by James Smiley
“The carriage you defaced with your incompetence is now with the wheelwright of Upford Cross, Jay,” the gentleman berated me, “and all expenses incurred shall be your expense. Do you understand?”
I nodded compliantly, a response which appeared not to gratify.
Quite plainly the purpose of the squire’s personal appearance was to engrave upon the mind of Upshott’s latest newcomer the high standing of his family in the community. Indeed, such was his hostility in this endeavour that he failed to notice the redundancy of his exertions. He could not see that the bent and enervated stationmaster before him was wholly contrite with no delusions of grandeur and no desire to compete for anyone else’s jealously guarded unpopularity. Yet without provocation he became more incensed, frequently casting a marble eye towards the disturbance over pot-lamps upon Platform Two. Since this was none of his business I closed the double-doors of the Booking hall to block his view. The squire opened them again defiantly.
“Your superiors shall hear of this woeful episode, Jay,” he warned me. “I will make it clear that I doubt your aptitude for this post. My God, man, if I ran this railway I’d take a whip to the lot of you.”
Squire Albury started his complaint with more dignity than he finished it. His ability to incite himself to rage by recapitulating his grievance was quite frightening and my shuddering silence throughout his remonstrance, though not calculated to do so, appeared to antagonize him further. Had he been less bellicose, this inveterate land owner would have realised that I was merely waiting for an opportunity to apologise, but by the time the clicking of his teeth had ceased I was myself incensed and decided that he could whistle for his apology. He would get no apology from me now even if he hired Mr Peckham do the whistling.
“Damn your eyes!” he cursed and returned to his chaise, a hoodless carriage with scant provision for inclement weather.
The undignified dignitary, manifestly unaccustomed to managing the reigns himself, unleashed his surplus venom upon a wild-eyed pony and took off.
The Giddiford train left twenty minutes late, its First and Second class passengers lamp-lit but not amused, its spirited Third class passengers in darkness but highly amused.
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Chapter Ten — First day ends with kissing conundrum
Hauling the last train of the day, Lacy trundled into Upshott station on its return from Giddiford and Driver MacGregor alighted the footplate to have a word with me. Grinning devilishly, he stopped some distance away and pulled the creases from his oily waistcoat, from which protracted instalment I sensed that he was the indulgent bearer of bad tidings.
Before uttering his piece, however, the Scotchman stepped closer and beamed at me mischievously with his bloodshot eyes. His two sparkling rubies, caught between a blazing red beard and a red tartan tammy, blinked lazily as he scratched his ruddy nose. His nose, it will amuse you to know, was a somewhat comical protuberance which the heat of the fire had cruelly inflamed.
“Which of your orramen laid on the Chinese crackers?” he wheezed.
“Crackers?” I queried him.
“Aye, the pot-lamps, Mr Jay. Fizzling like fireworks, they were. Och, and the smoke was enough to asphyxiate ye. I should expiscate the matter if I were ye.”
“Very well,” I responded listlessly, having no idea what the driver was talking about.
“Aye, well, I should, Mr Jay. T’is a good thing we were nay inside Splashgate tunnel or we’d have had passengers breathing their last.”
“Splendid,” I replied through a stifled yawn.
Nonplussed, MacGregor scratched his head and stared at me . My docile response to his grave news was not what he had hoped for.
“As a matter of fact, Mr Jay, the pot-lamps were singing with the skirl of the pipes,” he boomed loudly in another attempt to startle me, but I was too tired to be startled. “T’is why we’re running late. We’d to empty and refill all the lamps at Widdlecombe. T’was nay picnic making up the lost time.”
“And you have not done so yet,” I reminded him with a glance at my fobwatch.
Eventually my indifference to the matter drove the driver’s hands aloft with exasperation. “Aye, but then ye dunny noo what I’m tocknaboot, do ye?”
MacGregor was wrong. I knew precisely what he was ‘tocknaboot’. He was ‘talking about’ his innocence should there be repercussions over the incident.
