The Railway Girl

by Nancy Carson

  Chapter 15

  Arthur Goodrich had established his lodgings in a part of Bristol known as Totter Down, a quaint fairytale village of steep tangled streets, stepped razor-backed rooftops and excellent views over the city and the countryside. Mrs Hawkins, his landlady, was as good as a mother to him. She did his washing, cleaned his room and changed his bed regularly. She fed him conscientiously with good nourishing food and was not deterred by his finicky attitude to some of the things she presented. The house, which she had inherited on the death of her husband, lay on a hill just off the Bath Road, and was within easy walking distance of the church of St Mary Redcliffe.

  On account of the variety of restoration tasks in which he was involved, Arthur had discovered a renewed enthusiasm for his craft in the employment of Mr Pascoe. Every morning, with a good breakfast inside him, Arthur approached the church and would look at the stump – all that remained of the spire – and try to imagine it in all its lofty architectural splendour before it collapsed. Then, typically, he would speculate mentally on the mayhem that must have followed the collapse, whether anybody was maimed or killed because of it.

  To his immense satisfaction, Arthur shared a rapport with the young man with whom he found himself working, Cyril Chadwick. Cyril was a year or two younger but their affinity had not diminished with their increasing familiarity. The reverse had happened and their friendship had actually flourished. To Cyril, Arthur sounded quirkily different. At first, he could barely understand what his new workmate was saying because of his strange incoherent accent and unfamiliar expressions, but he soon grew used to it. Arthur, conversely, was amused by Cyril’s soft Bristol burr, and the pair regularly teased each other about their respective cadences. It was not simply their different accents that helped to bond them, however; they shared a similar sense of humour yet, more significantly, both had been unlucky in love. Consequently, they found some comfort in confiding to each other their innermost thoughts. They often met at night, sometimes drinking in the local public houses, and bared their respective souls after a few tankards of beer.

  Cyril Chadwick was the son of a mine manager from Bedminster. He had opted to take up the craft of stonemasonry as a youth, and had helped in the rebuilding of St John’s, his local church just to the south of East Street, the main road through the parish. The Chadwicks’ house was situated in a better part, and owned by the Bedminster North Side Colliery, which in turn was owned by a Mr William Goulstone, a churchwarden of St John’s. Hence, the family attended that place of worship regularly.

  Arthur was not particularly impressed by Bedminster. It had obviously evolved from a village, judging from some of the quaint buildings that remained, but in its present state it reminded Arthur of Brierley Hill. In terms of immediate landscape it vied with Brierley Hill for squalor and quite possibly beat it. Bedminster certainly possessed uglier and higher slag heaps, which the recent proliferation of coal mines within its parish bounds spewed out indiscriminately, even onto East Street. Cyril assured Arthur that coal was bringing greater prosperity to Bedminster’s inhabitants, half the male population of which were said to be employed in mining. Arthur asked at what cost; East Street, he pointed out, was in part already lined with unsightly grey slag heaps.

  Shortly before Cyril met with his accident falling off a scaffolding, he had invited Arthur home to take Sunday tea with his family. John Chadwick and his wife Catherine made Arthur welcome and Catherine, like Mrs Hawkins his landlady, also recognised Arthur as something of a lost soul, and so began to regard him as another potential son who needed mothering. It was on the first of these visits that Arthur met Cyril’s sister Dorinda.

  Cyril had mentioned already that Dorinda was a pretty girl, but he had said it with a brotherly disdain that somehow devalued her looks in Arthur’s expectation, so that he anticipated meeting a girl of no more than merely pleasant visual appeal, and there were plenty of examples of the like in Bristol. However, when he actually met Dorinda and saw how strikingly lovely she was, he was in hallowed awe of her beauty.

  That particular Sunday afternoon Arthur was thrust centre stage and his performance surpassed by a mile his own meagre expectations of himself. He was natural, amusing, relating tales of his life and exploits in the Black Country, encouraged by Dorinda’s spontaneous laughter and obvious enjoyment. The Chadwicks were tickled with his strange accent and loved to hear it. He proved such a likeable success that Dorinda suggested that perhaps Mr Goodrich might like to return next Sunday, upon which the kindly Mrs Chadwick had no option but to confirm the invitation.

