The Railway Girl

by Nancy Carson

  Bristol is not as beautiful as Oxford, I reckon. I haven’t had much chance to explore very much yet, but it must be an interesting city with its famous sea-faring history, and I daresay it holds plenty of delights in store.

  Yesterday I went to see a Mr Pascoe about work. He is a builder and was advertising for a stonemason on good pay to do restoration work on a Church called St Mary Redcliffe, said to be the most beautiful parish Church in the Kingdom. I went and had a look. It is magnificent and very different from our own redbrick Church in Brierley Hill! It used to have a spire but it blew down in a gale nearly four hundred years ago, and now they are talking about rebuilding it. I shall be happy to accept work doing up the church if Mr Pascoe offers it me, but I won’t know till Monday. There could be work here for years if I want it.

  I have not been keeping too well this week, what with the toothache coming back again and long bouts of hiccups which makes me feel sick the longer it goes on. I had a sore throat Wednesday and thought I had a chill coming, but that seems to have subsided, for now at any rate.

  I am missing you terribly, Lucy. It would be the greatest treat imaginable if you could see your way clear to paying me a visit in Bristol if only for a short stay. I could arrange for good lodgings for you, which I would pay for, and I could show you around. I am sure you would like Bristol very much. Please think about it. And please reply to my letter as soon as you can. I long to hear from you, to know that you are all right and that your family are well. I would also deem it a great favour if you could find time to visit my mother and tell her that I am well and, for the time being at least, living in Bristol. I’m sure she’ll be worried about me and I don’t want to write there yet in case my father thinks I’m trying to wheedle my way back home, because I’m not.

  Your ever loving

  Arthur Goodrich

  Lucy folded the letter, put it back in her reticule and withdrew a spotless white handkerchief. With a swift hazy glance at her travelling companions to check they weren’t watching, she wiped tears from her eyes that for some stupid reason had accumulated there while she was reading.

  At Low Level Station Lucy did as she’d been bid and found a seat on the platform where she could wait for Dickie Dempster. He saw her primly awaiting him and waved before he disappeared for some minutes. She watched the comings and goings of fellow travellers, wondering what they were doing there, where they were bound for. The rain had gone and the sun was hurling intermittent shafts of brilliant light through the mist of smoke and steam that lingered under the single-span roof in a perpetual swirl. At last he came, carrying a snap bag and wearing his usual amiable smile. She rose to greet him, also smiling expectantly.

  ‘I hope I ain’t kept you waiting too long.’

  ‘You haven’t at all.’

  ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t come last week, you know,’ he remarked chattily. ‘We found some chap asleep in one of the carriages – on the train we’d travelled in – when we’d shunted it into the sidings over there …’ He thumbed in the general direction. ‘We thought he was dead, poor sod. He caused a tidy commotion.’

  ‘Fancy,’ Lucy replied with a grin, doing her best to feign surprise. ‘But I expect you get lots of funny folk on the trains.’

  ‘Well, this chap was funny all right. It turned out the fool had took laudanum when he set off from Kidderminster and it sent him to sleep.’

  ‘I should think it would,’ Lucy agreed. ‘What a nit!’

  ‘But he was all right after. I took him for a cup o’ tea and had a chat with him. He turned out to be a stonemason … from your neck of the woods, as it happens. Name of Goodrich. D’you know him?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she answered, avoiding Dickie’s eyes, believing it more expedient to lie than admit to knowing such a fool.

  ‘Come on then, eh? I’ll take you to the Old Barrel at Boblake. It ain’t far to walk. At least it’s knocked off raining now.’

  He took off his guard’s cap and stuffed it in his bag, and began walking briskly. Lucy had her work cut out keeping up with him as they left the station. The sun was bursting through fractured clouds. Its shimmering brightness reflected off the wet surface of the road and roofs, making them both squint.

  ‘Are we in a rush?’ Lucy asked. ‘I can’t keep up with you.’

  He turned to her and grinned. ‘Sorry. I’ll slow down … That better? I always walk quick. It never occurs to me that other folk mightn’t. So what’ve you been a-doing with yourself this week?’

