The Railway Girls

by Leah Fleming

  ‘Come back into the kitchen, boy, let Susan inspect your hands. I’m sure the headmaster’s uninvited visitor will be leaving soon. You should not have let him in, Susan, barging in here without a by your leave, stupid girl.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ bobbed Susan Hindle and scurried past, white-faced. Once out of view she stuck out her tongue and smiled at the poor pupil, shrugging her shoulders defiantly, raising her eyebrows under the floppy mobcap worn ever since the unfortunate incident of the lice.

  ‘Sit down, boy, until you are called. You can have another glass of buttermilk but don’t expect such an extravagance every time you come. This is an exception and we must all be patient while poor Mr Bulstrode bears the burdens of his office.’

  Tizzy was bearing her own burden of deception, here under sufferance chewing a ship’s biscuit which nearly broke her front teeth, trying not to make a moustache of milk over her lips. At least milk was better than the usual tea treats of manky cake crumbs from the tin which were furry with green mould. Susan sometimes exchanged the crumbs for an apple or a lozenge from Mr Bulstrode’s special jar. His sweet tooth was the only luxury in his saintly life, lectured his sister once with a sigh. She seemed to live on air and leftovers like a sparrow darting for sandwich droppings.

  Every visit got harder to stomach. Why on earth had she ever allowed her disguise to get this far? What a fuss about a stupid examination she would never attend. Sherbert got so steamed up about this coaching. She called at their hut, throwing Mally into a fit of clearing up and stowing ale bottles out of view, trying to make the lodgings look less like a dosshouse, pretending she slept with her little brother as the hutkeeper and not with Wobbly Bob as his common-law wife. Missionaries seemed to take that sort of custom badly and would want to see marriage lines.

  In the event Sherbert brought yet another bag of hedgerow rovings: wool Mally could spin up into scratchy socks or spencers and a jar of purple jam that was so solid it stood upright on yer spoon and tasted of burnt treacle toffee. Mally sat there all prim and red-faced as Sherbert went on about the Fawcett giving Billy a step up the ladder of life.

  She herself got badgered by Bulstrode at every turn in the classroom. He picked her out and made a fuss of her arithmetic, showing her work as an example to the rest of the buggers who sat there stony-faced and gave her hell in the playground afterwards. Mercy Birkett, her only friend, blew hot and cold according to how well she had beaten her in English grammar. Tizzy had tried to get extra shifts as an errand boy for the tommy shop, delivering groceries to the far-flung huts, but her arms couldn’t carry the weight of tins and bags. The older lads resented her efforts, tripping her up, and she was soon replaced. They were getting stricter about the under-twelves going off site to school and checked on the half-timers. There was even talk of evening classes. Paradise was getting respectable.

  To be fair, Bulstrode was kind enough; he never rapped her knuckles if she got a sum wrong. He was a soft squashy sort of man like the pictures of Father Christmas she once saw on a picture card. His cheeks were red and fiery, his bushy beard a sandy white, his belly was plump and round like a horse’s backside. And he peered over half-moon spectacles with funny eyes which stuck out of their sockets. He liked patting her head when she did well, fingering her tight curls which would never grow straight, and now she knew why he was nicknamed Patabully.

  It was the study she hated, all closed in, dark and smelly. The walls were cluttered with books, large leathery tomes standing like sentries over the lesson. There was a smell of stale baccy and something she had never smelt before, sweaty, musty, sickly to swallow. The fire was always banked up high, the curtains half-closed. For that hour Tizzy could never breathe.

  Patabully sat so close she could taste his breath. He would lean in to point out each task of algebra, geometry, calculus. They made up problems to solve, drew graphs and looked at map references. The tasks were interesting and absorbing but always Patabully intruded heavy on her shoulders, stroking her head.

  He said there were special herbs to rinse into your hair which made it shine golden and he showed her wonderful pictures of ancient history and foreign costumes and strange battles where men with bare bodies were fighting all tangled up like knots, one on top of another. He liked those pictures best of all and would get all excited as he turned the pages, mumbling so fast she could not understand a word he said but nodded politely, watching the clock on the mantelpiece creep slowly, twenty to, quarter to, around to five o’clock. They always seemed to end with those pictures whatever the subject of the lesson.

