‘Your sort’ll never make me rich,’ the landlord, Billy Graves, would say. ‘All you do is polish my chairs!’ Always, when Charlie went to the pub these days, George Cressy was bound to be there. The burns on his face had healed now but the terrible ugly scars remained and he would carry them all his life. George was proud of these scars of his; he regarded them as emblems of honour; proof of his courage and endurance.
‘There’s not many chaps who would have the guts to burn theirselves like that,’ he would say, and his mates in the pub were quick to agree.
‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘No, nor me.’
‘It takes a special sort of man to do a thing like that, George. I reckon you must have nerves like steel.’
But Charlie, as he said to Jack, had his doubts about these ‘mates’. George had more money to spend these days; often he ordered drinks all round; and one or two of the younger sprigs had taught him a new accomplishment: to drink a pint of beer at one go and follow it down with a ‘chaser’ of rum.
‘Why do you let him drink so much?’ Charlie said to Billy Graves. ‘It’ll lead to trouble in the end.’
‘It’s his own money, after all. He can spend it as he likes.’
‘So long as it ends up in your till?’
‘We’ve all got to live,’ Billy said. ‘I’ll never get rich on what you spend here.’
Charlie had been at home for a month and yet there remained a host of things still waiting to be done on the farm. He was busy at this time, fencing the new chicken-ground and moving the hen-coops on to it, and soon, if the weather held good, he would tackle what ploughing had to be done. It was now early March. The ground was beginning to dry out and there was a sweetness in the air. And at Piggotts Farm, Robert reported, the first of the season’s lambs had been born.
‘I should like a few sheep, myself,’ Charlie said. ‘With so much land lying idle, we could manage a few quite easily ‒’
‘And who would look after them,’ Linn asked, ‘when you’re back in work again?’
‘I daresay I could fit it in.’
‘When are you going to start looking round?’
‘I want to plough the old chicken-ground first and get it sown with turnips and kale.’
‘Dad did the ploughing last year. Why don’t you leave it to him?’
‘That was before his heart trouble. I don’t think he should do it now. It would be too much for him.’
Linn had to admit it was true. Her father was beginning to feel his age, and although he had suffered no more attacks, he became tired more easily.
‘It’s the spring weather,’ he would say. ‘It makes me lapsadaisical.’
And Charlie, when he harrowed the chicken-ground, noticed that Jack, at the end of the field, burning the weeds and couch-grass, often paused to lean on his fork.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ he asked, stopping the horse at the headland.
‘Just a bit out of sorts, that’s all.’
‘What did the doctor say to you when you saw him last time?’
‘He said I’d probably last for years ‒ so long as I take it easy.’
‘Then mind and be sure to take his advice.’
‘That’s what I am doing,’ Jack said. ‘That.’s why I’m leaning on this fork, instead of walking behind that horse.’ There was no bitterness in his tone; only a stolid acceptance of things; and that was the surest sign, Charlie thought, that the old man was feeling his age. But Jack had a quick-seeing eye even now. Nothing much escaped him. He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed with it at the horse’s hooves.
‘Simon’s got a shoe loose. You’ll lose it if you don’t watch out. I’ll go and get the toolbox.’
One Sunday evening Sam Trigg strolled down to see Charlie and Jack and the three of them went to the Hit and Miss. George Cressy was at the bar, already the worse for drink.
‘How are things on the line?’ Charlie asked.
‘Don’t mention the line to me! The railway’s given me the push! I had a row with Jim Taylor and cracked his rotten skull for him so they gave me my cards and paid me off.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Charlie said.
‘You needn’t be sorry on my account! The railway ent heard the last of me! I’ll get even, you see if I don’t!’
‘You go easy,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ll get into trouble, talking like that.’
He and Jack and Sam Trigg took their drinks to the snuggery. George Cressy remained at the bar. A few of his usual friends were there and he was plying them with drinks while he told them over and over again of the fight he had with his boss on the line.
‘He’s pretty far gone,’ Jack remarked. ‘Is he speaking the truth, d’you think, about putting that chap in hospital?’
‘You never quite know with George,’ Charlie said.
‘He ought to be locked away,’ said Sam.
The evening passed quietly enough but there came a moment when George found he had spent all his money. He turned his empty glass upside down and looked round at his circle of friends.
‘I’ve treated you lot often enough. It’s high time you treated me back.’
There were five men in the group at the bar but none was willing to buy him a drink.
‘I’m as broke as you are, George. You know how it is with us married men.’
‘Me, too. I’m just about skint. I only came in for a box of matches.’
‘Billy will give you a drink on tick if you ask him nicely and don’t crack his skull.’
‘You could always stop and wash out the glasses.’
‘Or you could pawn your tomahawk.’
George Cressy looked at them. His coarse-skinned face was darkly flushed and the scars stood out on his cheeks and forehead.
‘It’s a very funny thing,’ he said, ‘but mates are only mates to me when I’ve got money to spend on them.’ Charlie and Jack and Sam Trigg were on their way towards the door.
‘Charlie?’ George said. ‘What about you? Are you going to stand me a drink?’
‘Strikes me you’ve had enough. It’s time you thought about going home.’
