Overnight to Innsbruck E-Book

Denyse Woods

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

On an overnight train to Innsbruck, ex-lovers Richard and Frances meet each other by chance many years after their mysterious separation on a train journey through the blistering heat and vast empty expanses of the Sudanese desert. As they each tell their separate stories of fear, confusion and loss, they try to unravel the truth of what happened - and confront the bitter possibility that one of them may be lying. As their train hurtles through a long sleepless night, a third passenger eavesdrops on their conversation, mesmerized by a complex dialogue that probes into the very nature of truth and personal identity. A story of love and doubt, Overnight to Innsbruck is charged throughout with tantalizing puzzles and all the tension of a first-class psychological thriller - and marks the debut of a remarkably fresh and original voice in Irish literature.

Leseprobe

Overnight to Innsbruck

Denyse Woods

For William, Finola and Tamzin

And beings in love’s tunic scattered to the four winds

For no reason at all

For no reason that I can tell.

Denis Devlin, from ‘Little Elegy’

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphRoma Terminione1234567two8910three111213141516Victoria StationACKNOWLEDGMENTSCopyright

Roma Termini

The train stood at its appointed platform, belching.

I walked towards it, drenched, and looked for the carriage as numbered on my ticket. Straggled hair stuck to my cheekbones, the hem of my skirt slapped around my calves, and my haversack had absorbed so much rain that it was like carrying a water tank on my back.

I had come to Rome without meaning to. In Toulon station, four days earlier, I had decided on a whim to take the first sleeper that came through that evening, and woke up in Italy the next morning. It didn’t actually matter where I was. What mattered was that I was nearly twenty-six, the cut-off age for the Inter-Rail Card, and this was my last chance for a truly cheap holiday. Rome would do as well as anywhere else – or would have done, had this not been such an unseasonably wet September. Instead of walking through sun-drenched streets licking gelati and dipping my toes in the Trevi Fountain, I had squelched through the Sistine Chapel and shivered over cappuccinos in stand-up bars until, with no hint of steam rising off the Italian pavements, I shared a taxi to the station with an American sailor who told me he had mislaid his aircraft carrier.

It was therefore a combination of whimsy and bad weather that led me to the Innsbruck train that night in 1987. Certainly I had no particular desire to see Innsbruck. I selected it, as I did every destination, according to the night-time network of continental railways. Trains offered cheap accommodation for me and my like, and since I had not slept well in my pensione I needed a long trip during which to recover. The overnight haul to Austria would allow me eleven hours of slumber.

I had reserved a berth, which was not quite in keeping with the image upheld by my travelling contemporaries, but it was the only way to ensure that I spent the night in a horizontal position. When I found the right carriage and stepped in, the corridor was heaving with people and haversacks. I joined the fray. Most compartments were packed – giggling girls, lovers ensconced behind closed doors, students huddled around poker games – so I was relieved to find that my own was almost empty. I stepped in, and looked up. The only berths worth having are the high ones near the ceiling. They offer headroom and some privacy, while other passengers struggle around in the confined space below, where the only options are to lie down or get out. But even the upper reaches must be shared, and on this occasion the top right-hand couchette, an arm’s length from my own, was occupied by a broad-shouldered man, whose whole being seemed to have laid claim to the cabin. He lay face to the wall in a black shirt and faded jeans, and his haversack, tucked away at his feet, had an Irish flag on it. That suited: the Irish were congenial, good for passing time. I looked forward to sharing my Roman salami with him and swapping the usual tales of where, when, and were the lavatories clean, but just as I was about to hurl my haversack up there, he coughed and sniffled. He had a thick cold. Thanks, but no thanks. For the first time ever, I settled for the bottom berth on the left, as far away from him as I could get.

I dried my hair and feet, spread my sleeping bag out to dry on the middle berth, then took out my picnic and watched haversacks bob along the corridor. Since turning in such a narrow passageway with a pack on your back is impossible, it was often a case of three steps forwards and four steps back, as in some ritualistic dance. My companion for the night hardly stirred, moving about only in the discomfort of his cold. There would be no swapping of travellers’ tales here. When the chaos in the carriage had ebbed, I went out to stand in the corridor, my ears gathering all at once the quips, asides, rebuffs and laughter of our multilingual population.

