Split Code Read Free Page B

‘Goodness knows, I’ve lost count. My mother’s moron of a doctor got the date wrong and it turned up fifteen days ahead of schedule. I missed the Hartleymann wedding.’
    I remembered the Hartleymann wedding. There were twenty- two bridal attendants and no publishable group photograph. I said, ‘Then he’s thirty days old at the most.’
    Nobody complimented me on my arithmetic. They all went on smoking and drinking. One of the Professors was reminded of a funny story. I got up in the middle while they were beginning to laugh, and let myself out into the passage, and asked where the basket was. The steward took me into a single-bunk room reeking of baby. The light was off and the basket was dumped on the floor. I hooked a towel over the bulb, switched on and had a good look.
    The Booker-Readman offspring was about twenty-five days old and a sturdy eight-pounder. His nightie was soaking and so were his smart cyclamen sheets. There was a patch of curdled milk under one ear.
    He was asleep but hungry, his mouth making sucking movements and his face beginning to screw. He wouldn’t be asleep for very much longer. A hunt round and under the mattress brought to a light a box of tissues and nothing else. I went back to the party and said, ‘Johnson, I’m awfully sorry to abandon the Numbers, but I’ve got to get back.’
    Simon Booker-Readman got up. ‘Oh, why? Are you feeling all right?’ he said. He had a boudoir voice too. His equipment was really unfairly prodigious. I smiled at him and said I was quite healthy, thank you. I was still smiling when I fell into his arms, and he fell into Johnson’s and Johnson fell over the Professors, who struck Rosamund variously with their elbows and burst her beads.
    Rumbling, grinding and squeaking, the wheels of the coach began trundling beneath us. The pullman trembled. The rumbling increased and quickened. A row of lights flashed by the windows.
    We were moving.
    That is, for an hour and a half, this had been a lone detached coach in a siding.
    Now we were a part of a train leaving Winnipeg.
    ‘Someone,’ said Johnson severely, ‘has stood on my glasses.’
    Rosamund Booker-Readman stopped screaming, picked herself up and began asking loud questions like everyone else. One of the Professors fumbled with curtains. ‘No, no,’ Johnson said with mild irritation. ‘The telephone. If someone will guide me to the sitting-room, I shall telephone the driver.’
    I thought it was a joke until we got back to the sitting-room, but there it was on the wall. A barometer, a thermometer, a speed dial and a telephone. We were going at fifty miles an hour. Johnson lifted the receiver and said into it, ‘Driver?’
    We all stood about.
    ‘Driver?’ said Johnson again. He joggled the rest, perhaps in order to alert the telephone exchange. Then he turned round, the classic expression on his unfocused face. ‘The line’s dead,’ he said.
    My responding hoot clashed with another response we might have anticipated: an outburst of short-winded wailing. Rosamund Booker-Readman cursed and took a step, in a harassed way, towards the passage. The large figure of E1-46, appearing there, took her comfortably in its arms and said, ‘You are sleepy too? I am One for Sex.’ He had on a pair of Angora wool long-johns.
    Johnson, walking like Mister Magoo, said, ‘Oh, steward, you might take the bourbon before it rolls over,’ and handed the bottle to E1-46, who dropped Rosamund and retired with the booze to his bedroom. One of the Professors, from the direction of the galley, said, ‘The steward’s knocked himself out. Help, someone.’
    My Italian knit was beyond hope anyhow; so I helped. The staff rooms lay at the end of the carriage. We hoisted the stricken steward on to his bunk and I bathed and plastered the cut on his head and began to get him under the blankets. Through the door, I could hear the wailing going on, with certain vibrations to indicate that the wailer had been lifted and