A Station In Life (10 page)

My nerves eventually
calmed, I summoned Messrs Wheeler and Troke and had them lift my Bloomer to the
mantelpiece, placing a short length of track there first to accommodate it. 
While the two men struggled with the engine I opened a book that I had recently
acquired and turned to Chapter One.  It amused me to think how my literary
taste would have baffled Doctor Bentley, for the volume was Benjamin Disraeli’s
‘The Two Nations’
in which the Tory MP reproved our country for having divided
into rich and poor.  Never was so much ink wasted upon the obvious I thought.

Thus absorbed I lost
awareness of time and did not refer to my fobwatch until some while after
Wheeler and Troke had left.  Snapping the timepiece shut in a state of shock I stood
up and chanced to glimpse a lady passing my office window.  My heart missed a
beat and I was compelled to close my book with a thud, for although my window
distorted all seen through its glass, and the lady passed very quickly, I
recognised the green dress and enchanting white lace that had been haunting
me.  The belle had returned!  I sped out to the platform to introduce myself.

“Begging your pardon,
ma’am,” I hailed.  “Do you wish to speak to me?”

When the lady turned,
swinging her lime green umbrella into the slanting rain with an ugly squint, my
gusto deflated, for this was not the face I expected to see.  Nor, come to
that, was it a face I would have elected to see.  Rendered speechless, I doffed
my hat with a sickly smile and prepared to withdraw.

“I think you are
mistaken,” she reprimanded me frostily.

Feeling utterly
ridiculous, I bowed.  Then, compelled to do so by a perverse fascination, I
became fixated upon the vainly decorated woman.  This caused her to stare back
at me sourly.  There were a considerable number of years accumulated upon her
face, all of them bad, and I sensed that by loitering in the vicinity I would
take the blame for them.  Yet still I could not disengage.  My stupefaction ended
only when she bared her teeth and clucked like a nutcracker.

“Begging your pardon for
the intrusion, ma’am,” I apologised briskly and returned to my cloister.

Assisted by Disraeli and
proximity to a finely engineered Bloomer I blotted out my unease until the
Market goods train returned from Blodcaster.  The sound of its approach was
accompanied by a knock at my door.  It was Jack Wheeler with, by the look of
him, a weighty problem.

“Ah, Jack, come in and
sit down,” I parried the clerk before he could bother me.  “You have a
comprehensive knowledge of local people and their affairs, perhaps you can
unravel a mystery for me.  I am trying to trace a lady who was on Platform One
this morning.”

I went on to describe
the belle as best I could then asked Jack if he had seen anyone fitting the
description.

“Brown ’air, ’ad she?”
he replied with a puckered grin.

This reaction was
promising, for I had said nothing of her hair.

“Did you see her too,
Jack?” I asked enthusiastically.

Jack sought further
details before confirming.

“Of about your years?”

“So you did see her,” I
concluded joyously.

“No,” the clerk replied,
shaking his head vehemently.  “But I reckon I know who she is, though.”  He
cast his eye about my office shiftily and hissed through his teeth.  “Is this
important, Mr Jay, because I was wondering if…”

“Not particularly,” I
interrupted him.  “Well?” I jumped.  “Who is she?”

“I reckon you saw
Mistress Goadby,” he announced with lofty confidence.

“Mistress Goadby,” I
repeated the name slowly, then slipped into a pensiveness gape.

While in this state I
decided that it mattered little if the ‘belle’ was married, for I harboured no
silly notions of wedlock and possessed not even a rudimentary understanding of the
successful, two-way relationship.  No, admiring this majestic lady from a
distance would suffice.

“She’s the pig killer’s
wife,” Jack proffered unnecessarily.  “She lives in the ’igh street near
’arvey’s farm.”

To this day I have no
idea why I decided to call upon Mrs Goadby but I did.  Somehow it seemed
necessary to know the boundaries of my secret worship.  After all, there was
evidence that she wished to speak to me.  Accordingly, therefore, I instructed
the clerk to take charge of the station in my absence.

“Foremost, Jack, I would
like you and Mr Phillips to deal with the Market goods,” I said.  “And see to
it that young Diggory Smith is dispatched promptly with the Blodcaster baton.”

