NGLND XPX

by Ian Hutson

  Branson gathered the entrants into the troglodytic privacy of the Already-Lost Luggage Office, closing the door and counting to ten with his eyes shut to reduce his frustration.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen. Good morning and thank you for coming. I take it that you propose to usher in a massive change to the global structure of human society with dirty great lumps of iron named Tinkerbell, Toto, Ivor my Engine, The Big Flying Scotch Man and von Ryan’s Express.’

  ‘And Big Choo-choo too!’ added Trevithick, ever hopeful of being allowed to compete.

  The assembled company nodded, happily and eagerly. One or two mopped their brows with their lace oil-rags.

  ‘No, gentlemen.’

  ‘No?’ they chorused, nonplussed and thus suddenly feeling quite negative.

  ‘No. Positively no.’ repeated Branson, arithmetically confusingly for “no” was far from a positive response in the eyes of the assembled entrepreneurs with their scientific minds. He had been intending to leave them all locked in with the starving un-labelled parrots previously en-route to Bognor and with the children who had become separated from their parents and were too young to give a return address. Generously, and on a whim he suspected that he would regret, Branson allowed them all to follow him back out into the limelight and the gathering soot.

  Branson, pursued by his gaggle of squawking entrepreneurial innovators, strode out into the station, reflexively genuflected to the as-yet empty Royal Box, bared his tooth at the The Press in a professional smile and then started barking orders to anyone close by. ‘Stationmasters? New nameplates and several buckets of paint, if you please. New nameplates and several buckets of paint even if you don’t please.’

  Little chaps scurried around at the command of the twin Siamese Stationmasters and then they all assembled at Platform One with scant seconds to go before England kissed goodbye for ever to the rural idyll. Branson fielded an enquiry from a haunted-looking little chap who was wondering if this was the eight-thirty train to Matthew & Son, where the work’s never done, there’s always something new you know? Upon being bitterly disappointed the chap decided to take a five minute break (that was all he would take) for a cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake. Then he threw himself, rather optimistically early for one so depressed, onto the tracks.

  As the Transport Police fished him off with poles and then led him away he began shouting. ‘I’ve been working there for nigh-on fifty years you know. No-one asks for more money because, well - nobody dares. I’m always up at eight – you just can’t be late! Not for Matthew & Son! They won’t wait!’

  A ruddy-face and portly gentleman who was secretly planning to leap into the speculative new field of the phonograph business wondered how getting up at eight was in any way workmanlike, but held his peace for the moment, happy that whatever they made at Matthew & Son, direct competitor or no, they were losing out on four or five hours of good working daylight six days a week. When he opened his studios in Abbey Road the acts would be there at four of the morning, promptly, or contracts would be cancelled. He saw little profit in treating musicians like prima donna.

  Branson though, saw something of note. ‘Get that chap’s name before you throw him out – I want to speak to him later about a possible opportunity in popular music.’ Something subordinate but literate on the payroll shuffled after the man, saying things like “Oh – I say ...” and “Calling card at all, Sir? May I have your calling card?”

  The motley crew of motley crews came to a halt, like a puddle of confused overflow in the yard of an automatic horse-wash. Branson groaned like a country squire presented with a son and heir that was altogether too fond of his sister’s rag dolls.

  ‘Tinkerbell. No. We’re dealing with shipyards and cotton mills and pumping beam engines and a hungry and as yet totally unemployed workforce of quite bwutish (SIC) louts, Mr Stephenson, Mr Stephenson Junior. Bwutish louts who will bang nails into wooden-hull vessels with their foreheads, bwutes who hitherto have milked cows by holding onto the teats and lifting the cow up and down. We must work to our market, Messrs Stephenson. We need something uplifting and yet totally Boy’s Own Willy or Dan Dare does Debbie in Darlington. Your entry will be re-named... “Rocket”.’

  ‘Ooh – I love it. Rocket! That’s my favourite salad leaf’ said Junior Stephenson, only to be automatically bitch-slapped by a despairing Senior who swapped a private “just please don’t ask and I won’t have to tell” look with Branson.

  ‘New nameplate if you please Mr Stationmaster and while you’re at it see if you can hide that lilac...’

