Christmas Fireside Stories

by Diane Allen, Rita Bradshaw, Margaret Dickinson, Annie Murray, Pam Weaver

The train passed through Thalstead three times a day in each direction along the single track, between the junction at ——— and the coast. On this day, so close to Christmas, the morning passed in a flurry of activity. Myself, my assistant and the station porter were much occupied in unloading a season-rich assortment of kegs and barrels, sprays of greenery, live fowls and sacks of vegetables, and carting them onward to the villages. Our breath wreathed the cold air. The carriages were pressed full of those travelling to where they would reside for the season, in hope of warm welcomes and hearths, of jollity and full bellies. At moments, imagining their festive days to follow, I envied them their social advantages. But I rebuked myself, counted the many blessings of my life and put an end to such ungrateful folly.

  All day, around and betwixt the busyness of engine and whistle, of rumbling barrows, the snort and clatter of the horses and the hen-coop chatter of voices, the snow fell in dense flakes. While we talked of there soon being an end to it, it rather thickened to a whirling blizzard so that the vista before us was obscured by a wall of white. It was as much as I could do to make out the station building with its adjacent waiting room, and our cottage close by. The rails shrank ahead into nothingness, in the grey gloom of the afternoon and the sheltering woods.

  Before dark, I bade the other men make for home. I would manage the last train back through alone, for I knew that the traffic from it would be lighter. Without much reluctance, the two of them agreed.

  ‘So long, old lad!’ one cried as they set off – joking, as he was several years my senior. ‘Go steady, now!’

  ‘Don’t you be getting up to any mischief, will you, Believing Thomas?’ said the other.

  ‘Goodnight!’ I called, as their laughter faded from me. I felt a moment of doubt at their teasing. But I told myself that they took me for a good fellow, with all my sober ways.

  The snow still did not abate but rather came on stronger. I watched it build upon the wood and along the tracks, high as a man’s thigh. The last train from the coast was due to reach Thalstead by 4.20 p.m., but the time came and went and the darkness gathered thickly.

  I paced the platform, my peaked cap small refuge from the blundering flakes. Darkness was all about us now and the dim lights of the station reduced it to an oasis, marooned in an obscured land. I was freezing cold and took refuge inside our cottage: another world, warm and lit, and full of the smells of chopped onion and spiced pies fresh from the oven. It was approaching five o’clock.

  ‘I’m worried, Mother,’ I said. ‘Where can they be?’

  ‘Is there no word?’ she asked. Our eyes met, imagining the two carriages and guard’s van stranded behind their engine, out in the murk.

  I shook my head. ‘The wire has been dead all afternoon.’

  The best part of another hour passed. We drank tea and waited. My innards tightened ever more with worry.

  At length Mother stopped in her work and held up a finger. ‘Listen – there it is.’

  I leapt up, hearing the faintest whistle of a train, and ran out to see a dot of light inching closer at not much more than walking pace. With a low chugging, the orange sparks from the furnace whirling upwards and the softly lit windows lighting up the night, it edged its way along the platform and stopped with a long hiss of steam. From one of the carriages I heard, I thought, the sounds of a woman in the throes of hysterics.

  ‘Thomas – you there?’ the engine driver hailed me.

  ‘Here!’ I cried. I knew Percy Rogers well, for he passed through several times each day, as did his crew, fireman Bob Rimes and guard Ernie Brooks, a proud team of fellows. Percy leaned out, pulling his cap over his face.

  ‘Reckon we can’t go on,’ he said, nodding with an air of doom at the track ahead. ‘We’re here for the night, Thomas.’ He looked along the train. ‘There’s only a handful aboard. Reckon you and your mother can manage us?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, already resolved to rise to this occasion. ‘Bring them along.’ And I ran towards the house, crying, ‘Mother!’

  They climbed down from the now dark carriages, the shrieks of the hysterical woman and the soothing voices of others strangely loud above their muffled footsteps and the whirling snow. There came another male voice, most loud and booming.

  ‘I must have my trunk – that’s it, help me lift it!’

  Bob Rimes the fireman appeared, bent over and rolling something along in front of him. ‘We’ll make up the fire in the waiting room,’ he said. ‘Us lads’ll settle well in there.’

