A Station In Life

by James Smiley

  To improve my view, I bypassed Wheeler and stepped outside. Here, while waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light, Jack resumed his dodging about with unwanted excuses and ignored me when I clicked my tongue with irritation. I looked at the cabriolet a little more closely and noticed for the first time how artfully was its wood grain exterior enhanced by pale varnish, but the persistent bobbing of my Booking clerk’s head prevented me from seeing the entire vehicle at once. Although it glistened like amber in the sunshine, the horses were a different matter. Just as Humphrey had predicted, the team’s fetlocks and hind quarters were caked with mud.

  “Mr Albury’s coachman would like a word with you,” Wheeler informed me furtively, settling down at last.

  “Is the cabriolet damaged?” I enquired with a degree of resignation as to the likely reply.

  “There’s a slight mark,” Wheeler answered with a twitch.

  I dismissed the clerk and crossed the forecourt towards the carriage, lured by the coachman’s angry stare. After studying the vehicle at close quarters, finding the valence scored severally, I resolved to discuss with Wheeler the meaning of the word ‘slight’.

  “I will arrange to have the conveyance cleaned and repaired at once,” I apologised to the coachman, mindful of the claim against the company that would inevitably follow.

  “I think you’ve done enough for Mr Albury today,” he rebounded stiffly while taking to the box, and with a crack of the whip the defaced carriage was receding. Not greatly pleased, I invited Wheeler to my office for a word.

  With the exception of an incoming baton rider from Giddiford, Upshott station was blissfully quiet until the return of Herod with the local goods train. The driver steamed Herod through the station slowly to enable Ivor Hales to exchange batons from the balcony of his signalbox. Being in the box at the time I witnessed the signalman at work and it amused me that a large off-cut of calico accompanied him to every lever. With this he would enswathe each handle before pulling it. This was a phenomenon I had seen before. Time-served switchmen were inclined to become very house-proud once installed in a cabin, none of them wishing to tarnish their highly polished levers with the touch of a bare hand. Indeed, apart from an occasional whiff of musty air rising from the ground-frame beneath the floorboards the cabin was thick with the smell of polish.

  Verily the signalbox was a shrine to modern railway practise, the switching apparatus that had previously been distributed around the station being centralised under one roof to protect it from the elements. The instruments seemed to be made only of materials that could be polished to great effect; copper, brass, teak and glass, lending the place a very scientific appearance. Nevertheless, many of Ivor’s instruments were new and yet to be connected.

  The location of the signalbox was such that its right-hand window overlooked the station platforms and, this being the case, I asked Ivor if he had seen an attractive, middle-aged woman standing upon Platform One this morning. He had not. He had been sitting at the opposite window repairing Dr Bentley’s long-case clock.

  “It sounds as though she could have been anyone,” he rambled unhelpfully. The clock chimed and he checked it against his pocket-watch. “Lace is popular with the ladies. It is a cottage industry in these parts. Ask Diggory’s mother. Mind you, since the Government shut down the lace schools, foreign lace has become the more commonplace. I expect you don’t know which she was wearing, Mr Jay. It would be a clue. Locally produced lace is far more delicate.”

  “Then I believe it was local lace she wore,” I reflected. “For it was as fine as a dawn mist.”

  “Mmm,” Ivor quavered with a raised eyebrow.

  I believe the fellow was amused by my romantic turn of phrase. Or perhaps, being a signalman, he was not enamoured of the analogy. Mist caused accidents. A further possibility was that he had observed Miss Macrames’ frequenting the platforms and wondered if I was a rake, perhaps being stalked by a secret admirer. Little did he know, I was more likely to become the secret admirer than to inspire one.

  Lacy had until 10.48am to entrain the heavily laden timber trucks with the ‘pick-up’ goods vans to make its return journey to Giddiford Junction, double-headed with Herod.

