ENGINE NO. 4 of the Moscow State Railway Company steamed across the barren open vastness of Siberia in imperial splendour, powering south to the Mongolia-China border. Thousands of miles of isolated tracks lay ahead and behind, stretching through the endless nothing like two long lines of footprints through a vast minefield, picking out the safest and quickest route across the emptiness, for empires to follow.
Nestled in one of the first class carriages, three down from the heaving, sweating engine, Jan and Peter drained their fine cocktails and nodded to the barman for another round. The barman deftly delivered two more to the table - white Russian for him, vodka martini for her. Jan sat back, drink clutched in her hand. She was enjoying herself immensely. Slightly tipsy from her third cocktail of the evening, she was excited about reaching Beijing in a few days time.
The train carriage rocked gently as the great steppes of southern Mongolia sped by the window. The past two weeks had been simply unparalleled, from the trans-Western Europe train odyssey from Bristol to Moscow, to the Trans-Mongolian Express from Moscow to Beijing: Bristol-London-Brussels-Cologne-Warsaw-Moscow; a few days in the Russian capital, a few in Irkutsk and a couple in Ulan Bator, finally to Beijing, and not a good few days and nights on the train itself, steaming across the most beautiful and breathtaking lands Jan had ever seen.
Best. 60th. Birthday. Present. Ever.
Very soon they would be thundering across the border into China. And just two days later they would be arriving in Beijing, the sprawling and congested capital city of the country that had many years ago wrapped its beautiful, maddening, enigmatic cloak around her, and in the warm embrace of which she continued, even after a 17 year absence, to long for. Beijing was to be the conclusion to a most wonderful story, a Catherine Wheel full-stop to a neon-lit paragraph.
Only a few miles from now, just crossing the border would be a return; an East Asian recharge to her Western soul. And even though the unworldly expanses flitting past her window were unlikely to change much, at first, just knowing that she was back on Chinese soil was enough to make flutter the bright butterflies in her stomach.
Then outside went dark, as the train plundered into the cross-border tunnel. The next time they see daylight, Jan thought, happily, they will be on Chinese soil and it will be Chinese daylight, on Chinese time.
She grinned at her husband, who grinned back. They clinked their cocktails together, drinking to Beijing. Oh yes, Jan was having a fine time.
Twenty minutes later, after pouring through the dark, deep tunnel, as the last of the vodka martini drained from her glass and they started eyeing up the barman for another round, they burst out of the gloom into dull sunlight.
Jan peered wide-eyed out of the window for her first view of China after 17 years. The view that greeted her, though, was odd. Streaming past outside in the overcast afternoon ran an endless dirty grassy bank, littered with discarded plastic bags and drinks cans, as ragged bits of newspaper fluttered from straggly bushes and bent trees.
Suddenly, with a stammer that threw her forward against her table, the train started to slow as the brakes screeched on the line. She looked questioningly from the window at Peter, who was nonchalantly packing his book and reading glasses into his bag. Her fellow travellers were similarly packing their belongings away and throwing on coats. The barman rattled down the shutters on the bar and slipped away.
The train slowed to a halt beside the station platform. Looming large in Jan’s window was the dirty yellow and black station sign, with the train company’s omnipotent ‘M’ logo crouching on it like an angry insect. Jan’s mouth fell open. She tore her eyes away from the sign, stared suspiciously at her empty cocktail glass, then around the carriage at her fellow travellers, then back at sign. She peered closer, unbelieving.
‘Birkenhead... North?!’
The train intercom fizzled to life: ‘Thank you for travelling with Merseyrail,’ it Scoused. ‘Change here for trains to Liverpool, West Kirby, Chester and New Brighton. Birkenhead North is our last stop. All change, please. All change.’
Peter slung his bag over his shoulder and headed towards the exit, chatting amiably to the other passengers.
A cavernous, empty silence replaced the low hum of the train engine as, one by one, the carriage lights began to flick off.
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