Jack gave me a hollow look
as if I had suggested something improper.

“Mr Maynard always rides
that one ’imself,” he said.  “The passenger train follows close behind, sir, so
it requires a very fast turn of speed back to Blodcaster.”

“Has Diggory no
horsemanship?” I enquired.  “I was given to believe he could ride well.  I
certainly gained that impression this morning.”

“Oh, ’e can ride well
enough, Mr Jay, but the company nags all ’ave broomsticks for legs,” the clerk enlightened
me plaintively.  “Mr Maynard rides ’is own ’orse, see.  Called Hildebrand.”

“I see.  And does Mr
Maynard expect payment for the use of his personal mount?” I asked.

“You can pay ’im if you
like, Mr Jay,” Jack mused.  “But he’s a skilled ’orseman who rides for cups,
not money.”

“Well the company awards
no cups, Jack, so tell him to go carefully over the downs,” I cautioned the
clerk.  “The bridleways hereabouts are boggy and I would rather have to explain
the late running of a train than a dead railway employee.”

I cast an eye through my
window towards the distant hills.  Looking like textured velvet, they were
actually course grass and heather concealing deep fissures in spongeous peat. 
The incautious rider could be thrown to his death.

Having dismissed Jack I
set off towards the village to call upon Mrs Goadby, pondering but one question.

‘How can this be the
woman haunting me with her loveliness, with a name like Goadby and a husband
who hires himself out to kill pigs?’

I concluded that since I
was almost certainly doomed to become a distant admirer of someone then why not
a Mrs Goadby?  Being fated to the condition, such was my lot in life.  However,
if on this occasion my luck was cruel enough to be kind, perhaps Mrs Goadby
would fail the test of close scrutiny and effect upon me no further thrall.

Close scrutiny changed
everything.  Mrs Goadby turned out to be the woman I had apprehended upon the
platform and of whose face I had not been enamoured.  Our second meeting did
not even merit a reprimand, for when, as a result of sheer surprise and lack of
ready wit, I asked her once more if she wished to speak to me, she took fright
and bolted her door in my face.  When a stationmaster’s enquiry is terminated with
the clunk of a snib and a nutcracker cluck, he hurries back to his station to
recover.  Somewhat dazed by my inability to learn I contemplated my good
fortune that the pork butcher had not been at home, otherwise I might have been
cured.

In riddance of the whole
affair I toured the platforms and pondered more refreshing matters, such as the
South Exmoor company’s imperspicuous method of running a railway, as
exemplified by its adherence to the curiously outdated practise of using horse
riders to transfer batons to and fro between stations.  The Board of Trade had
approved an alternative system known as ‘staff-and-ticket’ which allowed
perfectly safe operation of ‘up’ and ‘down’ trains over a single-line railway
but this would never be installed while a gentleman called Benjamin Crump held
sway.

Mr Crump, the General
Manager, maintained that while the staff-and-ticket system prevented head-on
collisions it could not stop one train from smashing into the rear of another,
his spouse having been maimed in just such an accident at Toadgrinton on the
Great North Junction railway, leaving her confined to a bath-chair.  He
regarded the horse and baton system as the very safest if not the most efficient. 
It was certainly the cheapest option for a line like the South Exmoor, given
that the weekly overhead of Mr Maynard’s horses did not amount to eleven
shillings each.  Nevertheless I did not envisage baton horses surviving the
London & South Western’s takeover, even if the shunting horses did.

Returning to my office I
noticed a message written upon my memo pad, the pad being positioned to attract
my attention.  I had forgotten to lock my door and someone had taken
advantage.  Judging by the delicate handwriting the author was not a member of my
staff, a conclusion which was reinforced by the salutation ‘Dear Horace’.  The
note was signed ‘Rosie’ and expressed thanks for my assistance in looking for
the missing parasol.

Rose’s handwriting was
hypnotic and I spent an agreeable few minutes studying it.  Beguiling curls and
serifs tickled my mind as disarmingly as had the feathers of her hat tickled my
face, and I admitted to myself that the woman’s attentions stirred me.  In just
one day Rose had established herself as firmly in my mind as a lifelong friend
and I wondered how I should behave towards her.