“The details of your poor timekeeping are of no concern to me,” I dismissed him.
Having closed the subject I removed myself to the Booking hall.
In the flickering light of the departing Blodcaster train I spotted Wheeler and Turner sloping off home so I sprang across their path with a crooked finger and beckoned them to my office for a progress report re snaring the lamp oil thief. It seemed likely that Driver MacGregor’s ‘fizzling’ pot-lamps had something to do with Jack Wheeler’s ‘smoke telegraph’ signals and this was a good opportunity to get to the bottom of the matter. I decided that in the prosecution of my enquiry I would intimidate the two clerks with talk of dismissal.
Unfortunately, being gifted with no demeanour of authority, my stern words failed to cause any apprehension and I was tendered an explanation nothing short of flapdoodle. It was obvious that something had gone wrong with Jack Wheeler’s doctored lamp oil but, the hour being late, I was compelled to postpone the hearing until tomorrow when I would be more perceptive. The two clerks, believing that they had outwitted me, backed out of my office deftly.
I concluded my duties with a tour of the station, locking each door and window with a grunt of relief, darkness following me like ink soaking through blotting paper as I dimmed the gasses. I cannot exaggerate how glad I was that my first day was behind me, for in any job the first day is the most difficult one, but this I had thought would never end. Fatigued and demoralised, and with the unfamiliar musty smell of my new abode in my nostrils, I climbed the stairs to my quarters. The station house was curiously quiet and I could hear in my cavernous mind the squire’s clicking teeth berating me.
‘I doubt your aptitude for this post, Jay’ the porcelain incisors percussed, and I began to wonder if they were right.
Convinced that I really had exceeded my abilities I kneeled beside my bed and prayed for deliverance, for I was not equipped for an alternative occupation should my career upon the railways come to a premature end. I explained to my Maker that on this, my first night to be spent at Upshott, I was feeling insecure and vulnerable in a way that I had never done before. As you will appreciate, when a single man finds himself displaced to the point of foreboding he not only craves the support of familiar faces, he needs a personal confidante. A shared pillow brings both encouragement and sweet diversion, and returns a man to strength. In this job, then, the satisfaction of aloofness looked like becoming the demon of loneliness.
Yet no matter the dint to my self-esteem I would be expected to meet the 5.05am Mail train tomorrow with the stature of a man unscathed by doubt. Not wishing to disappoint the trusting simpletons whose ignorance of my ebb matched their contribution towards it, I climbed into my bed to get some much needed sleep.
Having reclined, wriggled, and squirmed until I was acquainted with all the unfamiliar lumps and bumps that were to become my nightly tormenters, I snuffed my bedside candle and shut my eyes. Exhaustion claimed me instantly.
With so few hours in which to repose I was not pleased to be awoken repeatedly by rain lashing fitfully at my window, and by the Waiting room sign squeaking all night just below my sill. Nor was I pleased by the whistling of an otter seeking a mate in the stream beyond the sidings. If I slept two hours I fared well.
However, during one period of slumber I was refreshed by a most arousing dream. In it, I was picnicking at Upwater in the late afternoon sunshine in the company of two exquisite females. One of them was the belle in white lace, the other Rose Macrames. Let me not be abashed to reveal that being flanked so intimately by two such beauties in these heavenly sur
roundings did unharness me from my cares awhile, and with the promise of complete abandon there was more to come!
My two pink lipped devotees had each presented me with a hamper packed with gastronomic delights and insisted that I choose between them. This was no easy matter because the confections in Rose’s hamper were on full display while the Belle’s were concealed. The contents of the latter I could only ponder, not peruse, and when I declined to partake of Rose’s offering until I had fully contemplated the potentially more rewarding alternative, the lady with no parasol became petulant. To settle the matter I became the subject of a kissing competition and would marry the seductress whom I considered to have the most sensual effect upon me. Stirred by their competing efforts I was then given but three seconds to make up my mind.