  Rather than oversee this operation I decided to retire to my office and deal with some paperwork, much of which was tangled inextricably in the web of Mr Mildenhew’s incomprehensible filing system. I was unlocking the door apprehensively, the room beyond still largely unfamiliar to me, when I heard the voice of Miss Macrames addressing me from behind. I turned and found her just a short distance away gazing at me with a feline smile. I doffed my hat. Taking this as an invitation, she closed in on me.

  This time, alone with the woman in the confines of a narrow corridor, yet another aspect of her beauty manifested itself and again I was most agreeably struck. Her hour-glass figure and china blue eyes were by now quite familiar to me, along with her swanlike neck accentuated by a black lace choker, but with her bonnet removed I became privy to her dainty ears curtained by honey-blonde ringlets. Against such an explosion of intimate charm I was defenceless and yielded to a wobbly smile.

  “Horace,” said she lingeringly, “if I am to rely on railway Headquarters to recover my parasol, should I not fill out a Lost Property form?”

  “A simple letter via the internal post will suffice, Miss Macrames,” I replied. “And I have already drafted one to save you the inconvenience.”

  “Now Horace, I told you to call me Rose,” she chided me playfully. “My close friends call me Rosie. You may call me Rosie if you wish.”

  “Rose,” I replied, selecting the option which reminded her of my status in the community.

  “But I do think I should fill out an official form,” she insisted, intoning her request with spontaneous frigidity.

  “Then I shall fetch you one,” I replied, wondering if I had offended her.

  I opened my office door and surveyed the filing cabinets before advancing, wondering where Mr Mildenhew kept the forms. Before I knew it, Rose was in the room ahead of me. Taken aback, yet relieved to see a warm smile returning to her face, I unseated my top-hat and hung it upon a coat-hook. Rose gazed blithely around my office and remarked how grand was my desk, then complained that there was nowhere for a visitor to sit. I called Mr Wheeler and instructed him to fetch a comfortable chair.

  “Perhaps Mr Mildenhew ruled like a schoolmaster,” I quipped. “Preferring naughty porters to prostrate themselves before him in contrition.”

  Rose laughed at my witticism, I think, although I am not entirely sure because by now I was myself prostrate, searching the lower draws of a crammed filing cabinet in search of Lost Property forms. Having found them and extracted one I straightened up to return to my desk and was astonished to behold Rose, large as life, sitting in my seat! Invested of harmony I cleared my throat and pretended not to notice, extending the charade to include Jack Wheeler when he flung open the door and dragged in a padded chair. I ignored the clerk’s twitch of disbelief and relocated my pot of Indian ink nonchalantly so that I could reach it from my place of exile, then settled upon the padded chair. The clerk backed out of the room creased with amusement. Feeling somewhat dysfunctional facing a beautiful woman who had enthroned herself as a stationmaster, I dipped my pen to take the details.

  Scarcely had I applied myself when Rose, finding nowhere to set down her bonnet, handed me the elaborately feathered accoutrement as though I should have no difficulty dealing with it. I did have difficulty and was compelled to hold it at arm’s length to avoid being tickled, eventually shunting it into a siding behind Mr Mildenhew’s aspidistra. During which operation, truth to tell, I had a change of heart and allowed the feathers to tickle me a little.

  When I returned to the Lost Property form, Rose responded to each question as if it were a conundrum, exhausting me on every detail. By the end of the exercise I was more knowledgeable about her affairs than of my own. I had learned that she hailed from Blodcaster and never married. Also that he
r brother had been a fireman on the LSWR and driven the Exeter Mail train, but was now firing locomotives on the Caledonian railway after marrying a Glaswegian, hence her understanding of railway affairs. Further, she described herself as an artist, but I make no comment about this, for it was her knowledge of railways which excited me most. Consequently I extended our conversation in this direction somewhat at the expense of my other duties.

  I noticed Rose’s eyes dwell upon the heavy crate that I had imported to my office after Mr Mildenhew vacated. I had got only as far as prising off the lid and exposing its contents.

  “I shall display it upon my mantelpiece when I have time,” I explained when she presumed to peer inside.

  “Is it a Bloomer?” she enthused.

