Free Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher Page B

window's edge. He smiled down at her, and she saw that his eyes were neither brown nor green, but speckled, like a trout. ‘It's too good to miss, isn't it?’
    The wheels were slowing. The iron girders clanked past, and far below gleamed cold winter water, crammed with sleek grey cruisers and destroyers, and pinnaces, and small, busy launches, and ships' boats, all flying the White Ensign.
    She said, ‘I think it's a special bridge.’
    ‘Why? Because it takes you over the river into a foreign land?’
    ‘Not just that.’
    ‘Brunel's masterpiece.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Brunel. He designed and built it for the Great Western Railway. The wonder of the day. Still is pretty wonderful, for that matter.’
    They fell silent. He stayed there until the train had crossed the bridge and steamed into Saltash on the Cornish side of the Tamar, and then he went back to his seat and picked up his book again.
    After a bit, the man from the restaurant car came along to tell them that afternoon tea was being served. Molly asked the young doctor if he would like to join them, but he declined politely, so they left him on his own and made their way down the rackety, lurching corridors of the train until they came to the restaurant car. Here, they were ushered to a table covered in a white linen cloth and set with white china. There were little rose-shaded lights, and these had been turned on, which made it all very luxurious and cosy, because outside the winter afternoon was darkening to twilight. Then the waiter came, with tea in a china teapot, a little jug of milk, and a jug of hot water and a bowl of sugar lumps. Jess had eaten three lumps even before her mother noticed. And then another waiter appeared and served them sandwiches and hot buttered teacakes, and slabs of Dundee cake, and Jacobs chocolate biscuits wrapped up in silver paper.
    Molly poured from the teapot and Judith drank the strong hot tea and ate the buttered teacakes. She gazed out into the deepening darkness and decided that, after all, it had not been such a bad day. It had started a bit gloomily, waking up and knowing that the holiday was over, and had become very nearly disastrous over breakfast time, with her mother and Aunt Biddy having that terrible row. But they had patched it up, and gone on being nice to each other, and out of it had come the good knowledge that Aunt Biddy and Uncle Bob actually liked Judith enough to want to have her to stay again, even though it didn't seem that she was going to be allowed to. Aunt Biddy had been particularly kind and understanding, talking to Judith just as though she were a grown-up, and giving advice that she would always remember. Another good thing had been Uncle Bob appearing at the station, come to say goodbye and see them off, and leaving Judith with a ten-shilling note in her hand. The start of saving to buy a gramophone. And finally, talking to the young doctor in their compartment. It would have been nice if he had joined them for tea, but perhaps they would all have run out of things to say to each other. Still, he was pleasant, with his easy manner. As they crossed the Saltash Bridge, he had stood very close to Judith and she had smelt the Harris tweedy smell of his jacket, and the end of his long muffler had lain across her knee. Brunel, he had told her. Brunel built this bridge. It occurred to her that he was the sort of person one would like to have as a brother.
    She finished the teacake and took a salmon-paste sandwich, and pretended to herself that Mummy and Jess did not belong to her, and that she was on her own, rattling across Europe in the
Orient Express,
with state secrets in her Chinese wicker basket, and all manner of exciting adventures in the offing.
    Soon after they returned to their compartment, the train steamed into Truro, and their fellow passenger stowed his book into his zipper bag, wound his muffler around his neck, and said goodbye. Through the window, Judith watched him make his way down