1. 8:30 a.m.: Embark Granville8:30 a.m. EMBARK GRANVILLE There isn''t a train I wouldn''t take, No matter where it''s going. EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, "TRAVEL" (1921) Half past eight in the morning, on the twenty-second of October, 1895, in Granville, on the Normandy coast.
Stocky, plain, and twenty-one, in her collar, tie, and boxy skirt, Mado Pelletier stands across the street from the little railway station holding her lidded metal lunch bucket, watching. The down train, as they call any service from the capital, deposited Mado here yesterday afternoon, sooty and bone-jarred. Only now does it occur to her that she could have waited until this morning to leave Paris, disembarked early at Dreux, Surdon, or Flers, bought what she needed, and caught the next express back. All that really matters is that she be on a fast train to Paris by lunchtime on the twenty-second. She supposes she came all the way to Granville because it''s the end of the line. The Company of the West''s posters call this wind-raked town the Monaco of the North. In the hours Mado''s been here, she hasn''t sought out the lighthouse or the casino or any of the so-called sights of this resort, off-season. Except one--she had a hankering to, for once in her life, set eyes on the sea.
It wasn''t pretty like everyone said. Wonderfully fierce, in fact--those waves biting into the stones of the beach yesterday evening as the sun went down behind the empty Lady Bathers'' hall. Hard to believe in October that invalids flocked here every summer to be wheeled out in bathing machines and half drowned for their health. Mado found a sandy patch and even made an attempt at a castle. She''s always loved being outside, staying out late, spending as little time as possible in the room that has a tang of rot at the back of the Pelletiers'' greengrocery in Paris. (It had to hold all four of them when Mado was growing up, but it''s just her and her long-faced mother now.) Mado''s best memory is of setting off firecrackers in the street one Bastille Day. So this trip to Granville is the kind of thing she''d have enjoyed hugely when she was younger.
Not that her parents would ever have been able to spare the money. Like much of the population of the famously wealthy City of Light, even before she was widowed, Madame Pelletier lived by the skin of her teeth. Her daughter''s been planning this trip since she turned twenty-one. Mado spent last night in a room on the unfashionable inland side of the Granville train station, picked at random and paid for with the few coins she hadn''t set aside for buying supplies. She blew out the lantern and squeezed her eyes shut for hours at a time, but her mind would never stop buzzing long enough to let her fall asleep. Up at dawn this Tuesday morning, like a good housewife she did her shopping as soon as the shutters opened. Back in the shabby room, she made her meticulous preparations before leaving in plenty of time to catch the up train to Paris. So what''s preventing Mado from walking into Granville Station now and taking her seat in a Third-Class carriage? What''s keeping her feet--still stubby, child-size, in secondhand boots--rooted to the pavement? Motionless at her side, a small boy with a schoolbag over his shoulders stares at the station entrance as if imitating Mado.
She gives him a glare, but his round eyes don''t even blink. Come on, in you go , she tells herself. The strap of her satchel cuts uncomfortably between her breasts. A fellow glides by on a bicycle, smirking and waggling his eyebrows at her. Mado''s been getting this a lot in Granville. That''s the price of wearing a tailored jacket with short, oiled-down hair. Even back in Paris, where quite a few young women go about à l''androgyne , sneers and jeers have come Mado''s way ever since she scraped together the cash to buy this outfit at a flea market last year. Her hair she cuts herself with the razor that was one of the few possessions her father had when he died.
She''ll take sneers and jeers over lustful leers any day. Bad enough to have been born female, but she refuses to dress the part. Stone-faced, Mado checks the set of her cravat, then her hat. Her mother''s always nagging her to make half an effort to catch a husband when the fact is there''s nothing Mado wants less. Even if you got a kind one like her papa, marriage uses you up like a fruit. Mado likes to look at a handsome fellow as much as the next girl, but if the choice is virginity or slavery, she''ll take virginity. Like the Maid of Orléans , she thinks, straightening her back. And then: The Maid of Orléans would be on the blasted train by now.