At eight twenty-five, the train jolted forward.

My fellow passenger had turned off the light as soon as I stepped out, the message patently clear. Like a cat put out in the cold, I stood by the window for a long time, watching the lights go by, and thought about Saul. Again. I had been thinking about him so much that his image had grown fuzzy. Was his hair quite so fair? His face so unblemished? Was this his grin, or was I now confusing it with that of a previous boyfriend? As for his voice, I had lost that entirely. At some point in the two weeks since I had seen him, the exact timbre of his voice had been lost to me, which was hardly surprising. I had known him for only three days when I left London – sixty-three hours to be exact – but in every moment of idleness since then I had revisited each one of those hours, dwelling on some more than others. Sometimes I wondered where our few days of love would lead, but most of the time I knew. There was something about Saul; something about us. There was a sense, an acknowledgment shared, that this was no passing whim, and Saul had even promised that, while I was away, he would speak to his girlfriend of two years’ standing and tell her that he had moved on. Standing on the train that night, with Italy rushing past me, I sent him courage across the continent to do it kindly, and well.

I stepped back into the compartment, pulled the door shut and lay down, placing the coarse brown blanket over me. I read for a while, but soon discarded my book and switched off the dim reading light. Then it was only a question of waiting for sleep as the train streamed swiftly through places unseen. Falling adrift to the soft chuckle of my transport was a luxuriant way of sleeping and waking. I would sleep in every town between Rome and Innsbruck, would be carried for miles unconscious. I could feel all but see nothing, could hear only the soothing rattle of the carriages as they chased each other eagerly towards the Alps.

*

The compartment door slid open with a clunk.

The train had stopped. The night-time rumblings of a large station had replaced the mumble of the undercarriage. Florence, already. Midnight, then. There was commotion in the corridor as fresh passengers boarded; someone was looking into our compartment, but thought better of joining us and moved on, only partially closing the door. I turned into the dark corner. It was comforting to be one of those already ensconced, and it was even better to know that I had slept deeply for the first time in three nights. I waited to slip back into that glorious blank, and might have done so but for the stationmaster shouting on the platform and our steward directing human traffic at the end of the corridor.

‘You, you,’ he called. ‘Here. Bed in here.’

A young woman passed our door. ‘Grazie. Thanks.’ But the steward was directing her into an apparently unappealing compartment, because she called after him, ‘Em, excuse me? Any chance of somewhere a little less crowded?’

There was a sudden movement on the top berth.

‘Everywhere crowded,’ the steward snapped. ‘You make reservation?’

‘No.’

‘You want empty couchette, you reserve! You pay!’

I rolled onto my back and was about to close our door when the man with the cold reached down and pushed it fully open. He was going to give them a piece of his mind, and mine too, I hoped; tell them some people were trying to sleep around here.

‘So I’ll try another carriage,’ retorted the woman in an Irish accent, and the man above me said, ‘Christ.’

‘Every carriage busy tonight,’ said the steward, dismissing her as he scurried past our door. ‘Everywhere full!’

‘Well, thanks so much for your help,’ she called after him.

‘Christ.’ The man up top dropped heavily onto the floor beside me and leaned out of the compartment. ‘Frances! Fran, is that you?’ The stationmaster cried out. Whistles screeched. I turned my head towards the door; beyond my roommate’s legs I could see a short stretch of corridor. Straining to hear above the hum of the station, I waited for the woman to speak.

‘Jesus wept. Fran!’

‘My God. Richard.’

She came closer. Her sandaled feet, the frayed hem of jeans around her ankles, stopped within my line of vision. ‘My God.’

The train was moving. It had slid imperceptibly out of the station, the only evidence of motion the lights passing the window.

‘When I heard your voice, I thought I must be dreaming,’ Richard gushed.

Her muttered response was smothered by the train’s increasing speed, and then, nothing. They stared at one another. She dropped her black holdall.

‘Fran, how the hell … how are you?’

Nothing.

He shuffled on his feet, confused by her inertia and anxious to disturb it. ‘God, it’s so great to see you.’

Her reply was sharp, but indecipherable. The carriage rocked to the beat of the wheels.

