The Railway Girls

by Leah Fleming

  Behind them to the left, the hillside echoed with a fearsome clamour, a cacophany of clankings, blastings and the noise of wagons rolling down embankments like the thunder of a thousand hammers ringing in the ear. In the distance were tunnel shafts sunk deep into the bedrock and men drawing up rocks from cranes, spoil heaps, brown bankings of soil, mud-encrusted men and boys pushing barrows of earth like busy ants. A world of rock and stone, mud and dust; an all-too-familiar prospect, this shovelling muck for a living.

  Fancy smiled as he sang the old ditty:

  ‘Rattle my bones, over the stones,

  Here’s a poor navvy who nobody owns.’

  He was in a poeticky mood and the sight of the bare green hillside, the limestone scree and the dramatic sky stirred the muse in his head. He could feel the words cascading over him and he needed to stop and catch the phrases before they got lost amongst the noise or sank into the earth for ever. He sat down on a damp tussocky clump and felt the spongy moss soaking into his breeks and picked the scratchy straw bits from his neck. A doss down in a fleabitten byre was no prize for a champion fighter but the money had long been swallowed up and he had no idea how he landed from Batty Green shanty to the Gearstones Inn. He was sobering up fast enough, fishing out a crumpled leather-backed notebook, the only thing he had not pawned for a bottle. He rummaged for a stump of pencil in his coat pocket and began to scribble down the lines in his head. Shaking his head furiously, he shook out more straw which landed on his paper to distract his concentration. He crossed out words and tried again to compose a rhyming couplet worthy of his bardic ancestry. His head was still woozy and phrases dripped slowly instead of the usual gushing waterfall. His brain was hungry and dried out and he was gasping for a drink.

  Fancy had tramped for a day on an empty stomach, spent his last penny in Batty Green and the rest was a blur. His pockets were bare and there was nothing else to pawn but his best tartan waistcoat with silver-tipped horn buttons if he was to eat that night.

  He cursed at himself. What was this son of the clan MacLachlan doing in this godforsaken bit of Yorkshire, far from the homelands of Argyll and his bardic forefathers? Why was he reduced to tramping out a living on foreign soil, dispossessed of his heritage and lands by those callous English lords who had cleared Father from his croft to graze their stupid sheep? How he hated sheep and now he was surrounded by them. Fancy cleared his throat and proclaimed in Gaelic the famous lament of his clansman, John MacLachlan of Rahoy.

  ‘On an April morning I no longer hear

  Birdsong or the lowing of cattle on the moor.

  I hear the unpleasant noise of sheep.

  And the English language, dogs barking . . .’

  The family had been driven off the land and forced into the city, His father, Lachie, had soured and ranted, old before his time. He saw his sons born in exile and died young, leaving Fancy’s mother, Eilean, to raise children in a Glasgow hovel close to the Broomielaw docks. This poor woman watched bairn after bairn die of enteric fever from the muck of the Clyde which washed through their basement and eventually it carried her tired spirit away. Fancy was the only survivor, taken into a dour orphanage, given a little schooling, enough to pick up the rudiments of English letters. In his head was always the flowing of Gaelic sounds like beautiful music but the dominie would beat him if he spoke the mother tongue in class.

  No one could ban memories of Mother’s stories of the glens and fighting men or their marvellous deeds in battle; of clan chief Lachlan MacLachlan, Prince Charlie’s henchman. Fancy was proud to bear his name. Sometimes his anger burned so fiercely in his head at the injustice of their treatment that even now only whisky would cool down the rage. Yet uisge beatha, that very water of life, raised its own fighting fire and he lost menial job after menial job because of it. Nor would he stoop to take the Queen’s shilling to fight in foreign lands for the Crown, nor would he police the streets as a peeler, the other fate of tall strapping Highlanders. So he left the streets of Glasgow far behind, tramping not northwards but reluctantly southwards to Carlisle, selling his brute strength digging roads and reservoirs, embankments and tunnel heads to slake his thirst.

  Lately his boots wearied of bogtrotting from one camp to another but a restless spirit drove Fancy forward, just in case. Some day he would stop roaming but he had found no reason to stay in one place so he kept on looking. It was always the sameness of camp and task which drove him off again.

