Station Jim

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘Please don’t cry, Lady Huffanpuff,’ said Albert.

  ‘Is that what you call me, mes enfants?’ sobbed Lady Huffington.

  ‘It’s only out of friendliness,’ said Ginger Leghorn. ‘They don’t mean nothing by

  it.’

  ‘No, we do like you really,’ said Sissy.

  This made her sob again, and at last Curly had a brainwave. ‘I’ll go in and put the kettle on.’ Some minutes later he came back out with a cup of tea, with two lumps of sugar on the saucer, just in case. Lady Huffington sipped at it, still seated on the ground at the base of the pillar. Finally she said, ‘Would you help me up?’ and Titch and Curly extended their hands to heave her upright. ‘Thank you so much. You’ll find a box in the pantry. You can put Jenks in that, and I can bid him au revoir.’

  As they all walked away with Jenks yeowling in the box, they felt not in the least bit triumphant. Instead, they were extremely sad. Even Sniffy seemed subdued, now that he had no scent to follow.

  ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ said Titch.

  ‘Certainly does,’ said Curly.

  ‘Poor Lady Huffanpuff,’ said the children.

  ‘Shows you can even be a Lady and still not have nothing much,’ said Titch.

  The story, however, has an unexpectedly happy ending, and not just because Curly and Titch gave Sniffy a huge thank-you bone from the butcher’s. Mr Jenkinson had rather liked it at Lady Huffington’s, so he took to disappearing from the signal box and going to visit her. He found her in the same way as Sniffy had, as cats also have a very fine sense of smell. It was summer, and Lady Huffington took to leaving a window open for him, but then as autumn drew in, she had a cat flap cut into the kitchen door. Whenever Jenks turned up, she telephoned down to the signal box to let Curly and Titch know where he was.

  Happier still, the children took to calling round occasionally after school, sometimes bringing Station Jim with them, and Lady Huffington made small batches of rock cakes and scones, with strawberry jam. She remembered all their birthdays, and bought them Ludo, jigsaw puzzles, dominoes, bagatelle, a shove-ha’penny board, a dog on wheels that played the xylophone, and a pack of cards. She had a swing put up on the walnut tree in the garden, and would sit on the terrace remembering how wonderful it had been when her own children were little. Molly Leghorn used to say, ‘We’ve got the poshest babysitter in England. Blimey, whatever next?’ Sometimes she and Ginger went round with the children to have tea with her, and they sat there at the table with its lacy cloth, not quite sure what to say, and wondering why you had to have a special knife for butter, and what to do with their cake forks. They never invited her round to their house, but Lady Huffanpuff quite understood why. They felt that their house was too little and humble for a Lady, and neither were they themselves nearly posh enough.

  Lady Huffanpuff’s lonely life in her great big house made the children feel grateful to be living in their smoky railway cottage on a terrace, all in a bundle of people and cats and dogs and lazy pigeons, and Ginger liked to say, ‘You know what? I bet even the King gets a bit low, sometimes, with his palaces and all. That’s why he’s got that little dog, to perk him up, probably.’

  STATION JIM’S SECOND FINEST HOUR

  Jim loved sausages more than anything else in the world, and didn’t care if they were cooked or not. They were the one thing that made him misbehave. He was banned from all the local butchers’ shops, and if there were sausages on the table he could leap up and lunge at the same time, or he would suddenly appear on your lap and stick his face in your plate. When they were having bangers and mash or toad-in-the-hole, the Leghorns would put Station Jim out of the back door, leaving him to howl with longing and despair in the yard.

  One day Station Jim was sniffing about on the pavement in front of the railway cottages, when he thought he smelled sausages. He raised his nose and whiffled at the breeze. These were pork sausages with quite a lot of fat in them, and about twenty per cent cereal, at some considerable distance, probably down at the docks, because Jim could also smell the green scent of the sea.

  Without further thought, because sausages were an absolute priority, Jim set off on his quest. He went down the hill, past the railway station and the post office, the town pump and the horse trough, the town hall and the police station, and when he found himself down at the docks he had no further distance to go than up the gangplank of a collier.