‘Look, come in here.’ His voice, thick with the congestion of his cold, was giddy, breathless. He reached for her holdall. ‘There’s loads of room. It’s only me and her. We can go up top.’

Come on, I thought, get in here where I can hear you properly.

She seemed petrified. Petrified, I fancied, by the unexpected resurgence of some old and awful grief. They must have been lovers, I thought. This was clearly an oft-anticipated incident, which, for all their longing, neither party could ever have been ready for.

I lay mesmerized, and uncomfortable. My neck was jammed to the right, my eyes straining to see the woman, and I realized that I was trying not to breathe, as if pretending to be not merely asleep, but actually dead.

He threw her bag up to his berth, then climbed after it to stow it away on the shelf over the door. ‘Fran?’ he said softly.

She stepped tentatively towards the compartment and stood in the doorway.

‘There hasn’t been one day,’ he said, ‘not one day in four years that I haven’t wondered and wished and … well, hoped to see you again, so please come up here and tell me how you’ve been.’

She stood. He lay. I listened.

Then she said, with rancour, ‘Where the hell did you get to?’

After a moment he replied, ‘I could ask you the same question.’

From that point on, my curiosity so vigorously aroused, I hardly moved a limb for the rest of the night.

They told their stories. They interrupted one another, often at first, but mostly each remained silent, transfixed by the voice in the dark and the tale it told.

For me, it was like falling into a vivid dream. The darkness, the rhythm of the bogies rattling across the sleepers, and the soft voices overhead transported me I knew not where at first, until I became aware, not of Ireland, as I expected, but of the barren deserts of the Sudan.

one

1

Frances stared at the desert, her mind as empty as the sandy expanse, her thoughts reduced to slow motion by the heat. There was nothing for her to do, except stay in that sleepy, timeless state for as long as possible. She was tired, still; her bones ached and her throat felt starched. Richard was off sulking somewhere, so she pulled her feet around her and looked out. The desert went on and on, an endless unattractive continuation of dirt and dust. It was like looking at infinity, she thought.

The argument she had had with Richard edged into her mind. She had never seen him so angry, and she wanted to set things right. She wasn’t ready to apologize, quite, but a few hours spent ignoring each other in the same compartment, with no third party to alleviate the tension, should eventually harmonize things, and by the time they came to share another tin of warm meat they might even be talking again. That was what usually happened. Sheer exposure drew them back into cordiality. Frances wanted to get on with that process, but until Richard came back, she could only reflect. His outburst had had the desired effect: he had forced her to take stock. She tried to see the desert through his eyes, to feel this journey through his limbs. There was nothing out there, she told herself, nothing even in the swirling sand that trailed the locomotive. It was romance to think otherwise, and yet Richard had always given in and followed her fantasies with her.

Until now. Now it was her turn to follow, to live his life for a change, and so, after this trip, she would go with him to London, where she would come to a halt, even though she had thousands of miles left in her. She worried that if she didn’t go their way, those unspent miles would revisit her, much later, when she and Richard had settled into their little home and were shackled by all the chains of domesticity. She feared she would rot if left in one place for too long, that the normality which Richard craved would corrupt something in her, just as her own yearning for diversity would damage everything he aspired to. This was what haunted her, and what Richard never understood.

She looked at her watch. Twenty-five past four. The air stagnated with stuffy determination. She was thirsty; her tongue felt desiccated. Richard might come back with tea, but as time passed she began worrying that he was actually stuck in the foul toilet, ridding his system of some nasty bug. He might also be walking around trying to cool down, in more ways than one, or he could be chatting to the two Australian blokes further along the carriage. Frances went back to daydreaming. After Cairo, she would see little more of North Africa and would never sit like this in the snug of a railway compartment, so she had to make the most of what was left to her.

But Richard’s absence began to niggle. She got up and leaned out the door, looking up and down the passageway. Further along, a Nubian man – the only Sudanese person in the first-class carriage – was bending over to look out of the low window. He stared at Frances, his black, wet eyes scarcely moving, as if to challenge her, but it was only curiosity. Sitting down again, she wondered how long Richard had been gone. She had slept for an hour at most and was now impatient to make up with him. These rows were getting out of hand; there had been too many already. It was time to come clean, own up; time to try to explain to him that it was not only the dread of forsaking her travels, of conceding to the humdrum of unexceptional existence, that was making her cantankerous. It was anger too, and a sense of betrayal.

