In the sleeper, Dotty climbed the ladder to the upper bunk and slid around in her silk pyjamas. Evelyn checked her bed for fleas and was glad not to find anything with more legs than her. She poured out two measures of brandy before lights out.
And Margaret someone? said Dotty. What on earth were you thinking? she said, turning the focus on Evelyn and her less than successful affairs for a change.
I wasn’t, said Evelyn. We met not long after Gabriela died. At a dull soirée of Muscadet and attribution. I was incredibly limp that night and Margaret was – she was – well, she was— A calliper? said Dotty.
Yes. Yes, that’s the word. And she was rather vigorous in her lovemaking. It, sort of, woke me up.
Literally? Metaphorically?
A little of both, I think. I was in grief.
I know you were.
Such a long time ago now. She used to buy me long-lasting flowers.
Carnations?
Yes.
Well, let that be a lesson. Night, darling. See you in Switz.
Sleep came fast to Evelyn and brought with it not a dream but a vivid memory to the pillow: a dinner with her father at Quo Vadis. The atmosphere was as convivial as ever, despite a radical shift from father–daughter relations after his mistress–muse, Gabriela Cortez, had formed a passionate attachment to Evelyn. Evelyn was as willing and enthusiastic as ever in this new alliance. She had never been so happy. Father and daughter toasted one another, and at the end of the dinner, Evelyn handed her father a letter that she’d written in Florence, twenty-five years before. She couldn’t explain why he was receiving it only then. She had mislaid it. And they had mislaid one another many times across the years. It was about love. He read it there and then. He was silent and thoughtful. He reached out and kissed his daughter’s hand and nothing more was said.
The next day, he drove her to Gabriela’s small flat with her bags.
You have my blessing, H. W. said. But please – two conditions.
The first? she said.
That you do not discuss me the man, only me the painter.
She rolled her eyes and laughed. And secondly?
That I paint you both.
Not in flagrante delicto, she said sternly.
Post? he said.
Conditions were met, and the painting was highly celebrated and bought by the National Gallery after a generous bequest by a dead Lord Somebodyorother.
Evelyn and Gabriela were together for ten years. They lived in a well-decorated nest on the edge of Bloomsbury where Evelyn still resided. In 1937, Gabriela Cortez died fighting Franco. She would be Evelyn’s last great love. Not long after the funeral, one weekend in May, Evelyn stood in front of the painting in a busy National Gallery and wept. Dotty was by her side.
In the middle of the night, Evelyn awoke, aware that the train was stationary. She peeked from behind the blind and followed a lantern moving along the platform until two men found each other. She thought them to be the watchmen. She couldn’t recognise the town they were in – much of a muchness, small stations at night – but that was half the thrill. The room felt chill all of a sudden, and she pulled the blanket up high, and wrapped Dotty’s jumper around her head. Settled into the comfortable sound of her friend’s deep slumber. She knew when she next woke up, Switzerland would be pressing itself against the window.
The train kept to schedule and, as predicted, crossed the border at six o’clock the following morning. Crisp mountain air co-mingled with the smell of coffee and eggs and— Is that sausage? asked Evelyn from the lower bunk.
Definitely porky, said Dotty.
And propelled by years of lack, the two women were up, washed and dressed by the time the next round of meat hit the sizzling blackened pan.
The ever-changing sight of mountains and ravines and meadows stunned them, pulled them into an interiority they would later share – in Florence, perhaps, or Rome. Silenced by the magnificent Alps, by the feat of engineering that cut through the Gotthard Pass, Dotty retreated to an empty corner of the carriage with a sketchbook and charcoals, and the hours fell away in a series of carefully sculpted lines and shading, of abstract versions of rock formations or sharp drops, the microscopic detail often appearing as a face or shell in the mastery of her craft.
Evelyn let her mind drift, fizzing, as it was, with fact and fiction because she knew the journey so well. Could anticipate every incline and shift in speed before it happened. The train clattered and entered the Gotthard tunnel. Evelyn closed her eyes and met the dark with dark. At what she imagined to be the midpoint, the name of Louis Favre came to mind, the man whose company had begun the 9-mile-long tunnel back in 1872, eight years before her birth. Two crews had bored and blasted into the rock from opposite sides of the mountain, intending to meet 4.5 miles underneath, and when they did eventually meet, were found to be only 13 inches off. Favre was four months dead by then. Stress and bankruptcy had killed him. But at the point of connection, a canister that held his image was passed through the gap. A promise fulfilled that he would be the first person ever to have passed through the tunnel.