  ‘Ah – do let me accompany you!’ A face loomed out of the gloom, pale between hat and clerical clothing, with a blond moustache. ‘I am Cecil Walmsley, Vicar of St Simeon’s in ———. I am more than happy to accompany these good fellows into the waiting room and learn from them the lore of the railway. This—’ he extended an arm towards the train – ‘is a Prairie tank engine, is it not?’

  As Bob Rimes straightened up, saying, ‘Oh, now, Reverend, I think you’d be better off going into the house with Mr Lee . . .’ I saw three women in bonnets and shawls emerge from the train, one snivelling loudly, a second timidly seeking to give solace. Behind them limped a younger girl in a much plainer bonnet, her head bowed against the weather. She was of slender build, the most marked thing I could see of her then being the awkwardness of her gait, her lilting somewhat to one side with every step. I felt the beat of nervousness inside me. I had not reckoned on all this.

  ‘Oh no, truly!’ the cleric was protesting. ‘It would be a delight to accompany you gentlemen. I am, if nothing else, a man of the people!’

  ‘Might as well let ’im,’ Percy instructed. ‘We’ll leave Ernie to sort out Captain Blood over there.’ He nodded towards the man with the booming voice. He was a tall, perilously thin-looking fellow with a host of dark, dis-orderly whiskers and was fussing about with something at the door to the guard’s van.

  ‘Come along, my dears – come inside and welcome.’ I was calmed by the voice of my mother once again, as she stood wrapped in her coat and shawl, ushering the group of gentlewomen into the house. As I had done so many times in my life, I gave thanks to God for her kindly ways.

  Inside, we took in the size of our unexpected party. The train crew, along with the eager clergyman and two other young men from the carriages, were all assembled in the waiting room. On visiting them with fuel for the fire and to assure them that we should shortly bring them food, I found them with the lamps lit and the fire burning nicely. They were all lounging along the benches, except for the reverend gentleman who sat leaning forward, asking eager questions. From the tail of my eye I saw that Percy already had a barrel laid along one bench, and I discerned that they were intending to make free with this plunder from the train. I steadfastly ignored it, not wanting to acknowledge such surrender to the vagaries of temptation. In this atmosphere of unbridled male licence, I found myself torn asunder by the desire to escape to the refuge of my house, while in great trepidation as to the exact nature of the females I might encounter there.

  ‘Off you go, St Thomas,’ Percy Rogers said, with indulgent mockery. ‘You don’t need to trouble yourself with us. You go and see to the ladies.’

  I retired, a little stung, amid their scattered laughter. As I entered our house out of the dark and cold, my eyes adjusted to the cosy scene within. My mother, bless her soul, had already made the assembled company comfortable, the distressed lady seemed to have calmed herself and order was restored. They were settled about the room, the women’s bonnets laid aside, and the only strange obstruction I noticed was a large black object deposited in front of the fire.

  ‘Ah, Thomas!’ My mother’s voice rang with pride. ‘This is my son, Thomas Lee, Stationmaster here,’ she said. ‘We are happy to accommodate you in this adverse weather, aren’t we, Tom?’

  ‘We are,’ I said. Looking about me, I perceived that the entire company before me was female, apart from the tall bewhiskered gentleman. His mature years, tight black trousers and fusty jacket put me
in mind of the Prince Consort, if His Royal Highness had perhaps spent several nights at large sleeping in a field or on a low-class berth of a ship, such was his unpressed and unshaven appearance. In short, he was a rumpled mess. On seeing me he leapt to his feet, dark-eyed and wild of gaze, held out a spindly hand and grasped my own with force.

  ‘Savage!’ he informed me in a roar. ‘Orinoco Savage. Captain – King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. Father was an explorer, named me after a river in the Americas. Damned lucky I didn’t end up with a sister called Amazon – hah-ha!’ He released my crushed hand at last. ‘Good of you – very civil. Most grateful.’ With that he regained his seat as if some fuse inside him had momentarily been extinguished.

  Introductions to the ladies were now in order, while my mother busied herself heating the pot of broth on the fire. The mistress whose shrieks had pierced the night was a Mrs Venetia Merchant. I noted that she had claimed the most comfortable chair beside the fire, close to the hefty black object. I now observed this to be a tin trunk. With her bonnet removed, I saw that Mrs Merchant was a woman in her mid thirties, her hair of an ordinary sort of brown and caught up in some complicated style. Her face was plain and wore a permanent expression of peevish complaint.

