by James Smiley
Not one fare-paying passenger was aboard this train’s little green-and-white carriages as it lurched through the wintry countryside, its misted windows making a magic lantern show of the moor. Meringues of snow thawing beneath gnarled oaks of dripping glass, pines shedding white cakes in the shimmy of a passing train, milky undulations ruffled and curled with crystal overhangs decaying into toothy caverns — all was presented through streaming condensate and falling clods of steam. An entire world was dissolving like a lover’s solitude.
Upon arrival at Upshott, where the altitude had extended the snow’s tenure, I was met by Humphrey crunching the hillside’s icy crust in fur lined boots. To be here at this hour the porter had clearly risen in the small hours to catch the Mail train.
“Enjoy Christmas over at Widdlecombe, did e, sir?” he asked, taking my bag with a ruddy smile.
“You shall hear all about it when I return from my quarters, Humphrey,” I replied crisply.
As Diggory joined us the porter crouched and patted Spook.
“My, what a splendid collar,” he remarked. “I reckons ol’ Jack’ll soon have this dapper little gent posted in the Goods shed a catchin’ rats.”
“Which is how I intend to justify his presence,” I added.
“It’ll take more than a few dead rats to justify Jack’s presence,” Humphrey warbled, putting my wits to the test.
Upon reaching the top of the stairs to my quarters I chanced to glimpse an open door. I halted and looked into the unused room beyond it. Standing guard over a realm of broken chairs, rolls of out-dated posters, carbolic jars and boxes of obsolete tickets, was a manikin in a moth-eaten porter’s uniform. The hand-painted character appeared as daunted as I at the prospect of clearing away all the clutter, but it would have to be done if the room was to be redecorated as part of my married quarters.
Later on, while patrolling the platforms in my top-hat and frock-coat, I returned to Humphrey to impart my good news. Together we watched William Troke and Cuthbert Swain remove slush from the sidings, and Ivor Hales de-ice points and pulleys with warm oil. When all the pleasantries were exchanged, I announced my betrothal.
“I have offered Mrs Smith my hand in marriage,” I declared smugly.
My lack of preamble hampered Humphrey and he gave me a quizzical stare.
“And what was the lady’s reply?” he enquired eventually.
“Well now, Humphrey, to cut a long story short, she said yes,” I replied.
The porter congratulated me but did not enquire of my needs so I set about dropping the necessary hints.
“You know, Humphrey, it is at a time like this that a gentleman regrets not having a brother or long standing friend to whom he can turn. Take myself, for example; I could very much do with a secondman to guide me to the nuptials.” I paused with a deedy eye cast upon my colleague. “By the way, dear fellow, what do you think of a watering resort for the bridal tour? Perhaps somewhere right here in the West country would suit. Tell me, if you were my bride, would Weston-Super-Mare appeal?”
The porter exploded with laughter.
“Well now, Mr Jay, I’d like not to dwell on that notion, if you please, but I reckons there be a strong likelihood that Mrs Jay will want to be a crossin’ the water after the weddin’.”
“I say, Humphrey, your insight does you great credit,” I replied, flattering the porter and enjoying his use of the phrase ‘Mrs Jay’. I patted him upon the back. “Of course, my beloved will wish to introduce me to her relatives. Do you know, this is exactly the kind of wisdom that one expects from a groomsman. I just hope I can find one.”
Humphrey affected a cough and I pretended not to hear it.
“Arr, a solitary man of your standin’ might find this a vexin’ question, right enough,” he concurred.
“The trick of it is to find a man I can trust,” I said. “It would not matter how long I had known the fellow, but I think he should be local. Why, even a colleague would suffice.”
Humphrey coughed again, and again I did not hear him. This was a most amusing game.
“Mr Jay,” he addressed me abruptly in a laboured voice, “do e be askin’ I for to do it?”
“Good heavens, what a capital idea!” I gasped. “Of course, Humphrey, you would make an ideal manservant for my big day. I cannot think why I failed to see it. You see? You have come up with two commendable ideas in as many minutes. What say you then?”
“I would be honoured, Mr Jay,” he replied, adding sardonically, “as long as you think a mere colleague would suffice.”
The porter lured me into an exchange of cat-like grins then shook my hand.
Later in the day, Élise knocked upon my office door and entered with plans for our wedding day. She was not as excited as one would have expected, her demeanour being somewhat melancholic, so I enquired if something had upset her.
“Oh, I am just being silly,” she replied.
“Well, if you will furnish me with all the details I should like to be silly with you,” I commiserated and ushered her to a seat.
She complied with a faint smile.
“It is my harp,” she explained. “I had intended to have it repaired before moving into the station but I found it to be riddled with insects. Woodacott is so very damp and the instrument is quite ruined.”
While I struggled to find words of comfort, Élise took a deep breath and removed her gloves in businesslike fashion.
“Now, Horace, how about June?” she suggested. “I have given the matter much consideration and I believe the perfect date is the Ninth of June. What do you think? Is June not a calm month for Channel crossings?”
I cast my eye towards the ring upon her finger and smiled anxiously.
