Off the Rails

by Beryl Kingston

  They decided on the blue wool and the sprigged muslin for Ann and then Richard folded up his tape measure and put it in the drawer under the counter and told them all he was taking them out for tea, as they’d been such good children.

  ‘Actually,’ he said to Lizzie when they were all settled with pots of tea and a plateful of sugar cakes, ‘it’s you I want to talk to.’

  ‘What about?’ Lizzie said, wiping cake crumbs from her mouth.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of buying shares in the railway,’ her brother said. ‘What would ’ee say to that? Would it be wise?’

  ‘Aye, it would,’ Lizzie told him. ‘Railways are going to mek a deal of money once they’re up and running. George told me. He might get a bit tetchy wi’ me when I don’t listen – he’s a great man and you’ve got to mek allowances – but he knows all there is to know about railways. None better. And money.’

  ‘I’d like to buy one of those new houses up by Clifton Croft,’ Richard said, ‘furnish it all a la mode, sort of thing. Live easy, sort of thing.’

  ‘Why not?’ his sister approved. ‘George would advise you, I’m certain sure. You have to buy at the top of the market – or was it the bottom? Anyroad there’s a best time for it. He’d be able to tell ’ee. And there’s a new railway a-coming. You could buy shares in that.’

  The new railway was voted into existence that summer at a meeting of the Committee of the York Railway which was now such a prestigious group they held their proceedings in the Guildhall. On this occasion they agreed to link up with the Leeds–Derby project and form a new railway company, which they called the York and North Midlands Railway. And when the shares were floated, one of their principle new shareholders was Mr Richard Nicholson, who naturally became one of the company’s directors.

  George invited him to one of his rowdy dinners to celebrate.

  ‘Now,’ he said, as they took their places one on either side of the table, ‘tha’s on tha way to becoming a very rich man.’ And he raised his first glass to his brother-in-law. ‘Your very good health, sir!’

  Jane and Nathaniel were dining with Milly and Felix that evening. Dining together had become a regular event since their brief visit at Easter and one they all looked forward to. Sir Percival and Lady Livingston were in London for the season, as was Felix’s father, and as term was over and Felix was officially ‘home for the hols’, they had plenty of free time – as well as one of Sir Mortimer’s carriages in which to travel about. Persuading his father to let him have it had been quite a victory as Felix was happy to tell them.

  ‘He thinks I’m visitin’ my Oxford friends,’ he said, the first time he drove to their door. ‘He’d have a fit if he knew where I really was.’

  ‘Good job he doesn’t then,’ Jane said, kissing her daughter. The warmth of being a conspirator and outwitting the icy Sir Mortimer was a real pleasure.

  But on this occasion, Felix had arrived with a problem which was obviously worrying him, and it wasn’t long before they discovered what it was. Apparently Sir Mortimer had come back to Foster Manor for a few days and had been laying down the law as to what his son was to do when he finally came down.

  ‘He says I can holiday abroad for the summer but then I’m to go back to the Manor and learn how to run the estate ready for when I inherit.’

  ‘You must have expected that, surely,’ Nathaniel said reasonably. ‘After all, that’s what eldest sons always do.’

  ‘Yes,’ Felix admitted. ‘I suppose I did, in a general sort of way. But …’ He sighed.

  ‘So what is the problem?’ Nathaniel asked.

  ‘It ain’t what I really want to do with my life,’ Felix told him honestly.

  ‘And what do you want to do with your life?’

  ‘I want to be a lawyer, sir. Always have done, as Milly will tell you.’

  ‘Could you not do both?’

  ‘Not according to the pater,’ Felix said ruefully. ‘We had words, I’m afraid. He said he wouldn’t allow any son of his to join such a disgraceful profession.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘You’re young yet,’ Jane said, trying to comfort. ‘You’ve got another two years at Oxford, have ’ee not? Happen he’ll change his mind.’

  Felix sighed even more heavily. ‘The pater never changes his mind,’ he said. ‘He tells you what he intends you to do and leans on you until you do it.’