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Chapter
Nine — The handless stranger

The afternoon Blodcaster
train steamed into Upshott on time at 5.03pm, hauled by Briggs, but its
departure was delayed six minutes by the late arrival of the Giddiford train. 
Mr Maynard had indeed found the going rough over the downs and kept Lacy
waiting for the baton at the far end of the line.  That same length of engraved
wood was now back at Upshott and, with vaudeville inevitability, Driver
McGregor was handing it to Driver Hiscox to carry with him back to Blodcaster! 
How unique it was that a collision should be avoided by the relentless passing
to and fro of a piece of wood.

The baton pantomime
would last until the LSWR company fulfilled its obligation to double the line,
and while rejoicing in this prospect I pulled Rose’s note from my pocket and
settled another gaze upon it.  Such was my indulgence that I fancied her words
written upon personal note paper, which I imagined to be pink with floral
embossing.  Alas I had become a letter fetishist!  Thinking I heard a porter
coming, I returned the slip to my pocket.

To look busy I stared
authoritatively towards Giddiford.  When the porter had passed I looked the
other way pessimistically towards Blodcaster, for in this direction no spare
track-bed had been constructed for a second line, the boring of a second tunnel
through Splashgate hill being regarded as too expensive.  Consequently I
doubted that the upper end of the line between Upshott and Blodcaster would
ever be doubled, even though the Board of Trade viewed a single-line railway as
incomplete.

With no further time for
whimsy I returned to my office and dropped Rose’s note into the waste paper
basket.

By Six o’ Clock the rain
had ceased and in the prosecution of his duties the village Postmaster, Mr
Peckham, arrived at the station whistling passionately a home-spun melody.  As
if hypnotised by his own trilling he exhibited an uncanny facility for ignoring
everything and everyone.  As he wheeled his precariously stacked handcart
across the line to Platform Two, not once did he shift his eyes from Her
Majesty’s mail.  I would come to know his normal behaviour only after every
canvas bag in his charge had been stowed safely aboard the Mail train.  It was
a picture of dedication that would become as familiar to me as the trains
themselves, twelve postal visits a week being necessary.

On this occasion Mr
Peckham’s whistling ceased abruptly and filled the station with an unnatural
silence, a silence accentuated by the absence of the labourers digging up slab-stones. 
The gang had departed by the last Giddiford train, presumably preferring the
comforts of Third class travel to a jury car.

Such blessed relief from
digging and relentless whistling prompted me to greet the ‘up’ Mail in the
company of the postmaster, my society intended to quell further chirping.  Mr
Peckham was short and thick set with silver hair and a pink face decorated with
bushy white eyebrows angled upwards like wings.  His most striking feature was
a perpetual smile which one might well have mistaken for a frown.  All in all,
Mr Peckham had the ambience of a man of substance.  I could tell that he knew
answers, and notwithstanding his infernal whistling I took a liking to him.

The level crossing gates
swung open with their familiar clatter and the ‘down’ disc signal rotated
clangorously.  Soon afterwards, as if in approval of these measures, a
prolonged whistle tumbled from the hills like the toot of an impatient
flautist.  Mr Peckham and I hearkened to the rhythms of a locomotive and its
faithful carriages, and mused over a herd of deer taking flight across the
Squire’s estate.  The Mail was coming.

At precisely 6.15pm,
London & South Western locomotive number ‘One-Seven-One’ squealed
discordantly to a halt beside us issuing foaming rapids of steam in deafening
sibilation.  But Mr Peckham and I stood our ground, drifting in and out of the
racing lumps of whiteness until we had thrown all the sacks aboard the mail
van.  After tossing in the last of the misshapen sacks, Mr Peckham padlocked
the doors and with all the priority deserved of such a cargo the London bound mail
resumed its journey.  I should not have minded talking further with the Postmaster,
for he was a very informed fellow, but without further ado he bade me farewell
and went off duty.  For my own part I would not sign off to test my new bed
until after 11.30pm.

