The Iron Road

by Jane Jackson

  Shaken and furious, she struggled to her feet. The basket lay on its side. Wiping muddy hands on her skirt she reached for it, praying the men ’s dinner was still safe inside. If it wasn’t – They wouldn’t beat her. No man laid a hand on Veryan Polmear. But they would certainly make her pay one way or another; and her life was difficult enough already.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Looking up she was astonished to see that the last rider had reined in and turned back. He was having difficulty controlling his horse. Tossing its head it danced sideways, anxious to be with the others.

  ‘What are you doing?’ one of his colleagues shouted impatiently. ‘For heaven’s sake don’t touch her. Navvy women are very free with their favours. God knows what diseases she’s carrying.’

  Ignoring his colleague, the first man urged his mount towards her. ‘Are you all right?’ he repeated.

  She straightened up, her face burning with furious embarrassment. What did he expect her to say? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. My clothes are wet and dirty, my shoulder feels as if it could be broken, but don’t you concern yourself, I’m fine.

  ‘I am no threat to your health, sir. But should you have cause to shake the hands of those with whom you ride, you would be wise to wash afterwards.’ As his expression reflected shock followed by swiftly controlled amusement she turned away, reaching awkwardly for the muddy cask, catching her breath as the weight pulled on her throbbing shoulder. She heard his horse prance restlessly.

  ‘They probably didn’t expect anyone else to be on the path.’

  It wasn’t an apology. Men never apologized. ‘Indeed?’ she commented acidly. ‘Yet this is the only path to the works.’

  ‘Ah. I didn’t know that.’ Reaching into his pocket he held out his hand. ‘For your trouble.’

  Stunned – for this was wealth – she gazed at the silver coin on her muddy palm and looked up, her anger smothered by amazement and a feeling she had all but forgotten, delight.

  ‘Th – thank you.’

  Momentary surprise crossed his sun-darkened features then, with a brief nod, he wheeled his restless horse and galloped after his friends.

  As she walked past abandoned fields and demolished cottages where rubble made a wasteland of gardens that had once grown rows of tasty vegetables, she held the coin so tightly it dug into her fingers. She could visit Aggie’s second-hand shop in Penryn. The temptation was strong. She had few clothes. And the daily tramp to the line through endless mud and rain had weakened the leather and rotted the stitching in her boots. They wouldn’t hold together much longer.

  But leav ing the works would be impossible without money, and this would double her meagre savings in the Penny Bank. She’d hold on a bit longer. Surely the rain would stop soon? She thought of her benefactor and felt her mouth soften in an unaccustomed smile.

  The hooter blew just as she reached the works and she had to endure catcalls from several other gangs before she came to the men who lodged in Queenie ’s shanty. Throwing down picks and shovels they came towards her, the smell of them overpowering.

  ‘What you been up to then, girl?’ Paddy McGinn grinned, looking her up and down as she handed him the beer cask and a tin mug from the basket.

  With no choice but to answer, she said briefly, ‘I slipped.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’ A brawny navvy with a wide toothless grin nudged his neighbour, a swarthy, wiry man the men called Gypsy Ned. Ever since he had arrived the previous week she had felt his eyes on her like sticky fingers. She had tried to ignore him as she did all of them. But somehow he made it more difficult than usual.

  As ganger, Paddy slaked his own thirst first before refilling and passing the mug to each man in turn while Veryan handed out the food. She tried to block out the sniggers arid crude remarks inspired by her muddy dishevelled appearance. The heat in her face, springing as much from renewed anger as embarrassment, provoked even more comment.

  Did Queenie send her to the works as a way of making her pay for being different? Or was it punishment because she refused to give up her dream? Both probably. But there was another, much simpler, reason. Queenie sent her because she was too fat and too lazy to get out of her chair and come herself.

  Ned sidled up and stood too close. ‘ I been watching you.’ His breath was foul. He flicked a coated tongue over his lips. ‘I know what you want. And I’m the man –’

  She glanced at him in contempt. ‘Over my dead body.’ Then, with the icy disdain she used to keep them all at a safe distance, she turned her back. She had to get away. She couldn’t reclaim her old life. But anything was better than this. Three blasts on the hooter signalled the return to work.