  ‘I am distraught!’ she announced, offering me a hand so lacking in force it could not have been more different from that of Captain Savage. ‘I need to return to London – to my husband, my boys! They will be bereft without me!’

  Quite close to her perched a faded, kindly-looking lady called Miss Hedges. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she comforted her, ‘I’m sure we shall be able to make progress in the morning and that we shall all be safely home by tomorrow night. I do feel sure my friend Miss Turner, who is expecting me, will be beside herself with worry. But what can we do except to expect only the best?’ Miss Hedges gave me a sweet smile and I decided that she was a safe and gentle person.

  I turned at length to the last of the company. Seated on one of the chairs by the table was the young woman, who, without her bonnet, I saw, had dark hair wound in a modest arrangement. She wore a plain grey dress and her eyes were cast shyly towards the floor. With her pale complexion and calm demeanour she looked to me like the painting of a saint, or even the virgin mother of our Lord.

  ‘This young lady is Miss Ellen Gibson,’ my mother informed me, since neither Ellen nor anyone else seemed about to introduce her. ‘She’s maidservant to Mrs Merchant here.’

  Ellen Gibson raised her eyes to me for a moment. In those few seconds I saw a long face with well-proportioned lips, neither too thick nor too thin, and the merest hint of pink in her cheeks. But in her brown eyes, deep and lustrous, I read an expression of such misery and desperate appeal that I was quite taken aback.

  ‘G’d evening,’ she breathed, before returning her gaze to our brick floor.

  ‘Ellen is a cripple,’ Mrs Merchant informed us brusquely. ‘She was lucky to find anyone to take her on, but I like to show charity where I can.’

  ‘Er – good evening, Miss Gibson,’ I replied, feeling quite shaken. I recalled her limping gait as she crossed the platform. Taking advantage now of her downcast eyes I took in the waves of hair about her forehead, the strong set of her shoulders and the neat way she sat, her feet tucked under the chair. She seemed, I thought, at everyone’s mercy, and a heat of tender protective sweetness flamed in me.

  This I found most unsettling. I moved to assist my mother, resolving to keep well away from Miss Gibson. I knew that the wiles of women are many and various.

  ‘Now,’ my dear mother announced, ‘here’s soup for everyone.’

  She and I fed the company and I took what we could spare to the waiting room, pushing in the pot through the door without entering myself. I did not want to know of their activities with the demon drink. The thought that a man of the cloth considered it fit to partake in them disturbed me more than I could express. But I was further disturbed by the thought of Ellen Gibson, whose quiet form, with its female apparatus of curves, I could not banish from my thoughts. I almost wished I could run her out into the snow for the way that in those seconds of her humiliation she had snagged my foolish heart.

  The snow fell silently and I hurried back to our muffled cottage. I heard the murmur of voices as the group made acquaintance with each other. ‘Make me pure as this snow in your eyes, Lord,’ I was praying as I unlatched the door. ‘Banish any thoughts which are not . . .’ But I was inside and did not finish.

  I positioned myself on a chair the other side of the room from Miss Gibson, beside the strange army captain. In his trumpet voice he was regaling the company with tales of the Indian Mutiny in ’57, in which he had played a lively part at Lucknow. It was not until they had all partaken of warm mince pies and the kettle was whistling on the fire that anyone paid attention to the tin trunk, taking up such a portion of space and warmth. Captain Savage had been eating as if it was his first meal in days. Replete enough now, however, he reached into his breast pocket and brought forth a leather pouch. He drew from it – at first I thought my eyes deceived me – a mouse. It was quite dead and as he grasped it by the tail I heard a small sound from across the room. Only then did I look at Miss Gibson. Her eyes were fixed on the mouse. The desperate look was banished and her face had come alive with interest. My own fascination was divided between the sudden loveliness I saw in her features and the mouse being dangled before us.

  ‘Ugh!’ cried Mrs Merchant. ‘What on earth are you doing with that disgusting thing! Get it out of here!’

  ‘Ah, no, madam,’ Captain Savage cried. ‘Do we not all deserve to eat? In here—’ he got up and stepped over to the trunk – ‘now, I hope, safely enjoying this warm refuge, I have the care of a creature more used to tropical climes.’

