A Station In Life

by James Smiley

  I called Diggory to come and explain the mess. This was an optimistic exercise given that my platform staff generally concluded their duties and left after the last train, and especially as I had given the lad permission to leave by this train should he have coal to carry, so I was surprised when he responded. Assuming him to be occupied constructively, perhaps encouraged by his pay rise, I was puzzled that his late working should necessitate skulking about in nooks and crannies. I drew his attention to the foul slurry on Jack’s desk.

  “Perhaps you would care to explain this mess,” I challenged him.

  Diggory seemed able only to stare at me in silent appeal.

  “Open it then,” I instructed him.

  When the young porter unravelled the wrapper and presented it to me for inspection I discovered that it contained an assortment of bones and what smelled like cooked chicken.

  “Scraps?” I queried him. “So you have been scrounging leftovers from the Shunter. Surely you are not in such straits that you are reduced to begging, young man?”

  “Spare me, Mr Jay, I wouldn’t eat this mess. I was… I was going to put it up a tree.”

  I stood akimbo, and agape.

  “Up a tree?” I queried him. “This is the kind of thing lunatics do.”

  “It’s for the tits,” the Junior porter apprised me.

  I lifted my hat and scratched my head.

  “Diggory, one day your propensity for climbing will be your downfall, literally,” I said. “What imperative is there to scale a tree at this time of night and adorn it with offal? The birds have gone to roost, fellow.”

  “I know that, sir,” the lad replied, then faltered. “I was… I was going to put it out in the morning.”

  Something about this business did not ring true.

  “You will do no such thing,” I checked him. “I cannot allow my staff to be seen swinging about in the trees like monkeys. What would the public make of it? Neither can I allow you to leave brock lying around overnight. Such things encourage vermin. Indeed I have reason to believe we have rats upon us already. Dispose of it at once, and clean up this desk before you go home.”

  Wondering what Diggory was up to I tutted loudly and left the Ticket office to retire for the night. Making my way to my office it occurred to me that Humphrey might know what accounted for the lad’s odd behaviour lately, and that if I hurried I might catch him waiting outside the station for his lift home. Finding the porter upon the forecourt struggling to don his giant overcoat with all the vigour of a bear in a trap, I approached him for a word. By the time I reached the fellow he was, for some reason, staring intently at the sky.

  “Different story to last night,” I observed, joining his gaze.

  There seemed to be a conspiratorial silence about the stars this night, their purpose a secret. They appeared as pinholes of daylight escaping eternity, bright and steadfast betwixt the valley’s sombre horizons, not twinkling as usual.

  “It is the waking yawn of creation, yet still you feel you could reach up and touch them,” I observed humbly.

  “I reckons they’m a tryin’ to reach down and touch I, Mr Jay,” Humphrey replied. “August be the month for shootin’ stars, right enough, for I’ve seen two on ’em in as many minutes.”

  “Humphrey, dear fellow, if it is not an imposition I should like to have a word with you about Diggory,” I redirected our conversation.

  “Arr look,” the porter interrupted me with a stubby finger raised heavenward. “Her makes three!”

  Vaguely aware of a streak of light, I persisted.

  “About Diggory,” I primed the fellow a second time.

  “Funny thing,” he ignored me, “most on em’s gone in a flash but now and then e sees a slow, sparkly one.”

  “Humphrey,” I barked, “I have no wish to talk to your chin. If you would care to lower it I should like to know of anything which might account for my Junior porter’s strange behaviour lately. Now, have you any idea what causes it?”

  “Course I does,” Humphrey chortled heartily. “The boy is Diggory!”

  I gave up.

  “By the way, Humphrey,” I began anew, “are there feral dogs hereabouts? I heard a most fearful howl last night.”

  “Arr, I expect the cry of a vixen’s what e heard, Mr Jay,” the porter entertained himself. “Frighten e, did it?”

  Humphrey’s flippancy was beginning to vex me.

  “I have heard no fox like it,” I retorted.

  “Perhaps it were a gust of wind in them telegraph wires, sir,” he sought to appease me. “They’m the devil’s choir in a storm. I bin heard ’em emit an unearthly low hum afore now. Fit to make your blood curdle.”