She had never dared tell him before, but in Richard she had fallen for the wrong type of man and she blamed him for that. The first time she had seen him, in a café in Hamburg, he had had a rucksack by his feet and a map in his hand and she thought he was like her – one of that unkempt band of wandering backpackers who saw the world as an unending banquet to which they needed no invitation. Frances had already been at the banquet for years and intended to stay much longer, for there was no end to the courses placed before her, and no satiation either. There were certain risks that had to be avoided, love and diarrhoea foremost amongst them. Love, Frances and her ilk agreed, could be as much of a death knell to their rambling lifestyle as chronic dysentery or a dose of hepatitis, because falling for a native or for the lure of a cosy den could bring them to a standstill. Frances accepted this; she was aware of the dangers of romance, but she didn’t see Richard as a threat because she thought he was like her. A nomad.

He did not disillusion her. He was bumming around Europe at the time, so they bummed around together and fell in love somewhere between the islands of Paros and Ios in Greece. By the time Frances found out that Richard wasn’t like her at all, it was too late. She had fallen for a tourist.

She felt betrayed and cheated. Not then, when she was barely twenty-one and too besotted to care, but now, when she had to pay the price of that mistake. Although it had been her mistake, she blamed Richard. She resented him not only because he had now given her an ultimatum, had drawn a line in the sand, but because he had insinuated himself into her life under false pretences and then expected her to accept the consequences without rancour, or even regret.

His disappearing act had worked; by now, she had even found enough humility to apologize. But first she had to find him. She wandered the length of the carriage, looking into every compartment. The only other foreigners, the two lads, weren’t around. That was a good sign. Perhaps they had gone to the restaurant with Richard. She hurried on through three carriages until she reached the dining car, fully expecting to find Richard sitting at one of the bare Formica tables sipping a glass of tea. He would look up when she arrived, his brown eyes still angry, but mostly hurt, so she began formulating a conciliatory opening, a gentle explanation. You silly dope. I love you. I want to be with you, but it isn’t easy giving up all this other stuff …

Richard was not in the dining car, but the Australians were. They stood out like rubbish beside a monument – their shorts and singlets obscene alongside the gallabiyas of the elegant Sudanese – but they looked like salvation to Frances. Richard couldn’t be far away. They must have seen him.

‘Hi.’ She almost fell over them as the train lurched. ‘Have you seen my friend anywhere? He’s tall and dark—’

‘Tall and dark?’ said one, grinning. ‘That’s a bit difficult. Sounds like every other person on this train.’

‘Yeah,’ said the other. ‘If he was small and white, he’d stand out a bit, you know?’

They laughed at their own wit.

‘He is white, but not small. You must have seen him in first class?’

‘Yeah, we were talking to him last night. Richard, isn’t it?’

‘Yes! Have you seen him anywhere?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘Damn. He’s wandering around and I can’t find him.’

‘Can’t have gone far, though, can he?’

Frances wiped her face with her scarf. ‘I suppose not. If he comes by, would you tell him I’m looking for him?’

‘Sure.’

Back in their own compartment Frances allowed reason to hold unease at bay. There was nothing to worry about: people don’t vanish from moving trains.

The carriage was quiet. Apart from the Australians, the Nubian and themselves, all the first-class compartments were empty. She stuck her head out the paneless window, eyes firmly closed against the sting of flying sand. Richard was pushing his luck. He had made his protest and it had registered accordingly, but doing a disappearing act on the Nile Valley Express was neither fair nor funny. Wherever he was, however bad their argument had been, it was cruel to stay away for so long. She pulled in her head. ‘Damn. Now there’s going to be another bloody row.’

The Nubian, who had been standing farther along the corridor, walked past her door, looking in, his white robes and turban giving the impression of a ghost slipping past.

