(Extracts from Day Two, Somewhere near Paris)
Just outside Lyon, very early morning
I accidentally woke Simon at dawn by accelerating out of a toll booth. He snorted awake like a startled walrus, then demanded to know where we were. I pointed at a sign for Mâcon and said, “France.” His silence thereafter was, for once, companionable.
We breakfasted, if you can call it that, on apricot pastries from a roadside café. Mine disappeared quickly; his was half-squashed from having been sat on during an earlier nap. He pretended not to notice. I admired the effort.
Mid-morning, Burgundy
The Bentley devoured the miles. She likes long runs, the hum and pulse of the road. Hills rose, fields gleamed, and occasionally a cow turned its head as if to say: “You’ll never catch a train that way.”
We overtook a convoy of lorries, their drivers waving as though we were some kind of sideshow. Perhaps we are.
Noon, outskirts of Paris
A glimpse of the Blue Train again,this time on a bridge, briefly silhouetted. My heart lurched: it was ahead. Simon noticed, and for once his voice carried some steel. “We’ll catch it,” he said. He is beginning to take this personally, as though the train insulted his family.
He insists he must reach London in time for the funeral tomorrow morning. The way he says tomorrow carries weight. For all his fussing, he has grief under his coat. I sense it.
Paris, mid-afternoon
Traffic, chaos, the opera of horns. Paris is an obstacle, not a city. The Bentley is not designed to crawl, yet crawl we did, between lorries and bicycles and a man selling roasted chestnuts in the exhaust fumes. Simon cursed in a way that suggested he hasn’t often cursed before. I admired him a little for it.
We did not stop. Not for coffee, not for sights, not even for petrol at first (a mistake quickly corrected at a station where the attendant took my glove off to kiss my hand). Paris slid behind us, as theatrical in leaving as in arrival.
Evening, north of Paris
The train remains elusive. Somewhere ahead, steaming with bureaucratic punctuality. We chase it like hunters in an old story, guided only by instinct and timetable. The Bentley’s engine still sings, but I feel the fatigue pressing at the edges of my eyes.
Simon offered to drive. I laughed until he stopped asking.
Near Amiens, very late
The road is dark, and the Bentley’s headlamps catch only fragments: hedges, signs, sometimes the flash of another vehicle. Simon dozed again, one hand on his case as if guarding treasure. I wonder what grief sits inside and who waits for him in London.
As for me, I feel both exhilarated and terrified. This is no race against a train, not really. It is a race against myself, inevitability, against the knowledge that things end.
Tomorrow, Calais. And then,England.