  ‘Lavender!’

  ‘...if you can hide that lavender paintwork under a coat of badger’s arse black. Quick about it, the public and Her Full Majesty will be officially here in two minutes.’

  The Stationmasters nodded to a couple of their chaps and they almost all moved on.

  ‘Toto’ said Branson.

  ‘Dorothy’s dog’ confirmed Braithwaite, reverentially, sighing.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is!’

  ‘No. Look, I know that this big butch industry stuff is a novelty for you – actually, yes - “Novelty”. New nameplate and a lick of sober Judge’s mood black if you please, Mr Stationmaster.’ They moved on again like a party of Cromwellian Jesuit ascetics redecorating the West End on one of their more austere campaigning days.

  ‘Ah - Ivor – you shall become Sans Pareil and a soupcon of...’

  ‘...big nasty pirate’s heart darkest charcoal in a rag-rolled matt eggshell finish?’ offered the left-most of the Stationmasters.

  ‘Soot black, Mr Stationmaster, soot black will do just fine. Just cover up that shade of faded Valençia tangerine.’

  The band was beginning to practice as Branson’s entourage moved on.

  ‘Ah – The Big Flying Scotch Man. Full marks for perseverance, Mr Burstall, full marks for perseverance. Mr Stationmaster?’

  ‘Percy Verance?’

  ‘Almost, Sir, almost – and a touch of...’

  ‘...non-white?’

  ‘Exactly. Extreme “midnight on a cloudy, moonless night” non-white.’

  Buckets of black were engaged and there followed the immediate sound of brushes slapping about the ironwork.

  They’d reached Platform Five.

  ‘Ah - von Ryan’s Express. I’m tempted to let you get away with that Mr Brandreth. It has the certain necessary overtones of man’s man’s men’s men, a definite air of testosterone under fire.’

  ‘It is the little horse’s name, Mr Branson’ said Brandreth, pointing to the power unit, a horse called von Ryan and standing on a conveyor belt and intended to drive the wheels by means of the poor creature galloping nowhere, very fast.

  ‘Very well then, von Ryan’s Express it remains. Mr Stationmaster? A touch of...’

  ‘Dark ebony gloss with a hint of autumn carbon?’

  ‘Straw, Mr Stationmaster, a touch of straw if you will. The horse is already quite black enough for the purpose. Just feed the bloody thing up a bit before the RSPCA get on to us. Mr Trevithick?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Steam, Mr Trevithick, steam. The rules say steam but you may run your Deltic, if you must, as the Umpire’s barge.’ Branson addressed the entrants. ‘Right, these trials are to be held between here and god-forsaken one thousand and one uses for house bricks Liverpool – I presume that you all know the way?’

  After a longish pause it became evident that the question was a serious one requiring collective shuffling, murmurs and an answer from some brave soul.

  ‘We sort of, well – we follow the rails don’t we?’ said some brave soul.

  ‘Indeed. You follow the rails, you stick to the rails, you do not fall off the rails, the whole rails and nothing but the rails. The rails are your alibi. Be at one with your rails. Embrace your rails, love your rails. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes!’ railed the entrants. ‘All hail the rails!’ Most of them had been to the premiere of Gladiator the previous eve
ning. Such Roman ruffians as never you did see! Except that they had, of course. Some bright spark shouted up from the cheap seats ‘Woderwick will stick to the wails!’ Branson ignored the heckler.

  ‘Upon reaching Liverpool you will immediately return, is that clear? Once through Penny Lane, once around Strawberry Fields, once past the office of the Tax Man, wave at The Walrus, collect a fresh dozen from The Egg man, get your entry forms stamped by Miss Eleanor Rigby and then straight back here for a quick fanfare for the common man and the National Techno-Anthem as played by Sergeant Pepper’s Lovely Clubbed Harts Band. OK?’

  ‘Suppose so’ was the collective sullen reply. They’d all rather hoped to have a chance to see the octopus’s garden while they were in the legendary neighbourhood during daylight hours, in force of numbers and thus in comparative safety.

  ‘Right, to your machines, gentlemen, to your machines. You begin in three minutes at the sound of the official starting pistol.’

