After a chaotic procession of family and servants to the station in the snow, embraces and blessings on the platform, and after settling her mother in her compartment, Natasha sat back in peace, enfolded in the sealed world of the sleeping car, with its brown plush seats, washbasins and divans. For the empty hours until nightfall she watched the snow-bound Russian plain fly past her window. At dawn at the German border, she lay in her bed and felt the train being transferred from its broad Russian gauge to the narrower European one. It was like going to sleep in one century and waking up in another when the maternal rocking of the Russian gauges was replaced by the sharper gyration of the European lines. She changed trains in Paris and drifted asleep in the dark panelled compartments of the sleeping car while it awaited the departure whistle in the Gare de Lyon. At first light she lifted the blind at the end of the bed with her toe and as the train sped round the cliffs and through the tunnels, she saw the waves of the Mediterranean so close they seemed to be beating at her window.