  ‘Oh … Just working …’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘I got the impression from your mate that you had a chap, Lucy …’

  ‘Did have – after a fashion.’ Their eyes met as they walked and she smiled shyly. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ he queried. ‘You mean you sent him packing, or he left of his own accord?’

  She uttered a self-conscious little laugh. ‘Oh, of his own accord,’ she replied economically.

  ‘Then more fool him.’

  Lucy shrugged as a signal of her indifference to Arthur. A dray was being driven by, close to where they walked, and she stepped back so as not to be showered by the splashes from its wheels, which clattered over the cobbles and precluded them from hearing each other until it had passed.

  ‘I can’t imagine anybody wilfully giving you up,’ Dickie said when they could resume their conversation. ‘A pretty girl like you.’

  ‘Such flannel!’ she chuckled. ‘I know very well that I’m not pretty.’

  ‘Then you know nothing, Lucy.’ He turned to look at her again. ‘Such eyes! I’ve never seen eyes the colour of yours. And such long lashes. But there’s more to you than just your eyes, I reckon …’

  ‘Oh?’ She felt herself blushing again. ‘Such as?’

  ‘I shan’t tell you now.’ He smiled mysteriously. ‘I’ll tell you some other time.’

  Some other time. That suggested they would meet again, and Lucy’s heart turned somersaults.

  Before too long they reached Boblake, an old and decrepit street in the centre of Wolverhampton. On the corner, where it adjoined a narrow road called Bell Street, stood an ancient black and white building, its top storey leaning over drunkenly.

  ‘That’s the Old Barrel,’ he informed her. ‘My mate keeps it.’

  ‘It’s old, Dickie.’

  ‘Tudor, they reckon. But the welcome’s good. So’s the beer.’

  Despite it being hardly a spruce area, she was with Dickie Dempster, so she did not mind the decrepitude, nor the ill-kempt street women who eyed her up with envious and resentful looks because of her decent frock and her handsome companion. Inside the Old Barrel the ceiling was low and the rooms were small, not at all like the Whimsey. He led her into a snug which was devoid of any customers, but which was clean and cosy even though it was empty. In the small fireplace flames lapped like tongues around one large solitary lump of coal. It was so perfect it might almost have been reserved for their private use.

  ‘I’m glad they’ve lit a fire today,’ Dickie commented. ‘It’s been chilly for July. What d’you fancy to drink, Lucy?’

  ‘A small crock of beer, please.’ He left her alone while he went to a hatch to fetch their drinks. When he returned, she said, ‘Are you not courting somebody, Dickie?’

  Her directness amused him. ‘Me, courting?’ Tantalisingly, making her wait for his answer, he took a swig from his beer and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. ‘I just finished with somebody, Lucy, and that’s the Gods’ honest truth. I daresay if I was still a-courting her I’d be hurrying back to her right now, instead of sitting here with you.’

  She breathed a sigh of relief at his answer. The question had been occupying her for some months, and with greater intensity during the past week.

  He leaned forward, grabbed the poker and started prodding at the lump of coal to break it up. A stream of sparks flew up the chimney. ‘Tell me abou
t your family,’ he said.

  When she’d finished telling him she said, ‘Now tell me about yours.’

  ‘Not much to tell, Lucy. I got a mother, a father, two brothers and five sisters. Two sisters are older than me, three are younger. Me two brothers are younger.’

  ‘So you’re the third child.’

  ‘Yes, the third. And the oldest of the lads.’

  ‘Are many of them married?’

  ‘I got four sisters married and one brother.’

  ‘How come a brother younger than you is wed afore you?’

  Dickie laughed. ‘’Cause he found somebody he wanted to wed afore me, I reckon. She’s a nice wench an’ all.’

  Lucy wanted to ask whether he felt he would ever get married, but realised it would have sounded probing, maybe even presumptuous, and might easily have put him off her if he considered she was trying to lead up to something. After all, she hardly knew him yet.

  ‘Tell me about this girl you’ve just finished with,’ she said instead.

