'And after that?'

'Except for a three-minute pause in a back-of-beyond, we stop at Thunder Bay for twenty-five minutes at ten-fifty tomorrow morning.'

'Do you know the whole timetable by heart?'

'Emil told me to learn it. He was right when he said the question I would have to answer most was ‘When do we reach so and so’… and if I were a regular waiter he said I would know the answers, even though we're thirty-five minutes earlier everywhere than the regular Canadian.'

'Emil is cute,' she said.

I looked at her in surprise. I wouldn't have thought of Emil as cute. Small, neat, bright and generous, yes. 'Cute?' I asked.

'I would hope,' she said, 'that you don't think so.'

'No.'

'Good.' She was relieved, I saw.

'Weren't you sure?' I asked curiously. 'Am I so… ambivalent?'

'Well…' There was a touch of embarrassment. 'I didn't mean to get into this sort of conversation, really I didn't. But if you want to know, there's something about you that's secret… ultra-private… as if you didn't want to be known too well. So I just wondered. I'm sorry…'

'I shall shower you with ravening kisses.'

She laughed. 'Not your style.'

'Wait and see.' And two people didn't, I thought, drift into talking like that after knowing each other for such a short while unless there was immediate trust and liking.

We were standing in the tiny lobby between the kitchen and the dining room, and she still has the clipboard clasped to her chest. She would have to put it down, I thought fleetingly, before any serious ravening could take place.

'You always have jokes in your eyes,' she said. 'And you never tell them.'

'I was thinking about how you use your clipboard as chain mail.'

Her own eyes widened. 'A lousy man in the magazine office squeezed my breast… Why am I telling you? It was years ago. Why should I care? Anyway, where else would you carry a clipboard?'

She put it down, all the same, on the counter, but we didn't talk much longer as the revellers from the rear began coming through to go to the bedrooms. I retreated into the kitchen and I could hear people asking Nell what time they could have breakfast.

'Between seven and nine-thirty,' she said. 'Sleep well, everybody.' She put her head into the kitchen. 'Same to you, sleep well. I'm off to bed.'

'Goodnight,' I said, smiling.

'Aren't you going?'

'Yes, in a while.'

'When everything's… safe?'

'You might say so.'

'What exactly does the Jockey Club expect you to Jo?'

'See trouble before it comes.'

'But that's practically impossible.'

'Mm,' I said. 'I didn't foresee anyone uncoupling the Lorrimores.'

'You'll be fired for that,' she said dryly, 'so if you sleep, sleep well.'

'Tor would kiss you,' I said. 'Tommy can't.'

'I'll count it done.'

She went away blithely, the clipboard again in place: a habit, I supposed, as much as a defence.

I walked back to the bar and wasted time with the barman. The intent poker school looked set for an all-night session, the dancing was still causing laughter in the lounge and the northern lights were entrancing the devotees in the dome. The barman yawned and said he'd be closing the bar soon. Alcohol stopped at midnight.

I heard Daffodil's voice before I saw her, so that when Filmer came past the door of the bar I was bending down with my head below the counter as if to be tidying things there. I had the impression they did no more than glance in as they passed, as Filmer was saying ‘… when we get to Winnipeg.' 'You mean Vancouver,' Daffodil said. 'Yes, Vancouver.' 'You always get them mixed…' Her voice, which had been raised, as his had been, so as to be heard while one of them walked ahead of the other, died away as they passed down the corridor, presumably en route to bed.

Giving them time to say goodnight, as Daffodil's room was one of the three just past the bar, I slowly followed. They were nowhere in sight as I went through to the dining car, and Filmer seemed to have gone straight to his room, as there was a thread of light shining along the bottom of his door; but Daffodil, I discovered, had after all not. Instead of being cosily tucked up in her bunk near the bar, she surprisingly came walking towards me from the sleeping car forward of Filmer's, her diamonds lighting small bright fires with every step.

I stood back to let her pass, but she shimmered to a stop before me and said, 'Do you know where Miss Lorrimore is sleeping?'

'In the car you've just come from, madam,' I answered helpfully.

'Yes, but where? I told her parents that I would make sure she was all right.'

'The sleeping-car attendant will know,' I said. 'If you would like to follow me?'

She nodded assent and as I turned to lead the way I thought that at close quarters she was probably younger than I'd assumed, or else that she was older but immature: an odd impression, fleeting and gone.

The middle-aged sleeping-car attendant was dozing but dressed. He obligingly showed Daffodil the upper berth where Xanthe was sleeping, but the thick felt curtains were closely fastened, and when Daffodil called the girl's name quietly, there was no response. The slightly fatherly attendant said he was sure she was safely asleep, as he'd seen her returning from the washroom at the end of the car and climbing up to her bunk.

'I guess that will do,' Daffodil said, shrugging off someone else's problem. 'Goodnight, then, and thank you for your help.'

We watched her sway away holding on to the rails, her high curls shining, her figure neat, her intense musky scent lingering like a memory in the air after she herself had gone. The sleeping-car attendant sighed deeply at so much opulent femininity and philosophically returned to his roomette, and I went on up the train into the next car, where my own bed lay.

George Burley's door, two along from mine, was wide open, and I found he was in residence, dressed but asleep, quietly snoring in his armchair. He jerked awake as if with a sixth sense as I paused in his doorway and said, 'What's wrong, eh?'

'Nothing that I know of,' I said.

'Oh, it's you.'

'I'm sorry I woke you.'

'I wasn't asleep… well, napping, then. I'm used to that. I've been on the railways all my life, eh?'

'A love affair?' I said.

'You can bet your life.' He rubbed his eyes, yawning. 'In the old days there were many big railway families. Father to son… cousins, uncles… it got handed down. My father, my grandfather, they were railwaymen. But my sons, eh? They're behind desks in big cities tapping at computers.' He chuckled. 'They run the railways too now from behind desks, eh? They sit in Montreal making decisions and they've never heard a train's call at night across the prairie. They've missed all that. These days the top brass fly everywhere, eh?' His eyes twinkled. Anyone who wasn't a wheels-on railwayman was demonstrably stupid. 'I'll tell you,' he said, 'I hope to die on the railways.'

'Not too soon, though.'

'Not before White River, at any rate.'

I said goodnight and went to my own room where I found the sleeping-car attendant had duly lowered my bed and laid a chocolate truffle on the pillow.

I ate the chocolate. Very good.

I took off the yellow waistcoat with its white lining and hung it on a hanger, and I took off my shoes, but rather like George I still felt myself to be on duty, so I switched off the light and lay on top of the bedclothes watching the black Canadian land slide by, while the free northern show went on above for hours in the sky. There seemed to be wide horizontal bands of light which slowly changed in intensity, with brighter spots growing and fading in places mysteriously against the deeps of eternity. It was peaceful more than frenetic, a mirage of slow dawns and sunsets going back to the fluted point people: humbling. In the context of ten thousand years, I thought, what did Filmer and his sins matter. Yet all we had was here and now, and here and now… always through time… was where the struggle towards goodness had to be fought. Towards virtue, morality, uprightness, order: call it what one liked. A long, ever-recurring battle.