Off the Rails

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘This is doing them so much good,’ Lizzie said, ‘I’ve a mind to make it an annual occurrence. A holiday by the sea. What do ’ee think?’

  ‘’Twould depend on t’length of it,’ Jane said honestly. ‘I’d not want to be away from Mr Cartwright for too long.’ This five-week separation had been very difficult and although she was grateful to Lizzie for taking them all out of danger she couldn’t wait to be back in her own house.

  But York wasn’t pronounced clear of the cholera until the end of June so they had to stay where they were. And by then George had become embroiled in a furious row with the Board of Health. When the two families returned, the town was seething with gossip about it. Peggy, Jane’s parlour maid-cum-lady’s maid, regaled her with a detailed account of it almost as soon as she got back.

  ‘He called the chairman a blamed old fool,’ she said. ‘What a thing to say. A blamed old fool what wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him. And then he said he was a doddering idiot and he ought to stand down afore he fell down and mek way for someone who knew what was what. I never heard the like.’

  ‘What brought that about?’ Jane asked. It sounded exactly the sort of thing George would say. She’d heard worse when he’d been roaring at Lizzie. But there had to be a reason for it.

  ‘’Twas the dead bodies,’ Peggy explained, as she hung Jane’s jacket in the closet. ‘There were so many of ’em you see, and Mr Hudson reckoned they should be buried outside t’city walls, on account of the effluvia, what he said spreads the disease, what could be right when you comes to think on it, on account of it must be summat. Anyroad, he had a plot of land what would suit, seemingly, and he meant to have ’em use it. Only t’Board stood up against him and said he were out to mek a profit and it got nasty. ’Twere all over town the next day.’

  ‘What was the upshot?’ Jane asked, although she already knew the answer.

  ‘Oh, he got his own way,’ Peggy said. ‘They’ve been burying ’em in his graveyard ever since. But what a way to go on! Roarin’ an’ hollerin’.’

  She was interrupted before she could tell her mistress any more for there was a sudden thunder of feet on the stairs, the door was flung open and Nathaniel strode into the room, beaming and holding out his arms to his family.

  Then there was a commotion as the children ran full tilt at their father and were caught up in his arms one after the other to be tossed into the air and caught and kissed. Audrey and Peggy shadowed tactfully away and left them to their reunion and they were all so happy they never saw them go.

  ‘I did miss you, Papa,’ Nat said, clinging about Nathaniel’s neck.

  ‘And I missed you, little one,’ Nathaniel told him, ‘but never mind, we’re back together now.’

  ‘Did you miss me?’ Jane teased, smiling into his eyes.

  ‘Aye, a little,’ he teased back, but his rapturous face gave the lie to his words.

  This is where I should be, Jane thought, here at home with my dear Nathaniel and my babies. Not with Lizzie Hudson, kind though she is. And as for George, he may do as he pleases and suffer the consequences. ’Tis all one with me. I’m home.

  But in fact some of the consequences of George’s blazing row were not what she might have expected. Although there were plenty of people who castigated Mr Hudson for his boorish behaviour, there were as many others who admired it and told one another that he might have a rough edge to his tongue but he’d been right about the cemetery and, what was more, he was plainly a man who got things done.

  Early in the new year, to his personal delight and few people’s surprise, he was voted onto the council and when spring came and the York Union Bank was officially opened, he bought a large number of shares and was appointed a director. Now, and at last, he had a position in the town. There was nothing to stand in the way of his railway committee.

  14

  THE UPPER ROOM in Mrs Tomlinson’s hotel in Low Petergate on that crisp December evening was packed to the walls and loud with excitement. George stood behind the baize-covered table waiting to take charge of the meeting and watched and listened with enormous satisfaction as more and more men arrived to join the throng and the noise of their mutual greetings grew deafening. There was no doubt now that the wealthy lawyers and businessmen of York had finally understood that a railway would bring higher profits to the town and that he, George Hudson, was a man to follow. Time to call them to order, he thought, and boomed at them that they should ‘pray be seated, gentlemen’.