Frances sat for another half hour, fuming. So she had not, perhaps, been an ideal travelling companion recently, but did she deserve this? And even if she did, Richard was always the peacemaker, the conciliator, the one who couldn’t bear conflict to drag on. But this time, she knew, had been different. His outburst had been out of character, out of proportion, and so his recovery must also take longer. Frances cursed herself for being too selfish, too self-absorbed. She had trivialized his ambition, scorned his aspirations, made light of his strength of purpose. Because he had a career to nurture, she had called him a stick-in-the-mud; because he wanted a home and family, she had accused him of being unimaginative. That had been too harsh perhaps, but falling for Richard had been an incomprehensible lapse of judgment. He was that bad dose of hepatitis she should have avoided; the debilitating dysentery that would make her go home. Why had she not seen it before it was too late?

She could no longer sit still. She went looking again. Second class was not as tightly packed as it had been before Atbara, but it was very crowded. Frances pushed her way through the carriages, knocked on the doors of lavatories, and pressed on, her irritation increasing with every foot that accidentally tripped her, with every toe she stood upon. By the time she was forcing her way through third class, sweltering and sweaty, reason began to lose its hold. Where was he? Before stepping across to another carriage she stopped to catch some breeze, but the relief was mild and momentary. Unease began to slide up her legs, preceded by a hunger-like tremor. She tried to catch her breath and calm herself; she must not faint. There was no longer any excuse for this. Richard would know that she would worry, and how on earth was she to find him on a train with several thousand people on it?

Her hands were shaking as she forged her way through more carriages. In third class, passengers were sitting on hard seats, jammed together in one great mould and lulled into a sleepless doze by the relentless swaying of their bodies. Some eyes followed Frances as she came through, but in a long-sleeved cheesecloth top and baggy cotton trousers, she was adequately covered. Audibly cursing Richard, she carried on. He was probably back in their compartment by now, with his feet up, while she was a dozen carriages away, struggling at every step. Her eyes jumped from face to face, which made her dizzy, and at the end of each carriage she had to step into the furnace of sunlight and negotiate her way across couplings to the next one. She had never felt sick on a train before, but now she did. She wished everything would stop moving. By the time she reached the end of the passenger coaches she was numb with confusion. Where was he? In the freight cars? In the engine? It was too ridiculous. This train, the only source of food, water, and shade for hundreds of miles, was like a moving oasis, carrying its population through territory so inhospitable that even a murderer would think twice about getting off.

The sight of the desert stretching out behind the train filled her with horror. Could he have fallen off and gone under the wheels? Could he be lying back there in 120° heat with a broken neck? No. He could not have fallen off unnoticed. There were too many people in the corridors, too many people by the doors. Someone would have seen, would have pulled the cord.

And yet something very close to fear made Frances hurry back through the carriages again. He might have moved compartments in a fit of pique and be lying on one of the high bunks in first class; she had not properly checked their own carriage. It took her nearly fifteen minutes to get there and when she did, she looked in every empty compartment. Up at the top berths, under the bottom berths, out of the windows, in the lavatories again. Nowhere.

Weak with disappointment, she collapsed onto the bench seat. It was then, as she caught her breath, that she noticed that Richard’s knapsack was gone.

The sound of her panting drummed in her ears.

She jumped up, looked under their seats, climbed onto the upper berths, searching frantically. The last time she had seen it, the knapsack had been on the seat near the door and Richard had been sitting opposite, with one foot on it. That was before they had started arguing. He had not, she was certain, taken it with him when he stormed out, but since he carried his money in the knapsack, he might have come back for it to go to the dining car. On the other hand, since it also held some clothes and belongings, he was just as likely to pack it away near Frances so that he wouldn’t have to lug it around.

She sat down. Nausea rose in her stomach. This was like trying to find her way in the dark; like being in a ghost house at the funfair. The exit was there, but she couldn’t see it, and every time she put her foot forward the surface dipped away, causing her to stumble.

Outside, the brown and blue of day had been mixed into the dull grey of evening. The desert drew a thin line along the horizon. There was no beauty in it, and even the approaching night offered little reprieve from the damning heat that made Frances’s head pound without remorse. The Sudanese man who stood guard outside her door moved away, and soon he and the tea man could be heard saying their evening prayers at the end of the carriage, their prayer mats spread out near the toilet door. Their rhythmic incantations fell in behind the measured sound of the wheels squeaking across the sleepers.