Get moving--unless you mean to miss it? Frowning, Maurice Marland looks up at the clock over the station entrance as the Breton guard with the great moustache sent him out to do. Railwaymen are figures of legend to Maurice, and engines are the dragons they command. The boy lives in the Calvados town of Falaise, more than a hundred kilometres inland. He''s taken five rail journeys already in his seven and a half years, but this is the first time he''ll be riding alone. Georges had a friend to meet in Granville so couldn''t stay to see his little brother settled on the train, but he says Maurice has such a good head on his shoulders that he''s ready to travel on his own like a grown man. The clock shows just past 8:40, the longer hand stabbing the V of the VIII . That can''t be right. Georges told him the Paris Express would be leaving at 8:45, and why would the guard send Maurice outside the station if it''s almost time to go? A trick? Maurice pelts back into the station, ducking under elbows, vaulting a terrier''s leash and then a spaniel''s, almost tripping over a cane, his face brushing bustles and coats.
But this steam engine, which the guard assured him was a splendid beast and fighting fit , is showing no signs of motion yet, only hissing through her veils of white and grey. The Breton takes the chewed pipe out from under his furry handlebar. "What did I tell you about the clock outside, youngster?" "You said it would surprise me." Maurice''s forehead is so furrowed, it aches. "But if the time''s gone eight forty already. does that mean we''re going to be late setting off?" With a shake of his head, the man points his pipestem at another clock, this one hanging over the platform. It shows 8:36--the minute hand barely nudging past the VII . "Time''s different inside the station.
" Maurice''s mouth falls open. When a train takes off, do its crew and passengers somehow stay on this inner time, moving along in an enchanted bubble of five-minutes-behind? That makes no sense, not even for magic. Trains cut through the air so blindingly fast, wouldn''t they be, if anything, five minutes ahead ? Behind his leathery hand, the guard says: "Stationmaster keeps this clock wound back, doesn''t he?" "Does he?" Maurice''s voice a squeak. "Otherwise half of you would miss the train." "Half of me?" His eyes bulge. Maurice''s left half or his right? Top or bottom half? "The dawdlers." The guard gestures at the throng. Maurice puzzles over this, tugging the straps of his schoolbag higher up on his shoulders.
So the stationmaster puts back the hands of this clock, the one inside the station, with the result that half the passengers will believe they''re boarding on time when in fact they''re dawdlers, and the train''s been waiting patiently for them. "You mean the Express actually runs five minutes late?" "Every train in France does." What a cheat! Railways are pure speed, the most modern thing there is. They''re a shortcut to the future, steaming along gleaming metals. So the clocks should all tell true, and the trains should set off on time and leave the dawdlers in the dust. A gent''s voice: "Over here!" The guard tips out his embers and pockets his pipe. "Coming, monsieur." Maurice remembers to pull out his brown cardboard ticket, printed with Third-Class Granville-Paris .
"You haven''t clipped this yet." He only nods. "Don''t lose that--you''ll need to show it when you get down at Dreux. And don''t let anyone take anything off you." What might they try to take--Maurice''s lunch wrapped in waxed paper? His milk bottle stoppered with a clean rag? The guard grabs a T-shaped handle on the train above him and pulls open a brown door, beckoning. Maurice hurries over, ready to climb the iron steps. But the man seizes the back of his collar and the belt that keeps up Georges''s hand-me-down trousers and hoists Maurice into the carriage like a dog. "Dreux--remember.
" Affronted, straightening his seams, Maurice nods over the half-lowered pane in the door. How could he forget the name of the station east of Falaise, the name Georges has drilled into him, the place where Papa has business this week, where Papa will be waiting for Maurice in the cart outside the station at 2:16 this afternoon? He glances over his shoulder but can''t spot anywhere to sit. He''s embarrassed for all these strangers to see him harbouring designs on their benches; they probably think he''s a dawdler . So for now Maurice stays at the door as if he prefers standing, eyes fixed on the mud-brown wall covered with words and pictures-- Louriste Razors, Valda Pastilles, The Divine Sarah, Smoke Gauloises, Irisine Beauty Powder, Liebig Meat Extract, St. Raphael.