  “How clever of you,” I delighted. “It is a 2-2-2 built by McConnell for the London and North Western. Yes, a Bloomer. A magnificent locomotive.”

  “Does it steam?” she enquired swiftly.

  “It needs but water and crushed coal,” I boasted.

  “It must be all of three feet long. Did you build it yourself?”

  “Heavens no! That was an engineer in Birmingham. But I fell in love with it, and because it had leaking tubes and a broken firebox stay he sold it to me for a fraction of its full value. The poor fellow had grown too ill to fettle it, you see. Even as a static display its value increases annually, so you see it is both a thing of beauty and an investment.”

  “I think your mantelpiece will collapse under the weight of it,” Rose warned me, echoing my own concern.

  After a most enjoyable twenty minutes of conversation I completed the form and dropped it in the Giddiford despatch pouch to indicate that our meeting was over, for I had much to do. However, Rose was not so easy to dislodge and resisted several polite hints to vacate my desk. Taking to her feet at last, she requested the return of her flamboyant hat. This time, when its feathers stirred me, I found remedy in visualising farmer Smethwick pursing his lips for a kiss. As I escorted Rose towards the platform, another sensual female arrived to beguile me. Standing in the corridor much as Rose had done, but attired more seemly, was my beloved Elisabeth.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye, Horace,” she hushed with a note of finality in her voice.

  Before I could respond, the idol of my childhood blew me a kiss and was gone beyond the corner of Mr Phillips’s office. I tried repeatedly to conjure her return, but she never appeared again.

  I retreated to my office to untangle my thoughts and, it being a sultry day, I opened my window to let in some air. By this I was reminded of unfinished business and closed it again promptly. Afterwards I marched to the platforms to make an enquiry, the business to which I allude being, of course, microbes. The smell about which everybody knew nothing and nobody knew everything had become more pungent than ever and presently resembled rotten eggs. I called out impatiently.

  “Mr Wheeler, what in Heaven’s name is that stink?”

  Indecorously loud though my enquiry was it educed no response.

  I had noticed that while it was not uncommon to see staff tending flower beds and vegetable plots during quiet intervals there was a less common atmosphere of skulking abroad. Most notably, Ivor Hales was raking over some bare soil and seemed alarmed by my interest. Within seconds he became engaged in a struggle with a heavy sack, appearing intent upon lodging it beneath the signalbox steps. My suspicion was further aroused by Jack Wheeler pretending not to be within earshot and absconding to the coal siding. Meanwhile, elsewhere, suddenly no one was about. Only the Second porter held his ground, this because he was busy mulching a bed of bright yellow flowers with his head among the bees.

  I had been unable to ascertain this particular employee’s name, save that he answered to the appellation of ‘Snimple’, so I addressed him thus.

  “Those are very unusual flowers, Snimple. What are they called?” I coaxed him.

  The porter beamed up at me with a spotty, weathered face and told me proudly:

  “Chrysanthemums.”

  I had not heard of them before but railway employees were renowned for ‘rescuing’ exotic items of freight that had gone astray. Indeed, employees without the moral guidance of a vigilant stationmaster were inclined to make them go astray in the first place. ‘Ullage’ was the euphemism used by weighbridge clerks.

  “And where did they come from?” I tested him.

  “China,” he replied blankly. “They grow ever sno well by the railway. I think they like the snoot.”

  I began to understand the fellow’s nickname, for he was indeed simple and troubled with a speech impediment.

  “And do they benefit from that mulch?” I enquired.

  “It’s treated snewage,” he replied helpfully.

  “Oh, from the sewage farm,” I jollied him.

  “They give it away free,” he said, filling me with horror. “Sno we filled a chaldron truck with it. There’s plenty left over if you want any.”

  Perhaps there was something to be said for treated sewage, for the border flowers were certainly colourful.

  I wondered if ‘chrysanthemums’ was their proper name or merely Snimple’s pronunciation of it.