  [The invention of the firearm made starting races so much easier. The earlier method of using a “starting bow and arrow” led to some outrageous false starts during the early Olympics and one or two spectator casualties since what goes quietly up must come quietly down, especially so if you fire it vertically and then forget to take a step to the left or a step to the right.]

  ‘Mr Branson?’

  ‘Yes, what is it Mr Ericsson?’

  ‘Once out of the station it is, I believe, a single-track line between Manchester and Liverpool with no turntable at the Liverpool end.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Does that not make, well, racing a little difficult? If we’re all switched onto the same single-track railway line how may we overtake?’

  ‘The conditions are the same for all entrants, Mr Ericsson. If fair play doesn’t suit you then perhaps you might prefer life in the colonies? The Americas perhaps. This is England, Mr Ericsson, we do not moan about the tough going, Sir. When the going gets tough we just draft in even more cheap foreign labour. To your machine, if you please and no more of your Scandinavian whining.’

  Branson strode over to the Royal Box and leapt in, eschewing the use of the little gate in favour of subliminally intimidating Albert with a demonstration of his athletic ability and a flash of the padded groin of his Jermyn Street tailored pin-stripes. Woof, I think there’s a large kipper down there that you can smoke me for breakfast.

  ‘G’morning Vicky.’

  ‘Morning Dick.’

  They air-kissed each other’s cheeks, mwuh mwuh, and Branson absent-mindedly squeezed a right Royal buttock in the clinch. It wasn’t one of Albert’s, either. Realising that they were in public they separated quickly, blushing. Branson had reserved his seat with his usual India-rubber “haemorrhoid” ring.

  Vicky stepped forward to do the honours.

  ‘Albert – your pistol if you please, One will begin proceedings.’

  The Queen Victorian pointed the duelling pistol into the air as per the little Japanese Instruction Manual, and squeezed the trigger. Several things happened then, all at once.

  The bullet ricocheted from the station ceiling and hit Brandreth’s engine-horse on the von Ryan’s Express between the eyes, dropping it where it stood, stone dead, on its little drive-belt, deceased, un-living, not even shuffling off its quite literal mortal drive-coil. Trevithick, thinking that he was next, floored the Deltic, but unfortunately in reverse. He disappeared through the Station’s Refreshment Room in what would clearly have been a false start even had he been a legitimate entry. Laura Jesson, who had been leaning out of the cab of the Deltic, having her elbow touched and saying a fond farewell to a doctor called Alec Harvey, found herself with more than just grit in her eye and staring down at Dolly Messiter who was having repeated brief encounters with the Deltic’s various axles.

  Four fully-qualified flaming firemen, one on each of the remaining entries’ platforms, raced out of the pits like lonely geriatrics on nursing home visitors day, struck tinderboxes and lit some rather exciting fires under their respective boiler responsibilities. There was a little bit of illegal fanning with broadsheets and magazines to encourage the flames.

  Victoria looked, amazed and cross-eyed, down the smoking end of the pistol. ‘Bugger me – did One do all that? What splendid devices – no wonder you chaps like them so much.’ Instead of returning the pistol to Albert she lifted her skirts and tucked it into the Order of the Garter where it remained almost untouched for months until that fateful day when it saved her life during an assassination attempt in St. James’s Park.

  [So un-amused was Victoria at this later assault upon One that she leapt out of One’s moving carriage, chased the would-be assassin through the woods, coined the phrase “do you feel lucky, Punk? Well do you?” and then pumped all four remaining bullets into his Police record at point blank range. Yes, four remaining bullets. One fired so far today, one up the spout and yet to go.]

  An incomprehensible public commentary was beginning, describing the nail-biting development of the respective boiler fires from smoking tinder to full-fledged conflagration. A scant couple of hours of cheering-on later all four engines had sufficient steam up to burst out of Manchester railway station like racing-demons out of some English Rail Hell.

  ‘Nothing to do now but wait, Vicky.’

  ‘Does anyone fancy a game of poker while One waits?’

  ‘So long as we use my cards, yes. Albert – are you in? Doctor Beeching? How about you?’ A card table was produced and chairs in the Royal Box shuffled about. Chestnut roasters and pork scratching peddlers began to circulate among the hoi polloi as the various experimental locomotives rushed towards the horizon with the Swedish driver of one of the entries, Ericsson, waving and shouting “get out of the way” to all who had gone before him.