  ‘Oh my,’ I heard my mother exclaim from beside me. Miss Hedges’ nervous expression had become even more uncertain, but she sat politely. I allowed myself another glance at Miss Gibson, at those dark, burning eyes, and looked away again quickly. For a second, before I could curb my wayward thoughts, I had in my mind a picture of her standing before me, those eyes fixed thus passionately on mine . . . Oh, Thomas, I groaned inwardly. Thou art a hopeless sinner.

  ‘What on earth can you mean?’ Mrs Venetia Merchant was rapidly removing herself from the best chair, close to the trunk, and backing across the room. ‘Ellen,’ she ordered, ‘exchange places with me.’

  I could not tear my eyes away. With reluctance I thought born more out of self-consciousness at her affliction than fear of the contents of the trunk, Ellen Gibson stood up. She limped across the room, her gaze lowered in embarrassment. It seemed to me there was some problem at the level of her hip which cast her walking so. But instead of sitting she stood near the chair to watch.

  ‘This,’ Captain Savage announced, tapping the trunk with the toe of one of his boots, while still holding the mouse, ‘contains a fine example of the Burmese python. This specimen is on her way to the London Zoological Gardens . . .’

  ‘A snake?’ Mrs Merchant cried vaporously. ‘You can’t mean – in there? A giant reptile – oh!’ She put her hand to her forehead and began to move towards the door. ‘Oh, Ellen – take me away from here!’

  Ellen Gibson did not move. She stood with her eyes shining, staring at the trunk. Mrs Merchant, realizing the futility of any escape she might make, returned further impassioned.

  ‘Get that thing out of here,’ she ordered.

  ‘No, no, madam – be calm.’ Captain Savage reached for a small latch in the side of the trunk and popped the mouse inside before shutting it again. This action and the graceful fall of Ellen Gibson’s grey dress occupied my sight, the one inextricable from the other as she was standing so near. ‘You’re all quite safe. The creature is locked in and is most likely sleeping, recovering from the ordeal of such terrible cold. Do, please, take your seat again.’

  ‘My goodness,’ Miss Hedges was exclaiming, among the general chatter. ‘I’ve never seen any such thing. I assume it can’t get ou
t?’

  ‘One of God’s creatures, I suppose,’ my mother soothed her. I admired her calm amid all this disturbance. ‘Let’s all make ourselves comfortable again while I mash the tea, shall we?’

  It was several hours before a drowsiness came over the company. Mrs Merchant, regretting having surrendered her prize chair, ordered her maid to restore it to her and help her move it further away from the trunk, at which she glanced frequently with a wary frown. Every few moments she dispatched orders to Miss Gibson – ‘A footstool, Ellen!’ ‘Help me to sit comfortably, girl!’ ‘Fetch the cologne from my reticule!’ Each time Ellen Gibson stood, moving with painful awkwardness to obey her commands, my wayward eyes could not but follow, drinking in each movement and line of her. While she was not pretty exactly, the shape of her had entirely bewitched me. The emotions condensed into those brown, downcast eyes, of which I had had only glimpses, tore at me as if they were my own. What intense feeling was concealed within that breast, which had telegraphed unwittingly from her eyes, so dark and full of yearning? I found myself longing to let this young woman lean her head upon my shoulder, to comfort her with words assuring her that her torment was at an end. And yet how I wanted to avoid her, for her to leave my sight so that my usual peace might be restored.

  My dear mother made sure that the company were as comfortable as could be. The captain, meanwhile, recounted story after story about exploits among the snow leopards of the Himalayas, pig-sticking forays from the cantonments of northern India and his expeditions into the jungles of Burma. While on any other night I should have been entranced by such novelty, tonight I was in a fever. I longed for quiet, for every eye except my own two to close so that I might safely watch Ellen Gibson. She, absorbed at first in these exotic tales, at last bent gracefully forward, her head resting on her arms on the table.

  At last, in various positions of repose, they all lapsed into silence. But I was far from sleep. From my seat I could see the rosy incline of her cheek, a curl of hair resting soft over her ear, and see the faint movement of her breathing in the grey curve of her back. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I promised the Lord that after tonight I should never more cast a glance towards any female, never again imagine the pale mounds and curvature that must lie under her simple attire. But tonight, sinner as I was, I was lost to it. My imagination was far hotter than the fire, which, once some hours had passed, I had the presence of mind to notice was dying in the grate.