Needless to say, and it was probably for the best, at the count of three I woke up. The disappointment was unbearable.
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Chapter Eleven — Second day begins with bully conundrum
By dawn I was back upon the platforms breathing air that was lighter than claret, all exhaustion caused by nocturnal rattles and squeaks having been chased away by a brief encounter with pursed lips and an attention seeking slap. I took to the footbridge to savour the morning’s moist fragrance before it could be sullied by the first locomotive of the day, and here found the world keen edged, crystal pure, and glistening larger than life under a sky like a silk scarf. Cold blue in the west, heaven’s eastern fringe was aflame with a new sun pulling mist from the dewy soil and stencilling long shadows down the slopes. Having checked that no one was watching me I took a deep breath and stretched my arms. To see the disbanding cloud-wrack of yesterday’s storm was, in the midst of so many anxieties, to feel my heart beat anew.
At this point you will permit me, perhaps, to acquaint you with the phenomenon of Upshott’s belated sunrise. This was caused by a circle of standing stones atop Splashgate hill to the east of the village. When the sky was clear the sun would lift the village from the shadow of this hill with amber fingers as if granting the community a primordial privilege. It was a spectacle that I found strangely stirring, for its effect upon my imagination was to turn those stones into infants playing ‘ring a ring o’ roses’ at the dawn of time. In defiance of their petrified state the ‘little ones’ would appear to move from time to time, when they thought no one but I would notice. The personal charm of this somehow allegorised unmapped desires of my soul.
I unseated my top-hat to feel the day’s pleasant coolness while surveying the station, whereupon my head was struck by a slimy dollop of something. I looked up cautiously. In the ash tree overhanging the footbridge were jackdaws chuttering and shaking the branches. Thankful that their jetsam was but dew, and not wishing to test my luck further, I replaced my hat and transferred myself to the opposite end of the bridge.
From here I admired the silver railway stretching towards each horizon with such purpose through the random landscape, as if a shooting star down the tail of which a man could slide from his own community to any other, dissolving the barriers of class and culture while mocking the costly turnpikes. A reflective morning stroll such as this, I decided, would become part of my daily routine to maintain self esteem. Through these few steps had I rediscovered my sense of novelty and pride at becoming a fully fledged stationmaster.
Keys jangling attracted my attention to Ivor Hales unlocking the signalbox. He interrupted his morning ritual to wave to me, and pointed to a siding upon which was parked a solitary ballast truck. Across the truck was stretched a canvas sheet, one end of which was depressed with accumulated rainwater. In the pool so formed were crows, as polished as boots, squabbling and scuttering for bathing space, and occasionally waddling to the top of the cover from where they would slide back down to the water, seemingly for the delight of it. I have always revered birds as nature’s comics, and watching their antics around Upshott station would frequently uplift me to the point of a private chuckle. Today I would take control of the station. Somehow I knew it.
In a matter of minutes the ‘down’ platform was populated. Harry Peckham, whistling one of his rambling melodies, had arrived and was guarding his empty mail-cart amid a crescent of domestic servants. These servants, who came from such influential households as the Highams and the Lacys, would gravitate around his cart to exchange pleasantries and trade gossip. Nearest the postmaster was the now familiar figure of the coachman from Albury Hall, having ridden to the station better insulated than most in the damp morning air. Waiting to collect the London newspapers for his master, the dark green fustian of his thick, double-breasted cape had been crystallised by the mist to make him look like a sugar-fruit.
Being short staffed, the proprietor of the Coach House, Upshott’s largest though not its principal hotel, had dispatched his ostler to meet the Mail train. An ugly cove, ill shaven and possessed of a questioning stare as if affronted by everyone’s business, the horse handler had few friends. Beneath his mop of sable hair a black linen jacket and trousers transformed his vastness into a shadow in a coal cellar, a man to be avoided because his percussive utterances were difficult to understand and his temper short.
