Lionel draws down the blind on the window and locks the compartment door. He takes her hand. She tries to pull it away, but he holds firm. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know where to begin. Jane. Why is Jane on this train? Is she your lover, too?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. She asked me to help her secure a seat out of Berlin. That’s what I was doing yesterday, while you were at the institute. Arranging everything for us.”
“Oh, yes? And what made her decide to leave?”
“There’s a war about to begin, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Violet pulls her hand away and drops into the seat, which has already been made up for the night by the steward. The sheets and blanket are pulled so snugly, she makes hardly a wrinkle. A suit of crisp blue pajamas lies folded next to her legs. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to believe.”
“Believe me.”
“I am not stupid, Lionel. I know there’s more. You and Jane.”
“We are not lovers, Violet. There’s only you.”
“So you say.”
He crosses to the washstand. “I thought we’d resolved all this last night. My God. How could you possibly think I’m holding a single piece of myself back, after last night? I gave you all I had.”
She says nothing. The water runs softly at the washstand: Lionel brushing his teeth, splashing his face. While she sits on the bed, he moves about her, changing into the pajamas, slipping a matching blue dressing gown over his shoulders and belting it at the waist. “I’m going to visit the lavatory,” he says. “You’ll be all right?”
“Yes, of course.”
He leaves, and Violet changes into her pajamas, brushes her teeth, lets out her hair. By the time he returns, she’s turned off the light and settled into the top bunk, with the blanket up to her nose.
“Christ. Violet, don’t do this.”
She knows she should answer, she’s being childish and stupid, but she can’t think of a word to say. She feels as if she’s lived a lifetime in this single day. She can’t bear another moment. She needs to think; she needs not to think at all.
“Violet, I’m sorry. I realize I’m making a hash of this. I never meant . . . I can’t explain it all, there’s too much. You’ve had too much laid on you already. Can I ask you to trust me?” He brushes the hair at her temples. “Poor Violet. You’ve been through hell, haven’t you? I’m sorry. I know I’ve no right to your trust, but I’m asking anyway. I’ll tell you everything, I swear it. I’ll make you understand. I’ll show you, I’ll lay myself bare. Once we’re safe, once we’re clear. Just let me get you safe, Violet. Can you give that to me?”
She listens quietly, while his fingers stroke her hair, his voice works in her ears. A tear escapes from one closed eyelid, and she knows that he sees it, because he catches it with his thumb.
“All right, then. Good night, darling.” His voice is softer than she expects. He kisses her forehead twice, once on each side, and ducks into the bunk below.
Behind the curtains, the indigo fields rocket by. Violet’s bed sways in time with the syncopated beat of the metal wheels, the endless modern clackety-clack clackety-clack clickety-clackety-clack that hurtles them through the German night and into a Swiss morning.
? ? ?
VIOLET IS NOT quite asleep when the knock rattles the compartment door.
“Papers!”
Lionel leaps out of bed. “Let me handle this, Violet. Don’t say a word.”
His voice is strict and sure. Violet sinks back into her pillow.
The train still careers down the tracks. They’re not at the border, then: just stamping papers in advance to avoid waking passengers at three in the morning. Unless it’s something else, unless it’s the police.
“Here we are,” says Lionel in his American accent.
“Hmm.” The sounds of paper shuffling, grunts of official skepticism. “You are Edward Brown?”
“Yes, sir. I sure am.”
“Your wife?”
“Sleeping right here, sir. She was taken a little poorly, if you know what I mean.”
Violet imagines a wink of shared masculine understanding.
“Hmm,” says the official.
Footsteps. Violet closes her eyes and arranges her face into peaceful misery.
Lionel chuckles apologetically and speaks in his American voice, Lionel and yet not-Lionel. “You know how it is with these female complaints, sir.”
Violet makes a faint groan, investing it with as much misery as she can. She feels the bright beam of a flashlight on her face.
“Now, now,” says Lionel. “We don’t need to wake her up, do we?”
“Sylvia Brown?”
Violet groans a pitiful yes.
“From New York?”
Nod.
“Hmm.” The flashlight moves away. “Very well, then. Your papers are in order. We cross into Switzerland at four o’clock. There exists a state of preparation for war—”
“Yes, sir. That’s why we’re leaving. Sounds like a real humdinger. I was just telling Sylvie over dinner, I said to her, Syvlie, honey, it’s a good thing we—”
“—and there may be an additional stop at the border. I apologize in anticipation for any inconvenience.”