“You see many things on the night train,” said Marek. “Look.”
He indicated a tiny village, all in darkness except for one light on in a bedroom. “Most nights—not every night—that light is on. Who is there? Can they not sleep? Is there a baby? Every time I wonder. Who are these lives all here one after another; and how kind of them to let us peer in, how generous of them.”
“I don’t think people really like living on the railway line,” said Nina, smiling.
“Oh, then they are even kinder,” said Marek, and they fell into silence.
When they pulled in to Newcastle, Marek told her to sit down, out of sight, that she shouldn’t really be here. There was a great thundering and clanging in the freight yard, which was lit up like a Christmas tree, so bright it looked like day; men were shouting and attaching cranes and pulleys to the containers on the train: wool, Marek had said, for the Netherlands and Belgium; whiskey, of course; oil; gin. And coming on, freight from China, destined for dollar shops and kitchen shops: toys, salt and pepper shakers, picture frames; bananas and yogurt and mail and anything you could think of, swinging off the great docks at Gateshead and being loaded onto trucks and trains to spread throughout the country overnight, like a network of blood in its veins; a dark midnight world Nina rarely gave a second thought to as she picked up a coffee stirrer or a jar of honey or a nailbrush. The clanging and shouting went on and on, and she dozed off in the corner of the cab. It had been an exceedingly long day and night.
She woke with a start as they were flying through the Peak District. She was disoriented and thirsty. Marek smiled.
“Ah, I thought you were gone for the whole time,” he said. “Maybe you are not good for night work, huh? A night library is not for you.”
“It’s a nice idea, though,” said Nina dreamily. She hadn’t been fast asleep, but rather untethered, feeling the train as if it were on rails through the sky. “You could swap children’s books for them at night when they were asleep. They could wake up with a new story.” She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked around. “Sorry, I’m talking nonsense.”
The tea in the thermos was cold, but Marek offered it and she drank it anyway.
“What is your dream?” said Marek as they flew along, the noisy engine rattling, the radio occasionally stuttering into life.
“Oh, I wasn’t really asleep,” she said.
“No, I mean for what you are doing. What do you want to do? Forever. What is your dream?”
Nina sat up. “Well,” she said. “I suppose . . . I want to be with books, have them all around me. And recommend them to other people: books for the brokenhearted and the happy, and people excited to be going on vacation, and people who need to know they aren’t alone in the universe, and books for children who really like monkeys, and, well, everything really. And to go places where I’m needed.”
“You’re not needed up there? Where we were? In Scotland?”
“Well, yes, maybe, but I’ve never lived there, and . . .”
“It will be better in Birmingham?”
“No, not really. I mean, not at all. It’s really congested there and there’s nowhere to stop and they kind of have libraries and bookshops and things . . . not as many as they did, but they do still have some.”
“Mmm,” said Marek. “And you don’t like Scotland?”
Nina thought back to standing on top of the hill, looking out over the fields, the ancient stone walls, the sun layering down, flickering in and out of the darker clouds, drawing tremendous stripes across the huge, long, empty land.
“I do,” she said. “I like it a lot. But I don’t know anyone there.”
“You’d have your books,” said Marek. “And you’d know me. Well, I am in Scotland for a little bit. Most nights.”
The first hints of dawn—dimming stars, a tiny line of summer gold—were appearing as the train came farther south. Now the towns were bigger and longer and went on and on and on, with only the depot names to differentiate them one from another; there was more traffic as the country very gradually started to wake itself and stretch its legs.
“Where do you live, Marek?” said Nina.
“Oh, the same place as you,” he said. “Birmingham innit.”
The way he said innit was so English that she found herself smiling.
“I can tell,” she teased, while marveling at the coincidence that they had both ended up in the same city.
“I do not like it,” he said. “Is expensive to me and too busy and too fast. I like it where is quiet and free and you can think and breathe proper air, like home. I like Scotland. Scotland reminds me of home. Is beautiful and not too hot.”
“So why don’t you move there?”
He smiled. “I not know anyone there either.”
At Birmingham, he helped her down and pointed her toward the exit. It was 5 A.M., but quite light, and absolutely bitterly cold.
Nina looked at him. “Thank you so much.”
“Thank Jim,” said Marek simply. “That he not run you down and turn you to jam on the tracks. And you must be careful here. If you are jam on the tracks here, well, it will all have been in vain and no good.”
Nina smiled. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
They looked at each other.
“Well,” said Nina. His bristles were more pronounced in the morning, almost a beard, and he ran his hand over them carefully, as if reading her thoughts. His dark eyes were twinkling in his high-cheekboned face.
“Good luck, book girl,” he said.
She was feeling in need of a hot shower and a long nap. The sun glinted off the steel of the train. Nina noticed she had a name: The Lady of Argyll. She turned and went to circumnavigate the end of the tracks; it came quite suddenly at the terminus, just a wooden barrier telling you not to go any farther.
“Wait, book girl!” came a voice suddenly behind her. She turned around. It was Marek, waving a piece of paper. Her brow furrowed. He looked rather red, like a big clumsy bear. He glanced down, shy.
“Well,” he said, “if you would like . . . I can maybe take you back to van. One night. We are not always two people on. Often just one. And I know where is van.”
Nina widened her eyes. “You’re allowed to do that?”