‘Patient! Patient! Excuse me, but in my humble opinion what this country needs is a few people who will no longer be patient! People who refuse to suffer patiently the bungling and incompetence with which we are surrounded! There! That’s what I think!’

‘It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive, they say. It should be the motto of the State Railways.’

‘You choose to joke about it, signore, but in my humble opinion this is no joking matter. On the contrary, it is an issue of the very highest importance, symptomatic of all the gravest ills of our poor country. What does one expect of a train? That it goes reasonably fast and arrives within five or ten minutes of the time stated in the timetable. Is that too much? Does that require divine intervention to bring about? Not in any other country in the world! Nor used it to here,’

‘You can always move to Switzerland, if that’s how you feel.’

‘But now what happens? The railway service, like everything else, is a disaster. And what is the government’s response? To give their friends in the construction business billions and billions of lire to build a new railway line between Rome and Florence! And the result? The trains are slower than they were before the war! It’s incredible! A national disgrace!’

The young man sitting near the door, Roman to his elegant fingertips, smiled sarcastically.

‘Ah yes, of course, everything was better before the war,’ he murmured. ‘We know all about that.’

‘Excuse me, but you know nothing about it,’ replied the vigorous, thick-set man with the shock of silver hair and the Veronese accent. ‘Unless I am very much mistaken you weren’t even born then!’

He turned to the third occupant of the compartment, sitting by the window, a distinguished-looking man of about fifty with a pale face whose most striking feature was a nose as sharply triangular as the jib of a sailing boat. There was a faintly exotic air about him, as though he were Greek or even Levantine. His expression was cynical, suave and aloof, and a distant smile flickered on his lips. But it was his eyes that compelled attention. They were grey with glints of blue, and a slightly sinister stillness which made the Veronese shiver. A cold fish, this one, he thought.