As his eyes adjust, Thomas comes to realise that the platform is not as deserted as he had assumed. A group of men, women, and children huddle against the wall at the far side of the building, downwind from the storm. There may be as many as a dozen of them; have formed a circle, their faces focussed on the centre. When the train starts up again, they draw level. It is too dark to read any features, but their gestures and stance speak of a violent excitement, clenched fists and wide-open mouths, the feet planted wide apart. At the centre of their man-made ring, two figures are wrestling, one atop the other, the upper stripped to his waist. They pass too quickly to say whether it is two men or a man and a woman; whether they are fighting or engaged in something yet more intimate. The whole group is steaming with a misty Smoke, snatched off their bodies by the storm and blown down-country where it will plaster a barn, a house, a shade tree with their wind-borne sin.

Then they are gone.

Charlie and Thomas go on looking out the window long after they have passed the group, though now, coated by country dark, the pane has turned into a rain-streaked mirror.

“Pedlars?” Charlie asks at last. “Circus people? Irishmen?”

Thomas shakes his head. “Who knows.”

The words are laced with a familiar flavour; the mirror shows a shadow darting from his mouth.

“A group like that,” Charlie goes on, “they infect each other over and over. Like a tiny, travelling London.” He sighs. “I wish we could find a way to save them.”

“Save them? Whatever for? Leave them in their filth. They deserve it. Isn’t that the point of Smoke?”

The words come out wrong, hard and flat and ugly. Charlie looks at him in shock. Afraid that Thomas means them, aware of the smell that’s filling the compartment. For a moment, Thomas searches for a phrase that will explain. But you cannot unsay the said. And how do you account for the yearning, distinct in his chest, to go back and join the men and women in their circle, find out what it was that those two figures did, half naked on the freezing brick of the station platform?

“We better get there soon,” he says, wrapping himself into the blanket, and leaving Charlie to worry for his, Thomas’s, soul.

ф

It must be past ten when they arrive at their destination. It is hard to be sure. The station clock is not working; Thomas has no watch, and Charlie quickly realises that he has forgotten to wind his. Baron Naylor’s coachman welcomes them on the platform. He is tall, bearded, half frozen, and nervous; stands muffled into a greatcoat; insists on carrying their luggage, then sets it down again after a dozen steps.