THE BLUE TRAIN

EATING DIRK BOGARDE'S SANDWICHES

       

    The Blue Train leaving Paris.

  I’m a creature of the railroad. The only regular job I ever had was pushing a pen for the New South Wales Government Railways, even if most of that was spent writing science fiction stories behind artfully arranged piles of files about workers compensation. But free travel on the system had its advantages, and one got used to the ancient varnished mahogany of those passenger cars, the  nap-worn plush,  the fittings blurred by decades of Brasso.

            France’s airplane-style TGVs make me nostalgic for a different era.  How marvelous to have been one of those travelers who straggled off the boat train at Calais in 1922, only to stop short as they saw the train that awaited them, the proudest achievement of the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de Paris á Lyon et á la Mediterranée - PLM.  

Gone were the wooden coaches and ancient locomotives leaking steam at every rivet. Instead. a new Pacific 2 3 1 engine stood ready to carry them across France in luxury. Smart young men and women, their gloves as white as their smiles, waited to help them to their compartments in rolling stock of a quality new to Europe: carriages of steel, enameled the shade of the Mediterranean. Welcome to La Train Bleu – The Blue Train.

             “Going to sleep in a country of mists and grey skies,” raved Le Figaro, “then waking up next day to visions of light and sunny places where one breathes a fragrant air; this poetic dream can indeed come true if you take the new lightning-speed train that the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean has just created with Monte Carlo as its destination.”

            Until 1947, this luxury all-first-class overnight service carried the rich and famous to the Mediterranean.  (“You’ve never taken it? My dear, it’s the only way to travel!”) All would compete for its state-rooms and private dining salons.  In Ernst Lubitsch’s Monte-Carlo, it inspires Jeanette Macdonald, a passenger to the Riviera,  to sing Beyond the Blue Horizon.

As it headed for Paris, passengers who would join it there gathered in the buffet at the Gare de Lyon. As spacious as a cathedral under its gilded domed ceiling, its walls were hung with paintings showing the cities and sites served by PLM trains. (Thanks to André Malraux, it was saved from demolition in 1963, declared a national monument, and given the same name as the train – Le Train Bleu.)

Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill were regulars on the train. So was Agatha Christie, who made it the setting for one of her murder mysteries. For Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau and Serge Diaghilev, it inspired a ballet, also called Le Train Bleu. Cole and Linda Porter took an entire carriage, with separate bedrooms, a dining room, and accommodation for three servants.

It always carried a few gamblers, headed for Monte Carlo. They honed their edge with high-stakes games of bridge, or relaxed with the courtesans who took the trip five or six times a year, and who, because of their specialty, were known as Madones des Sleepings – Madonnas of the Sleeping Cars.

            Not long ago, I ate at the Train Bleu with Serge, a film director friend.  

            “You have to love the railways,” he said, looking up at the gilded ceiling and the paintings of voluptuous women of the belle epoque luxuriating in some seaside resort. “You don’t get this on Easyjet.”

            “You don’t spend a day getting to your destination either.”

            He shrugged off the attractions of efficiency. “How often are we really in such a hurry? I miss those long slow trips.” He went on  “One of my first jobs was on a film with Dirk Bogarde. This was back in the seventies….”

“How was Dirk? Bit of a prima donna, I’m told.”

“We got on very well. In fact he invited me to spend a few days at his house in Grasse. When I left, he even made up some sandwiches for me to take on the train back to Paris.”

Dirk Bogarde cutting sandwiches?  None of the stars I’d interviewed offered so much as a biscuit.

“He made a large packet of them,” John said. “More than I could possibly eat. I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time, so he said  ‘On the train, if you see a girl you fancy, give her a sandwich. It’s a good way to break the ice.’ ”

“Did you?”

“Oh, yes. The compartment was jammed, but the girl next to me was quite cute. So I offered her one.”

“And?”

“She refused.”

“Ah,” I said. “Dommage.”  But the cynic in me was secretly pleased.

“About halfway to Paris,” he went on, “we both got up and went out into the corridor. I still hadn’t eaten all the sandwiches, so I offered her one again. She said ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.’  I said ‘I’m not selling them. They’re free.’ And she said ‘Oh, in that case I’d love one.’  She ate the lot.”

He looked up reminiscently at the ceiling that celebrated the romance of rail.  “We ended up living together for three years.”

            Well, it was France after all…But it made one wonder…

What did Dirk Bogarde put in those sandwiches?