An extract from HEAT 18

I was rereading Calvino. That is a pleasure of mine, rereading. I like the surprising newness in familiarity. And very early on I came upon something that astonished me: the description of a railway station café and all its vapours, the smokiness, the befogged glass, the cloud of steam from the coffee machine; the regulars looking sideways at newcomers, the customers at the bar, the haloed lights, the odour of train that lingers after the trains have left. I have been there, and it was exactly like that, in 1967, as it is in Calvino’s narrative published in 1971 so I must have read it after my experience, but I don’t remember recognising that before.

My railway station was in Alassio, a little town on the Italian Riviera, not far from the French border. Late one night we walked across the train lines and went in to the station bar, pushing open the clouded and heavy etched glass doors and into the yellow, steamy light inside. We sat at a table and ordered glasses of vermouth while we waited for the express train to Rome. Normally the express would not stop at a provincial station like this, but ah, there was a story to that. We sat and drank the herby vermouth – my husband, me with our baby and a man called Ian Thorne, who had left his wife and somewhat older baby at home. Too late for a baby to be out, but ours was travelling, sitting up with great gaiety taking in the scene. We talked as people do who expect never to see one another again, probably never even to communicate, though that was one of the things we talked about.