  This collier was a medium-sized tubby and rugged ship so engrained with shiny coal dust that even the most violent rains and storms at sea never fully managed to clean it off. The crew were also engrained and shiny with coal dust, and whenever they eventually got home to Newcastle in between voyages, their wives would bring a tin bath to the parlour and fill it with hot water so that they could stand in it and scrub themselves down. When they saw themselves in the mirror, they would be surprised to recognise themselves, and their wives would say, ‘Why aye, it is you then,’ and their clean husbands would reply, ‘Aye, hinny, it’s me. Who were you hoping for?’ Their children would say, ‘Coaly Dad’s got back, and now he’s Cleaned-Up Dad,’ because in their minds they had two completely different fathers all rolled up into one.

  Jim went down the steep gangways into the galley, his ears and jowls flopping forwards, and great concentration on his face as he coped with the metal steps. The galley was a tiny little room with a table that had a raised rim around it so that things could not slide off at sea, and all the implements were hung up on hooks. There was a strong scent of sausages there, but the sad thing was that the crew had eaten them all and gone ashore for the last time before setting off back to Newcastle. All that was left were the dirty plates on the table. Jim washed them up with his tongue, and relished the flavours of brown sauce, buttery mashed potatoes, peas covered with gravy, and delicious sausage grease. It wasn’t much, but it was worth the long walk. Jim then settled down and fell asleep under the table.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Ginger Leghorn two days later, taking off his cap and scratching the top of his head as he stood on the docks and gazed out to sea, ‘what the heck’s this, then?’

  ‘Well,’ said Smiffy, ‘if Sniffy says that this is where Jim is, then this is where Jim is.’

  ‘Out at sea?’ He turned and looked down at Sniffy. ‘Are you sure about this, boy?’

  Sniffy looked back up at him, closed his eyes, lifted his head, and belled.

  ‘Jim’s gone for a swim? I don’t believe it. Not out there. Just look at those waves.’

  The whole family were so grief-stricken at the news that Jim had apparently swum away to sea that they sat miserably at teatimes and could hardly eat. At night the children cried, and the cat sat in the yard and yeowled. Molly and Ginger Leghorn kept shaking their heads and repeating, ‘I don’t believe it. Why would he do a thing like that? Must have had a rush of blood.’

  ‘Lucky he’s got a collar on,’ said Molly Leghorn. ‘When they find his body they can let us know.’

  They were just getting used to the idea that Jim had inexplicably committed suicide by swimming out to sea, when someone came from the post office bringing a telegram.

  Mrs Leghorn was better at reading than Ginger, so she read it out to him, exclaiming ‘Blimey!’ and ‘Blow me!’ at the same time.

  GONE TO NEWCASTLE STOP LOVELY TIME STOP LOVELY SAUSAGES NICE BLACK PUDDING STOP BACK AT DOCKS ON TUESDAY 1200 HRS WEATHER PERMITTING STOP JIM

  Ginger telephoned the harbourmaster from the station, and found out that the SS Pride of Blyth was due in at that time, with a cargo of coal.

  The story got around the town very quickly, because it was so extraordinary, and Jim had become such a popular dog. Many people had shaken their heads with sorrow over Jim’s suicide, feeling great sympathy for the Leghorns, and now they were all overjoyed and terribly surprised. When the Mayor heard about it, he said to the Deputy Mayor, ‘How about a little celebration?’

  The Deputy Mayor played trombone in the town band, and in the Salvation Army
band too, so that evening he went round town after work, knocking on doors, and the folk he called on went in turn and called on their employers to see if they could have the morning off. Miss Fortunata Horseferry, the schoolteacher, agreed that the children could have the morning off too. The dockers were going to be at the docks anyway, and the Pride of Blyth was the only ship due in. The Mayor was going to come with his chain of office about his neck, and the town crier was dispatched about the streets with his black tricorn hat, his red frock coat and his big brass bell, to cry ‘Oyez! Oyez!’ and summon the populace for Tuesday at noon.

