Off the Rails

by Beryl Kingston

  The letter was sent as soon as he’d eaten what breakfast he could. And twenty-four hours later Lizzie arrived in his parlour, her face full of concern.

  ‘Now don’t you go a-worritting your poor old head about all this nonsense,’ she said. ‘I mean for to say, what is it? I’ll tell ’ee. ’Tis just nonsense. Folk being jealous, that’s all. What does that Mr Prance know about running railways? You tell me that. Nowt, that’s what he knows. Pay him no mind, that’s my advice to ’ee. Pay him no mind at all. I mean for to say, who is he? He’s a nobody, that’s who he is.’

  In his terror-heightened state, Richard had acquired a peculiar sharp-sightedness. She doesn’t know what’s been going on, he thought. This is all George talking, not her. I can hear his voice. And she’s taken it all in and believes him. Oh my poor Lizzie. ‘He’s a member of the Stock Exchange,’ he said, wearily. ‘He knows about shares.’

  ‘Well, let him,’ Lizzie said stoutly. ‘What’s that got to do with us? My George wouldn’t do anything dishonest. You know that. Never in this world. So don’t you worry your head. It fair makes my blood boil the way he’s upsetting folk. Not my George, I don’t mean. The other one. That Mr Prance. I’d prance him if I could get my hands on him. Upsetting folk. Saying things. And in print too. I don’t know what the world’s a-coming to. I truly don’t. My George is a fine, upstanding God-fearing man and as honest as the day. Don’t you go worrying your head. That’s my advice to ’ee.’

  Your George cuts corners and goes in for shady deals, Richard thought. He’s done it for years, if Mr Prance is to be believed and I see no reason to disbelieve him, and you don’t know. You’ve never known. I’ve had a sneaking suspicion sometimes but you’ve never known. She was still prattling on, so he looked away from her and sighed as deeply as he dared, accepting the fact that she was no help to him at all and feeling achingly sorry for her, because she thought she was doing her best for him. Then he served her tea and tempted her with the sugar cakes he couldn’t possibly eat himself. And when she left, he kissed her goodbye and thanked her for coming over so quickly and, as a loving afterthought, told her he would take her advice.

  ‘Much the best thing,’ she said and trotted across the path to her carriage, waving to him quite gaily. It was the last time she would ever see him.

  That evening, when he’d toyed with his dinner for nearly an hour, he put on his hat and his second-best jacket, because the best one was too recognizable, and walked down to the river to think. His misery had deepened during the day and the chill air and ominous gloom of the evening made it worse. He was finished. He knew it as surely as he knew he was standing by the river. It wouldn’t be long before he and George were arrested and taken to court to face their crimes. Oh dear God, arrested and taken to court. How could he bear it? He had no idea what sort of sentence they would have to serve but that was immaterial. He couldn’t face a court case, let alone a prison sentence. It was insupportable.

  The rank smell of the river rose to fill his nostrils and he looked down at it, licking at the banks, and noted vaguely that it was moving at a greater speed than usual. If I were to fall in, he thought, I would drown because I can’t swim. I would drown and it would all be over. The thought was suddenly extremely tempting, filling his mind and pulsing along his veins. I would drown and it would all be over.

  He took off his jacket and his boots and held his nose and jumped into the running water. It struck so cold it took his breath away, so cold that it filled his mouth, so cold it clogged his nose, so cold it blanked his eyes and made his ears roar. Somewhere at the back of his frozen mind he knew he was slipping away downstream. I shall drown, he thought, but the words were taking a long time to enter his mind and he felt peculiarly calm.

  They fished his body out of the river the next morning and his death was reported in the evening papers, the reporter saying that there were no marks of a struggle on the body and that it was to be presumed that Mr Nicholson had taken his own life.

  Nathaniel had been working on a complicated engineering design in the library for most of the day. He carried the paper into the parlour and gave it to Jane as soon as he’d read it.

  ‘I think you’d better see this,’ he said and waited anxiously while she read it too.