  ‘Move yourselves, boys,’ Paddy growled, jerking his head towards the top of the shallow cutting. ‘We’re being watched.’ The navvies picked up their shovels and began trudging back to the embankment. Paddy hung onto the cask. ‘I’ll keep this. We’ll need it this afternoon.’

  Starting back the way she had come, Veryan looked in the direction Paddy had indicated. The directors sat astride their horses at the top of the slope, grouped in a semicircle around the man who had given her the silver coin. Who was he ? Suddenly, it came to her. This was the new engineer.

  Chapter Two

  James Santana stood in the stirrups, his gaze following the wide canyon that gaped like an open wound in the landscape, and hid weary disgust behind an expression of interest. Another rescue job. He should have stayed in Spain and to hell with the agreement. He could have convinced other wealthy landowners of all the advantages a private railway line would bring, but he had given his word.

  How had it happened? He’d gone over and over it in his mind, and was still convinced he hadn’t given Natalia any reason to believe … Maybe that was it. Maybe she had thought to precipitate matters, and persuade her father at the same time. But surely she must have known Don Xavier was not a man to be coerced. Or had it been an act of pique? Not knowing was what rankled. Not knowing made it so much harder to put the episode down to experience and consign it to the past. Someone coughed, and he was suddenly aware of the directors watching him, waiting.

  ‘Well, Mr Santana.’ Adjusting his top hat with a gloved hand, Ingram Coles beamed. ‘As chairman of the board, I’m sure I speak for my colleagues when I say how delighted we are that you will be joining our venture.’

  Glimpsing the other men’s expressions, James doubted it. They needed him, but they didn’t really want him there. He was an outsider. Moreover, an outsider who was bound to ask questions they mould rather not answer.

  ‘As you know,’ Ingram Coles continued, ‘Mr Smallwood has an excellent reputation and we considered ourselves fortunate to have secured his services. However, he didn’t see fit to inform us of his numerous other commitments.’

  As he looked down into the works James could see, even from here, all the signs of poor organization and neglect: wheel-less wagons and broken tools abandoned and ignored; earth churned to glutinous knee-deep mud; standing water with no drainage channels to allow run off, lumber for walk-ways and rails for the temporary track carelessly dumped. The horses were limping, which signified disease in their feet, and the men moved with sullen slowness.

  James sat back in the saddle. Because all the main lines had been completed, more and more railway engineers were being forced to look abroad for work. There would have been several applicants for this job, many with far more experience. Yet he had been given the post. He was glad to have the work. It was well within his capability. But a tiny part of him remained wary.

  ‘Smallwood hasn’t attended a directors’ meeting for months,’ Victor Tyzack sniffed in disapproval.

  James glanced at the deputy chairman. A tall man in his late forties he looked uncomfortable, and James guessed he was on horse-back only because the terrain precluded use of a carriage. Next to him, astride a sleepy-eyed grey gelding, Clinton Warne’s forehead was a map of anxiety.

  Stocky, with dark hair and bushy side
-whiskers, the general manager had a nervous habit of stretching his clean-shaven chin as if to escape his upright collar. Like the others he wore a braid-edged frock coat over a matching waistcoat and check trousers. Like theirs, James noted, the watch chain draped across his paunch appeared to be solid gold.

  ‘Nor has he visited the line. Of course we didn’t know that. At least, not until –’

  ‘The point is –’

  James turned. The snapped interruption came from Harold Vane, the company solicitor. A bulky man with an egg-shaped face he frowned through his pince-nez. ‘Work on the line has fallen behind schedule. A situation I consider totally unacceptable, particularly in view of the restrictions and penalty clauses we were forced to concede.’

  As anger tightened the solicitor ’s cherub lips so they looked like a fleshy drawstring purse, James felt a quiver of disgust. That kick had been deliberate. What kind of man did such a thing? He pictured the girl. He’d seen plenty of navvy women, but never one like her. She was neither coarse nor cowed. True, her clothes were little more than rags and she had called him sir. But there had been more spirit than subservience in her manner. The kick had obviously hurt. He had expected whining or curses. She’d given him neither. Her speech – the words she’d used, her phrasing, was totally unlike that of any navvy woman he’d ever heard.

