Trains and Lovers: A Novel by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

nodded. “Like the poor, Geoffrey.”
    “Nobody says that any more, my dear. So I would suggest it’s a said —past tense—rather than a saying.”
    He was pleased with this joke. Eleanor glanced at me, and I could tell what her glance meant.

THE AUCTION HOUSE HAD A LIBRARY AT THE BACK of their building. It was not a large room, but by covering every inch of wall space with shelves the firm had managed to contain a collection of books and journals that was adequate for much of the research we needed to do. I used the library in preference to the desk I was given in a room shared with the other interns and one of two of the more recently appointed junior staff. I did this because I found it disconcerting to work in the same room as Hermione; I simply could not concentrate if she was there. I think that she felt the same about sharing a room with me, and by tacit consent we fell into a system of my working in the library if she needed to be in our shared office, and if she needed to be in the library I would resume my place in the office.
    That afternoon I sat in the library and stared at the photograph of the Dughet I had taken that morning. I had transferred the picture to my laptop, and this enabled meto blow up sections in order to examine them in much greater detail than would have been possible with the naked eye. I started with the figure of the shepherd, and then progressed to the sky. There was nothing exceptional in any of this, but then I looked at the picture in its entirety. It was at this point that I realised what it was that was troubling me: something was happening in the background, in a small section of landscape below the hillside. There was something there: not just trees and the shining surface of a lake, but a puff of white smoke, tiny but unmistakeable. And beneath it, the source of the smoke, a minuscule black pipe that on closer examination revealed itself as being the funnel of a steam train.
    For a few moments I stared at this in disbelief. This was impossible. This was a painting executed in the first half of the seventeenth century by an artist who had never seen a steam train. Yes, Leonardo da Vinci drew helicopters, but he was an exception, and his helicopters were never more than an idea.
    I looked again. Was I imagining it? No, whichever way I peered, I reached the same conclusion. There was a steam train in this picture of Italian arcadia.
    I walked briskly from the library—almost ran. Hermione was alone in our shared office, and I thrust mylaptop in front of her. “Do you mind!” She pushed the computer away from the papers she had in front of her.
    “Sorry,” I said, “but you have to take a look.”
    She peered at the enlarged section on the screen. “So?” she said. “A train. So?”
    I reduced the magnification so that the rest of the painting came into focus.
    She frowned. “Poussin?”
    “Gaspard Dughet—brother-in-law of Nicholas Poussin. But that’s not the point.”
    She looked puzzled. “What is the point then?”
    “The seventeenth century. Seventeenth . And this is a train. A steam train.”
    She smiled. “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere. It’s a mistake, then. This can’t be Dughet, or whatever you call him.”
    I sat down next to her. Her leg touched mine briefly, and for a moment I stopped thinking about Dughet and steam trains. We would go out for dinner that night, I decided. I would dip into my dwindling funds and take her out to dinner.
    I came back to the picture. “I think they’re wrong. They said it was definitely Dughet—I was at the meeting.It was Eleanor—you know, that nice woman—and that Geoffrey character.”
    “Can’t stand him,” said Hermione.
    “They both said it was Dughet. There seemed to be no doubt in their minds.”
    Hermione looked again at the picture on the screen. “It’s easy enough to miss it, I suppose. It’s a very small part of the overall picture and …”
    “Yes,” I said. “I agree. We can all miss