  She was very upset. ‘Suicide?’ she said. ‘No, surely not. Whatever got into him to do such a thing? It’s not like him. Not suicide. He was always so light-hearted. Wouldn’t ’ee say so?’

  ‘He found us this house,’ Nathaniel remembered. ‘He said it was rare sport to take me house-hunting. But as to suicide …’ And he paused. ‘Happen it was something to do with Mr Prance’s report.’

  She was struck by a shock of the most uncomfortable conscience. ‘Surely not,’ she said again. ‘I mean to say, the report was about Mr Hudson, not him. It couldn’t apply to him surely.’

  ‘It could if he was buying and selling the same shares.’

  ‘But that’s dreadful,’ she said. And yet even as she spoke she knew it could be possible. Oh, poor Mr Nicholson. What a fearful thing for him to have done. He must have been desperate.

  ‘Yes,’ Nathaniel agreed. ‘It is. I wonder how poor Mrs Hudson is taking it. It will be a parlous shock to her.’

  Mrs Hudson was screaming abuse at her husband. It had been a totally awful day. First her poor Ann had come weeping into her bedroom before she was dressed, to tell her she’d had a terrible letter from Mr Dundas informing her that ‘in view of the present situation’ he was ‘releasing’ her from their engagement.

  ‘I’m to be shamed before the whole of society,’ she wept. ‘The whole of society. It’s not fair, Ma. I didn’t sell any shares. Why should I have to be shamed because of what my father’s done? It’s not fair.’

  ‘Happen you could marry someone else,’ Lizzie said, trying to comfort her.

  ‘No one’ll have me,’ Ann wept. ‘Not after this. I’m ruined. Oh, Ma, it’s not fair.’

  It had been well into the afternoon before she stopped crying and then she went off to her bedroom and locked herself in and the housekeeper came storming into the parlour to complain to Lizzie because the maids couldn’t get in to clean the room. As if that mattered when her daughter’s heart was broken.

  Then the newspaper arrived and the stupid housekeeper brought it in to her at teatime as if she were doing her a favour. ‘I thought you ought to see this, ma’am.’ What a thing to say. She’d had to read it twice because she couldn’t bear to believe it the first time. He couldn’t have done such a dreadful, awful, appalling, sinful thing. Not her Richard. Not her darling Richard. And to have it all in the papers for everyone to read. It made her want to scream that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true.

  And then as if all that weren’t bad enough and just as she’d stopped wanting to scream, a second letter had arrived and that one was from William to say that he was ‘going to take the Queen’s shilling and join the army, on account of it is impossible to stay at school now there is all this fuss over Papa.’

  ‘I can’t bear it!’ she shouted when George came whistling into the house. Whistling! As if there were nothing the matter, when her world was falling to pieces. ‘Don’t you understand? I can’t bear it. First my poor Ann and how she’ll get over a blow like that I really don’t know, she were crying fit to break her heart, and then that awful newspaper – what I mean to say, she didn’t have to bring it up to me like that. She must have known what was in it. And William gone for a soldier, when he should have been going up to Oxford like his brothers. It’s enough to drive anyone distracted.’ And she started to howl.

  ‘Stow that row!’ George shouted at her. ‘Do you hear me? Just stow it! I’ve not come home to listen to all this rubbish.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ she screamed. ‘My brother’s dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ve heard.’

  That stopped her for a second – but only a second and then she was screaming at him again. ‘What are you going to do about it?’


  ‘Do?’ he roared. ‘What are you on about, woman? The man’s dead. Can’t you understand? He took the easy way out and he’s dead. You can’t bring the dead back to life.’

  By that time, she’d reached spitting fury. ‘Easy way out!’ she shouted at him. ‘Easy way out! How can ’ee stand there an’ say such a vile, hateful thing? You’re … you’re …’ What was the word she wanted? ‘You’re heartless, George Hudson. That’s what you are. Heartless. You’re the most heartless, abominable wretch I ever clapped eyes on – and the most selfish and the most unkind, and, and … And here’s my Ann been jilted and my William gone for a soldier and all you can do is stand there and say easy way out. You should be ashamed of yourself! Downright ashamed!’

