The West Winford Incident

by John Parker

  *

  Peter’s car drew up outside but before he had turned off the engine, Sue was half way down the front pathway. In just a short time she had become a practised genealogist, at least as far as the addictive behaviour was concerned. She joined her fellow enthusiasts. The morning was overcast and there were a couple of light showers during their journey, but it began to brighten as they neared London. Having parked at Hammersmith, the previous routine was followed with Sue and Kathleen retracing their steps to Somerset House.

  Soon Sue was settling into her morning’s exercise with the heavy index books – lift – turn – across – thump – search – return. She picked up the rhythm quickly. This time she was in the marriages section, searching for the marriage of three of her great, grandparents, firstly the Boughtons. She worked her way methodically through the quarters knowing that their son, Harry, had been born in 1878, so she needed to start at that year and work backwards through earlier years systematically. The search was on. The area in which she was working was crowded and this slowed her progress.

  It turned out to be a long search, which entailed checking through twenty odd volumes, to find the entry she wanted; Thomas Boughton’s marriage to Martha, which she found indexed in the April volume of 1872. The next marriage – that of James Loomes to Caroline Potten – took almost as long and so she had to abandon her search for the third marriage, through lack of time. She still had to fill in the request forms and pay her fees. She felt tired, hot and grubby after the hours of searching. So much for glamour, she thought, checking herself in the mirror in the Ladies, before meeting up with her travelling companions.

  The four of them regrouped at Hammersmith and settled for the drive home. As they drove along the A4 past the White Horse at Cherhill, Peter said that he would prefer to take a different route from the morning one, which meant dropping off Kathleen and Maureen first and leaving Sue until last. He was, he explained, due to put in an extra session with his indexing team at St. John’s in Bremham, which was more convenient for him. Having dropped the others, he stopped at Sue’s and accepted her invitation for tea. They had just settled when Jo and Katy burst in with the customary sound track at full volume. This was reduced considerably when they found an unknown man sitting on the sofa. Strangely shy, considering that it was their home, they acknowledged their mother’s introductions, though they kept their eyes on her the whole time. Quite soon and with the minimum of fuss, they were closeted in their rooms.

  “Well, Peter that’s one advantage of inviting you in that I hadn’t anticipated,” smiled Sue. “A significant noise reduction, plus an early start on their homework. Perhaps you could call in every evening?” Sue placed Peter’s tea, together with a selection of biscuits, on a small table beside the sofa.

  Shortly afterwards, Katy peered around the door chewing the end of her pencil. “Mum,” she said, glancing shyly in Peter’s direction, “can you come here a minute?” She was half in and half out of the room. Sue smiled and asked her to come in as Peter was unlikely to bite her. Katy did as she was asked and moved slowly into the room, passing quickly by the sofa containing the funny man, as she went to her mother’s side.

  “Do you know what – er” glancing at her homework book, “a palindrome is?” She seemed surprised when her mother said that she did.

  “Why, what do you want to know?”

  Katy leaned rather babyishly against her mother’s knee and replied that they had to find as many as they could for school. As a special incentive, Mr Evans had said that there would be a prize for the child with the most.

  “And have you got any yet?” asked Sue, trying to get Katy to stand away from her so that she could read what was on the page of her exercise book. “Yes, you’ve got deed and pop, bob, and level. That’s a good start. Now try and think of some more.”

  “Ooh! Mum, help me with some,” weaselled Katy.

  “Erm, well there’s madam and rotor and civic,” suggested Sue.

  “How do you spell civic?” asked Katy, making a note of her mother’s contributions. Sue spelt the word for her and added that it was really her homework and it wouldn’t be fair on the others if she did it for her.

  “Oh! Just one more then, please Mum.”

  “Why don’t you ask Peter? I bet he will know a good one,” replied her mother, looking across to him. Peter was touched, watching the charming family scene, of which he had no experience. He had a couple of nephews but rarely saw them.

  “You ask,” said Katy from behind her book.

  “Certainly not, it’s your homework.”

  Peter spared Katy further embarrassment by asking her if there were any extra prizes for the longest palindrome. Katy, still leaning against her mother, looked sideways and with a shy smile, shook her head.

  “Well, in that case you won’t want mine.”

  “Oh, anything would do,” she coaxed.

  Peter said that he would need her pencil and paper, so Katy decided that this was worth following up and she moved across to him. Peter wrote on the loose piece of paper that Katy gave him, as she climbed upon the sofa to see what he was writing. He pulled away from her to prevent her seeing. Sue watched with amused interest. Katy took the paper when Peter offered it and, with a puzzled frown, went back to her mother.

  “What’s this, Mummy?” she asked, showing Sue what Peter had written.

  “That’s a super one, isn’t it?”

  “But what is it?”

  “Well you can read, so what does it say?”

  “Was it a cat I saw? But what does it mean?”