  I almost choked upon hearing this theory.

  “No telegraph wire made the sound I heard,” I declared with a raw laugh.

  A Linton tradesman who spent each night carousing in The Coach House circled his gig upon the station forecourt and brought it to a clumsy halt beneath the awning. This was Humphrey’s lift home so I bade the porter goodnight with a pat upon the back and turned away to retire. Notwithstanding the stink of garlic, the absence of a thunderstorm, and scattered poison, the departure of all my staff left me feeling alone and vulnerable.

  Back to contents page

  Chapter Twenty-Four — A spook comes to stay

  Walking the shadowy platform back to my office after my starlit consultation with Humphrey I found that I could not recall the vicar mentioning the charcoal burner’s final resting place, and because there was nothing in parish records to indicate that the outcast’s remains had eventually been admitted to the churchyard I began to wonder if I did indeed have a skeleton beneath my floorboards.

  Whilst I could appreciate that an exhumation would have incited the same ugly prejudices that had beset the charcoal burner’s burial in the first place I could not believe that the so-called evil doer’s remains had simply been dug back into the soil by a detachment of navvies. Yet upon reflection this seemed likely, for had the church been magnanimous enough to allow the outcast’s remains to be reburied in consecrated ground the vicar would have been proud to tell me about it. Of this I had no doubt.

  Earlier in the day I had secreted a bottle of port wine in my office and thereto I strode to partake of a measure, for whilst I had taken many steps to prevent after dark horrors, this night I intended to sleep even should Beelzebub visit. Instantly I thought he had! A figure sprang out of a doorway just ahead of me and turned to stone upon the clashing of our eyes.

  Instinctively I raised my handlamp to the intruder to establish his identity. Staring back at me in surprise, his guilty lineaments twisting rhythmically in the swinging lamplight, was a youth.

  “Diggory! What are you doing here?” I bristled. “Should you not be on your way home by now?”

  “Mr Jay,” he stammered, having intended to avoid me, “I was only…”

  “Shush!” I interrupted him. “Listen. Do you not hear that noise?”

  For some reason the lad responded with only a timid stare.

  “Bless my soul,” I breathed. “If it isn’t that tapping I’ve been hearing at night. You must be able to hear it too.”

  Still Diggory said nothing.

  Looking over my shoulder I saw my Rollingstock superintendent’s white eyes floating up the platform so I called him over and invited him to follow me to the Booking hall to begin an investigation. Mr Troke, wearing a rancid oilskin cape, was evidently working late to cleanse the interior of a van in which fish had putrefied while in the sidings. The three of us advanced with our noses pinched.

  Once in the Booking hall I led my two followers through the staff door into a short passage communicating with the various offices. Having detected nothing untoward during this phase of our search I continued with somewhat greater expedition to the foot of the stairs leading to my private quarters, and here halted abruptly with a finger pressed to my lips. Mr Troke, being more concerned with a shred of tobacco caught between his teeth, w
alked into my back. Taken by surprise, the oaf then trampled my heels with his heavy duty boots while trying to regain his balance. I called a halt to his feeble apologies and listened once more for the tapping.

  At first I could hear only my Rollingstock superintendent’s heavy breathing, something to which he was prone while concentrating, but then I heard the tapping again.

  “Mr Troke, do you hear that noise?” I tested the fellow while dealing Diggory a withering look. “Upshott’s Junior porter has cloth ears, you know, but if you listen carefully I believe you will hear a tapping noise coming from beneath the floorboards.”

  “Nay,” Mr Troke contradicted me with a gappy grin. “Thither it is.”

  Using his foot, the ill bred fellow pointed lazily towards the Goods office door.

  Almost immediately, and for no apparent reason, Diggory took to loitering beside the staircase and was reluctant to move aside when I attempted to advance. Confusion followed, and during this the tapping grew louder, seemingly coming from several directions at once. In an attempt to locate it, Mr Troke revolved himself several times upon one heel with his head cocked studiously. I took no notice. I did not envisage his grotesque ballet dance accomplishing very much apart from dizziness so I set about my own method of tracing the elusive sound. Diggory obstructed me again.