  Arthur was, of course, still preoccupied with Lucy Piddock’s refusal to take up his serious offer of marriage. It seemed perfectly reasonable and sensible that they should get wed. They had known each other for nearly a year and, even though she claimed that she did not love him enough, it was hardly a viable excuse for he loved her enough for both. Besides, she would inevitably come to love him in time. As Moses her brother-in-law had explained, all she needed was a good poking on a regular basis to concentrate her attention and her emotions. Arthur was thus convinced that a good poking would have worked wonders, and he still might engineer the opportunity if only he could convince her to visit Bristol and stay for a while with him, in one of the many pleasant inns the city boasted.

  After Lucy had written and told him she was no longer interested, Arthur was naturally devastated. His first reaction had been to return to Brierley Hill to talk some sense into the girl, to make her realise he was in earnest with his proposal of marriage and that such earnestness was not to be trifled with. Not only that, he was certain he could offer her a comfortable and secure future. But Cyril suggested that such a move would not only be futile, but would occupy valuable work time, and possibly might lead Lucy to perceive him as both immature and pompous. So Arthur, after some days of thought, decided that Cyril might be right.

  By which time, he’d begun to realise he’d been existing without seeing Lucy for a month already. He had missed her, of course, but he was surviving; life continued. She was perpetually in his thoughts, but during that time away his emotions and his disappointment were becoming less intense. Over the ensuing weeks and months he began to realise that what was niggling him was not so much her actual refusal to wed, but the principle of it. He had loftily offered her the chance to venture into that honourable estate, ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Of course, what he had also offered, although it had remained unspoken, was the likelihood of their having sons and daughters, since marriage was also ordained for the procreation of children. What ordinary working girl, the daughter of a humble ironworker, had the brass-bound effrontery to spurn such an offer, especially when it was earnestly made by the son of a self-made monumental mason and sepulchral architect, albeit a modest one in terms of professional and commercial achievements.

  Thus it was that Arthur began to develop a greater regard for Dorinda Chadwick, though he knew it must remain distant and unspoken, for why should she, beautiful as she was, be interested in the likes of him?

  Dorinda was twenty-three years old, affable and single. Although she’d had one abiding romance with a young naval officer, that affair had come to a dismal and unanticipated end when he’d returned to port two years earlier and claimed he had married a Maltese girl while he’d been away. The disappointment had brought her considerable heartache and a heightened mistrust of all men thereafter.

  Until Arthur came along.

  In Arthur, she saw the exact opposite of her perfidious naval officer. She saw an ordinary man, but honourable, reliable and down to earth. If not endowed with great masculine beauty, he was not altogether repulsive. She found him amusing too but, perhaps more importantly after what she had suffered, she felt she could trust him. Arthur was too honest in his self-portrayal to be either devious or deceitful. He possessed the added attraction of being almost a foreigner, and thus sufficiently ‘different’
.

  In the early spring of 1858, some seven months after his own disappointment over Lucy Piddock, it was arranged that Arthur come to tea again one Sunday and perhaps accompany the family to evening service at St John’s. The hurt had gone by this time. He could think and talk about Lucy without pain. He was free of the acute emotional stranglehold she’d had over him, and he looked forward to freshly feasting his eyes on the lovely Dorinda once more. The last time he had seen her was before Cyril Chadwick had recovered from his accident and was still laid up at home. So he strolled along to the Chadwick’s home dressed in his Sunday best and a new tall hat, and presented himself at their front door.

  Dorinda answered the bell.

  ‘Oh, Miss Chadwick …’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Goodrich. You look surprised to see me.’

  ‘Well, I was expecting the maid—’

  ‘Well, you’ve got me instead.’ Her smile was brilliant. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘No, I’m not disappointed, Miss Chadwick. Honest I’m not.’

  She looked like a goddess who had swooped down to earth to lure some adoring Endymion. Her dress, all in white, served only to enhance the almost supernatural effect of her dazzling loveliness. She seemed enveloped in a haze of snowy clouds and shimmering moonbeams, the pure whiteness of which set off the brilliance of her copper hair and her green eyes. Arthur looked at her mesmerised.