  Far out in the gentle English countryside events were about to turn very ugly, very ugly indeed.

  A lovely family, torn apart by false allegations of spying and of selling state secrets to the dastardly “The Russians”, was busy drinking its way to a new life in a rented house on the wrong side of the tracks – the new railway tracks. The father of course, being the cheap treasonous rat that he was, was languishing in jail and swapping Russian cigarettes for drugs and the odd night off the “Mr Big’s Cuddly-Wuddly Living Teddy bear” rota. The three young children, Roberta-Jo, Peter-Billybub and Phyllis-Jo were playing on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway line, as directed by their inebriated “I want to be a paperback writer” mother. The very line out of the two in existence that, tragically, and unbeknownst to the children, was so soon to be tested by the speeding new “steaming great locomotive” designs...

  ‘What will it be like when trains start to run do you think?’ asked Roberta-Jo innocently, swinging the hem of her smock among the daisies and the dandelions and the long but decorative embankment grasses.

  ‘Scary!’ replied short-tongued Phyllis-Jo in the manner of a young Joyce Grenfell before she found her feminine poise.

  ‘Fun!’ was the opinion of Peter-Billybub who had once had his head inflated to the size of a watermelon by a very annoyed and preternaturally muscular toad on the business end of a playful paper straw and a schoolboy bet gone seriously wrong for the human being involved.

  ‘I know you’ve told me this before Peter-Billybub but I always forget – to be safe does one stand outside the two little tracks or inside?’

  ‘Inside, silly! The train runs on the tracks. If a train is coming then the only safe place for sure is between the two tracks. You girls will just never understand mechanical things, will you?’

  ‘Oh. OK. I’ll tie a knot in my handkerchief so that I remember. Of course, the trains won’t run all the way into Liverpool, will they? Even Daddy wouldn’t be brave enough for that.’

  ‘Of course not, silly! They’ll stop a safe distance away. Assuming that they’ve been forewarned.’

  ‘What’s that rumbling noise?’ asked Roberta-Jo, looking for storm clouds but finding none.

/>   ‘A stampede perhaps?’ said Phyllis-Jo, looking hopefully at the old cow in the next field. The old cow shook a fist and carried on walking back to the OAP home with her two-hundred pound firewood bundle on her arched back.

  ‘An earthquake maybe?’ said Peter-Billybub gleefully, imagining Los Nottingham, city of the one-way tramway no-parking average-speed camera town planning angels, splitting in two or three and burning a bit.

  ‘Oh goodness me – it’s a train!’ said Roberta-Jo, horrified and excited at the same time in much the same way as she had been when one of daddy’s many Russian friends had stayed over and she’d been sleepwalking again but he said he didn’t mind and had explained how Russians keep warm in the long, cold, Siberian winters with nothing but shared body-heat and some strange foreign exercises.

  ‘Can’t be a train – no-one’s seriously expecting trains to start running for another ten years or more.’

  ‘Well something’s coming!’

  ‘Run!’

  ‘It’s too late! The future’s already here! Get between the tracks!’

  ‘I know - I’ll take my bright red cotton underknickerglorybockers off and wave them over my head, just so that they know we’re here’ said Roberta-Jo. She was very limber and could even take them off in her sleep, and it had made the Russian laugh so.

  ‘You always take your knickers off and wave them over your head at any excuse!’

  ‘Do not!’

  ‘Do so!’

  ‘Phyllis-Jo’s right, Roberta-Jo – do you remember yesterday when we walked past that building site? I’m sure that the builders knew we were on the pavement nearby even before you stripped off and waved at them.’

  ‘There were cranes and shovels and pickaxes! It was dangerous. I had to do something!’ protested Roberta-Jo in her own defence.

  ‘What about the day before when the greengrocer was putting boxes of apples out in front of his shop? You waved your knickers then too.’

  ‘They were heavy boxes! He might have dropped one on us.’

  ‘We were on the other side of the road! What about the farm workers in the field at the back of Mummy’s new house? Why did you wave at them? We were indoors!’