  The speeches from the floor were extremely gratifying for they began with a clear statement that a railway would be beneficial to the town and it came from one of the town’s leading businessmen, a gentleman called James Meek, who was a Whig and had the ear of the local MP.

  One or two voices were raised to express concern about the possibility that the trains might carry passengers. They reminded George of his Uncle Matthew, but he dealt with them patiently. He’d been sure of his success as soon as he called the meeting and the knowledge made him uncharacteristically tolerant.

  ‘Our line will certainly carry a deal of freight,’ he told them, ‘that being the principle reason for bringing it into existence, as we all know, howsomever, in my humble opinion, ’twould be folly to preclude the possibility of carrying passengers. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway carries passengers already, as I’m sure you know, and is making a handsome profit out of it. If I’m any judge, and I think I can say I know as much as most on the subject, rail travel will soon be the preferred mode of transport, being, as it will assuredly be, fast, comfortable and dependable.’

  There was no gainsaying him. He made sure of that. By the end of the evening, after several rousing speeches and a steady consumption of brandy, the York Railway Committee had been voted into existence, with Mr James Meek as its chairman, Mr James Richardson as its solicitor, and Mr George Hudson as treasurer. It was, George thought, as he strolled happily home to Monkgate, with a sharp frost under his feet and a sky full of bold white stars above his head, a thoroughly satisfactory outcome. And the best thing about it was that it was only just the beginning. There was more and better to come. I’m the richest man in York by a long chalk now, he thought. Just give me a few more years an’ a few more railways, an’ I’ll be the richest man in England. There’ll be no stopping me. Wait till I tell Lizzie.

  It was a disappointment to find that, late though it was, Lizzie wasn’t in bed and waiting for him. Fussing with one of the children, he thought, and strode off to find her.

  She was in Dickie’s room, sitting by the bed, looking anxious, her long face darkly shadowed by the gas light, with Milly standing beside her, demure in her dressing gown and looking even more anxious.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘There you are. Come to bed, woman. I’ve summat to tell ’ee.’

  She didn’t appear to have heard him. ‘He’s not at all well,’ she said, looking at the little boy, who certainly had a very flushed face and was tossing his head from side to side on the pillows. ‘Poor little mite. He’s been coughing half the night, hasn’t he, Milly?’

  ‘He’s in a blue funk because I told him he was going to school,’ George said. ‘That’s all. Come to bed. I’ve summat to tell ’ee. Summat important.’

  She didn’t move. ‘I’ll be along presently,’ she said, not even looking up. ‘When I’ve just got him settled, poor lamb.’

  ‘Goddamnit!’ he roared at her. ‘Am I not to be allowed to speak to my wife in my own house? Do as you’re told, woman, and come to bed. The girl’ll see to him.’

  The girl glared at him but Lizzie rose stiffly and reluctantly to her feet and bent to kiss the boy’s hot head. She was carrying again and her pregnancy was making her look fat and awkward. She bent her head towards Milly and whispered to her please to let her know if there was any change, then she waddled after her husband.

  ‘He’s such a bully,’ Milly told her mother three days later when she was visiting Shelton House. ‘He treats her like a servant.’ />
  ‘Nowt would ever surprise me wi’ that one,’ Jane said. ‘He’s a brute. Allus was. Come up to the nursery and see what your brother and sister have got for Christmas.’

  ‘Is it Christmas already?’ Milly laughed.

  ‘It is for Mr Cartwright,’ Jane said, laughing too as she led her daughter upstairs. ‘He couldn’t wait to give it to them. Not even for a week. I never saw such excitement.’

  It was a painted rocking horse with a leather saddle and a thick mane of grey horsehair. The sight of it took Milly straight back to the nursery of her childhood. ‘Oh, Ma,’ she said, ‘do ’ee remember our horse at Foster Manor?’

  ‘I’ve been remembering it ever since Mr Cartwright took off the wrapper,’ Jane said. ‘Remembering and wondering how they all are.’

  ‘Felix is up at Oxford,’ Milly said, automatically lifting her sister into the saddle. ‘Sarah told me in her last letter. Enjoying it no end, she said.’

  ‘He was such a dear little boy,’ Jane said rather wistfully.

