Trains and Lovers: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

for me. Transformed it.

IT WAS MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF BEING HEAD over heels in love; my only experience, in fact. I had been infatuated with a girl at university, but that had barely lasted three months and the relationship had not progressed very much. She toyed with me; it flattered her, I think, to have somebody who felt that way about her, but she had no intention of getting involved. “What’s the point?” she asked on our final date. “This isn’t going anywhere.”
    “Because you don’t want it to,” I protested. I thought that if only she would give rein to her feelings then it would be different.
    “No, you’re right,” she said. “I don’t.”
    That was no obstacle, in my view. “You could make an effort. You could try.”
    She smiled patiently. “You don’t try with these things. It’s either there or it isn’t.”
    “So it isn’t there?”
    “No. It isn’t.”
    That rejection had the virtue of clarity, and I retired to lick my wounds. A few days later I saw her with someone else. She did not notice me, but I saw her flirting with him and knew that if it hadn’t been there with me, then it was definitely there with him. I thought of going up to her and saying, “Don’t try too hard,” but fortunately lacked the courage. It would have been petty, and she was right, after all; either it was there or it was not.
    But this was so different: Hermione seemed to reciprocate my affection. And that was an extraordinary discovery for me, leading to a state of mind that at the time I had difficulty in describing, although I thought about it a lot. I felt around for the word to describe my feelings, and found a whole dictionary of terms to describe such things. Entrancement; rapture; bliss; there were others—all of them somewhat breathless and none of them capturing what was happening to me. Does everybody feel that he is the only one ever to have felt this way?
    The world was suddenly immensely valuable. Everything seemed to have more significance; every moment seemed to have a hinterland of possibility: we might go for dinner somewhere; we might just talk; we might lie in one another’s arms in her room in that flat; might watch the clouds again through the skylight. Even London itself—thatgreat, straggling city with its washed-out, secondhand air, was somehow rendered brilliant and exciting. That’s the curious thing about love, isn’t it? It makes very ordinary things seem special. It makes them seem so much more valuable than they really are.
    The auction house was the epicentre of this. I could barely wait to go to work each morning. Although we spent our evenings together, I always went back to the flat I was staying in, even if it was late at night. I sensed that she did not want me to stay, and I did not press her to allow it. She would look at her watch and sigh. “I have to get up early tomorrow.”
    “Of course. Me too. That’s the worst thing about working in London. You have to spend so much time travelling. In Edinburgh you can walk to work from where you stay.”
    “This isn’t Edinburgh.”
    “No.”
    She looked at her watch again.
    “Tomorrow?” I asked. “What shall we do tomorrow? Not that we have to plan anything. We could just let the day happen …” The summer seemed endless. It was only June and we would be together in London until September.
    “I don’t mind. Anything.”
    “Go somewhere.”
    She hesitated before answering. “Would you like to meet my father? I have to see him tomorrow evening. You could come, if you like.”
    I did not particularly want to meet him, but could hardly refuse. “Of course.”
    She asked me if I was sure, and I replied that I was. “Why shouldn’t I want to meet him? He can’t bite my head off, can he?”
    She smiled. “You’d be surprised.”
    “I’m sure he’s very nice.”
    She thought for a moment. “I think he is. But then he’s Daddy.” She paused. “From what you’ve told me, your father was very