  He drew himself up to his full dominant height, red in the face and hot with fury. ‘I will not be spoken to like this in my own house!’ he roared. ‘Make your mind up to it. I’ve enough on my plate wi’ court cases an’ people bellowing at me to resign and threatening to take away my estates and all my capital, wi’out having to listen to your stupid nonsense. If you go on, I’ll have you sent to an asylum for the insane. Do you hear me?’

  ‘The whole house can hear you!’ she shouted at him. ‘The whole world.’ Then she ran from him, sobbing wildly.

  Heartless and foul tempered he might be, but what he was telling her was correct in every detail. He was being beleaguered on all sides. The bank had foreclosed on his mortgage, which meant he would have to sell Albert Gate, he’d already resigned his chairmanship of the York, Newcastle and Berwick and all his other railway companies were demanding his resignation too, he had three court cases pending, all of them in Chancery, and in seven days’ time he had to appear before the House of Commons to answer charges that he’d been bribing MPs. His life couldn’t have been at a lower ebb. But he had no intention of sinking into self-pity. He was George Hudson, the Railway King. They’d not see him taking the easy way out. He’d stand up to ’em. He’d show ’em. If he couldn’t beat ’em, he’d go down fighting, God damn it.

  His daughter Ann had much the same fighting spirit. Within three days of her uncle’s suicide, she announced to her mother that she was going to marry Count Suminski. ‘I’ll not let folk mock me,’ she said. ‘Not when I’ve a suitor ready and willing.’

  ‘But I thought you told me no one would have you,’ Lizzie said. ‘How did you…?’

  ‘I wrote to him,’ Ann said. ‘He asked me by return of post.’

  ‘But he’s foreign,’ Lizzie objected. ‘You’ll have to live abroad.’

  ‘Aye, I will,’ Ann said. ‘And a good job too. I’ve no intention of staying here to be a laughing stock.’

  She was married and gone within three weeks. Poor Lizzie was distraught. ‘First Richard and now my Ann,’ she grieved.

  But George wasn’t listening. He had battles to fight.

  Jane Cartwright had spent a happy summer preparing for her daughter’s wedding, supervising the making of the bridal gown which was to be in white like Queen Victoria’s wedding dress, sending out invitations, and watching the transformation of the vicarage, but she took time off now and then to check on her adversary’s downfall because it gave her such a wonderful sense of satisfaction. It really was so exactly what should be happening to him. Poor Richard hadn’t deserved his terrible fate at all but George most certainly had. Now that Nat was working with The Yorkshireman, she had an almost daily source of gossip, although for the most reliable news she had to wait to read the reports in The Times like everybody else in York. There was only one thing that troubled her and that was what would become of the people Hudson employed – and in particular of her Nathaniel.

  She worried for more than a week before she decided she must talk to him about it, for if he were to lose his job, they might have to move from their lovely house, which would be extremely sad, especially with the wedding coming.

  He was instantly reassuring. ‘There are plenty of railways,’ he told her, ‘and more being built or at the planning stage. Hudson may be gone but his companies are still up and running and they can’t build railways without the engineers to design them and build the bridges and the viaducts and all the other things they need.’ Then he noticed her expression and asked, ‘Were you worried about it?’

  ‘I was,’ she confessed, ‘but I’m not now.’ And she was thinking, those courts can do what they like with George Hudson, if that’s the case.

  What they did, as the months passed, was to strip him of all his assets, ordering him to pay back all the money he owed, to every company he had cheated. One by one his expensive properties were sold and naturally, given the situation he was in, all of them went cheaply. Albert Gate was sold to the French government for a mere £21,000. By August, even Newby Park was lost and by the time he and Lizzie had to leave it, he had no property left and precious little money. And to make matters worse he was still heavily in debt.

  ‘I shall have to go abroad now we’ve lost this place,’ he said to Lizzie, as he closed the door for the last time. ‘There’s nowt else for it.’

  ‘Abroad?’ she said. She was finding all these changes very hard to contend with but the thought of leaving the country was the worst thing she could imagine. ‘How will I see my boys if I’m not in t’country? I mean for to say. Bad enough losing Ann and William wi’out being cut off from the others.’