  As soon as Miss Cora knocked on the door the book was slammed shut and put up on the top shelf before the door was unlocked. Why did he have to lock the door? No one ever intruded uninvited. They were never disturbed but Patabully had his own peculiar routine for each lesson and Tizzy as a fraudster was in no position to complain.

  Once out into the fresh air she would see if Mercy was waiting to hear all about the lesson and walk her back to the fork in the track. By the time she ran back to Paradise Tizzy was ravenous, raiding any tuck box left unlocked by the lodgers in Wobbly’s hut. On good days, Mally left a pan of stew on the boil in the copper and she wolfed it down straight from the pan. Studying was definitely hungry work.

  As she waited for her lesson in the kitchen, listening to the row down the corridor with Susan polishing the brasses with flapping ears, they heard a door slam and Tizzy jumped up to see Miss Bulstrode dart away from her listening post to hover in the hallway. Tizzy saw the familiar bulky shape of Sunter Lund striding out, brushing past the woman roughly. She hoped Mr Bulstrode had given him the hard word. That made her feel better as she gathered up her exercise book and pencil, making for the study whose door was ajar.

  The sister nipped swiftly inside to quiz her brother and it was Tizzy’s turn to eavesdrop. She could hear them arguing.

  ‘What did he say, Ezra?’

  ‘Nothing to worry you with, dear,’ came the reply.

  ‘What does he want with us? I told you he’s been stalking this house for weeks.’

  ‘Whatever he demands, he’ll not be getting from me.’

  ‘Are you sure? He is so angry, Ezra, why?’

  ‘Not another word, Cora, come on, it’s time for Master Widdup. We don’t want to send the child back in the dark.’

  ‘Oh Ezra, how can you be so calm about all this? He has violated our house. Shall I speak to his mother?’

  ‘Do not fret on this matter or concern others in our affairs. It only raises curiosity and speculation . . . most unwise, dear.’

  ‘But you look so troubled.’

  ‘Nothing I can’t control myself. Bring the boy to me. Work is the best antidote to worry. Find yourself a task.’

  Tizzy drew back from the door. This strange drama had shaken the calm of the household. Why should that stupid cowman threaten the Bulstrodes?

  ‘Come in, Widdup, sit down. As you gather we have had a most unfortunate incident this teatime. Nothing that concerns you, boy, but it’s delayed our studies. Don’t hover, child. You heard nothing of his words, did you?’

  ‘No, sir, but that’s the geezer who killed my dog, sir, and I hate his guts.’

  ‘Language, boy, language. I would like to take the roughness out of that tongue of yours. Let it be a lesson to you. There are none so bitter as those who fail my test, who are not worthy of the honours, attention and time so generously bestowed upon them by the Fawcett. It is in my power to withhold and withdraw as befits the suitability of my students. The higher the fewer and you, Widdup, are chosen for the honour. Mr Lund was not. I’m sure, child, you would not be so foolish as to let me down when your time of trial comes.’

  ‘No, sir,’ gulped Tizzy, pink with shame.

  ‘Righty ho. Pull up a chair and let’s make the most of the time that is left to us. Open your textbook and . . .’ There was a crash of broken glass as an object hurled through the window landed on the desk, scattering papers and books and broken
shards of glass everywhere. The room was sprayed with splinters as the panel of the window collapsed inwards. The draught from the hole made the fire flare up into a blaze. ‘What the . . .’

  The two women rushed into the room for it was not yet locked. Ezra Bulstrode brushed the glass from his jacket. His broadcloth had taken the brunt of the blast but the thickness of its textile kept him unscathed from the attack. They stood shaken, trying to compose themselves, while Cora fussed around screaming.

  ‘You could have been killed, Ezra.’

  ‘Calm yourself. It was just an accident . . .’