The impending darkness made Frances set off again, pushing through carriages, bumping into people, falling against seats, bangingher knees on doorways as she pulled them open. Faces everywhere, looking up, looking out, looking at her, but never the right face. Every carriage seemed stuffier than the last, the smells of food and humans causing bile to rise in her throat. At the end of one carriage, she inhaled a lungful of sandy air.

By the time she returned to base, panic had cut her off from all things familiar. Nothing was right. The airlessness and dimming light made her feel truncated, as though her exhausted body was not connected to the mind that raced in every direction, hitting a wall at the end of every line it took. She couldn’t see the desert, though she stared at it. Hot from rushing and cold with sweat, she tried to calm herself by breathing deeply, the way her aunt had taught her to do when she was fussed. This helped her to think straight, spurring her to take out the map. The last stop had been at Abu Hamed. Frances remembered coming into the town, but not out of it. Not long after Richard’s furious exit, she had stretched out on the seat so that when he came back – ashamed by his loss of control – she could pretend to be asleep and would not have to speak to him. However, after seething and thrashing about, she had soon worn herself out, and although she was aware of Richard coming back – she had opened one eye as he sat down – she was soon genuinely dozing. She remembered, vaguely, pulling in to Abu Hamed and hearing the cacophony outside, the local people coming aboard to hawk goods and food, and it must have been then, she supposed, that she had actually fallen into a deep sleep, for she could recall nothing beyond that point. She had slept for over an hour, and as it was now after six, they must have left Abu Hamed at around four. Could Richard conceivably have left the train there? But why? Because of one argument amongst many others? It made no sense. She tried to shake off this thought, to put it away, but the questions persisted. Where was he? What had she done to warrant this?

It had to be due to some weird corrosion of her imagination. The desert was getting to her, causing her to hallucinate. Richard was on the train, somewhere. He had to be. He couldn’t have been kidnapped or dragged away with yellow fever – she would have heard the scuffle – but could he have fallen out of one of the carriages? The thought recurred over and over. Could he be back there in the sand dying of thirst?

Night had come, and it made her surroundings shrink. She had less space, less air, nowhere to look. The man in the corridor hovered near her door, glancing in occasionally from his great height at her frenzied head-shaking. In her increasing paranoia, his face acquired a menacing look. Did he know something? Was he hiding Richard? He had seen her rush about – had he also seen Richard leaving?

Frances opened another bottle and drank, allowing water to dribble down her neck and inside her shirt. Richard’s knapsack was gone. What did that mean? They were travelling light. She wore her documents in a money-belt, which she rarely took off, and they shared a small rucksack for the few clothes they had needed for their week-long detour to Khartoum, but most of their belongings were in another rucksack, which they had left in storage at their hotel in Aswan. The train often stopped between scheduled stations, because of sand on the tracks and even to let people disembark, but why should Richard get off anywhere? They were going to Aswan and Cairo. They were on their way home. He finally had what he wanted. Surely he could not have been so angry that he had got off? No. Therefore he must come back. He must be somewhere, camouflaged in the mad amalgam of bodies pressed together in other carriages, and before this went beyond reason he would return with a perfectly plausible explanation as to where he had been.

He didn’t.

2

Frances sat in a stupor. Richard was no longer on the train. This was the only conclusion she could reach, and if he wasn’t on it, then he must have got off it. His knapsack was gone. Everything came back to that. He had picked up his bag and got off the train. Voluntarily, wilfully. And he had done so because she had driven him to it. It was no longer a question of Richard punishing her, but of leaving her. He had threatened it, and now he had done it.

The Nubian gentleman walked past the doorway again. Frances suddenly found the courage to call him. She unzipped her money-belt, grabbed her wallet, pulled out the photo of Richard she had carried with her for three years, and held it out to him. He looked at it quizzically. English was quite widely spoken in the Sudan, but it would be just her luck to be travelling with all the non-speakers in the country.

‘Excuse me, but have you seen this man? He was here, with me here.’ She pointed at the seat. ‘And, well, he seems to … have gone somewhere. Did you see him?’

He took the photo and studied it in the bad light. He nodded. He clearly recognized Richard as the man she was travelling with.

‘I don’t know where he is,’ she said.

‘You have go look?’ he asked, raising his chin to the left and then the right.

He knew very well she had. She had been whirling around like a tempest. ‘Yes. I’ve been down the whole train. I can’t find him!’