  Yes, Jane thought, that’s exactly what he does.

  There was a long pause, while Milly and Felix looked sadly at each other and Jane looked hopefully at Nathaniel and Nathaniel poured more wine for them all and then considered, gazing away from them into a space of his own.

  ‘When we’re building a railway,’ he said eventually, ‘and we hit upon a problem – an incline too steep for a cutting, for example, or an inpenetrable hill – we sit down and ask ourselves questions and give our minds to finding another solution to it. There are invariably other solutions. It’s just a matter of looking for them and asking the right questions. Happen I might ask you some questions in this case, Felix.’

  Felix nodded, although both Jane and Milly could see that he had little hope that an interrogation would provide any useful answers.

  ‘Your father appears to dislike the legal profession for some reason,’ Nathaniel said.

  ‘Yes. He does.’

  ‘Do you know why that should be?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Felix said. ‘He makes no secret of it. In his opinion lawyers are rogues and fools.’

  ‘Not honest men, is that the size of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he often express such an opinion?’

  ‘Yes. He does. Frequently.’

  ‘Then I believe we may have hit upon a plan of campaign,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I would advise you to say nothing about your hopes for the time being. In fact if I were you I would avoid the subject of your future altogether, agreeing that you would, of course, be prepared to learn how to run the estate but otherwise holding your peace. Then all you have to do is wait until the next time your father is holding forth about the dishonesty of lawyers and, when he has disburdened himself of his opinion, I suggest that you ask him, very politely, whether he would allow you to provide him with a lawyer who would be more to his taste. If what you say about him is true, he will protest that there is no such thing as an honest lawyer. You can then ask him whether he might prefer a lawyer who has been raised and bred in his own house and therefore knows right from wrong and would be utterly trustworthy. What do you say to that?’

  Jane clapped her hands with delight to think of this cold, powerful man being outwitted. ‘I never knew you could be so artful,’ she said.

  But Nathaniel was still looking at Felix.

  ‘I’m not sure, sir,’ Felix told him. ‘The pater ain’t the easiest man for anyone to talk to. He don’t listen, d’ye see.’

  ‘Then you would have to choose a good moment,’ Nathaniel said. ‘You’ve plenty of time to think about it.’

  Then the subject was dropped because their parlourmaid had come in to ask if there were owt else they needed and they decided that as the meal was finished they would walk in the garden while it was still light. And Milly and Felix asked if it would be agreeable for them to take a short walk in the fields instead, which they always did when the meal was over.

  Jane watched them stroll away, very close together but being careful not to hold hands until they were out of sight. ‘They do mek me remember,’ she said, taking Nathaniel’s arm.

  ‘Aye,’ he smiled. ‘I can see that. Will he take my advice, do you think?’

  ‘He will try,’ Jane said. ‘He does so want to be a lawyer.’

  ‘He would make a good one,’ Nathaniel said. ‘He has the necessary virtues.’

  ‘And what are they, pray?’

  ‘He is patient and he listens. You brought him up well.’

  The summer gentled by: Jane’s garden was scented by roses and raspberries; Nathaniel worked on plans for the new railway;
Sir Mortimer stayed in London and so did Sir Percival and Lady Sarah, who wrote to Milly twice a week to send her the latest gossip and to enquire after her daughters. And at the end of July, her letter was bubbling with the news that ‘that dreadful upstart George Hudson’ had been summoned to appear before a special committee in the Houses of Parliament to answer charges of bribery and corruption during the recent election.

  ‘We are all agog to see how it will turn out,’ she wrote. ‘’Twould give the wretch his just deserts were he to be sent for trial. He has always been a deal too full of himself.’

