Paving the New Road by Sulari Gentill Page B

been converted for the day into a carpeted sitting room; the seats upholstered in burgundy velvet on either side of a central table. Luggage racks and other fittings were brass and the walls, panelled cedar. It was a cosy fit with the four of them, but though Rowland had booked three double sleeping cabinsto accommodate them, they did have many matters they needed to discuss.
    Edna and Milton squabbled briefly for a place beside the window. Milton won, and Rowland gave up the facing seat to Edna.
    The window framed a passing vista of snow-capped mountains, swathed in hills of radiant yellow and deep green. Rowland watched, almost mesmerised. The colours were more intense here than at home. Perhaps it was the broadness of the Australian continent that muted its shades, faded them somehow. Here the colours seemed to be thicker, undiluted. A landscape made for the brush of Van Gogh. “Would you look at that,” he murmured, as the band of yellow widened into a golden sea.
    Clyde prodded him. “Don’t tell me you want to paint it.”
    Rowland laughed. He had long given up trying to paint landscapes. Both his talent and his interest had always been in portrait work, and not even the magnificence through the window could intrigue him as more than a backdrop.
    “What’s making the fields appear so yellow?” Edna asked.
    “Dandelions,” Rowland replied, remembering from previous visits, when he had walked in those fields. “Rather a lot of them.”
    Milton was unable to refrain. “Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”
    “I think you’ll find that Wordsworth was talking about daffodils, not dandelions.”
    As the train churned through the Austrian countryside towards the German border, they decided brief personal histories consistent with their new identities. Edna was prone to embroider the story, and for a while they debated the efficacy of the elaborate lie over the simple one. The sculptress and Milton were adamant that plausibility lay in detail, while Clyde demanded something he couldremember. In the end it was decided that they could be creative with those aspects that did not require Clyde to remember them, and a satisfactory agreement was reached.
    Edna rested her head on Rowland’s shoulder as the gentle rhythmic lurch of the moving train rocked her towards sleep.
    “How are we going to find Campbell?” Clyde asked.
    “We don’t want to find him,” Rowland yawned. “He’d quite probably recognise us all. And he’ll most certainly recognise me.”
    “So what are we supposed to do?”
    “Apparently this chap, Blanshard, Campbell’s interpreter, will get in touch with us at the Vier Jahreszeiten.”
    “The fear of what?” Clyde murmured.
    Rowland smiled. “The Vier Jahreszeiten—The Four Seasons. It’s an hotel. Until then we visit galleries, talk to artists, generally carry on like art collectors and see if we can’t find out more about what happened to Peter Bothwell.”
    “And Campbell has no idea that Blanshard is an Old Guard spy?” Milton asked, playing with the dark moustache he had kept when he sacrificed his goatee for their time in Germany. It was now just long enough to twist.
    Rowland shrugged. “We have no way of knowing. I can only presume if Blanshard is still with him, then Campbell is still in the dark.”
    “And if not?”
    “Things will get a bit awkward, I expect.”

    It was early in the evening when the Orient Express stopped in Munich, before continuing on to Strasbourg and Paris. It was cold,the sky dark with cloud, and the day misted with a light but steady drizzle.
    Rowland offered Edna his hand as she alighted. The sculptress was still not completely awake having roused only moments before. Indeed, they had all slept through most of the journey, forgoing their turn in the dining carriage in the interests of rest. Rowland’s last memory was of the simple lines and rural colour. The ornate, architectural grandeur of the Munich