“Penfold knew all the railway staff; I think he knew all the waiters. There was one conductor we sometimes encountered on a transcontinental, who was a special delight to him, a gloomy man who carried a real railway watch—one of those gigantic nickel-plated turnips that kept very accurate time. Penfold would hail him: ‘Lester, when do you think we’ll be in Sault Ste Marie?’ Then Lester would pull up the watch out of the well of his waistcoat, and look sadly at it, and say, ‘Six fifty-two, Mort, if we’re spared.’ He was gloomy-religious, and everything was conditional on our being spared; he didn’t seem to have much confidence in either God or the C.P.R.

“Penfold knew the men on the locomotives, too, and whenever we came to a long, straight stretch of track, he would say, ‘I wonder if Fred is dipping his piles.’ This was because one of the oldest and best of the engineers was a martyr to haemorrhoids, and Penfold swore that whenever we came to an easy piece of track, Fred drew off some warm water from the boiler into a basin, and sat in it for a few minutes, to ease himself. Penfold never laughed; he was a man of deep, private humour, and his solemn, hypnotist’s face never softened, but the liquid on his lower eyelid glittered and occasionally spilled over, and his head shook; that was his laugh.

“Now and then, on long hauls, the train carried a private car for Sir John and Milady; these luxuries could not be hired—or only by the very rich—but sometimes a magnate who owned one, or a politician who had the use of one, would put it at the disposal of the Tresizes, who had armies of friends in Canada. Sir John, and Milady especially, were not mingy about their private car, and always asked a few of the company in, and now and then, on very long hauls, they asked us all in and we had a picnic meal from the dining-car. Now surely that was romance, Roly? Or didn’t you find it so? All of us perched around one of those splendid old relics, most of which had been built not later than the reign of Edward the Seventh, full of marquetry woodwork (there was usually a little plaque somewhere that told you where all the woods came from) and filigree doodads around the ceiling, and armchairs with a fringe made of velvet bobbles everywhere that fringe could be imagined. In a sort of altar-like affair at one end of the drawing-room area were magazines in thick leather folders—and what magazines! Always the Sketch and the Tatler and Punch and the Illustrated London News—it was like a club on wheels. And lashings of drink for everybody—that was Penfold’s craft at work—but it wasn’t at all the thing for anybody to guzzle and get drunk, because Sir John and Milady didn’t like that.”

“He was a great one to talk,” said Ingestree. “He could drink any amount without showing it, and it was believed everywhere that he drank a bottle of brandy a day just to keep his voice mellow.”