Mr Phillips, looking as wan as ever, appeared among the crowds upon the platform. Instantly he became irritated by the presence of the solitary goods truck parked near the footbridge. As I descended the footbridge steps to join him in his investigation of its contents I was intercepted by the aforementioned ostler who used his physical bulk to impede my progress.
‘What business can you possibly have with me?’ I wondered as I attempted to circumvent his beer barrel body.
Cornering me against railings, the cove stared at me probingly. When it suited him, after almost a minute, he bothered to speak.
“Macrames. Stayway,” his voice vibrated through my chest.
“And pray, sir, what have my dealings with Miss Macrames to do with you?” I asked.
The difference in pitch between our voices was a cause for concern but held my ground with a rigid stare.
“I hurt you,” he vibrated again, raising his fist and pulling a face.
The ruffian’s gesticulation appeared to be in substitution of a third party script which he could not fully recall. Miming fisticuffs again, presumably hoping that I would infer the remainder of the threat for myself, he grinned darkly.
Gauging the cur to be incapable of instigating any kind of business of his own account I levied a more direct approach.
“Sir, I demand that you tell me who you represent in this matter.”
Ignoring my enquiry, the ostler walked away with a turgid plod.
It was clear that someone objected to my associating with Miss Macrames, but I was puzzled that something so innocent as helping to locate an item of lost property should cause such an intervention? Dazed and incredulous, I joined Mr Phillips on his walk to the mystery truck and together we scared the bathing crows into a spray of flight, making our uniforms glisten in the morning sunshine.
It was Mr Phillips’s misfortune to play Pinkerton, and having lifted one corner of the truck’s cover to satisfy his curiosity he received an olfactory shock. I detected that nasty smell again as he released the canvas smartly and pinched his delicate nose. This had the whiff of skulduggery. In an attempt to deceive me, someone had moved the sewage from its long established location in a far corner of the south siding, where Mr Phillips had become accustomed to ‘overlooking’ it, to this new and rather ill considered location outside the Goods shed. That same someone had also covered the fetid heap with a canvas blanket in the hope of disguising its unsociable nature.
It was obvious that my Goods clerk had not been party to this ruse but I censured him nevertheless, pointing to the wagon with my handkerchief draped across my fingers
“I believe I requested its removal, not its relocation,” I said.
“I was never in favour of harbouring this beastly stuff from the word go, Mr Jay,” Mr Phillips pleaded indignantly.
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br /> “Who orchestrated it?” I asked, exploiting his moment of contrition.
“Jack Wheeler,” he replied without surprising me very much.
“It will take more than a sheet of hemp to put me off this scent,” I said. “Have it removed from the station immediately.”
How many more times would I have to issue this instruction before the truck finally went away? Mr Phillips replaced his monocle and studied me as if I were a curious, surgical specimen.
“I do hope there’s to be no power struggle, Mr Jay,” he sighed ominously. “There can be only one stationmaster. I’m afraid your predecessor, Mr Mildenhew, had no grasp of this precept and history shows us the result.”
Mr Phillips departed for his office, leaving me to grapple with his theory. Perhaps Jack Wheeler was really the stationmaster and I merely a figurehead.
Where was Diggory? The level crossing gates had been swung and the air was rippling with the approach of the Mail train, yet none of Diggory’s duties had been carried out. The station draw-well at Busy Linton had been fouled by misuse and the Stationmaster there was expecting me to send him several pitchers of fresh water aboard the first train of the day, yet when I peered into the allotted vessels I found nought but dead flies, dust and cobwebs. I set Snimple the task of filling them quickly.
It became apparent that something was terribly wrong when the driver of the approaching locomotive leaned out of his cab and waved his cap. No sooner had the engine reached the platform, still travelling at a speed, its whistle shrieking continually, than the fireman leapt from the footplate and stumbled towards me purposefully.
“There’s been a nasty accident!” he blurted, pointing towards the parcels van.
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Chapter Twelve — Accident on the viaduct