  “Lad, what ails you?” I snapped. “Can you not see that I wish to open this cupboard beneath the stairs? Stand aside. Better still, fetch a spade. If we are up against a rat we shall fare better with a bludgeon to hand. I just hope your marksmanship is as good as they say it is.”

  “Only with a catapult, Mr Jay,” the rebellious scamp corrected me sullenly.

  I ignored his impudence.

  “Rat don’t have catapults,” Mr Troke sniggered.

  Only another Mr Troke would have understood this remark.

  “I’m no good with a club or anything like that,” Diggory blurted an explanation of his reluctance.

  I stared at the boy intently until he took my hint, whereupon with an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm he meandered away to the Platelayer’s hut to fetch a spade.

  “Hurry!” I chivvied him. “Now see here, William,” I turned to Mr Troke. “When I direct my lamp beneath the stairs to flush out this blasted rodent, you must stamp your feet to drive it towards Diggory. Diggory will then club it to death.” Mr Troke chuckled manically in the quivering light and gave me an energetic nod of approval. “More is the pity that we do not have a station dog,” I added. “A little terrier would earn its crust handsomely at a time like this, what?”

  “All roads lead to home, sir,” Mr Troke agreed in his inimitable fashion, then pounded the floor in a club-footed rehearsal of his part.

  At length Diggory returned with a long-handled shovel, and a long-handled face. He listened very miserably to my plan and it seemed to me that he possessed surprising qualms for a boy who had once assisted a rat catcher.

  “Have you no heart for this, nature boy?” I teased him, then turned to Mr Troke. “He feeds the tits, you know.”

  My Rollingstock superintendent bombarded the corridor with a raucous laugh and tried to pull the shovel from Diggory, but Diggory clung to it grimly.

  “If you will not let William do the job then you must do it yourself,” I told the scrupulous youth. “Rats are not tits, you know. Unlike birds they spread disease and must be killed.”

  At last, with a sulky nod, the lad agreed to cooperate and with Mr Troke breathing down my neck I opened the cubby-hole door. A shard of light fractured the dark interior of the cupboard and in response the tapping resumed. Not only did the tapping resume, unattenuated it resumed loudly and I knew that I had located the source of my torment.

  “Rats don’t tap,” Mr Troke observed succinctly as I placed my hand inside the hole.

  “Well, something does,” I whispered while retreating sharply. “And whatever it is, we have it.”

  As I reached inside again, Diggory startled me with a warning and dropped the shovel. Withdrawing again, it shames me to say that I abandoned myself to a profanity, an utterance so shocking that I was compelled to censure the lad for it. However, the lambasting was short because of my need to maintain the initiative and I thrust my lamp inside the cubby-hole once more. When I looked around I saw a broom, a mop, a tinplate bucket, a jar of decaying macassar oil, and two luminescent eyes. Bright green eyes. I leapt backwards.

  My two colleagues stared at me like dummies as I looked again in search of the words to express my incredulity. As apprehension gave way to intrigue, then mirth, I stood aside and allowed Mr Troke to share the spectacle. He coughed out his chewing tobacco with a wheeze and gawped at the strange new addition to our cleaning materials. But while his response was to stare with a slack jaw and slightly crossed eyes mine was to convulse with laughter. Indeed, so visceral was my outburst that it frightened my two colleagues, there being so much tension to release.

  Far from having discovered a corpse in a rotten coffin I had discovered a puppy-dog, very much alive, with its wiry tail wagging against the joinery beneath my stairs. Two things now became clear. Diggory’s reluctance to assist had been borne of concern for the furry mite presently blinking into my handlamp, and this frightened little waif with luminous green eyes and pale, speckled nose had been the cause of all my nocturnal misery. The anxious little fellow looked far too innocent to have caused a stationmaster so many sleepless nights but there was little doubting its culpability, for its tail was still making the noise that had driven me to distraction, also I could see the evidence of its attempts to scratch and gnaw its way out of the cupboard during the thunderstorm. Hallelujah! There was no evil spirit!

