sherry, we move cars and sit down to face cutlery that lies clean as a surgeon’s implements. I flap out my napkin—the roaring embroidered GWR loin now holds a Modernist cross in its paws—and I smile at the man opposite me. We have nothing left to say once we have commented on the lovely weather. This, after all, is still Britain. In many ways, little has changed since Francis Eveleigh and I went to Scotland nearly thirty years ago.
I dip my spoon into the gently slopping asparagus soup and break open a bread roll. I smoke a cigarette between courses. We pause at Crewe. The pork is excellent, the roast potatoes are crisp little envelopes of warmth. Even my sense of taste seems to have come back to me. No ash, no dead leaves, and the strawberries for pudding taste exactly like strawberries, the clotted Devon cream is just like clotted Devon cream. Feeling faintly sick, faintly elated, I finish my coffee and Glenlivet as Manchester becomes Bolton and then Preston without any obvious change. I smile to my companion and sway past the tables. Letting down the strap and leaning out of a window between carriages, I can see the train stretching far ahead of me along the bends. The towns become grimmer for a while as the hills grow wilder, before suddenly transforming into pale stone and whitewash where packhorse bridges straddle silver streams in the prickling fairy dust of evening. The waiter taps my shoulder, asking if I would like another Glenlivet. He has it ready on the tray he’s holding, along with iced water in a GWR jug, individually-wrapped GWR chocolate, a GWR matchbox, a choice of GWR cigarettes.
All of this, by my standards, is a wild extravagance. Despite all of John Arthur’s promises, going First Class has not become any cheaper. But, with the decent salary I’m paid, the easy frugality of college life, the money I have put away from the sale of my mother’s house—and the fact that this will be the last holiday I ever take—I can easily afford it.
At ten, passing through the suburbs of Lancaster, I make my way along the gently rocking corridors towards the sleeping carriage. My name is on the door; G. Brooke. Another luxury this, to have booked both the upper and lower bunks in a compartment. To have had some stranger above me—even a First Class one—the breathing weight of him sagging down over my memories, would have been unbearable. We went Second Class all those years ago, did Francis and I, and I wonder as I slide my door shut and run my hands along the brass fittings, the polished marquetry, if these differences will break the precious burden of renewed love that I feel myself carrying. Yet enough is the same—from the bleached smell of the towels, the dire warnings about pulling the communication cord, the whole muffled weight of this hurrying train…
Of course, my money paid for our trip; Francis never had enough of his own. At the time we set out on our holiday together, everything was still a matter of friendship. Not that I didn’t I love him, adore him for his looks, his mind. But this was in 1914, and I was 34 by then already, and Francis was just 19. The whole idea of physical love, cheap sham that I was sure it was, made the thought of such contact unbearable.
Francis, after all, had many female friends back in his left wing set in Lichfield. And they, being no more blind to him than I was, gathered around him after meetings in cooing groups. The talk then was of libertarianism, Nijinsky, Stravinsky, Futurism, Lawrence and Proust… Even in Lichfield, and with me elevated by then to the giddy heights of Assistant Junior Master at Friary School and a house-owner by inheritance, everything was supposed to be modern —although there was no capital M to the word then. Watching his group from outside like some explorer encountering a new tribe, I had no idea what most of it meant. Francis seemed to have no special association with any of these women, and he always left the meetings
I dip my spoon into the gently slopping asparagus soup and break open a bread roll. I smoke a cigarette between courses. We pause at Crewe. The pork is excellent, the roast potatoes are crisp little envelopes of warmth. Even my sense of taste seems to have come back to me. No ash, no dead leaves, and the strawberries for pudding taste exactly like strawberries, the clotted Devon cream is just like clotted Devon cream. Feeling faintly sick, faintly elated, I finish my coffee and Glenlivet as Manchester becomes Bolton and then Preston without any obvious change. I smile to my companion and sway past the tables. Letting down the strap and leaning out of a window between carriages, I can see the train stretching far ahead of me along the bends. The towns become grimmer for a while as the hills grow wilder, before suddenly transforming into pale stone and whitewash where packhorse bridges straddle silver streams in the prickling fairy dust of evening. The waiter taps my shoulder, asking if I would like another Glenlivet. He has it ready on the tray he’s holding, along with iced water in a GWR jug, individually-wrapped GWR chocolate, a GWR matchbox, a choice of GWR cigarettes.
All of this, by my standards, is a wild extravagance. Despite all of John Arthur’s promises, going First Class has not become any cheaper. But, with the decent salary I’m paid, the easy frugality of college life, the money I have put away from the sale of my mother’s house—and the fact that this will be the last holiday I ever take—I can easily afford it.
At ten, passing through the suburbs of Lancaster, I make my way along the gently rocking corridors towards the sleeping carriage. My name is on the door; G. Brooke. Another luxury this, to have booked both the upper and lower bunks in a compartment. To have had some stranger above me—even a First Class one—the breathing weight of him sagging down over my memories, would have been unbearable. We went Second Class all those years ago, did Francis and I, and I wonder as I slide my door shut and run my hands along the brass fittings, the polished marquetry, if these differences will break the precious burden of renewed love that I feel myself carrying. Yet enough is the same—from the bleached smell of the towels, the dire warnings about pulling the communication cord, the whole muffled weight of this hurrying train…
Of course, my money paid for our trip; Francis never had enough of his own. At the time we set out on our holiday together, everything was still a matter of friendship. Not that I didn’t I love him, adore him for his looks, his mind. But this was in 1914, and I was 34 by then already, and Francis was just 19. The whole idea of physical love, cheap sham that I was sure it was, made the thought of such contact unbearable.
Francis, after all, had many female friends back in his left wing set in Lichfield. And they, being no more blind to him than I was, gathered around him after meetings in cooing groups. The talk then was of libertarianism, Nijinsky, Stravinsky, Futurism, Lawrence and Proust… Even in Lichfield, and with me elevated by then to the giddy heights of Assistant Junior Master at Friary School and a house-owner by inheritance, everything was supposed to be modern —although there was no capital M to the word then. Watching his group from outside like some explorer encountering a new tribe, I had no idea what most of it meant. Francis seemed to have no special association with any of these women, and he always left the meetings
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