  ‘I’m sure, once it’s explained to him, Sir Gerald will –’

  ‘My dear Ingram,’ Harold Vane cut across the chairman, ‘he will demand every last penny. Where money is concerned there is no man more acute or determined.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Ingram Coles said, ‘that is the whole purpose of engaging Mr Santana, is it not?’ He turned to James. ‘To shake things up? Get the men moving, and make up the lost time?’

  ‘We are indeed most fortunate,’ Harold Vane said. ‘Mr Santana has a quite remarkable record of accomplishment.’

  James smiled, calmly meeting narrowed eyes as hard as two black pebbles in the moon-like face. ‘For one so young?’ As he voiced what he knew they were thinking, he sensed rather than heard the collective intake of breath. ‘Mr Brunel was but twenty-seven on his appointment as engineer for the Great Western Railway.’

  Ingram Coles nodded as the men exchanged glances. ‘Mr Brunel was a genius.’

  ‘Indeed he was,’ James agreed.

  ‘I see you do not lack confidence,’ Harold Vane observed.

  ‘I have no reason to,’ James responded evenly. ‘And would be of little use to you if I did.’

  ‘I say you are just the man we need, sir.’ Ingram Coles patted his horse’s neck. ‘We were all most impressed by the reference from your previous employer.’

  James’s lips twitched in an ironic smile. Don Xavier was a man of honour. A glowing testimonial and full payment in exchange for James’s immediate return to England. Young women, he’d explained, were impressionable, prone to exaggerating their feelings and imagining themselves in love. But regardless of James’s half-Spanish ancestry, an alliance was unthinkable. Not, he had added as James stiffened in protest, that Mr Santana had ever harboured any such idea. But he would surely understand that as heiress to a considerable fortune it was important Natalia marry a man of equal standing. His daughter knew her duty. She would quickly forget her foolish notions once James was no longer around. ‘

  I take it,’ James said, ‘that Mr Smallwood has officially vacated his position?’

  ‘Indeed he has,’ Harold Vane was grim. ‘He’s damn lucky we decided not to sue.’

  ‘That is all in the past.’ Ingram Coles’s voice held an unexpected hint of steel. ‘We must look to the future. So, Mr Santana, what do you require of us?’

  James scanned the works. ‘Copies of the surveys and plans.’ Then he turned his horse so he faced them. ‘Plus costings and details of fees paid.’

  Clinton Warne’s chin shot forward. ‘I really don’t see –’

  ‘Is that absolutely necessary?’ another of the directors, silent until now, demanded. ‘Surely it’s privileged information?’

  James simply waited, not justifying his request. He knew that at least half of them would have accepted bribes to ensure materials were purchased from particular companies. No doubt others had received a handsome commission for acting as agents in the purchase of land for the railway. But if he was to achieve what they wanted it wasn’t enough simply to reorganize and speed up construction of the line, he needed a detailed picture of the company’s finances.

  Harold Vane’s gaze lighted on him like a bird of prey. ‘As an employee of the company, Mr Santana is under an obligation to treat anything he may learn as absolutely confidential. Is that not so, Mr Santana?’

  ‘Of course. My sole concern is to get the railway built.’ He watched the directors visibly relax. ‘However, I see one immediate problem. It appears the track is being constructed for a broad gauge line.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Ingram Coles replied. ‘Broad gauge allows greater speed. More passengers and freight can be moved in a given time, which in turn generates higher revenue and therefore greater profit.’

  ‘Indeed,’ James nodded. ‘But Great Western is the only major company using broad gauge. This inevitably means delays when transferring to standard gauge lines. As many stretches of Great Western track now have an extra rail to allow use by rolling stock of both broad and standard gauge, would it not be prudent to lay the line as standard right from the start?’

  ‘I take your point, Mr Santana. Indeed I do, however –’

  ‘That decision is not ours to make.’ Harold Vane cut in once more, brusque and impatient. ‘The Act specifies broad gauge. As you have been abroad, Mr Santana, you may not be aware of the difficulties we have faced from those in Parliament opposed to the railways.’