  I checked the four-legged stowaway and found it to be a male. He tilted his head and barked bravely, although just the once, and made no objection when I lifted him from his gloomy prison with an embrace. Indeed, to show his gratitude he dispensed a long, pink tongue and larruped my face.

  “You, sir, have shortened the sum of my days,” I indicted the animal gravely then handed him to his co-conspirator. “This puppy is never again to be left alone,” I instructed Diggory. “Especially during a storm. It is bad for him and it is bad for me. Feeding the tits indeed, huh!”

  Diggory hugged the creature fondly.

  “He’s an English Setter,” he told me excitedly.

  “He’s a trespasser,” Mr Troke reminded the lad.

  “Praise be, at least he is not a charcoal burner!” I toppered them both, though they did not understand the remark. “And as for you, Master Smith, I am greatly disappointed. I’ll be bound if this dog did not fall off the circus train. What have you to say in your defence?”

  “Sorry, Mr Jay,” he apologised sullenly. “I was going to put him aboard the train to Giddiford but then I overheard someone say he would have his neck wrung if nobody claimed him. Can’t we find him a home? Couldn’t I take him?”

  “I have heard enough,” I halted the lad.

  Diggory’s future domestic arrangements, three small rooms above a shop, would provide no space for a growing dog. Besides, my duty was to censure the porter for his disobedience, though in truth I was struggling to appear stern.

  “Officially the dog is lost property,” I reminded the boy. “And very probably he has a broken-hearted owner somewhere, perhaps a young lad like yourself, pining for him.”

  Diggory looked troubled by this possibility and lifted his chin manfully, whereupon my attempt to be severe was weakened further by his rubescent eyes and quivering top lip.

  “Shall you rectify your misdeed?” I softened.

  “I’ll put the puppy aboard the morning ‘up’, Mr Jay,” he undertook solemnly.

  I was touched by the lad’s adult sensibilities, and on the strength of this I decided to indulge him a minor infraction of company rules.

  “We shall keep the little chap here at Upshott and notify Giddiford of what has happened,” I declared. “If the puppy is unclaimed, well, I have no doubt that our
Lost Property clerk can be persuaded to endorse a solution which spares him administrative inconvenience.”

  “What solution?” Mr Troke asked stupidly.

  “To wit,” I ignored him, “that we offer the animal a home here as a supernumerary. And I do not jest, gentlemen. I think we might be well advised to place this little terror on the payroll as a watchdog.”

  The melancholy in Diggory’s eyes was gone as he squeezed his new comrade tightly, the ball of mushroom fur so flattened that its shiny black nose nearly popped off.

  “He will be the cleverest station dog on all the railways,” I was exhorted.

  I brought the lad back to earth with an outstretched finger.

  “If he is unclaimed,” I reminded him. “Now, I must make arrangements for the poor creature to spend the night in company. No dog should be incarcerated on its own in the dark for days on end, least of all an intelligent working breed. Tomorrow we shall think of a suitable name for the critter, for I have no wish to be heard calling out ‘here dog’ while at large.”

  “He’ll be no passenger,” Diggory put in. “I’ll teach him to do things.”

  “Yes, well, a dog that can sell tickets would be useful,” I responded wearily, reclaiming the animal.

  “I reckon we could teach him to lick baggage labels,” Mr Troke suggested, apparently in earnest.

  Mr Troke worried me at times but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Perhaps you have an idea there, William. His tongue is long enough to wet a dozen at a time.”

  After a staccato laugh, Diggory counselled against the idea.

  “He’d run off with them stuck to his tongue!” he warned.

  Who was in jest and who was not I had little care to judge, for my backwards lean from the critter to avoid another larruping was proving ineffective and I had need to wipe saliva from my face again. During this operation with my best silk handkerchief I was puzzled that the animal’s breath smelled of peanuts. I glanced at my fobwatch, dismissed Diggory with instructions to find a lamp and set off home, then tucked the dog under my arm where he could not douse me. The lad, unable to wrench himself away from his newfound friend, lingered.