  That was the opinion of the Whigs in York, who were still smarting over the way Mr Hudson had outmanoeuvred them and still complaining about the effrontery of those sovereigns. George himself was annoyed to be summoned so peremptorily but not overly concerned. After all, both parties had bribed the electors. That was the way of the world. It was a storm in a teacup, as he told his friends in the Tory Party. Nevertheless he had to obey the summons, even though his first instinct had been to ignore it, and he duly travelled down to London on the appointed day, taking his solicitor friend James Richardson to support him, and prepared himself to answer their unnecessary questions.

  They were a great deal more searching than was comfortable for, as he saw at once, one member of the committee seemed to have made up his mind that he was guilty as charged before he’d had a chance to open his mouth.

  ‘You are the treasurer of the Tory Party in York, I believe,’ he said.

  George agreed that he was.

  ‘Then you would have been responsible for any monies spent by that organization.’

  ‘No, sir. That was the responsibility of the committee as a whole.’

  ‘But you were the treasurer?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Then you would have paid out monies on Mr Lowther’s behalf.’

  That needed a denial or the wretched man would trap him. ‘No, sir, I did not.’

  ‘I find that hard to understand,’ his questioner went on. Really, the man was like some ugly little terrier. ‘Were you treasurer without a treasury?’

  He would have to be answered, George thought. Wretched little man. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps that admits of some explanation. The fact is that I believe in 1832 I was what they call treasurer but I received no monies; but I was told by the chairman that cheques on the city and county bank would be answered, if I drew them on account of the expenses of the election. That is the explanation.’

  ‘The total amount drawn from the bank was £3,240,’ another committee member put in. ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Was this polling money?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by polling money,’ George said loftily, and he turned to appeal to the chairman. ‘I don’t like to be entrapped into an answer by a question of that sort. Let him put his question in a straightforward way.’

  It was done. Instantly. ‘Very well then, I ask you, do you know whether any polling money was paid on behalf of Mr Lowther?’

  George drew himself up to his full pompous height. ‘That question,’ he said loftily, ‘I respectfully decline to answer.’ And he glared round at his persecutors, daring them to challenge his right to stay silent.

  The questioning went on for three days but George stayed obdurately obscure about his financial dealings. In the end the meeting was adjourned and no further action was taken.

  Mr Richardson was deeply impressed. As they were travelling back to York and safety, he said it was a masterly performance, ‘damn if it wasn’t’.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got the measure of a pack of bullies, don’t ’ee worry,’ George said, preening himself. ‘They needn’t think they can tell me what I’m to do with my own money. Sod that for a game of soldiers. Oh no. I showed ’em what’s what. Shout first and shout loudest. That what you do wi’ bullies.’ If he’d learnt nothing else back in that crowded, quarrelsome farmhouse, he’d learnt that. ‘Anyroad, they can’t touch me. I’m too rich for ’em. And if I’m too rich for ’em now I shall be ten times richer come the end of the year. You watch and see. My star’s in the ascendant.’

  It certainly seemed to be. By the end of that year he owned seven railway companies and had so much money he was a millionaire and sure enough not one further word had been said about their stupid trumped-up charge of corruption. And to set the seal on his success, by that time the local Tories held the balance of power within the Corporation and in their view, when it came to choosing the new Lord Mayor for 1837, there was only one man for the job.

  It was marvellously gratifying. ‘Didn’t I tell ’ee I’d be Lord Mayor,’ he said to Lizzie. How well he remembered standing in that little church when they were getting wed and looking down at the tombstone to another Lord Mayor, whose name he had quite forgotten, and vowing that one day he would follow him into office.

  Lizzie looked up at him in admiration. He seemed to have swollen to twice his size that evening and he looked so well with his cheeks red and his eyes shining and that gold watch chain shining on his chest like a medal.

  ‘’Tis no more than you deserve,’ she told him. ‘I mean for to say you’re just the man for the job. I’ve allus said so.’

  ‘I shall have my portrait painted in my mayoral robes,’ he said, admiring himself in the long mirror. ‘And I shall throw a banquet. An inaugural banquet. That’s the way to win hearts. Good food and champagne and plenty of it.’