  ‘And now you’ve got a dear little boy of your own,’ Milly told her briskly. ‘Hasn’t she, Nat? And two dear little girls, even if one’s not quite as little as she was.’

  Outside their long window it was starting to snow, the light flakes tossing and dancing in the cold air.

  ‘Loo’! Loo’!’ Mary called, pointing at it. ‘Wha’s dat?’

  ‘That’s snow,’ Milly told her, ‘and if it settles we’ll go outside and build a snowman.’

  Which they did, to the children’s intense excitement. Playing with them, as they wielded their spades and patted the solid sides of their creation and were lifted up to give their beautiful snowman a hat for his icy head and a carrot for his nose and two round black pebbles for his eyes, Jane knew she had never been so happy in all her life.

  ‘If I could only get my Milly to leave Monkgate and come and live here with us,’ she said to Nathaniel later that night, ‘I’d never want another thing.’

  ‘Happen she’ll join us when Dickie goes away to school,’ Nathaniel said.

  But fate had other and more terrible plans for Dickie and his father, as they were to find out in the next three months, for the little boy was seriously ill and the racking cough and the exhausting fevers continued, despite everything Lizzie could do to ease them, like keeping a kettle steaming in the bedroom or heating coal tar in a pumice-stone saucer until it let off healing fumes, which the pharmacist promised her was ‘just the thing’ for coughs and rheums.

  ‘He’ll be better come the spring,’ she said to Milly, her face strained with the need to hope. ‘’Tis just this bitter cold what does it, that’s all. He’ll be better come the spring, don’ ’ee think so.’

  But the spring came, at first tentatively but then with encouraging warmth and strength, and the fevers continued and got worse. And then at the end of March, the child developed a rash of small red spots and when Mrs Hardcastle was called to attend him, she took one look at his labouring chest and diagnosed the measles, instructing that a sheet dipped in disinfectant should be hung across the bedroom door, that only Lizzie and Milly should enter the bedroom and that the other children should be kept well out of their brother’s way. ‘’Tis a mortal powerful infection,’ she said to Lizzie, ‘and you’ll not want them to tek it too.’

  It was indeed mortal. Five days later, in the small hours of a very chill morning, Dickie Hudson gave up his unequal struggle against the terrible combination of consumption and measles and died in his mother’s arms.

  Lizzie was wild with grief. ‘Three of them,’ she wept to Jane, when her old friend came hurrying round to comfort her. ‘Three! I can’t bear it. First my poor little James and he was such a pretty baby, you never saw such a pretty baby, and then my poor little Matthew just when I thought he was better and now my dear darling Dickie. Oh, what did I ever do to deserve it? I’ve loved them more than I can tell ’ee, much more, oh much, much more. I’d have given anything to keep them alive. Anything at all. I don’t know how I shall go on, I truly don’t.’

  ‘No, my dear,’ Jane said, putting her arms round Lizzie’s pitifully bowed shoulders and holding her gently. ‘I can see you don’t.’

  ‘’Tis more than human flesh and blood can stand,’ Lizzie wept. ‘’Tis all very well George saying ‘you’ll have others’. I don’t want others. I want my dear darling Dickie and my darling Matthew and my poor little James. Oh, oh, what’s to become of us? And that poor little dog howling all the time.’

  It was impossible to find anything to say that would comfort her so Jane simply went on holding her and stroking her tear-damp hair until the worst of her grief was over. It was a terrible time. And it got worse when she finally said goodbye to Lizzie and went downstairs to the back door for she found Milly sitting in the kitchen, rigidly upright on one of the kitchen chairs, with a carpet bag at her feet and her face under such tight and ugly control that it hurt Jane simply to see it.

  ‘My dear?’ she said. And Milly burst into tears.

  ‘I can’t stay here, Ma,’ she wept. ‘Not now. Not wi’ my Dickie gone. There’s nowt for me to do now he’s gone and everyone’s so upset. I can’t bear it. And with the funeral coming and everything. Why did he have to die, poor little man? It’s not fair! He was such a good little boy and we all loved him. I can’t stay here.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Jane said, taking charge of her. ‘You must come home wi’ me and let me look after you.’