  The plan worked better than expected because the ship docked half an hour early, and the Mayor was able to go on board and tell the crew what was going to happen.

  And that is why Station Jim had a civic reception down on the docks, with children cheering as he was led down the gangplank to the blare of the combined bands playing ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’ and ‘What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?’. When Station Jim realised that his family were all there waiting to meet him, he threw himself about in such a frenzy of joy that he slipped the leash, leaping and capering so much that Ginger and the children had to defend their faces with their arms or they would have been licked to death. At the same time he managed to sing a dogsong, consisting of whines and howls and small yips. In the newspaper the next day there was a photograph of Station Jim, apparently flying, with his lips drawn up in such a grin that his whole face seemed to consist of nothing but pink gums and shiny white teeth.

  When Station Jim finally calmed down, the Mayor made a long speech full of classical references to dogs that he had found in an encyclopaedia. Lady Huffanpuff, dressed in a highly floral style, made a shorter one, and presented Station Jim with a certificate of welcome and a new disc for his collar with ‘Home is the Sailor’ engraved on the back of it. Everybody posed for a picture to be printed in the Herald and Advertiser, and there was a separate picture of Smiffy and Sniffy.

  Ginger Leghorn took the collier’s crew to the Tipsy Boatswain to buy them a pint each, and heard the story of how they had found the dog under the galley table half an hour after setting off, how it had made itself at home and stolen sausages from the cupboard. They told him that Jim had spent the days up on deck, barking at the seagulls and trying to bite the spray that came up over the guardrails.

  Molly and the children took Jim upriver and threw sticks for him so that he could swim out and wash off some of the coal dust. Then they brought him home and washed him again, out in the yard. Tildo waited till he was dry, and then wound himself in and out of Jim’s legs, bumping his head and purring. Mrs Leghorn told everyone to change their clothes, because Jim had covered them all in coal dust, and she mashed them in the cauldron with a wooden dolly to get them clean.

  The story of Station Jim’s voyage and civic reception made it into the national press, and for a few weeks he even received fan mail. In France one of the national newspapers printed the story in order to demonstrate how mad the British are. A local photographer printed a large photograph of the Leghorn family with Station Jim sitting in front of them with his favourite galvanised bucket on his head. This and the newspaper articles were pinned up at the station for the passengers to look at, and at the town hall too. At Windsor Castle, King Edward read them and showed them to the Queen, saying, ‘Plucky little fellow, eh?’ and he turned to his own small dog, Caesar, and said, ‘Don’t you go trying anything like that.’

  The person who was most pleased about Station Jim’s return was Smiffy. Even he had had his doubts about whether Jim had really gone out to sea, but now he had been vindicated, or, rather, his bloodhound had. Back in his forge, he patted Sniffy on the head, saying ‘Who’s a good boy, then?’, and all his pride in his dog’s infallibility came flooding back.

  SCHOOL

  On days when the trains were not running because of works on the line, Jim went to school with the children.

  It was a small Church of England National school which consisted of one large room. There was a raised dais at the front, with a desk on it for the teacher, and behind it on the wall, a very large blackboard. There were several rows of desks for the children, with the bench seats built in. It was considered a matter of personal honour to carve your name in your desk without being detected.

  They had lids that opened up, and each child stored their slates, books and pencils inside. Above the hinge, on the right-hand side, there was an inkwell for the children to use for their dip pens, which were regularly topped up with a horrible greeny-black ink that seemed to get everywhere: on your hands, on your face, on your clothes, and very occasionally onto your sheets of paper. The ink didn’t come off even if you scrubbed yourself raw with a pumice stone when you reached home.

  Upon one wall was a large portrait print of His and Her Majesties, looking most royal and gracious in their colourful regalia, and on another was a print of a pale Jesus, dressed in white robes, with a splendid golden halo about his head, and a sheep slung across his shoulders. Underneath it said, in elaborate lettering, ‘The Good Shepherd’.