  I declined the porter’s offer and made for the coal siding where I located the offending truck parked against the buffer stop. Its cargo, unlike coal, was humming with bluebottles and liberating a stench fit to induce nausea. I hailed Mr Troke and ordered him to have it removed at once. Mr Troke stared at me with a gappy grin and bloated white eyes and set me wondering if Upshott station was really a working home for odd fellows. This possibility placed a question mark over my own appointment.

  “Mr Troke, you are the station’s Rollingstock superintendent and I want to see this rollingstock rolled out of here as a matter of urgency,” I remonstrated. “If this substance remains here we shall have an outbreak of typhus. There is little point in our benefactors engineering the safe disposal of such waste if people like you fetch it back again. Can you not see, fellow, the stuff is not yet fermented.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Mr Troke retorted defensively.

  “Its presence in this yard requires your collusion,” I parried him.

  “Whither shall I send it?” he whined, suddenly abandoning his hauteur.

  “Dispose of it how you will,” I snapped.

  By now my most fervent wish was to be as distant from the insalubrious cargo as possible, for I could bide its proximity no longer even if Mr Troke was unruffled by it.

  “We could wait ’til no one’s looking and attach it to a passing train,” Mr Troke suggested. “You could create a diversion while I do it, Mr Jay.”

  “Good Lord, are you serious?” I gasped. “We shall do no such thing.”

  Mr Troke appeared crestfallen by my rebuttal and sulked, suggesting that his proposition had been in earnest.

  “Have it tipped in the river Ondle,” I instructed him. “Secure the Giddiford baton when no train is due and use a company horse to draw the truck to the viaduct. You may tip the ghastly sullage over the side.”

  Had I recommended this course of action two years later I could have ended up in prison for contravening the ‘Rivers Pollution Act’. Even by this time such activity was considered antisocial, but with a diabolical smell interfering with my reason I could think of no better solution.

  The departure of the Timber and Goods train was nearing and Mr Phillips duly arrived with his piece of chalk to mark the wagons with their destinations. While doing this he looked my way accusingly and pinched his nose. About the same time, a smallholder pulling a tilt-cart crammed with vociferous geese came by and halted a few feet away from me to recover his breath. He too was enfeebled by the wafts of putrefaction and wheezed desperately, his geese bearing the imposition in indignant silence. The old man cast about for the culprit, his face cockled with disgust, and I hastily hid behind a barrel. But I was not well concealed and the drover’s keen eye settled upon me with a prolonged and knowing stare of disapproval. Having not
the least idea what explanation I might tender, I took flight. Alas, had I done so in less haste I might not have taken sanctuary in my most hated place, the Telegraph room.

  The Telegraph room, incidentally, was barely large enough to share with a hung up overcoat, and watching the receiver chatter rapidly within its four bare walls intimidated me woefully, as did most technical advances. I had once been told that nothing sharpens the wits of a young lad more than a spell of duty in a telegraph office, but I was neither a young lad nor a pencil so I had no desire to be sharpened. Notwithstanding my apprehension, however, either I became a skilled operator or I followed in Mr Mildenhew’s footsteps.

  Ironically, a still uglier threat lurked in those telegraph wires, a threat to which I would be exposed by the very act of learning to use the apparatus. You see, prior to this invention a stationmaster was truly the master of all he surveyed, little interfered with by his superiors at Headquarters where administrative inertia was his guarantee of autonomy. Now, alas, the electric telegraph was bringing to every station on the network, no matter how remote, the minute-by-minute dictates of management. So, not for much longer could my ignorance of Samuel H Morse’s ‘clicking’ and ‘clacking’ immunise me from Albion’s new age of accountability.

  Nursing a heavy heart I left the Telegraph room and stood in the weakening sunshine for a while to absorb the industry of my surroundings. The pallid sun was soon eclipsed by Herod’s feathery coils and I moved on to avoid the inevitable shower of smuts. As I strolled with my hands behind my back I saw on the Parcels platform a number of fleeces being tied in bundles and labelled with their various destinations, and by the Goods shed some empty mushroom pallets being unloaded and stacked for return to Hunt farm.