  ‘That was no accident. Look! A brick on the floor, a brick thrown through the window deliberately. Call the constable. We must report Sunter Lund. How dare he come in here and—’

  ‘That’s enough! There are ears present, sister. We’ll not demean ourselves before the village. Just a silly incident, best forgotten. I’ll have the window repaired tomorrow and we can board up the hole until then. Our lesson, young man, is postponed until Thursday when I’m sure we will be undisturbed. Perhaps it is best not to broadcast this episode abroad. Petty minds, Master Widdup, petty minds and we must rise above such petty minds,’ urged the teacher with hands held to his side as if strapped on and a look of fury in his red face. The effort to look composed and untroubled was spoiled by the hard thin line of his mouth. Miss Cora was shrieking and flapping like a blackbird whose nest was threatened by a tomcat. Tizzy hurried out of the dreary room into the kitchen to find her cap, letting herself out by the back door into the school yard, relieved to breathe the cool dusk air.

  Tonight there was no Mercy Birkett hanging about under the shelter, kicking leaves in all directions. There was no one in the village street to witness the commotion. Only the flickering shadows of trees waving across the stone walls, the flutter of leaves falling. Somewhere out there was a madman, a killer of dogs with angry eyes and a petty mind. That was no comfort to Tizzy as she raced back towards Paradise, her lungs bursting with the effort to run uphill against the wind, heart pounding for fear of who might be stalking this path. She crossed over to the railway track where the last of the day shift were preparing to knock off. She made to carry a bag of empty flasks and snapboxes, tagging behind the weary navvies as they tramped back to camp. This was not a night for walking alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The screams of children pierced his sleep and the terrible vision of the dying navvy with his stare, eyes glazed like a dead fish on a slab. The dream awoke the restless parson with a start. He jerked upright and felt his back stabbing at the sudden movement. Damn, damn, damn. The wailing still echoed around the fields outside the vicarage garden. It was the time when the sheep were separated from their ewes for the September fatstock sales. The night was riven by the bleating; mothers crying for their lost children on the moors.

  The harvest moon shone through a gap in the curtains, streaking onto the walls, the dropped clothing, the bare floorboards. This noise would deafen anyone but sleep was already elusive. Ralph’s bed was crumpled into a heap of boulders, crumpled under him. How he longed for a decent night of uninterrupted slumber and now he would have to get up and find his pot to relieve himself.

  He drew back the curtains, stretched his aching limbs and arms, cursing the stupid sheep as they called to one another in the moonlight. Since Beth Wildman left him to fend for himself he too was feeling like a motherless lamb. There was no one to hear his troubles, all he had experienced at the camp over the past weeks. The way that navvy destroyed himself, bled to death, choking on his blood, and all he could do was sit mouthing platitudes, meaningless words. What a waste of life, what a disgusting end for a human being, a violent unnecessary death. It made no sense. Damn, damn, damn.

  Ralph could no longer pretend that Paradise camp was no concern of his parochial duties or that he had no responsibility to relieve conditions there. They had most outward comforts, more than many of his parishioners: warmth, food and dry beds, but little to relieve nights of boredom but a cask of ale or bottles of coarse spirits. He was shamed by the efforts of the Quaker women from Dent village who visited each week to teach knitting and reading. Missioner Tiplady from Batty Green braved the bleak moorland to deliver magazines and newspapers to the reading room and even the Mission teacher visited families with comforts bought from her own meagre wage, so the Birketts had informed him. What had he done to alleviate their boredom? Nothing, damn it! Nothing but a few perfunctory visits to the smallpox victims and then only because he knew it was safe for him to touch them, having once had the protective pox scratch on his arm many years ago.

  He spent August shooting grouse, catching fish in the beck, pretending it was none of his business, but only guilt was his companion. Why did they have to build this railway slap through his parish, disturbing his slumber? Now he saw the faces of scarred children down the sights of his shotgun, heard the sad tales of suffering in his ear as he galloped away across the fells. There was no escaping this burden.

  As he surveyed the moonlight torching the first autumn frosts in his garden the landscape shimmered like a silvery lake; the spider’s web across the window ledge glistened like a crystal lace net. All things bright and beautiful indeed. All things cold and troublesome more like. There was only a gaping hole in the pit of his stomach to comfort him. I’m a useless apology for a priest; a sham and a faker. There is no good in me, nothing of worth. Thus he would have wallowed all night if the voice of the Crow Woman had not whispered in his ear, ‘Stop all that drooling. Yer no worse than many others. Get off yer backside, stir yer loins and do something useful for a change, parson.’