  “Well, it isn’t just a single word, it’s a sentence, but if you write all the letters backwards they will be in the same order as forwards, so it’s a palindrome just the same.”

  “Goody, Goody,” giggled Katy bouncing up and down before going gleefully upstairs. As if by magic, Jo appeared just as Sue was going into the kitchen and, without so much as a glance at Peter, she followed her mother. Jo, it appeared, also needed help as she had to write about Fox-Talbot at Laycock Abbey – her class was due to visit there soon. Sue wasn’t sure of the details, she just knew that it had something to do with photography.

  “Ask Peter, I bet he’ll know,” her mother suggested.

  “No, I can manage it on my own, I suppose,” grumbled Jo and she went back to her room.

  For the next few minutes Sue and Peter chatted and she asked him what his indexing meeting up at Bremham was all about. He explained that very shortly, given the progress she was making with her research, she would be needing to check census and parish records. When she did do that, she may often come across the difficulty of not being able to find out where a person was at a particular time, say at the time of a census, or perhaps, not having any idea of where or when some ancestor had been baptised, for instance. There were so many records. Census returns were based upon addresses, for example, and so in order to find someone, you needed to know the person’s address at that time.

  “Now supposing that you had an index of names to consult,” he said, “it would be so much easier to locate your ancestors.”

  Sue could at once see the benefit of such an index. Peter continued, by explaining that there was a growing collaborative programme, amongst groups of genealogists all over the country, aimed at providing such indexes. Lots of volunteers were busying themselves regularly, in organised groups, working their way through local records. Gradually, indexes were becoming available for parish registers and census records, he continued. It was a very long job, which required a lot of dedication. He said that he had accepted the task of overseeing this work for a few of the Wiltshire parishes and the nearby parish of Bremham was the first to be tackled. His group was small but they were keen, which was the main thing, and also they were very precise. They usually met on Fridays. He ended by saying that if Sue felt like joining them, they would be very pleased. Sue thought that she could spare some time and it would be nice to feel useful and also meet with other family history
folk locally. She would think about it and let him know. Peter was pleased and said that she would be welcome to pop in one Friday to see what it entailed.

  Katy returned, homework completed presumably, and when her father arrived he was surprised to find her on the sofa, chatting unselfconsciously to a complete stranger, whilst Sue was busy in the kitchen. Introductions followed and a brief friendly chat, before Peter left for his appointment and Dave went out for his run.

  14

  Friday couldn’t come quickly enough for Sue. During the week she had met Pam for a couple of hours in Chippenham, but otherwise she had been unsettled. At last, the postman arrived. Earlier she had resisted the foolish urge to go down to Home Farm, at the end of the village, and hijack the poor man. Eventually her patience was rewarded. A long brown envelope, bearing her own handwritten address, dropped amongst lesser items onto the hall floor. She checked the two marriage certificates and was pleased to find that the details, for her great grandparents, were as expected, with one of the marriages having taken place in Birmingham the other in Kensington, which was very close to Caroline Jane’s birthplace, Paddington. Of particular interest, was the additional information provided, including their ages at the time of their marriage, which would help in obtaining their birth certificates. A real delight was learning the names and occupations of her great, great grandfathers as this took her ‘tree’ back another generation. She was excited, though perversely, this information had the negative effect of fuelling her appetite for more. Goodness, where would it all end? Her next step was to find the births of these great grandparents, which would necessitate another visit to Somerset House. She could hardly wait to get to London again.

  *

  The next sub-committee meeting was arranged for the following week and Dave was preparing a few notes, upon recent developments, when he received a phone call from Dorinda McCann. She told him that he may be interested in witnessing some of the work they were doing. They were colleagues in the same organisation and she had been thinking since the last meeting, when they had had their minor differences, that it might be better if they kept in closer touch and attempted to resolve such differences between themselves, rather than washing their slightly soiled linen in public. Dave agreed and arrangements were made for him to visit Slough, following the London meeting.

  Dave decided he would treat himself to an overnight stay at The Bonnington Hotel in London, with whom the SSA had special arrangements. Having this organised, he went to check on Bunsen’s progress with his Winford project.

  The white-coated Bunsen was his enthusiastic self, bustling about the lab like a two year old. He greeted Dave with a wave, whilst swirling around a large flask containing a hot, probably aggressive, blue solution in his other hand as though it was a cocktail. Dave advanced, though he kept a respectable distance from the frothing mixture.

  “Dr Jekyll, I presume?”

  “Greetings David. Want a swig?” Bunsen quipped.

  Dave was pleased to hear that all was well with the chemical sampling and measuring equipment at Winford and that all steam impurities were within prescribed limits and not significantly different to any other power station in the country – no evidence of contamination.