  ‘You’re not going,’ he told her. ‘’Tis just me.’ And he tried to explain. ‘If I stay in this country, I shall be arrested for debt and sent to prison. That’s the long and short of it. I’ll find you somewhere in London until I get myself an appointment. Don’t ’ee fret. ’Twill all work out. I know more about railways than any man alive. I’ll find some government that wants a railway built. They’ll jump at me. You’ll see.’

  ‘Where are we going now?’ she asked, waddling after him.

  ‘To t’station,’ he said.

  29

  THERE WAS A harsh rain falling when the Hudsons arrived in Euston on that August afternoon and Lizzie was tired and miserable. She’d had a most uncomfortable journey because something seemed to have happened to their usual coach and they’d had to travel in an ordinary one, which was none too clean and crowded with people. Now she trudged along the narrow streets between the most ugly soot-black houses she’d ever seen, damp with rain and burdened by a great bag full of shoes and clothes and all sorts of things that he would have her bring, and wondered where on earth they were going.

  ‘Is it much further, George?’ she said as they turned down yet another street of poverty-stricken houses. They really were hideous, with their peeling paintwork and their rickety doors standing askew and all those windows caked with such thick dust it looked as if it had been there for centuries. She pitied anyone who had to live in houses like this, she truly did, but then the people they were passing were a rough-looking lot and probably didn’t notice how bad they were. The women wore men’s flat caps and filthy shawls and broken-down boots and the children were in rags. There was a group of them lurking about on the corner with no shoes on their feet. One of them was smoking a clay pipe as if he were a man. It made her shudder to look at them. ‘Is it much further?’

  ‘This’ll do,’ George said, stopping in front of one of the houses. There was a clumsily written notice propped up against the filthy window and, peering at it through the rain, she saw that it said ‘Rooms to let’. Surely he’s not going to take a room here?

  ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be a minute.’ And he walked in through the squiffy door, calling as he went, ‘Anyone at home?’

  She waited awkwardly, standing on the pavement in the rain but at a distance from the house, because she wouldn’t want any of the passers-by to think she had anything to do with a place like that, and keeping a wary eye on the dirty children who were eyeing her up and down. What if one of them were to jump out on her and attack her? They looked capable of anything and that one with the pipe was downright ugly. Oh, do hurry up, George,
she thought, looking at the blank face of the house. I don’t like it here.

  The boy with the pipe sauntered towards her. ‘You waitin’ for summink, missus?’ he said.

  ‘No, no,’ she said in confusion. ‘’Tis all right.’

  ‘Not from round these parts, are yer?’ the boy said.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking round rather wildly for George. And there he was, striding out of the door towards her. Praise be!

  ‘That’s settled,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  He was leading her into the house. Why was he leading her into the house? ‘I’ve got you a couple of rooms,’ he said. ‘First floor front. Best in the house so the landlady says.’ He was leading her up the stairs, and nasty rickety stairs they were. It was a wonder they didn’t fall headlong. They reached the landing. ‘There you are,’ he said, opening a door and inclining his head to show her that she should step inside. ‘This one’s the bedroom. ’Tis all paid up and reg’lar. You’ve got it for six months.’

  It was a dreadful room, dark and gloomy and very scantily furnished, with no curtains at the windows and only very dirty boards on the floor. There was a lumpy-looking bed against one wall with a decidedly dirty coverlet pulled clumsily across the top of it and a chamber pot rather horribly visible beneath it, a chipped wash stand with a plain jug and basin lurking in a corner and a plain deal table and one plain deal chair standing forlornly in the middle of the room. But if the bedroom was bad, the sitting room was worse. It smelt sour and every item of furniture in it seemed to be suffering from a sort of palsy. There were two chairs that were leaning on one another like a pair of drunks, the table had one of its legs propped up by an old book, there was a filthy dresser and a sofa that was so lumpy she could see the bumps in it from where she stood. The grate was empty and showed no signs of ever having been used. A dreadful, dreadful room. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘It’s a foul place.’