The pain under my breastbone returned; this time it was so sharp that I bit my hand to stop myself from crying out. The sweat was running into my eyes, but I didn’t dare to wipe it away: the pain held me rigid, my hand in my mouth like a baby. It had gone by the time we reached Kensington High Street; but I still sat stiffly, my right hand to my mouth, my left arm pressed against my side as if to hold back its return. It didn’t return; instead I kept thinking about Harry’s model railway layout. He’d finished it – as much as one ever finished a model railway – last year, just before he’d gone away to boarding-school; it lived on two trestle-tables in the loft. It was a mixed sort of railway, mostly Triang Transcontinental stock, running from Warley to Zurich. It was open country all the way from Warley to Zurich; there were three windmills and two churches in the middle of the fields, but that was the only sign of human life. And on the road which ran parallel to the main line there was a steam lorry, a traction engine, and a steam-roller. There were cattle browsing beside the bright blue river; and, in the shadow of what I took to be Zurich Cathedral, a shepherd and a flock of sheep. But besides them he’d put an elephant and a leopard.

That was on the first night of the Easter holidays when we’d gone to the loft and switched the lights off; as the big silver Diesel came out of the tunnel its headlights had illumined the cathedral and the sheep only. The elephant and the leopard were vague shapes in the background. He dropped the mail at Zurich, a tiny Zurich full of British soldiers, and there the headlight picked up the elephant and the leopard.

He’d drawn in his breath sharply and then slowed down the train. “The people in the train can’t believe their eyes,” he whis­pered. “But they’re not frightened.” He speeded up the train. “They’re safe, they’re on their way to Warley.”

“What about the shepherd and the sheep?” I’d asked.

“The soldiers will look after them,” he said. “That’s what soldiers are for.”

The train speeded up; then at the last moment before the bend he stopped it dead. “The people on the train are frightened now. They think there’s a breakdown. And the elephant will break down the doors and then the leopard will get in . . .” He’d started the train again. “They’re all right now, though. They’re glad they’re not where the shepherd is. They’re all laughing—” The train had gathered speed into the next bend; but he didn’t slow it down and it went off the rails.