  ‘They are making a great fuss over the fact that one in four members of the House of Commons holds a directorship in a railway company,’ Victor Tyzack’s sniff was belligerent. ‘What’s wrong with that, I’d like to know?’

  James gave a small shrug. ‘Perhaps they fear that, with such active involvement, the government might be influenced in favour of the railway companies?’

  ‘So what if it is?’ Victor Tyzack demanded. ‘We are playing a major role in creating a powerful and forward-looking economy for this country. All businessmen understand that certain accommodations are a vital part of negotiations. Yet ignorant people have the impertinence to accuse us of corruption.’

  ‘They also say’ – Clinton Warne’s jutting chin quivered with indignation – ‘we have too little regard for the welfare of company employees. This is a gross injustice. While mines are closing all over Cornwall, we are providing work for two hundred men. It is healthy outdoor work.’

  ‘And they are paid three times the wage of a farm labourer,’ someone else chipped in.

  ‘You have joined us at a trying time, Mr Santana, but’ – Ingram Coles’s bright smile re-emerged like the sun from behind a cloud – ‘the market is strong and I have no doubt that the Helston to Penryn line will provide an excellent return on our investment, and that of our shareholders, of course. Now, as we are so close to Trewan, this would seem to be the perfect opportunity for you to visit Sir Gerald Radclyff. I’m sure you’ll be able to allay his concerns.’

  As the other directors nodded, James could see their relief at being able to transfer the responsibility from their own shoulders to his.

  ‘If there’s anything else you need,’ the chairman added, ‘don’t hesitate to ask. We will help in way we can. Right, gentlemen, back to town I think.’

  ‘You aren’t going to tour the line?’ James’s surprised enquiry met with a unanimous shaking of heads.

  ‘No point in confusing things,’ Victor Tyzack said quickly.

  ‘Too many cooks, and all that,’ Clinton Warne agreed.

  As they prepared to depart, Harold Vane brought his horse alongside James’s. He leaned forward, deliberately intimidating, his voice soft and full of menace. ‘We’re paying you a lot o
f money, Mr Santana. Start earning it.’

  Huge iron gates mounted on stone pillars topped by heraldic lions marked the imposing entrance to the Radclyff estate. The long drive wound across rolling parkland dotted with ancient oaks, towering copper beeches, and a canopy of broad chestnuts whose tightly folded leaves were just beginning to unfurl. The warmth of the sun released the scents of wet earth and primroses, the buttery perfume of gorse, and the sweet mustiness of leaf-mould. James closed his eyes as memories of Galicia broke over him like a curling wave.

  Much of Spain was arid desert, but not Galicia. Frequent rain and hot summer sun made the north-west corner of Spain a rich and fertile region growing wheat, barley, oats, and rye, as well as potatoes, turnips, and orchards full of apples. On Don Xavier ’s estate outside Santiago, pigs rooted beneath oaks and chestnuts just like these, and cattle roamed the rich valley pastures.

  Cushions of pink and purple heather and clumps of blackberry and gorse bushes were daubs of vivid colour on the high heath just as they were at Carn Brea and Goonhilly. The rocky coastline; like that between Land’s End and St Ives, offered sheltered bays and deep estuaries as safe havens from the thundering Atlantic Ocean.

  James gave himself a mental shake. Forget Galicia. There had been little time to explore the region or to discover more about his Spanish ancestry. Perhaps once this job was completed he would go back.

  Clicking his tongue, he urged his horse into a canter. Reaching the top of a knoll, his eyes shaded by the brim of his top hat, he saw a massive embankment of dark earth lying like a giant scab across the undulating hillside. It lay about half a mile away beyond the flags marking the boundary of the works and the scattered debris of felled trees.

  How could the directors expect anyone to condone this wanton desecration? No wonder the chairman had preferred to send him to explain the problems to Sir Gerald. Still, much of his reputation had been built on his ability to redeem apparently irreparable situations. How else, at twenty-seven, would he have gained such a wealth of experience? He was going to need every bit of it. Instinct told him the battles hadn’t even started.