“Well then, it is settled. The happiest day of my life is to be the Ninth of June, Eighteen-Seventy-Five,” I replied, consulting my calendar and noting that it was a Wednesday.
“I shall invite my sister and her husband, of course,” she advised me, “and Diggory shall give me away.”
Having set aside a date for us to go to Hatton Garden to buy a more appropriate engagement ring, which I wanted to be a surprise, I prepared to divert our conversation to other matters should it become necessary.
“If we are to marry in Upshott, Élise, then you shall have to join the congregation of Saint Martha,” I advised extraneously.
“Of course, Widdlecombe has only a chapel,” she nodded, perplexed that I should so stridently state the obvious. “Now, Horace,” she recovered airily, gathering her gloves, “the shop has proved very popular so I must hurry back at once.”
I escorted Élise to the forecourt where she halted unexpectedly. Having planned to sub let Woodacott until the wedding, using it to accommodate her sister and family, she now proposed an alternative arrangement.
“Oh, and Horace,” she gusted, “I have calculated that it will be cheaper to pay for Dorine and Claude to stay at the Lacy Arms for the wedding. The new rent makes Woodacott too expensive to retain.”
It was a joy to see Élise so filled with designs for her future, and by the third reading of the banns we had formed a most capable alliance.
The day of our wedding dawned with a blush and wafting summer breeze, the stone children atop Splashgate Hill playing hand-in-hand as ever. After passing my keys to a relief stationmaster from Barnstaple, sleep deficit tugging my eyelids, I handed myself to Humphrey. Clearly prepared for all eventualities, the first thing the porter did was fetch me a tumbler full of what looked and tasted like muddy water. This I was advised to sip slowly.
“My misses invented this’un,” he boasted. “It’ll liven up your mind while a sluggin’ down your nerves.”
Imbibing such a contradictory formulation caused me a little apprehension but I was too effete to argue with the fellow.
To my surprise, Humphrey’s ghastly remedy worked. Simultaneously it lifted my eyelids and lowered my apprehension of the ceremony. Indeed it induced a detached state of mind close to euphoria and rendered m
e entirely dependent upon the Senior porter’s judgement. So agreeable was its effect that had I left for church with my shoes pointing backwards I should have thought it funny. The potion affected its zenith while I was at the altar waiting for Élise, all manner of fantasies diverting me. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I whispered to myself that I was a buffoon to dress so lavishly while in bed; the next that I was delusional, Élise never having agreed to marry me, causing regret that the people of Upshott had turned out to witness my disappointment yet amusement at their futile camaraderie.
The stout stone pillars and little arched windows of Norman origin came to the rescue, the gravitas of their masonry, cold as moonlight, causing me to look over my shoulder. The small church was a meadow of bonnets and expectant faces, shafts of dusty sunshine lifting them all from the Masonic gloom. Thus I comprehended that the Belle in White Lace would leave here as my wife, my life changed for ever.
My heart summersaulted when the organist turned a page and began playing Mendelssohn's Wedding March, the pedals and bellows of his instrument voicing louder than the pipes, and I dared not look when Humphrey remarked how ‘handsome’ was the bride. Instead I fixated upon the vicar in his world of stained glass light, the sniffing harlequin who would make my dream come true.
Of the matrimonial ceremony, all I recall is the Reverend’s intermittent drone and nudges from Humphrey when I failed to reciprocate in timely fashion, and shivering when I learned that I would answer for all my sins upon the ‘dreadful day of judgment’ when all the secrets of the heart are disclosed. During the words ‘Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony?’ I received a particularly severe nudge for answering prematurely. ‘Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’
“I will,” I answered a second time.
Élise made no such mistake while taking her vows.
“Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man?” the Reverend asked aloud, causing Diggory to step forward nervously.
I took Élise’s hand and imagined her soft fingertips playing the harp as I said my piece.
“I, Horace Ignatius Jay, take thee Élise Nathalie Liliane Smith to my wedded wife, to have and to
hold from this day forward…”
The recital complete, my thoughts turned to my cherished Bloomer, alas mine no more, sold to buy a harp. Having been delivered to the station earlier in the day, the harp now stood in the parlour and I could scarcely wait to see the surprise upon Élise’s face. Her voice in the church seemed unusually soft and delicate.
“… to love, cherish, and obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I give thee my troth,” she hushed.
Humphrey handed me the ring and I placed it where it would ever remain.
‘With this Ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow…” I heard myself say.
The Minister sniffed, recovered, then led us into the Lord’s prayer, my arm now aching from Humphrey’s incessant nudging and my head throbbing as the effect of his muddy water wore off.
It was not until much later that I beheld fully the splendour of Élise’s wedding gown, for even after I had kissed her for the first time as my wife and signed the register I had not perceived the lengths to which she had gone. My first appreciation came when we swept outside, dazzled by sunshine and well-wishers, and deafened by Saint Martha’s three bells under a shower of pattering rice.
“Oh, she’s beautiful,” I heard a woman sob.