  First he would join the queue at the contractor’s hut; shuffling forward he would sign on the dot, receive his chits, bargain for lodgings in some hut, put his bags in his locker, seize the bottom bunk of one of the truckle beds lined up against the walls like in a barracks, inspect the bedding for fleas and the face of the hutkeeper’s wife. If she was plain so much the better; the temptation of a pretty lassie, slattern though she be, was more than he could resist. He always chose the sourpuss. The more she grumbled, the more he charmed and often ended up with the best bit of the boiled mutton, the largest slice of the pie.

  He had fled too many docks through the window at midnight with a jealous husband lunging at him with a knife with barely time to put on his trousers and grab his sack. What a life for a man of twenty-five summers.

  A restless dissatisfaction at his given lot burned within him but he never stayed long enough to learn a skilled trade. He fancied the open-air life, the hillsides and green landscapes beckoned him. He spurned city jobs, preferring to rough it in the cold. He liked a big stretch of sky over his head with stars to count at night when he slept rough in a ditch. He hated being cooped up in the huts with only the snores and farts of smelly men for company. Men whose idea of a good wash was to dunk themselves occasionally in the water butt.

  That was how he had got his nickname, Fancy. He might only be a navvy digger, lowest of the low, but no one could accuse him of smelling like a sewer even if he dug them. Fancy was fastidious about his appearance. He liked nothing better after knock-off than to find the nearest burn, strip off and bathe away the muck of the day. Then he would put on a cleanly laundered shirt and breeks, finished off with one of his collection of waistcoats and shiny boots, comb out his drying locks which frizzled into coils and splash a little oil on his whiskers, framing them into cones over his full lips and straight set of teeth. The thought of selling his clan tartan waistcoat with its rich blue, scarlet and green plaid pattern to some dirty workman, to sick over it, was unbearable. He would rather go hungry.

  They called him Fancy, for his fancy waistcoats, and he liked this handle, so it stuck. Woe betide anyone who mistook his handle for that of a fop, thinking him a pushover!

  Not that any self-respecting navvy used his given name, not if he was fleeing from some woman or the constabulary. Your real name was incriminating evidence and only yielded to a priest at the last rites. They were not all criminals, thieves and drunkards. Fancy was proud to have the acquaintance of many good workmen and their families who happened to like the travelling life.

  Nicknames were their secret code, just like their own rhyming slang. It showed you were one of them and knew the ropes. It got you respect as did your fighting spirit and strength and Fancy had plenty of that. Lanes Tommy, Devon Whiskers, Gripper York, Whistler, Bones and Billy Two Hats, he had passed them all on the road up and if they made up a gang together they would set the tone of the dig by their speed and strength. If they made him their ganger, gaffer of the team, that would suit him fine and he might stay the whole summer or even see the job through.

  Sometimes Fancy dreamt the same dream: he was on a tramp and he felt there was someone waiting just around the corner but always the face, the place was fuzzy. He would drop his tommy sack and run, hopeful and expectant, only to find the vision vanished just out of reach perhaps around the next corner and he would chase into the mist. He woke then with a sadness which hung over him until he reached for the barrel of ale hidden in their digs for just such a comfort. If only he could see what it was, waiting there out of reach,
but he would keep on tramping until it appeared.

  Fancy searched through the muddy main camp at Batty Green, the wildest, windiest, coldest, dreariest of shantytowns. It was filling up fast with tramways and tracks, a mission, post office, limeworks, brick factory; already crammed with people, too much a city and too public a place for a poet, for that was what he was; a bard with stories in his head to share around camp fires and taprooms. There were ancient lays ringing in his head and he needed space to coax them onto paper so he was tramping on up Ribblehead to the next camp, just in case.

  Now he was turning left off the Hawes road towards Dent down another rough track, the wind beating furiously into his face from the north-west. Fancy was glad he had not wagered his jacket and bent his head in defiance. At last they were going downhill and in the distance a grey-misted valley opened up before him and he felt a strange lurch in his stomach at the sight of this hidden glen. For one giddy second he felt like some chieftain surveying his domain.

  For that moment he forgot he was cold and hungry, with thin soles on his second-best boots and straw itching its way down his back, forgot his anger and stood stock-still. His heart was thumping and he didn’t know why but it terrified him more than six navvies with hammers cornering him in a dark alley. He took a deep breath and turned to the entrance of Paradise camp where the contractor’s wagon on wheels was waiting patiently to lure him in.