He looked at her kindly, his eyes no longer threatening, but he was shaking his head. He glanced over his shoulder and summoned the tea man, who was coming along the corridor with a kettle and glasses. They showed him the photo, but he also shook his head: ‘Muta’assif.’

The Nubian raised his palms at Frances. ‘You wait.’ He strode down the corridor and returned some minutes later with the young guard, who still managed to look fresh in his brown uniform in spite of having been on duty since they left Khartoum twenty-six hours earlier. He was holding Richard’s photograph.

‘Madame. You have problem?’

In a semi-coherent rush of words, Frances told him about Richard’s disappearance.

‘Okay, okay,’ said the guard, raising his hand to slow her down. He asked her some questions, then moved along to the next carriage, with Frances on his heels, and spoke to some men standing around the door. Delighted to meet intrigue in the midst of crushing boredom, other passengers gathered around; the discussion was lively and loud as the photo was passed from hand to hand. Everyone had an opinion, but Frances understood nothing. As she peered around the guard, several pairs of eyes looked at her, nodding as the photo went from one to the other. Some clearly recognized Richard; he had come through their carriage several times since leaving Khartoum.

Then one man pushed his way to the fore of the huddle and spoke at Frances in Arabic.

‘I don’t understand. English?’

He shook his head. He gesticulated towards the door. He bent his elbow and threw his arm forward. Out. Then he did it again.

Frances grabbed a door frame for support. ‘He got off?’ Her limbs shook. ‘Is that what he’s saying?’

The guard spoke to the passenger. Frances tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry that the reflex hurt her tongue.

‘Yes,’ said the guard. ‘Your friend he get off.’

Her eyes filled. ‘My God. Where? Where did he get off?’

They discussed this, then said together, ‘Abu Hamed.’

‘Abu Hamed?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘But why? Why?’

The man shrugged, shook his head. The crowd stared at this young foreign lady abandoned in the middle of the desert. It made no more sense to them than it did to her.

‘Jesus.’

He had got off the train. It was true: he had left her. Here.

A large hand with slim fingernails holding a glass of tea roused her from a trance. The Nubian smiled, gave her the hot glass and vanished again. The black tea was sweet and soothing. Beyond the window, there were no passing lights to relieve the blackness, only her own reflection on the dirty windowpane. The train rocked her as though trying to lull her problems away. The wheels clacked, the wooden carriage creaked – sounds she loved. Richard had not fallen off or been assaulted or kidnapped. He had taken his bag and disembarked, without fuss or drama, of his own free will. A movement in the doorway made her jump – she still expected to see Richard standing there – but it was one of the Australians.

‘Hi. Just stretching my legs.’

Long and bare and covered in sun-bleached hairs, his legs didn’t look like they needed much stretching. ‘Hello.’

‘Did you find your mate?’

‘No.’

‘Crikey. Wonder where he’s got to?’

‘He got off.’

His jaw dropped. ‘Got off? Geez. Where?’

‘In Abu Hamed, apparently.’

‘Geez. Poor bugger. Must have gone for ciggies and missed the train, eh?’ His accent was potent.

‘He doesn’t smoke.’

‘Must have wanted something, but. There was all sorts of stuff going in that last place.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t see him?’

‘I saw him last night and again this morning down by the dunny—’

‘I mean this afternoon!’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Fuck.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I … I don’t know.’

The Australian frowned. ‘I wonder what he’s going to do. I mean, there’s not a lot out there.’

Frances glared at him. She needed company, yes. She needed help even. But this ill-clad, over-bronzed purveyor of the bleeding obvious somehow didn’t measure up to the sustenance she had in mind.

He tried to backtrack. ‘Aw, but he’ll be right, don’t you worry. He can always catch the next train.’

Frances sighed. She did not want this conversation, did not want to hear herself say what his bland attempt at reassurance was pumping out of her. ‘The next train? That could be days, with all the usual delays, or even a week …’ A week?

‘Crikey. Hope he’s got money on him.’

‘He has everything he needs.’

He glanced at her, not sure what she was getting at, then sat down, issuing antipodean grunts that were either sympathetic or perplexed, she wasn’t quite sure, and asked, ‘Was he, eh, I mean, did you know him, or did you just meet up on the trip?’