‘I don’t want to go home!’
‘Come outside for a minute, then. I want a private word with you.’
George followed them out of the pub and they stood on the narrow pavement. Charlie took two half-crowns from his pocket and held them up for George to see.
‘If I give you that, will you go straight home?’
‘All right. Whatever you say.’
Charlie gave him the five shillings and George put it into his pocket.
‘I’m just popping back for one last drink.’
‘Dammit, George, where’s your sense?’
‘One drink’s all right. There’s no harm in that.’ George was already turning away. ‘So long, Charlie. Thanks for the sub. I’ll do the same for you one day.’
Charlie was left with Jack and Sam.
‘That warnt very clever of you,’ Sam said.
‘No, I could kick myself,’ Charlie said.
They walked home together through the gathering dusk. George, at the bar of the Hit and Miss, had five pints of brown ale lined up, together with five tots of rum. He looked at the group of men nearby.
‘I suppose you think I’m treating you, but you can bloody well think again!’
‘You’re never going to drink that lot yourself?’
‘Aren’t I, by God? You just watch!’
They watched him drink the first glass of beer and follow it down with a tot of rum. Billy Graves grinned from behind the bar. George wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, reached for his second glass of beer, and raised it slowly to his lips. His audience watched him, cynically, as the beer went gurgling down his throat.
‘Mad bugger!’ one of them said.
At Stant Farm, just before ten, Charlie and Jack were out in the yard, seeing that all the shed-doors were closed. The wind was blowing from the north east and with it came
the sound of a goods train rumbling along the valley below.
‘There goes the last train for the night.’ Charlie glanced up at the sky. ‘It should mean the dry weather will hold, when we can hear them as plain as that.’
He and Jack went indoors to bed. Darkness descended on the house. The little farm was at rest for the night.
Down in the winding valley bottom the goods train rumbled on its way, its engine glowing in the darkness, sending sparks into the trees and casting an angry torrid flush on the smoke uncurling from its chimney. Up on the bridge in Ratter’s Lane, where the road went over the railway line, a figure stood poised on the parapet, with knees bent and arms outspread, in a position ready to spring.
As the engine passed under the bridge, George Cressy screwed up his face, closing his eyes and holding his breath while the hot smoke swept over him. When the engine had travelled on and the smoke was blowing away on the wind, he opened his eyes cautiously and peered down into the darkness, watching the trucks as they passed below. Nostrils dilated, he took a deep breath, and, uttering a loud blood-curdling cry, leapt from the edge of the parapet, into an open truck full of coal.
Facing towards the rear of the train, he made his way swiftly along it, leaping from one truck to the next and throwing things over the sides as he went. Pit-props and concrete blocks, crates of spring cabbage and boxes of fruit, were thrown on to the sides of the track; and then he came to the iron girders, loaded into the last three trucks: great heavy things, twenty feet long, twelve inches by ten inches; those on top lashed down with ropes. He picked his way over them until he was in the last truck of all and there he loosened the ropes on their cleats.
The train was now passing Scampton Halt. George lifted one of the girders on to the rear edge of the truck; tilted it from the other end; and sent it screeching over the edge, on to the railway line itself. The train travelled away from it and he saw it glinting in the moonlight. He heaved another girder up and sent it slithering after the first. Sweat started out on his forehead and his breath came noisily from his throat, bursting from nostrils and mouth together, as he heaved the girders on to the ledge and shouldered them over on to the line.
Suddenly the whistle blew. The train was approaching Glib Hill Tunnel. George stepped on to the edge of the truck and dropped lightly on to the line. He scrambled up the steep bank and the trees received him into their shade. The train ran clacking into the tunnel.
Just after six the following morning, Charlie loaded four crates of eggs into the van, and Jack took them down to Scampton Halt. Fred Mitchell, the Halt attendant, should have been there at six o’clock, but more often than not he was late and to save himself trouble he always left the gate unlocked. Jack unloaded the crates of eggs and carried them down on to the platform.
He was not the first to have come to the Halt that morning: two local farmers had been and gone, probably while it was still dark; and four churns of milk from Flag Marsh and two from World’s End already stood on the platform’s edge, waiting to go on the milk-train from Chantersfield to Kitchinghampton.
Jack set down the crates of eggs and looked at his watch. It was now twenty-past six. He strolled along the little platform and stood at the end of it, lighting his pipe, patiently waiting for Fred Mitchell to come. The sun was up in the sky now, shining along the narrow track and glinting along its pair of rails. A jackdaw was pecking about on the line.
Jack turned and began to stroll back but something, somehow, was troubling him. Something he had seen and yet not seen. He paused and looked up and down the line, shielding his eyes against the sun. Up the line, all seemed well, but down the line something was wrong. Something was gleaming, out of place, and his first quick heart-stopping thought was that one of the rails had been dislodged and was sticking upwards from the track. Then, as his eyes focussed better, he saw that it was an iron girder lying, one end between two sleepers, the other tilted over the rail.
