Editor’s note: This is the first half of a two-part column. The second will appear in Friday’s edition.
“God! I will pack, and take a train, and get me to England once again!” – Rupert Brooke
A little less than a lifetime ago, I had a dream date with my late husband on a train.
Both now exist only in the Land of What Used to Be. But lately, thoughts of him and of that intimately sweet adventure have been poking gentle fingers into long forgotten corridors of my mind, and as I try to concentrate on paying bills or making deadlines, words pop into my head to lure me away from occupation and obligation.
Evocative words like Pullman, porter, and 20th Century Limited. My mind dawdles over these words, and I hear a sound – a drawn out whistle as lyrical as a wind chime echoing through a tunnel – and suddenly, I am no longer sitting at the desk in my office; I have been transported back to the polished mahogany, plush upholstery and gracious personnel of the offices of the American European Express.
My husband and I have just arrived at Penn Station in New York: I, manicured and coiffeured, my red suit without a wrinkle. Charlie, a silver blond hunk of diamond blue eyes, affection and perfection. We are on our way to an escapade – or do I mean an escape from the mundane? One complete day, twenty-four hours of gently jolting, with a sweet, rumbling sleep tossed in between. We will be on the American European Express.
What is the American European Express?
It is a train.
It is a train.
It is 9:30 on Thursday morning. A uniformed man behind the desk cheerfully informs us that he is the Chef de Train.
Chef de Train?
What is s Chef de Train?
Is he a chef, as in gourmet cuisine?
Is a chief, as in “Hail to the…”?
What is he?
Ours is a cross between Huckleberry Finn and a Medicine Man. He is the guy who stands at the back of a Conestoga wagon selling miracle potions, but unlike the hucksters of old, our miracle man promises nothing and delivers everything with all-American, boyish good looks and an easy-going manner. Chef de Train, such an elaborate title. Gregg Edwardsen, our Chef de Train, a good-natured, efficient, unpretentious nice man.
He gathers his travelers in front of the American European Express office and herds us, designer-original sheep, through the dingy waiting rooms at Penn Station, down the escalator, down the dark, long, narrow, magic carpet platform, to the train.
The train.
And as I sit here at my desk so many years later, a stolid, steady earth beneath my feet, my pencil follows the drift of my mind backward to the motion of the train slipping out of the Penn Station gate. So subtle. So swift a motion. No jerk. No jolt. Like an elegant stripper slipping a long black glove of off graceful, slim fingers.
We are moving faster.
The heavy train begins its massive roll. Forward. Forward. Out of the tunnel. Into the day. Bright, dazzling sunlight without. Soft, polished twilight within.
And music. Cole Porter, as Charlie and I are led to a club car with the name Bay Point engraved elaborately on the door. I tap the door, expecting it to slide into the wall with a pneumatic swoosh, like on the commuter trains in Chicago. It doesn’t budge. I look down and see a handle. A real door. Like on a real train. I push.
The luxuriously decorated club and dining cars had been described before in the dozens of articles we read prior to being enticed aboard. They are attractive as we had been led to believe, but much warmer and more comfortable. And bigger. Wider. Train photographs somehow project an all-pervading narrowness. Even in the wonderful movie of Agatha Christe’s Murder on the Orient Express, I felt cramped as I observed the passengers edging cautiously between tables and around awkward-looking chairs.
Not so in the Bay Point, where a glossy black Baldwin piano sits center supreme, teasing us with the Shakespearean notion that here, if nowhere else, the world is, indeed its own stage. Lounge chairs, sofas, crystal bowls of nuts abound. More soft music. Is it Gershwin now?
Gregg, our Chef de Train, leads us past other crewmembers whose smiles and faces we will soon get to know, and we are taken to our cabin in the Paris car.
Paris car.
I’m pinching myself. I’m pinching my husband. Paris car! Are we awake! Is this a movie? Are we still ourselves, or have we been mysteriously transformed into star-lighted creatures from our own imaginations?
Gregg turns to see if we are following him. Charlie and I stop pinching each other and try to act like grown-ups, but he smiles and sees through us.
He leads us to a car D.
Since then, D has become my favorite letter. I love D.
He opens the door.
We have a drawing room.
It is small. Plush. Compact. A place where our knees can say hello to each other. There are two gigantic windows opposite the door to the corridor, a comfortable sofa that turns into a bed. A table with orchids in a silver vase. Textile window shades. And polished mahogany walls and trim everywhere.
We glance around. We open and shut doors, looking for secret compartments. Bathroom? Found it. Closet? Here it is! Mirror. Luggage hook. Upper berth. Another lower berth? My, oh my. It’s absolutely adorable.
Now what?