  *

  Sue decided to call Peter. She knew that she was being silly, letting all this family history assume such significance for her, but she couldn’t help herself. She had been taken aback by Dave’s reaction at finding Peter at the house. He said that he had been pleased that she had found an interest, but he didn’t expect it to result in him coming home at night and finding some bloke playing fathers with his daughter. She thought that this was more evidence of Dave’s attitude to her new found interest. It was clear that he didn’t mind her amusing herself with, what in his view was, a silly pastime, providing that it didn’t impinge upon his own life. This was particularly galling after she had made an effort to show an interest in his every move.

  Peter answered and Sue told him of her news and where her next step lay. She said that she was impatient to make progress and this would require another trip to Somerset House. They chatted for a while, during which Sue agreed to visit his indexing group.

  She was still despondent however as, despite having her new friends and her interest in family history, she was still spending many hours alone. She calculated that it was something like forty hours a week. She had checked through the classified section of the local paper, for job vacancies, several times since Christmas without finding anything suitable, but now that she had transport there was a wider selection from which to choose. She had seen two possibilities and written off. The prospects did not seem good as her CV had that ominous fifteen year gap, in addition to her age. These days it appeared that over thirty was over the hill. Her pessimism had been justified, as she was not granted an interview in either case. She had since circled another two and now settled down to apply to both, then, with some effort of will, she directed her attention to her other role in life as housewife and mother and got on with her chores. Goodness, Dave and the girls would be home any minute.

  *

  Dave arrived home and went straight out for his run. Since the evenings were drawing out, he was able to go over the paths crisscrossing the Highwood Estate, which he much preferred to the winter runs along the dark lanes.

  After tea Sue mentioned that her certificates had arrived and so she now knew where her next steps lay, which meant another trip to London. Her delight, when she learned that Dave was going up shortly, was quickly quenched when he added that he’d be staying overnight.

  Unusually, Dave travelled to London by car, as this was convenient for getting to Slough the following day. Unlike Sue, he was not familiar with the Hammersmith car park and so as he approached London, he decided to look for an underground station where he might leave his car. He turned north at Chiswick and, after passing Chiswick Park station, he found a suitable place.

  The meeting began with Henry, ably assisted by Pauline, doing the usual honours of presenting documents received since the previous meeting. These were the subject of discussion. One gave details of the progress being made with the refurbishment of Number 2 turbine at Winford, which was going well. Some new discs had been manufactured, whilst some of the existing ones had been modified, by removing the keyways and devising a different form of attachment to the rotor. The intention was to carry out a complete refurbishment of all LP turbines. This would be a long term programme involving a huge amount of non-destructive testing.

  Joe gave an update on his tests, which were the highlight of the meeting. His steam rig specimens had completed 1,000 hours of exposure and had been removed for inspection by x-ray. He believed that some increase in crack length had occurred, though this was quite small. This caused a ripple of excitement around the table. If confirmed, these results meant that, surprisingly, cracks in disc steel could grow, or deepen, whilst operating in ‘pure’ steam, in other words, during normal turbine operation. Thus, just a small ‘crack-like’ defect in a disc, say an original fault, could extend during service and cause the disc to fail, as the Winford one had, so dramatically, done.

  Following lunch, James Collingwood gave an update on their work at Slough. They had examined the discoloured portion of the fracture surface taken from the failed Winford disc and had found something significant. There was evidence of a series of narrow lines of deformation, which may have arisen, one by one, at each monthly overspeed test. As the dates of these tests would be in the station’s records, it might be possible to use these lines as a method of dating the development of crack progression during service, in a similar way to that used with rings on trees. Another observation was that there was evidence of staining on the surface, producing ripples, which could be the residue of an impurity, such as sodium hydroxide, from water droplets in the steam.

  Dave’s contribution was a collection of small advances. He reported that Bunsen had examined some of the steam analysis data from Winford and that, so far
, no evidence of contamination had been found. He went on to say that he had received information from their Fracture Group on the mechanical properties of the failed disc and Pauline had circulated the details. It was evident that this disc had been in a very brittle condition. In addition, there was significant segregation within its structure, including the distribution of impurities in the form of sulphide particles, though the number of these was about normal. All one could say from this, was that the poor mechanical condition of this disc was probably the reason why it had been the one to fail. It was known, from the examination of other discs removed from the failed Number 2 machine, that several contained cracks. It could be that some of these could be deeper.

  The meeting broke up early. When Dave went down to the ground floor he saw Pauline standing near the door surveying the incessant rain beating down upon the pavement.

  “Going to have to make a run for it,” he grinned.

  “I’m meeting a friend later. I was wondering about a taxi.”

  Dave said that he was going up to Holborn and would just dash to the tube. Pauline surprised him by saying that Holborn was where she was meeting her friend. Perhaps they could dash together? Pauline’s superior knowledge of the Walton House layout, was put to good use as she was able to lead Dave through the complex of corridors, which minimised their exposure to the rain in getting to St. Paul’s underground station. As Pauline was not due to meet her friend until later, she accepted Dave’s invitation for a drink at The Bonnington, which he hoped they could get to without actually drowning.