  At the back was a large wooden board with the Ten Commandments written on it in Gothic script, some of which were never explained to the children, so that generations would grow up thinking that it was sinful to become an adult, and wondering why you would want to cover your neighbour’s ox or his ass or his wife.

  The teacher at this school was a terrifying, raspy-voiced, tennis-playing lady named Miss Fortunata Horseferry, but the children knew her by many other names, such as ‘Whacker’. She was a tall, slender woman in middle age, with her grey hair piled up on her head. She wore a white apron to protect her dresses from the grubbiness of children, and she wore pince-nez glasses, over which she could peer disapprovingly, should anyone become unduly cheerful or boisterous. She had been a teacher for twenty-five years, and her head was full of lessons which she could use over and over again as one generation succeeded another.

  In her hand she always held a yardstick, marked out in feet and inches, but seldom used for measuring. It was employed for pointing to things she had written on the blackboard, and for whacking badly behaved children on the top of the head. If they were very bad, she would make them put out their hands, palm downwards, and strike them across the knuckles with the narrow edge. This was excruciatingly painful. If a child was particularly stupid or ignorant, they would be made to stand in the corner wearing a tall dunce’s cap with a big D on it.

  Under Miss Horseferry’s tutelage, Alfie, Arthur, Beryl, Sissy and Albert learned the lengths in yards of miles, rods, poles and perches, the number of ounces in a pound and of pounds in stones and of stones in hundredweights and tons. They recited the times tables both backwards and forwards, and learned by heart poems by William Wordsworth and Henry Newbolt. They were required to remember the dates of every English monarch, going back to King Ethelred the Unready, and every year they would, at least once, be made to trace a large map of the world and shade the dominions of the British Empire in pink, just to make it quite clear that it was indeed an empire upon which the sun never sets.

  The children learned about tea growing in Ceylon, rubber production in the Amazon, the parables and miracles of Jesus Christ, the victories of the English over the French in the Hundred Years War, and about how King Edward the Fourth drowned his brother in a butt of malmsey wine, without their ever learning what a butt was.

  To the accompaniment of Miss Horseferry caterwauling, clattering and jangling on the upright piano, they sang hymns, such as ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’ and ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away, Without a City Wall’, only to wonder for the rest of their lives why you would all run away after ploughing, and why a green hill might have a city wall round it in the first place. Every day they recited the Lord’s Prayer, and it was not until she was twelve that Beryl realised that God’s name was not Harold.

  The children quite liked their school, because in those days nobody expected their teachers to be kind or ge
ntle, or even remotely reasonable.

  And Miss Fortunata ‘Whacker’ Horseferry did have a big weak spot, which was that she loved animals. Childrenwho tried to bring their cats in always failed, because cats don’t go to school, on the grounds that they know everything worth knowing already, but others might come in with a mouse in their pocket, or a tortoise, or a scrabbly brainless rabbit, and, without fail, Miss Horseferry would go damp-eyed and soppy. She particularly liked it when Jim came in with the Leghorn children, because Jim would bound up to her and try to cover her with wet kisses, making her feel lovable after all.

  In later life, the children’s memory of their schooldays would be not of Miss Horseferry as a terrible dragon, but as the tall, slender lady who used to take the whole class up the hillside above the town, ostensibly to teach them about clouds, wild flowers and the wonders of nature, but really to throw a tennis ball for the dog.

  RAGGABONE

  In those days there were many tradesmen who patrolled the streets, hawking their wares, and each had a special cry.

  There was the muffin man, for example, and the tins man who put new linings in your copper pots, and the scissor man who had a water wheel for sharpening your scissors and knives, and the tinker, who could mend your pots and pans, and the cat’s-meat man who brought horsemeat from the knackers’ yard.

  Cat’s meat! Cat’s meat!

  Make your cats fat meat!

  The dog might like some too … ooo.

  There were diddicoys, who knew how to mend machinery, there was the pieman, who pushed a handcart loaded with hand-raised pork pies, and steak-and-kidney pies, and Cornish pasties, and beef-and-potato pies, and any other kind of pie he felt like making on the day. He used to chant

  Simple Simon met a pieman