  Ralph smiled to himself. Trust her to have the last word. Perhaps she was right. This was no job for an idle bachelor. The vicarage bed was cold, in need of a woman’s warmth, the house austere without a feminine touch of softness in the furnishings. The upper floors should be ringing with the laughter of children in the nursery. The noisy bustle of family life would support his more depressing work in the parish. How on earth would he find himself a decent filly in this godforsaken part of the Dales?

  Sir Edward’s society girls would not wish to moulder in this backwater. And that left only one other female of quality, the dreaded Miss Herbert, she of the missionary zeal and fervent hymns who sang off-key and interfered at every turn. Never, never, never. There must be a better helpmeet than she in the dale. But he was damned if he could think of one at four o’clock in the morning. She would definitely be last reserve.

  For the moment he must think up some scheme to lift the spirits of the camp and the village before the onslaught of winter; some competition or game perhaps, a cricket team or football match. Scarsdale against Paradise. Now that would cheer the troops.

  With that thought he straightened his crumpled bed, poured himself a large whisky and jumped back under the cold covers. Soon he was dreaming of bowling down the aisle of St Oswy’s with the Herbert woman guarding her wicket with a large black Bible, batting sixes in all directions until she was clean bowled by his overarm swing and he took her there and then on the chancel steps.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘You can’t buy that ram, ye don’t know owt about it,’ yelled Sunter across the pen full of tup hogs gathered in the street for a final inspection before the annual tup sales.

  ‘Shush! I don’t want all of Hawes knowing our business,’ snapped Ellie, turning to see if they were being overheard. Secrecy and silence, casual glances were all part of the performance at an auction sale. Never show interest in the object of your desire in case you gave another buyer a notion for your fancy. Dad’s advice was etched in her brain. How she wished he was here by her side instead of Uncle Warwick and Sunter who was as helpful as a teacloth mopping up a flood. She felt the coat of the young beast; it was tight and in good condition.

  ‘Father, tell her not to be so stupid. Yon’s a right craggy fell sheep off Tan Hill way. It won’t be any use on our fellsides. We need a good-looker like them Wensing
dales over there, long coats and fat lambs, fine wool. Stick to what you know.’ Sunter was shaking his head at her choice.

  ‘Happen Ellie knows her sheep, son, if she’s Jim’s daughter. He could allus spot a bargain but why the stranger in the pen, lass?’ said Warwick Lund, examining the ram himself, feeling down its back carefully to size up the flesh.

  ‘I just like the look of him, the gleam in his eye . . . he’ll know what’s what when tupping time comes, he’ll serve our ewes right and the cross should toughen up our stock for the future. I’ve heard that sheep out of Swaledale do well in heather and stick out the winter better than most. I’ve seen a few crosses down in the far pens getting a lot of interest. That puts them out of our price range. I reckon this one will slip by cheap, the odd one in the pen.’ The street was packed with wooden pens and farmers leaning over, viewing.

  ‘But his wool is rough. Go for summat tried and tested, not from away.’ Sunter sniffed at her choice and walked off, embarrassed to be seen with one of the few women at the sale. Auctions were men’s work; from the drovers who brought in their flocks for the preview to the landlords who served ale and pasties for farmers who whispered advice to each other into their glasses and set up auction prices between themselves. It was all a big show: beasts washed and combed out, prettified for the ring, bad points disguised like painted women, good features exaggerated for their brief moment of glory. Ellie would shame them with her ignorance and make them the laughing stock of the dale for introducing strange breeds into their flocks. Trust her to pick a black face and grey muzzle, a right scruffy creature in his eyes, just like yon Jock, oversized and cocky with it.

  ‘I do like this one, Uncle Warwick, his horns are strong and his coat tight, he stands square on. He’s my choice. I know he’ll serve us well and added to our other rams we can try him out and test him against the rest.’