  18

  WHEN PRINCESS VICTORIA was eighteen, the law was changed so that she could be declared to have come of age. Most people knew that the old King could die at any time and nobody in parliament wanted her mother to be regent. That wouldn’t have done at all.

  There was considerable celebration and anybody who was anybody threw a party. Even Sir Mortimer, who was usually too dour for parties, decided to host a large one and invited half society as well as all his children. Felix couldn’t see the point of it but he attended dutifully, telling himself that he could slip away unnoticed after an hour or two because it was bound to be a crush.

  As it was. The drawing room of his father’s fine town house was booming with loud voices and dazzling with flamboyant diamonds, most of them, as he noticed sourly, decorating wrinkled bosoms, and it was so impossibly crowded it was really quite difficult to move around in it. But he stayed polite and asked after the health of anyone who addressed him and tried to watch where his father was, so that he could keep out of his way.

  He was out of luck, for just as he was asking after the health of another drawling young man, a duchess in full sail bore down upon him, bearing his father in her wake.

  ‘Me dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve been searchin’ for you all over the room. Where have you been hidin’? You mustn’t hide. ’Tain’t kind, ye know, and it ain’t the style. Now tell me what you mean to do with yourself now you’ve come down. You will come to my soiree, naturally.’

  He agreed with her, giving her the slight bow that was her due. What else could he do? ‘Naturally, ma’am.’

  ‘Quite right,’ she said, nodding her plumed head so that the feathers swept his father’s face. ‘Now tell me what you mean to do with yourself until you come into the estate. It ain’t a bit of use puttin’ on that face to me, Mortimer. A young man should have an occupation otherwise he runs to the bad. We all know that.’

  Her words put Felix into a state of delighted shock. Had the moment actually come? Could he tell her what he wanted? Would she prove an ally? It probably wasn’t the place or the time but, even so, he was scrabbling about in his mind to remember the words he’d planned to say.

  The great lady leaned towards him and whacked him on the shoulder with her fan. ‘Speak up!’ she ordered. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Well now, as to that, ma’am,’ he said, gaining a little time while he got his thoughts in order, ‘I’ve been considering the law, ma’am.’

  She looked at him quizzically. ‘Have you now?’

  ‘Ye
s, ma’am. I thought it might be helpful for Pater to have his own personal lawyer. A trustworthy one, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘Quite right,’ she said, whacking him with the fan again. ‘Some of ’em are rogues. Absolute rogues. That all sounds very sensible. Wouldn’t you say so, Mortimer?’

  Sir Mortimer had retreated into his chilly face and didn’t answer but the lady sailed on in her imperious way. ‘It’s quite the done thing, ye know,’ she said, ‘dependin’ on the number of sons you have available. One to the army, one to the church, one to the law. Quite the done thing and a matter of good sense to my way of thinkin’.’ She gave Felix a nod as if the whole matter were settled. ‘Call on me a’ Friday,’ she ordered. ‘I will speak to the duke. He has friends in the Inns of Court.’ Then she sailed away, skirts swishing as she bore down on an old friend. ‘Me dear!’

  Felix realized that his heart was beating uncomfortably fast and that his father was looking as if he’d been frozen into his skin. ‘I wouldn’t do anything against your wishes, Pater,’ he hastened to assure.

  ‘Quite!’ his father said. Then he gave his son a short formal bow and left him.

  Has he agreed or not? Felix wondered. How am I to find out if he will keep walking away? But there was no point in worrying about it and fortunately just at that moment he saw an old college friend so he struggled through the crush to join him and they spent the next twenty minutes making ribald comments about the various impossible people in the assembly, which was entertaining and cheering. He would know his father’s decision soon enough.

  He knew it five days later after he’d paid his courtesy call on the duchess and been given the address of the ‘best chambers’ and a letter of introduction to the head of those chambers, whom the duchess pronounced ‘a stout chap’. He went back to his father’s house feeling so elated that his feet were barely touching the ground and showed him the letter with some pride and considerable satisfaction.