  There was the usual queue and he stood in line, admiring the view across the dale to the patchwork of stone walls marking out the moorland, the clumps of trees in the hollow and the lush green pastures either side where the shorthorn cattle were grazing contentedly on the fresh grass. Now cows were a far bonnier prospect in view. You knew where you were with kine.

  His vision was distracted by the sight of a small boy by a stone wall, struggling to swing a pickaxe over his head, nearly turning a backwards somersault in the effort to control the heavy handle. The boy was trying to make a hole by the wall but the ground was hard and stony and he was making little headway. Visions of blood gushing from the bairn’s shins stirred Fancy from the queue, catching the axe mid-air. ‘Hang on, laddie, yer too wee to be swinging yon like a sword. Let me gie ye a hand.’ He took the pickaxe and crashed it down, splitting the earth. ‘What are we hiding . . . a bit of stolen treasure have we here?’ laughed Fancy, seeing the bundle covered with dirty sacking. Tizzy stood in awe at the sight of this man as tall as a tree bending to examine the bundle.

  ‘It’s me dog, Tat. I’m burying him under the wall so he can sniff out rabbits.’ She pulled back the rag to show the man the sad stiff corpse.

  ‘Worn out with tramping, was he?’ said the giant as he hacked out a hole skilfully. ‘There, that’ll make him a comfy bed to lie in. It’s a sad day when yer friend comes to the end of his years,’ he said gently to humour the child.

  ‘ ’Snot fair, he were only a pup. He were brayed on by a farmer up there,’ she said as she pointed across the beck to the rising fields high up, dotted with sheep. ‘He were brayed to death with a rock for going in a field full of lambs. He weren’t doing nothing but laiking about . . .’

  The man stood up, his warm brown eyes hardening. Sheep again, always trouble around sheep. He stared across to see if he could see anyone still working in the field. There was always trouble with farmers on the line, grousing, griping on about stock going missing and fences broken or daughters up the spout. Miserable beggars. ‘Were you after getting his name?’

  ‘Nah, I were scared in case he’d set on me. But I’d know him when I see him, poxy-faced with a fat belly and black hair, about yourn age. If you meet him tell him he’s dead meat,’ said Tizzy, trying to sound tough.

  ‘Dinna fash yersel. If I see him, I’ll be giving him a real Fancy’s welcome, one he won’t forget in a hurry. I promise you.’

  ‘Thanks, mister.’ Tizzy doffed her cap, revealing the worst of Mally’s scalping. ‘Here, do you need a tea masher for yer gang? I can run errands and sprog wheels too.’ Tizzy seized the moment and stood squarely, giving him one of her piercing stares.

  ‘I’ve only just arrived myself. Give me time to draw my breath. If we do need a nipper, I’ll be for givin’ you yer chance. You look awful small to me for sprogging wheels.’ Fancy smiled at this lad’s brass neck in sticking himself forward. He liked to see that in his crew.

  ‘What I lacks in size, I make up for in speed.’ The boy leapt over the wall. ‘Now you see me, now you don’t, Jack in a Flash!’ Fancy smiled at the scruffy boy in his overlong breeks and skinny legs.

  ‘Well, Mr Flash, I’ll be looking out for ye. Where’s yer dock?’ asked Fancy.

  ‘I ain’t got one yet but me sister, Mally, is a good cooker and skivvy and she’ll get us summat. Ask for Billy Boy Widdup but you can call me Flash if you like and thanks for the job.’

  ‘I’m not promising, mind. You should be at school. Get an education, laddie, or you’ll end up like me!’ Fancy tried to look stern but there was something unnerving about those grey eyes and the freckles across the bridge of his nose, the tufts of amber hair which reminded him of himself at that age.

  ‘Nah, I’ve been there, nowt to it but squiggling and singing. I could do sums in me head quicker than the teacher. Don’t reckon much to it. I could allus read letters and I can show how them numbers add up sideways, upwards and downwards. I worked it out mesen. Easy as pie.’ Tizzy picked up a flint of slate and drew on it with a stone. ‘See, if you take a three and double it and treble it and add another . . .’

