They got to the train-driver’s house and found it pleasantly chaotic. They were offered drinks, and the crew members made themselves comfortable with tea and cakes. They were introduced to Luke’s wife, Odette, who was smallish, thoughtful, and solicitous. There was an air of tempered mourning about the house. There had been a recent death in the family and Odette’s eyes were always on the brink of tears. Politeness helped with the transference of her grief. Her mother had died not long before and the house was still cluttered with her belongings.
Luke spoke of how much he hated their area. It was too noisy. He loathed the trains that rumbled past the back of the house. Lao thought it odd that a train-driver hated the noise of trains.
Jim plied Luke with questions. It turned out that Luke travelled all over France and Belgium, and to London on the Eurostar. He never knew in advance where he was going to be sent, whether he would be driving a goods train at eighty miles per hour, or the TGV, or his favourite train, the Eurostar, at two hundred miles per hour. His spare time and holiday pursuits revolved round scuba diving with his family and the exploration of underground caves. He took his underwater exploration seriously. He had made dives into underground lakes and rivers, where he had discovered tusks of mammoths in places where human beings have never been before.
Odette had studied languages at a university in Paris, her preference being German and English. But she was too full of grief to talk for long. Jim asked Luke how he came to be a train-driver.
‘I dreamed of being a train-driver from the age of seven,’ he replied, in halting English. ‘Near my grandmother’s house I first saw the beautiful billows of smoke from the passing trains and I fell in love with the idea of being a train-driver. I love driving through landscapes, particularly the landscape of Kent. I love passing through countryside. Trains are high speed nowadays. But it’s not so fast when I’m driving through England because of its laws. It’s nice that way because I see the English gardens and steal some ideas for my own.’
The conversation passed in a general way. Luke and Odette expressed their admiration for high technology and saw no contradiction between technology and nature, if wisely balanced. But it was the garden that most drew warmth from their eyes. It was the garden that most displaced the grief that lurked behind the rims of Odette’s glasses.