  ‘Can I bring Spot with me?’ Milly asked. ‘He’s been howling ever since and ’tis upsetting everyone. He won’t howl with us, I promise. I’ll look after him.’

  So it was agreed that the dog should come too and Sally was instructed to tell everybody where they’d gone.

  Even in the midst of this grieving household, Jane was glad to think that her daughter was finally coming home, but she brought her grief with her and ate so little and was so quiet during their first dinner together that Jane was seriously worried about her.

  ‘’Tis a dreadful thing to see her in such a state,’ she said to Nathaniel when they were on their own together in the bedroom.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, looking at her compassionately.

  ‘’Tis all so unfair,’ Jane said. She was very close to tears herself. ‘There’s not a scrap of sense or justice in any of it. When you think of all the hard work it takes to carry a child and bring it into the world. And the weariness of those last months. And then to have to watch him die. ’Tis the cruellest thing. She was so fond of him, poor Lizzie. And so was my Milly.’

  He put his arms round her and held her protectively close. ‘I will look after your Milly, my dearest,’ he said. ‘She’ll be well cared for here. I’ll see to it.’

  And at that, she wept.

  The funeral was held in Scrayingham Church on a bright spring day. Jane and Milly were touched to tears as they watched that little white coffin being lowered into George’s imposing family crypt in the churchyard. He should have been buried in his own little grave, Jane thought. That would have been much more fitting. All that expensive marble looked too heavy to be used to cover a little boy and his tender wreath of daffodils, although she noticed that George seemed pleased by it and was standing with one hand resting on it in a proprietorial way. She also noticed that he wasn’t paying any attention at all to poor Lizzie. He could at least have offered her an arm to lean on. ’Tis all money with him, she thought, hateful man, and she walked across to put a comforting arm round her old friend’s shoulders.

  ‘Time for me to be off,’ George said, throwing the words in their direction. ‘Tha’lt be fine wi’ Mrs Smith, will ’ee not.’

  Lizzie tried to dry her eyes. ‘When will ’ee be back?’ she asked, huskily.

  He was already striding through the churchyard to where his groom stood patiently holding his horse. ‘No idea!’ he called. ‘Don’t wait up.’

  Jane was appalled. ‘Where’s he going?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, ’tis business,’ Lizzie to
ld her, as if that explained it.

  Jane was too cross to be cautious or even polite. ‘Business!’ she said. ‘At his son’s funeral?’

  Even in the terrible depths of her grief, Lizzie knew she had to defend her husband and struggled to rouse herself to do it. ‘People depend on him,’ she said. ‘He’s a great man, Jane. We must mek allowances. He wants to link his railway up with another one in Leeds. Or was it Derby? Anyroad, one or t’other, ’tis important. He were telling me only t’other evening. Linking two railways, you see. You do see, don’t you, Jane?’ And then she looked down at the little grave and cried again.

  He’s a heartless beast, Jane thought, but she didn’t say anything more. Lizzie was too upset for that and if George wouldn’t look after her, she would. She put her arm round her friend’s shoulders and held her while she cried. But she carried her anger in her heart and by the time she got home it had hardened into the old familiar hatred.

  ‘He left her standing at the graveside,’ she said to Nathaniel, as they were getting undressed ready for bed. ‘I ne’er saw owt so cruel. And she with her son just buried and barely able to walk for the weight of the next baby and weeping so much ’twas a wonder she could see. There are times when he beats cock-fighting.’

  ‘But she had you to look after her,’ Nathaniel said easily, hanging his jacket in the closet. ‘She was in good hands.’

  ‘That,’ Jane said, stepping out of her petticoat and giving it a cross little shake, ‘is beside the point. ’Twas his job to look after her. He’s her husband.’

  ‘He’s a great man,’ Nathaniel told her, patiently, as he took off his shoes. ‘A man with a vision. You can’t expect a great man to play nursemaid to his wife. He has other things to do.’

  Jane snorted.

  ‘He means to build railways from one end of the kingdom to the other,’ Nathaniel went on, ‘and when ’tis done, ’twill change the entire country. There’s no doubt on it. As I told you, he’s a great man.’