He got down on to the line and ran towards it. He stooped and took hold of its uptilted end and dragged it, screeching, across the rail to send it toppling clear of the track, into the grass at the foot of the embankment. When he stood up there was sweat on his brow and he wiped it away with his jacket sleeve. He put his pipe into his pocket and stood for a moment to recover his breath and then, staring along the line, he saw, a hundred yards further down, another girder lying there.
‘God!’ he muttered. ‘How many more?’
He took out his watch and looked at it. It was now six-twenty-six. In twelve minutes’ time, at six-thirty-eight, the first train of the day would be passing Scampton Halt, travelling towards Mingleton, and he knew it would be a passenger train. A glance back at the Halt platform told him that Fred Mitchell had not yet arrived. There was no one on hand to help him, and he knew that the nearest signal-box was two miles away, at Upper Royne. So he set off again, down the tracks, boots sometimes pounding the wooden sleepers, sometimes crunching the granite chips; and in his mind one agonized question: how many girders lay on the line?
As he ran along the track he thought he heard the train coming; thought he heard its whistle blow; but it was only his imagination: the noise of the train was in his head. He ran on at a steady pace, heaved the second girder clear, and saw at once that there was a third. With scarcely a pause he carried on. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he blinked it away, shaking his head. His breathing was painfully difficult; he gulped in air through his open mouth but there was no room for it in his chest; his lungs were squeezed against his ribs. His feet and legs had become leaden and three or four times he almost fell, catching his foot against a sleeper and stumbling forward, arms outstretched. But each time he recovered himself and ran on at the same steady pace, telling himself to lift his feet.
Ten girders he removed from the line, heaving each one clear of the track, safe at the foot of the steep embankment. Now he was close to Glib Hill Tunnel. He stood and stared at its round black mouth. Were there more girders inside? If there were, he had done the wrong thing, for a crash in the tunnel would be far worse than any crash out in the open. He went a little way into the darkness, peering along the vanishing track, and then stood still, listening.
This time it was not his imagination. This time he really could hear the train and could feel its vibration in the rails. He returned to the open line again, wondering if he could stop it, but he knew that, rounding the gradual bend, travelling at perhaps sixty miles an hour, the driver would never see him in time. So he stood to one side, in a place of safety, a little way up the grassy track.
He thought the train seemed terribly slow as the engine first hove into sight, coming like fate round the broad bend. He had the strange fancy that it was going to grind to a stop. Then, abruptly, its whistle shrieked; the engine came booming along the track and even in his place of safety Jack felt he was going to be swept away. Its stench in his nostrils. Its din in his ears. Then the engine had gone past him, into the dark mouth of the tunnel, which pressed down on the coil of smoke, sending it rolling and billowing sideways, choking him with its heat and fumes.
There were five carriages in all. He thought he saw faces staring at him. The last carriage passed and he was alone. He listened fearfully, dreading a crash, but the train was running normally and soon he heard the change of sound that meant it had emerged at the end of the tunnel. He listened again, head bent; heard the train running into the distance; and knew that the rest of the line was clear.
When he stepped down from the bank again, his body felt as though it was melting. There was a weakness in his bones, and in his stomach a terrible sickness. With trembling hands he took off his cap and used it to wipe his face and forehead. He stood with it pressed against his eyelids, fighting the darkness that rose like a fog, closing in from the sides of his brain. Suddenly he opened his eyes. His cap had fallen from his hands and now lay on the ground at his feet. He stared down at it, helplessly, knowing he could never pick it up.
Pain had come some minutes befor
e, but he had not acknowledged it. Now it impaled him, spearing his chest, and as it spread outwards, wave upon wave, his left arm became maimed with it, seized, immovable, in its grip. The surging of the pain was stopping his breath. He waited, quite still, for it to pass, but instead it moved in quickening waves, outwards from his overtaxed heart and up to his throat, choking him.
His mouth was open, but he could not breathe. He felt himself splintering, flying to bits. The pain, if it increased any more, would send him spinning from the face of the earth. He took a few paces along the track and felt he was hurtling through empty space. His arms flew up and his hands went out, seeking to ward off the unseen dangers, but what they were he never knew, and the cry that started from his lips was cut off suddenly in a gasp. He fell forward on to his face and lay quite still beside the track, and not very long afterwards the milk-train, emerging from the tunnel, ran slowly past his body. The driver saw him lying there. He reported it when he got to the Halt.
Chapter Ten
The funeral expenses were paid by the railway company. An official called on Linn at the farm to offer his condolences and to make the necessary arrangements. It was the least they could do, he said, for the man who, by his selfless action, had prevented a tragic accident.
‘If there’s anything more we can do, I hope you will let us know, Mrs Truscott.’
‘No, there’s nothing more,’ Linn said.
The company also sent a wreath: an expensive thing of hot-house lilies, the scent of which was over-sweet and hung heavily on the air in the church. The wreath should have been a solace to her, but the sight of it lying on the coffin made her feel uncomfortable, and Robert put her thought into words when he talked about it, later, at home.
‘That wreath seemed all wrong for Granddad, somehow. He was never much of a one for show.’
Linn could not get over the manner of her father’s death. The thought of it haunted her constantly.
‘If only he hadn’t been so alone!’
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 17