  ‘You’ve lost me there, laddie, but I’m sure you’re right. You should stick with yer numbering and it might earn you a living.’ Fancy waved and drifted back to the queue bemused by the razor sharpness of the child. Billy Flash still had that wide-eyed innocence which believed everything was possible, that justice would be done for his dog. Well, Tat would get his revenge. Fancy would sign on, wash down in the burn and sort out that young farmer before the night was out.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Put yer clothes on, parson, we don’t want to be late for the meeting. Don’t worry, that’ll fettle yer back up for a few more weeks,’ laughed a white-haired woman as she lifted the flat iron off the brown paper covering his torso.

  The priest in charge of St Oswy’s, Scarsbeck, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, moaned with relief as he unpeeled himself from the dog-haired rag rug in front of the glowing open fire. On his face was a look of satisfaction usually reserved for market day afternoons when the blessed Liddy Braithwaite sent him to heaven locked in the juicy wetness of her cavernous thighs while Farmer Braithwaite patted the rumps of his best shorthorns at Hawes market.

  ‘Ooh, that’s much better,’ sighed the naked man as he reached for his woollen combinations warming on the brass fender rail.

  ‘Trouble with you is weak foundations and not enough strong through stones to hold up a wall the size of your back. Walls need bedding in firm rock and get yerself covered up before I get blushing at the size of you – like a stallion and twice as eager, no doubt.’ The woman smirked, unable to avert her eyes from his swollen member. ‘Time you got yerself a wife, she’ll soon cure yer aches ’n’ pains. I’m too old to be stooping over you and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Bethany Wildman, you’re an angel sent from heaven to minister to the afflicted. What would I do without your sheep-grease rubbings and flat-iron presses? And as for being too old, why, you’re still in the prime of life,’ replied the vicar in his soft southern accent as he dressed himself.

  ‘Stop all that flannel, Ralph Hardy, it don’t wash on me, save it for them silly ewes who run when you whistle. Hurry up, get them breeches on before someone sees you here again. Gossip walks on four legs in these parts, sheep tell tales and drovers pass my gate. If they keep seeing yon dappled grey horse and trap of yours hitched to my post then it’ll be clacked all round the village that parson’s getting his comforts again from the owd Nag On the Moor and I’ll be for it with all them jealous hussies.’

 
; Beth Wildman stood squarely with her hands on her ample hips, her pinny scooped up either side of her ragged skirt, in the old-fashioned way, pointing her finger in mock annoyance. Then her eyes softened at the sight of his winsome expression, the way his glossy mane of hair cascaded down from a centre parting, the slight tilt of his upper lip, the symmetry of his features and the childlike sparkle of his beautiful eyes.

  ‘You always shame me,’ smiled her patient as he stretched himself, banging his head on the low ceiling beams, sending bunches of dried crinkled herbs scattering like rice confetti over the table, cluttered with lavender-scented sheep salve and greasy paper.

  ‘Well, someone has to. I’ll name no names and you can tell me no lies but there’s nowt hid in Scarsbeck that shan’t be known. I’m not one to put legs on a snake but one of these days you’ll be caught with yer breeks flapping to the wind and you’ll be horsewhipped out of Scarsdale. Is that why you were put here with this far-flung flock, to cool yer ardour and mend yer ways? Yer a mite younger than the usual relics put out to grass in this pulpit.’ Bethany laughed as he averted his gaze. ‘So I hit nail right on the head then. Come on, you can do yer Christian duty and take me down the fell to this gathering tonight. I’ll not be missing all the baahing and bleating that’ll rise to the chapel rafters. I’ve got me own piece to say while we’re all in the same pen. But first you can help me shift them ewes down from the top fields. I can smell snow on the wind.’

  ‘Surely not? It’s the end of April.’

  ‘Makes no difference, you should know by now. Weather is its own master in this dale. Nine months winter and three months fair to middling, if we’re lucky, and every now and then it blows a fit just to let us see who’s gaffer. Anyroad, April snow makes good manure but it’s the very divil for young lambs.’ Beth flung open the wooden door and untethered her sheepdog, which strained eagerly at the sight of her. ‘See yon sky, swollen fit to burst o’er us heads before the night’s gone. So stir yerself, fasten up that fancy tweed jacket. You’ve had enough coddling for one day, naughty lad. I mean it. Get yersen a wife and stop yer capers in yer own sheep pen. Shame on you, a man of the cloth! Get yerself on yer knees and pray to the Good Lord to deliver you from yer sloth and sinning ways or I’ll cast a spell and dip that big wick of yours in the bog and you’ll never shift it again.’