The Snow Geese by William Fiennes

Author:William Fiennes [Fiennes, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

6 : MUSKEG EXPRESS

THE WOMAN IN the large blue plastic-framed glasses, navy fleece jacket, jeans and brand-new running shoes leaned forward, placed a paper cup of coffee on the burnished marble floor, then sat up straight again, fluffing out her long, curling, pale brown hair with both hands. She was about forty, with a smattering of faint freckles and no perceptible corners to her shoulders, nothing for the straps of a tote bag to find adequate purchase on. A squat brown leather suitcase waited like a dog beside her feet. To her left, a short, almost spherical man, sixty-odd, in an olive anorak, neatly creased charcoal trousers and shiny black leather shoes, perched on the edge of another wood-slatted bench, his hands resting one on top of the other on the pommel of a stick – an orthopaedic stick, provided by a hospital, with a scuffed rubber hoof and apertures in its metal tubing like the fingerholes in a recorder or antique flute. He had thick, fleshy lips and the bulging, eager eyes of an infant. His hair was the same tarnished silver as the Viking’s, only longer and straighter, smoothed back like a bird’s conditioned feathers with wax or oil. His hair shone like his shoes (he sported badges of light at top and toe) and he sat with proprietorial confidence, as if he owned the entire building.

The woman checked her watch. It was just before ten o’clock on the evening of 20 April, and we were sitting in the waiting area of Winnipeg’s Union Station.

Our train was announced: the Hudson Bay. The spherical man was first up, grabbing the handles of a battered leatherette overnight bag with his left hand, wielding the orthopaedic stick in his right, and walking briskly with the rolling gait of a goose towards the uniformed VIA ticket collector at the gate. On the platform, he threaded his arm through the bag handles, hooked the stick on the crook of his elbow, reached up for both sides of the door-opening and hauled himself aboard with a blithe ‘Hup!’ I followed the brown-haired lady, her shoulders so self-effacing that her arms seemed joined directly to the base of her neck under the navy fleece jacket.

We located our tiny roomettes in the accommodation car without speaking a word. Upper and lower roomettes, seven feet by three, were dovetailed along both sides of the car – cabinets for living, surfaces and upholstery painted or dyed jade-grey, furnishings and features packed in tight as if on a submarine: cushioned seat, miniature toilet, hanging hooks, reading light, a whirring fan encased in a grille, a pull-out bed unlocked by a lever marked Release/Déclencheur. Each roomette had a pile of folded white hand-towels, a tube of conical waxed-paper drinking-cups, and a wash unit that folded down from the wall – a stainless steel basin with concentric rings shimmering in its clean, unblemished concavity, and no plughole but a narrow maw just below its wallside brim through which water drained sensibly whenever the unit was stowed upright.

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