  ‘Oh, come in, Mr Goodrich,’ she cooed in her delightful Bristol drawl. ‘It’s so lovely to see you again. How’ve you been?’

  ‘Oh …’ He was about to deliver a bulletin of his recent ailments, but wisely thought better of it. ‘I’ve been well enough, thank you. How about you?’

  ‘Seldom better. We’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, Mr Goodrich.’

  ‘I wish you’d just call me Arthur, you know, Miss Chadwick.’

  ‘Very well … If you’ll call me Miss Chadwick.’ She giggled deliciously. ‘No, I was only jesting. Of course you can call me Dorinda.’

  He smiled tentatively, for he was not sure how to react to her jest. ‘Thank you, Dorinda.’

  She led him into the sitting room where the family waited. Mrs Chadwick, big and buxom, got up from her seat, her stays creaking, and offered her fat face. Arthur planted an exaggerated and rather noisy kiss on one cheek. Mr Chadwick, thin and scrawny by comparison, stood up and shook Arthur’s hand cordially, as did Cyril even though he saw Arthur every day of the week at work.

  ‘Please sit down, Arthur,’ Dorinda said.

  These people were not like the sort he was used to. Mr Chadwick was an important person at the mine; they employed a maid and lived in a house that had four bedrooms as well as a garret in the loft for the maid. It was clean and tidy, with soft drapes and decent furniture. Vases of freshly cut daffodils neatly arranged adorned a whatnot and a pianoforte. Comfortable chairs with soft cushions were abundant, there was a table with a pristine chenille cloth draped over it, and a print of the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert graced one recessed wall.

  Talk at first was about the mine and how fortunate Cyril was, having chosen to avoid working in any capacity in mining.

  ‘Not being bright enough to become a manager, nor stupid enough to become a miner, has stood Cyril in good stead,’ his father proclaimed approvingly. He sucked on his clay pipe and the filaments of tobacco in it glowed momentarily. ‘Becoming a stonemason was a sensible move. The lad will never make a fortune, but at least he might derive some spiritual satisfaction from the craft.’

  ‘I might even try my hand at sculpture one day,’ Cyril declared. ‘I do b’lieve I got an artistic streak in me.’

  ‘How about you, Arthur?’ Dorinda quizzed. ‘Would you like to try your hand at sculpture perhaps?’

  Arthur shook his head. ‘I have enough trouble carving letters,’ he replied unpretentiously.

  She laughed with approval at his beguiling self-derision. ‘I’m sure you’re far too modest, Arthur.’

  ‘Oh no, it ain’t a question of modesty, Miss Dorinda, it’s a question of ability.’

  ‘So what are you good at?’

  Arthur pondered the question for a few seconds, all eyes on him. ‘Cricket? I’m all right at cricket … Shooting rabbits … Carving the wrong inscriptions on headstones,’ he added with a boyish grin of embarrassment.

  ‘Oh, do tell us …’ Dorinda pleaded, anticipating a chuckle.

  ‘I daren’t. It’s a bit … indelicate …’

  ‘We’re not such prudes,’ Mrs Chadwick affirmed. ‘I’m sure we’ll not be too shocked.’

  So Arthur told about the time he got the two inscriptions mixed up in Pensnett churchyard and his being taken short. It only served to enhance his standing with the Chadwicks, who liked him the more for it, and especially Dorinda whose mirth lasted until the family migrated to the dining room.

  Tea was served, with sandwiches and cakes and … a syllabub.

  ‘Don’t you like syllabub?’ Mrs Chadwick asked when she could see that Arthur was reticent about having any.

  ‘No, I don’t care for syllabub at all, sorry … Mrs Hawkins, my landlady, used to make lots of syllabubs, but I always ended up giving them the cat when she wasn’t looking. But even the cat turned its nose up at them in the finish. So I had to tell her I didn’t like them.’

  ‘It’s a wonder the cat wasn’t perpetually inebriated,’ Mr Chadwick said, laughing. ‘Especially if she used spirits in them, as well as wine.’

