglantine Chattisbourne?” I said.

She nodded. “In 1897. He became the vicar of St. Albans in Norwich.”

“What about the station guard?” I said. “I didn’t catch his name. He—”

“Tossie didn’t even glance at him. She hasn’t shown the slightest interest in anybody all day.” She leaned tiredly back against the seat. “We have to face it, Ned. The life-changing experience didn’t happen?”

She looked so discouraged I felt I had to try and cheer her up. “The diary didn’t say she had the life-changing experience in Coventry,” I said. “All it said was, ‘I shall never forget that
day
we went to Coventry.’ It might have happened on the way home. Mrs. Mering had a premonition something terrible was going to happen,” I said, and smiled at her. “Perhaps there’ll be a train wreck, and Mr. C will pull Tossie out of the wreckage.”

“A train wreck,” she said longingly. She stood and picked up the shawl. “We’d better be getting back before Mrs. Mering sends someone to look for us,” she said resignedly.

I opened the door. “Something will happen, you’ll see. There’s still the diary. And Finch’s related project, whatever that is. And we’ve still got a half-dozen stations and a change of trains before Muchings End. Perhaps Tossie will collide with Mr. C on the platform in Reading. Or perhaps she already has. When you didn’t come back, her mother sent her to look for you, and as the train swayed going round a curve, she fell into his arms. Dashing, titled, as insufferable as she is,
and
he happens to be the sculptor of the bishop’s bird stump, and she’s in his compartment right now, discussing Victorian art.”

But she wasn’t. She was still in her corner, looking moodily out at the rain, when we entered our compartment.

“There
you are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Where
have
you been? I’m nearly frozen.”

Verity hastened to drape the shawl around Mrs. Mering’s shoulders.

“Did you tell Baine we wanted our tea?” Mrs. Mering said.

“I am just on my way to do so now,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “I met Miss Brown on my way there and accompanied her back,” and ducked out.

I expected to find Baine deep in Toynbee’s
The Industrial Revolution
or Darwin’s
Descent of Man,
but his book lay open on the seat beside him, and he was staring out at the rain. And apparently thinking about his aesthetic outburst and what the consequences of it might be, because he said gloomily, “Mr. Henry, might I ask a question about the States? You have been there. Is it true America is the Land of Opportunity?”

I really should have studied Nineteenth Century. All I could remember was a civil war, and several gold rushes. “It is definitely a country where everyone is free to voice his opinion,” I said, “and does so. Particularly in the western states. Mrs. Mering would like tea,” I told him and then went out on the rear platform and stood there with my pipe, pretending to smoke and looking at the rain myself. It had subsided into a misty drizzle. Heavy clouds hung grayly over the muddy roads we rattled by. Retreating to Paris.

Verity was right. We had to face it. Mr. C wasn’t going to show up at Reading or anywhere else. We had attempted to mend the tear in the continuum by tying the broken threads together again, getting Tossie to the appointed place on the appointed day.

But in a chaotic system, there was no such thing as a simple tear. Every event was connected to every other. When Verity waded into the Thames, when I walked down the tracks to the railway station, dozens, thousands of events had been affected. Including the whereabouts of Mr. C on 15 June, 1888. We had broken all the threads at once, and the fabric in the space-time loom had come apart.

“ ‘Out flew the web and floated wide,’ ” I said aloud. “ ‘ “The curse is come upon me,” cried the Lady of Shalott.’ ”

“Eh, what’s that?” a man’s voice said, opening the door and coming out on the platform. He was stout, with an enormous set of Dundreary whiskers and a meerschaum pipe which he tamped down violently. “Curse, did you say?” he said, lighting his pipe.

“Tennyson,” I said.

“Poetry,” he growled. “Lot of rot, if you ask me. Art, sculpture, music, what use are they in the real world?”

“Exactly,” I said, extending my hand. “Ned Henry. How do you do?”

“Arthur T. Mitford,” he said, crushing my hand in his grip.