  ‘Not much to tell. She says she wants me back. Keeps coming round after me, trying to persuade me to get back with her.’ He shook his head resignedly. ‘But I ain’t interested no more.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  He shrugged. ‘What does it matter what her name is?’

  ‘Well, then you could refer to her by her name,’ Lucy said logically.

  ‘Myrtle. She’s called Myrtle.’ He lifted his tankard and took another draft.

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘Yes. Very pretty.’

  ‘And what sort of things does Myrtle say to you when she comes and tries to get you to go back with her?’

  ‘You want to know the top and bottom o’ Meg’s arse, Lucy,’ he answered with a grin.

  She could have kicked herself for being so stupid as to ask such things. Probing, prying, as if she were already established in his heart and in his life. Of course, it was nothing to do with her what poor heartbroken Myrtle said to him. She must try and curb her inquisitiveness. But she would love to have known the strength of her competition.

  ‘Tell me about that chap who you found in the sidings,’ she said, anxious both to change the subject and to find out whether Arthur had mentioned anything about her, which Dickie was not revealing.

  ‘I felt sorry for him, poor chap. He seemed a bit of a muff, but I couldn’t find it in me to dislike him. I think he was grateful when I took him for a cup of tea and a slice of pork pie afterwards, and talked to him. He was a bit awkward at first, as if he wasn’t used to company, but after a bit he loosened up.’

  ‘Did he say whether he was married, or courting, or anything like that?’

  ‘He never said, and I never asked. He didn’t look like he was married. Still being looked after by his mother, I should say, if his manner was anything to go by.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lucy was glad of the information. At least Dickie had not made any connection between herself and Arthur. ‘But how can you tell by looking at a man whether he’s married or not?’

  ‘It was difficult to tell with him, ’cause he had the careworn look of a married man with all the troubles of the world on his shoulders. But he was just too callow, too unworldly for a married man his age.’

  ‘So marriage makes a man careworn, does it?’ she asked feigning mild indignation, picking the weightier of the two notions to discuss.

  ‘The way I see it, Lucy, half the women in the world marry a man ’cause they see him as the exact opposite of what he really is. Then, when they’ve found out that he ain’t what they think – that he’s just the way he always was to everybody else – they spend the rest of their lives punishing him by trying to change him. Then, when they’ve changed him and moulded him to their ideals – if he’s daft enough to go along with it, that is – they walk all over him. Consequently, half the marriages in the world are unhappy ones.’

  ‘I wouldn’t try and change a man,’ Lucy protested defensively. ‘If I like what I see in a man, why should I try and change him?’

  ‘No man is perfect. A woman will always find some flaw in a man, something she wants to change, whether or no.’

  ‘You could say the same about women. No woman is perfect.’

  ‘Some are more perfect than others, I grant you,’ he answered with an admiring smile that suggested plenty. ‘Some are prettier than others.’

  ‘I think prettiness can be a curse, although a good many would say it’s a blessing.’

  ‘How do you mean, a curse?’ Dickie asked.

  ‘Well, a girl who is pretty can generally attract the man she wants, which might be seen as a blessing. But maybe she’ll attract men she doesn’t want as well, men who’d be no good for her. That’s where the curse arises. So, in some ways, while I wish I was pretty, in other ways I’m thankful I’m not …’

  ‘I wouldn’t say you’m not pretty, Lucy.’

  ‘I’m not pretty, Dickie,’ she said earnestly. ‘I know I’m not pretty.’

  ‘Like I said, you know nothing. You’ve got the most beautiful eyes. Crystal clear, they are. Like a baby’s.’

  ‘So it’s been said before. But I’m not pretty.’

  ‘There’s something about you, all the same …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some … some fascination, a certain allure … I don’t know how to describe it without offending you. And yet at first glance you always look so aloof, so stuck up.’

  ‘I’m not stuck up, Dickie,’ she laughed. ‘You know I’m not stuck up.’

  ‘I know it, ’cause I took the trouble to speak to you. But to folk who don’t know you, you look stuck up. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘So what’s this fascination, this allure you reckon I’ve got?’ she fished.

  ‘Promise you won’t hit me?’