  ‘The cat used to act a bit queer now you mention it, Mr Chadwick,’ Arthur said straight-faced. ‘It used to jump about after its own tail, then fall over.’

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘Syllabubs are very popular in these parts. Not so in the Black Country?’

  ‘Oh, I daresay, but I never heard of them till I came to Bristol.’

  ‘Such a sheltered life you led, Arthur,’ Dorinda remarked. ‘A situation we’ll have to remedy.’

  The nights were drawing out and it was not yet dark when, after tea, the family and Arthur put on their respective shawls, mantles, hats and bonnets and walked to church, battling a stiff breeze. Arthur placed his best top hat under the pew and Dorinda made sure she sat next to him. From time to time during the service she turned to look at him with admiring smiles as he sang familiar hymns with enthusiasm. He sat half listening to Reverend Eland’s sermon, half concentrating on returning Dorinda’s heavenly smiles. When the service was over and the choir and clergy were in procession returning to the vestry, Dorinda leaned towards him.

  ‘Would you like to go for a walk after the service, Arthur?’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘I quite fancy a bracing walk afterwards, but I don’t suppose anybody else will.’

  ‘All right,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘If your mother and father and Cyril have got no objection.’

  Dorinda beamed at him with her big green eyes. ‘Oh, leave that to me.’

  The day had been bright and remained dry, but the wind was funnelling briskly up East Street, making it feel colder than it should. The party walked back to the Chadwick family’s abode, when Dorinda announced that she and Arthur were going to continue to walk for a while.

  ‘If you’ve got no objection to me walking with Dorinda, that is,’ Arthur, to his credit, was quick to add as a qualifier.

  ‘Perhaps Cyril would like to go with you,’ Mrs Chadwick suggested out of a sense of propriety.

  ‘It’s too chilly for me,’ Cyril affirmed.

  ‘Very well,’ Mrs Chadwick conceded. ‘But I urge you not to tarry too long in this dreadful wind. You neither of you want to catch a chill. Are you going to be warm enough, Dorinda?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  They turned and walked on.

  ‘In any case I have my blubber to keep me warm,’ Dorinda said to Arthur when they were out of earshot of the others, who stood and watched them go.

  ‘What do you mean, blubber?’ Arthur asked puzzled.

  ‘My fat.’

&nb
sp; ‘Your fat? What fat? You ain’t got no fat. You’re all nice and slender.’

  ‘Oh, at the moment,’ Dorinda said, a look of sad resignation clouding her face. ‘But look at the size of Mother.’

  ‘But she’s your mother. All mothers are fat … Well, not all, but most.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be fat. I don’t want to grow into a stout middle-aged woman like she is. That’s why I don’t eat very much. I want to stay thin.’

  ‘I don’t see as you’ve got anything to worry about, Dorinda. You’ve got a lovely face anyway.’

  ‘Oh, I know I have. I don’t dislike my face at all … But my figure isn’t exactly everything that I’d wish – or rather it is right now. What I mean is, it’s in danger of becoming much stouter than I’d wish … Can you think of any more sorry sight than seeing a woman’s pretty face stuck on the peak of a mountain of flesh, like a perfect peach perched on top of a Suffolk Saddleback. It’s such a waste of a pretty face … But it will be my fate, I suppose.’

  ‘But you might take after your father,’ Arthur suggested rationally. ‘You can’t say as he’s fat. Far from it, he’s like a lath. I mean to say, Cyril isn’t fat either. He’s more like your father in that way.’

  ‘But he’s a man. All the women on the Williams’s side – my mother’s side of the family – end up fat. And so shall I.’ Dorinda sighed profoundly. ‘And men don’t give birth neither, do they, Arthur? If I ever get married I shall refuse to have any children. If I were forced to have a whole host of children, I should end up so fat that I’d overflow on both sides, and wobble like an egg custard every time I moved … It’s not funny, you know, Arthur … Do you dislike fat women?’

  ‘No. You can’t have too much of a good thing.’ He smiled at her reassuringly, proud of his response. ‘Some of the nicest women I have ever known are fat. Take Mrs Hawkins for—’