Few individual voices were discernible above the clamour. Clanging bells, a thousand cawing crows, cheering celebrants, snorting horses, Spook barking frantically at the vicar, and an itinerant musician fiddling with improbable passion all faded away as I settled my eyes upon Élise in her wedding gown. I found myself speechless in admiration of her dressmaking skills. Cream and white folds embraced a court train and full length veil of lace whilst an exquisitely embroidered bodice inflected with the merest hint of colour imparted the dress a subtle radiance which, to my mind, could have come from Worth of Paris. It was overwhelming that such a wonderful woman should be my wife.
The photographer established his apparatus while Humphrey marshalled together the first group to be photographed. This included Élise’s sister, Dorine, husband Claude, and their two young daughters dressed as bridesmaids, the formation completed by Diggory and a selection of close friends. Humphrey would not join us, and when the flash and genie-like puff of smoke from burning magnesium had all but blinded us we learned why. The porter hurried away to organise a surprise. It turned out that he had arranged for our next photograph to comprise Élise and myself walking arm-in-arm through an archway of coal shovels held aloft by SER footplatemen. This was a stirring moment to which no photograph could do justice.
As Élise and I emerged from the arch, Humphrey dashed off again to summon a landau parked in the lane. Having escorted us aboard this he hurried away once more, and I noticed that to each of his dashes was added a bigger grin and louder wheezing. With a crack of the whip we were on our way to the High street, and for the first time I beheld the community of Upshott through the eyes of a married man. But while superstition held Élise’s eyes steadfastly ahead as we joggled towards the Coach House, I accepted felicitations from all, including Serena Blake who for once was not dressed in black, and even received hat waving from the likes of Doctor Bentley and Postmaster Peckham.
As the brisk click of hooves upon cobbles slowed to a more sedate pace I looked over my shoulder at the carriage following us to the reception and exchanged waves with Dorine. This charming lady’s smile was identical to Élise’s, and in her two daughters I perceived a family penchant for mischief and enjoying colourful occasions, though Claude remained aloof throughout and dispensed only the odd greeting in his native tongue. He, I had been told, was normally very amiable but poor sea-legs were causing him anxiety about the return crossing to France.
Our wedding breakfast had been arranged to take place upon the rear lawn of the Coach House at Noon, and first sight of the spread from our carriage caused Élise to squeeze my hand tightly. Not even a second shot of Humphrey’s muddy elixir could have elevated me to such euphoria because I knew that from this day forth I would face life’s every vicissitude with a doughty angel at my side.
The carriage halted gently and I saw Diggory with various young ushers directing guests to their seats, the lads having sped along footpaths to arrive ahead of us. Snimple had produced a charming array of posies for the head table and on display was Serena Blake’s contribution, a tall wedding cake, its towering presence in dark green icing sugar giving it the appearance of a small hill. On the subject of small hills, there was no sign of Humphrey, for having paid the vicar he was now back at the station preparing our trunks. Into his shoes had stepped Edwin Phillips, reputed to be Upshott’s most thunderous orator, to propose a toast in our honour, and I spotted him behind an urn rehearsing his speech. Jack Wheeler made a brief excursion from the station to offer his congratulations and I instructed him to thank his wife for taking care of Diggory while Élise and I were away.
Receiving so much good will, so many gifts, and in some cases approval from the most unexpected quarters both humbled and emboldened me, for despite all my disasters I had found my station in life. My future was at last defined. It would be one of devotion to my beloved wife and my community.
And so it is with regret that I must now abandon my pen. My faithful old railway watch is showing 4pm which, for an elderly gentleman, is an hour of fatigue. Whilst the Eighteen-Seventies remain vivid in my mind, my undertaking was to recall them from my first day as a Stationmaster until my first day as a married man, and with my bachelor days now fully told I am acquitted of further exertion.
The Twentieth Century may have spawned many intriguing advances, but of late I a
m diverted only by life’s simplest pleasures. My memories are rekindled daily by a photograph of two newly weds beneath an arch of shovels, and by the view from my cottage window. For among the distant hills, serenity collides with dreams to fill my mind with familiar voices, lost friends, and the clatter of early trains. My garden is filled with birdsong to which my frail ears are now indifferent, so I hark back to those hectic days when my senses were alive and I could never have imagined that one day I would become ‘that lonely widower of Tor cottage. Do you know, he used to be a stationmaster.’
Indeed, my end reflects my beginning. My wonderful Élise, who gave me twenty-five years of steadfast companionship, has returned to Diggory’s side, her naive and gangling first-born having grown to become a true gentleman and the Stationmaster of Blodcaster, remaining so until Eighteen-Ninety-Nine when he died saving a woman from a burning carriage. He is greatly missed.
Fortunately I am blessed with two further boys, the youngest of whom is a civil engineer for a railway company in the Transvaal, and the eldest, of all things, a private detective. The latter is retained by the Great Western for special enquiries, which is a source of great pride to me as he has solved many of the most mysterious crimes committed upon our railways.
But what of Spook, I hear you ask. This little fellow lived until Eighteen-Eighty-Five. Throughout his working life he caught countless rats and guarded the station both day and night against felons, in his enthusiasm occasionally apprehending an official visitor. His declining years were spent collecting money for the LSWR Orphans’ fund with a brass box strapped to his back. I can still see him roaming the platforms of Upshott, his legs arthritic, his tail wagging at everyone except the vicar.