My next concern was to
see Diggory away safely to Blodcaster with the baton from the Mail train, and I
did not like the look of the weather.  Across the valley, lingering above the
now sombre hump of Widdlecombe hill, were the vertical streaks of a downpour. 
A few minutes later that downpour had reached Upshott and driven my platform
staff into their oilskins.  Cloistered inside these cumbersome company
waterproofs was a parade of faces squinting at me meanly as if I were to blame
for the storm.  Perhaps my porters were envious of the somewhat more commodious
capes issued to stationmasters.

Diggory, wearing a
vastly oversized oilskin that I imagine he had borrowed, emerged from the
station house and was met by Mr Maynard leading a company horse.  Mr Maynard
steadied the beast while the boy mounted it, then stood aside as the lad rode
to the signalbox to collect the baton from Mr Hales.

Hunching against the
vitreous squalls, Signalman Hales scurried down the wooden steps of his gas-lit
cabin and imparted the baton to Diggory with minimal ceremony.  On his dash
back to his cosy shelter he unhitched an oil lamp and urged Diggory to carry it
with him as a marker.  Unwisely the lad declined the offer, so I advanced
hastily to revise his answer, hampered by deep puddles and a domesday umbra.

“I’ll be alright, Mr
Jay,” he assured me brightly, pointing yonder.  “See, the sun’s breaking
through!”

I squinted into a
shrieking gush of rain and saw that the optimistic youth was referring to a
silvery pool of light that had momentarily glazed the railway cottages.  As the
ephemeral puddle of daylight dissolved into a blur under the sable sky, the lad
turned his horse towards the village, applied the spur undaunted, and galloped
away.

“I should reach
Blodcaster in time to return on the Eight-Forty-Seven,” he called back, barely
audible above the tumult.

It was indeed customary
for the rider carrying this baton to return on the 8.47pm train, and since the
train could not leave without it, Diggory’s remark was either witty or daft.  I
had no idea which.

In due course, with
glistening rods still occluding everything beyond ten yards, it was with great
relief that I observed Diggory stepping off the 8.47pm ex Blodcaster.  Humphrey
approached me in his huge oilskin and appeared indifferent to the waterfall
flowing from a carriage roof.

“Bain’t natural, her
bein’ so dark,” he remarked solemnly with water pummelling his hood.  “E mark
my words, Mr Jay, her’s goin’ to come down in pitchers.”

Nonplussed, I stared at
the porter without comment.  With a bruised and sagging sky barging overhead
like the vault of judgement day, what did he think it was doing now?  I thanked
the fellow for his uplifting outlook and suggested that he carry someone’s
trunk.

As it turned out,
Humphrey’s forecast was wrong.  After a short while the rain eased and I was
able to observe operations from my favourite location.  Standing aloft and
alone upon the footbridge, listening to the steady patter of drizzle upon my
top-hat, I stared through a curtain of drips at the two trains in my station.

Directly beneath me was
Lacy simmering at the head of a Blodcaster train, its sibilations scarcely
audible above the cackle and gurgle of water running to earth, upon its
footplate Driver MacGregor and Fireman Jones ever raising their voices in
vexation.  With a humourless Welshman stubbornly proud of ‘dry steam’ coal
sharing a small space with a Highlander of testing dry wit, the firebox was but
a secondary source of combustion.

I descended the
footbridge and braved the far end of Platform Two to have a word with the more
equable crew of the ‘up’ train.  Here I recognised the silver hair of Driver
Hiscox down at track level where he was assiduously lubricating his engine’s
link motions.  Having finished with the oiling can, taking shelter leeward of
his charge, the fellow straightened up and lit his pipe.  Refreshed by a
satisfying puff he pulled a forage cap from his back pocket, unrolled it, and
donned it squarely as if going on parade.

Hiscox realised that he
was being watched and peered upwards with a brief, sagely nod.  Embarking upon
another vital task he took a small mallet from a toolbox and began tapping
Briggs’s axles, cocking his ear to each metallic ring.

“Hear that, Mr Jay?,” he
hushed.  “One dull clunk and we’ve a fracture.”

I knew this, of course,
but I acknowledged him studiously nevertheless.