  ‘Why should I hit you?’

  ‘You might, if I’m too blunt. If I’m too blunt for somebody who seems stuck-up … like you.’

  ‘No, I won’t hit you,’ she chuckled. ‘Just tell me …’

  He finished off his tankard of beer and licked his lips, smiling at her waggishly.

  ‘Well? …’

  ‘Well … you’m so damned beddable, Lucy Piddock, and I fancy you like hell. I’m dying to get you between the sheets. Just dying to … And I will, you know …’

  She gasped, not knowing how to respond, flattered that he desired her in that way, indeed grateful that he did, but apprehensive of the prospect and certain that she ought to register some indignation for the sake of propriety.

  ‘And it won’t be just one good rogering either,’ he continued. ‘I get the feeling I could never get me fill of you. And once you’d got the taste for it …’

  ‘I don’t know what you expect me to say to that, Dickie Dempster,’ Lucy said, breathless and embarrassed at such an astonishingly frank admission. ‘But I’m not a girl like that and it’s only fair to tell you. I didn’t come here today with anything like that on my mind. I have to tell you, to save you getting the wrong idea about me. Nothing could have been further from my mind when I said I’d meet you. I’ve always believed that a girl should wait till she’s married for that sort of thing …’ She was babbling on disjointedly, disorientated at receiving such an outlandish proposal. While she was anxious to protest her chastity, she did not want to lose his interest.

  He smiled and placed his hand on hers reassuringly. His firm but gentle touch stirred her insides alarmingly, and there was a warmth in his eyes that made the blood course through her veins and her head throb.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he whispered, as if in a hot conspiracy of hearts. ‘But why wait till you’m married to enjoy the natural pleasures God created for men and women? It’ll happen whether or no, and you’ll want it to. I can’t say where or when, but we’ll be partners in the blanket hornpipe sooner or later. When you’m ready that is, Lucy, my love … But I ain’t gunna rush you. I just hope as you’ll want to see me again after today …’

  �
��Oh, yes,’ she said unhesitatingly.

  ‘Good.’ He put his arm around her waist and drew her to him. ‘I hoped you would.’ He bent his head and kissed her on the lips, a long, lingering kiss. ‘I’m head over heels for you, Lucy. Have been for ages. I can’t wait till the next time I see you.’

  ‘But please don’t think as I’d be easy.’

  ‘Course I won’t. I don’t want you to be easy.’

  ‘Good.’ She smiled and there was a warm light in her eyes. ‘So when’s it likely to be that we meet again?’

  ‘One of the nights, eh?’

  ‘Depends which night. I work some nights in an alehouse called the Whimsey.’

  ‘I can only manage Wednesday night next week. I’m doing some work for our Sarah … one of me sisters.’

  ‘But I work Wednesday nights,’ she said, her disappointment obvious. ‘Damn!… But to hell with it, Dickie. I’ll take the night off, or swap it for another night.’ She beamed up at him. ‘So that’s all right.’

  ‘I’ll come over to you then,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on a train to Brettell Lane. You can meet me at the station.’

  ‘Course I will. Just tell me what time and I’ll be there … So do you like working on the railway?’

  ‘I wouldn’t work anywhere else.’

  Chapter 12

  Tuesday 21st July 1857

  Dear Arthur,

  Please forgive my awfull handwriting its not as pretty as yours. I got your letter Saturday when I got back from the glass works. I am glad you found nice lodgings and I hope this Mrs Hawkins is looking after you well. I did as you asked and went to see your mother Sunday afternoon. I gave her your adress and she says as she will get Talbot or Magnolia to write to you for her. We had a nice long talk and she says how she was serprized and glad as you stood up for yourself agenst your father at last but sory as she could not prevent you going away. Your father was abed asleep after his Sunday dinner and not well again I believe so I didn’t see him but your mother said as how he misses you and he’s having to send your brother Talbot to do the letter cutting on the graves which he don’t like at all but I think our Moses is a big help and he is keen to lern letter cutting as well our Jane says. I think that sort of work would sute him and I’m sure he cud do it if he put his mind to it.