“Are MacGregor and Jones
always at variance?” I asked, wondering what kind of atmosphere prevailed in
the engine house.  Driver Hiscox, presumably preferring not to judge his
colleagues, pretended not to hear.

“I think you’ll find the
signal lamps need lighting, Mr Jay,” he grunted with the cadence of a man
struggling against himself.

I summoned Diggory to
perform the task and the boy arrived swiftly clutching a can of lamp oil, his
face arched with delight.

“You’ll not think the
duty so fine when we go over to semaphores,” Hiscox addressed him.  “Do you
know what a ‘Distant’ signal is, lad?”

The porter shook his
head with a cascade of drips.

“It’s a signal they put
a quarter of a mile outside the station,” Hiscox told him with a mock peer
through the steady drizzle.  “Not quite so much fun in this weather, eh?”

This forecast did not even
dent Diggory’s enthusiasm, for servicing remotely located signals would place
him outside my jurisdiction for a while each day.  It would take more than
driving rain to dampen his spirits in such circumstances, a fact which was evident
upon his face, especially as modern signals were fitted with removable lamps to
make refilling them easier.

“A young man enjoys his
freedom,” I told Hiscox with a wink, and together we watched the boy shin
effortlessly up a forty-foot signal post.

Such was the downpour
that Diggory could not strike a lucifer to light the lamp’s exposed wick, and
having tipped more oil down the wooden post than in the reservoir, when he
finally got a light it was only the rain that prevented a fire.

“These life expired
discs jam,” Hiscox told me, pointing upwards miserably while Diggory slid
downwards gleefully.  “We got this one second-hand from Vauxhall after the London
and South Western declared the type obsolete.”

Being by nature a
gentleman, this was the closest Percival Hiscox would ever get to criticising
the South Exmoor’s obsession with economy.

“A typical penny-saving
job lot,” I concurred briskly.

“Things will change, Mr
Jay.  You’ll see.”

With this prophecy,
Driver Hiscox took the ‘right away’ and eased open the regulator.  I watched
his train recede beyond Fallowfield common until it was no more than a
flickering red tail lamp in the blustering rain where the engine’s sulphurous
grey fog finally dispersed, then watched the ‘down’ train woof into the
striated gloom of Splashgate.  Once again the station fell quiet.

It seemed unlikely that full
daylight would return this day so I set Snimple the task of lighting the
platform lamps.  Until many years later, when fitted with incandescent mantles,
these gas lamps were woefully dim producing only a fluttering, naked flame no
better than a well maintained oil lamp.

About Nine-Thirty this
evening a most peculiar thing happened.  I was seated in my office reading
Rose’s note, which like a besotted schoolboy I had retrieved from my waste
paper basket to review, when I spotted an unfamiliar gentleman wearing a black
cape and top-hat.  Standing beneath the canopy upon Platform One, he was
dithering as if in need of directions.  When I went to him, having stuffed the
note in my pocket, the stranger bade me good evening with a most peculiar
stridence which bordered upon mockery.  In addition to his disagreeable conduct
I detected in his lineaments a condescending smirk of recognition, as if he
knew me from somewhere but chose not to say.

Before I could utter a
word of enquiry the objectionable fellow pulled out his fobwatch and asked me a
question.  It was a simple enough question but delivered in the oddest fashion.

“Have you the means
hereabouts to record the passage of time, sir?” he asked.

Suspicious that the boor
was of making sport of me I expressed my disapproval by way of a raised eyebrow
and nothing more.  In response, the clown flipped open his silver timepiece to
demonstrate that it was unserviceable, its vigorous ticking comically negated
by the absence of hands!

Taken aback by the antic
I revised my opinion and supposed the fellow to be foreign.  Experience had taught
me that Johnny Foreigner could be quite offensive at times, albeit
unintentionally.  For which reason I decided to give him a lesson in British
civility.  Matching his gesture deed for deed I showed him my own fobwatch and
offered no explanation as to why it was losing time.  Unfortunately Rose’s note
stuck to the timepiece then spiralled downwards to a puddle, much like a wounded
butterfly, and when I stooped to recover it my hat fell off.  With the bounder
laughing openly I placed the soggy slip of paper in my trouser pocket and
summoned Jack Wheeler.