A Station In Life

by James Smiley

  Later, upon the forecourt, I came across one of my clerks holding back some children who had gathered to watch Lacy complete another trip over the tramway hauling timber trucks. Its wheels grinding, Lacy crossed the running line and entrained some loose goods vehicles in the south siding before detaching the whole ensemble. As the engine scooted away to the coal staithe its safety valve lifted and released a deafening tuft of steam, the abrupt onset of which gave me a start. I had developed a phobia of hissing white feathers sprouting suddenly from engines. I recovered from the spasm to find Humphrey gazing at me from his vantage point upon the parcels platform.

  “Watch out, sir, she’s ready to blow,” he called gleefully.

  The porter with the mischievous sense of humour adopted a wilfully straight face, tipped his cap politely, and moved on. I could see that I would never be allowed to forget my mistake.

  Humphrey’s jibe reminded me that I had intended to challenge driver MacGregor on the subject of sticking safety valves. The fact that his was working presently did not guarantee the wellbeing of railway patrons long term, so I crossed the line to speak with him. It proved necessary to shout above the noise of escaping steam and of coal being shovelled into the bunker, nevertheless the reply was clear enough.

  “She’s snod,” the blunt Scotchman advised me. After this he shrugged his shoulders and ceased to recognise my presence.

  To entrain the waiting goods wagons and, more importantly, to escape my interference, MacGregor reversed Lacy away over the level crossing, causing pedestrians to leap aside. The fireman, left behind, knocked me off balance as he jumped from the staithe to catch up with his crewmate. Not wishing to be dismissed so easily I hurried to the front end of the train to meet MacGregor and resume our conversation, but he saw me coming and halted his charge out of reach, where mud, deep ruts and oily puddles acted as a deterrent.

  Herod, a much larger locomotive, was waiting nearby and so I took the opportunity to introduce myself to the driver, who was leaning idly from the footplate.

  “Good day, sir, I am the new stationmaster here,” I opened.

  “How do you do,” the skeletal fellow shouted back above the handsome 2-4-0’s deep boiler rumble. “I’ve sent my fireman to hold Lacy where she is. I need to drop the bag in,” he added, referring to the water column.

  “You will be running late,” I pointed out.

  “Can’t be helped,” he replied. “She’s got a thirst, this one.”

  He took the fireman’s coal pick and clouted a reluctant valve with its handle. The rumble softened. “Mind you,” he continued, “it’s not so bad descending to Giddi’. She drinks a good thirty gallons a mile climbing up to Blod’. With a gradient of one-in-forty through Upford cutting I don’t wonder this branch of yours needs four engines.”

  Herod’s burly fireman returned and unhitched the locomotive for its trip to the column. The coupling hooks rang out as the locomotive and its rollingstock parted company, and the fireman climbed adroitly back to the footplate. Here he began foraging the coal bunker to satisfy his workhorse’s relentless appetite.

  “Looks as though we’ve a few hundredweight left over,” he mumbled with a sly grin.

  I thought the fireman was talking to himself, and since the driver ignored him so did I.

  “He’s talking to you, stationmaster,” the driver chirped unexpectedly.

  I had no idea to what the fireman was referring, or why the driver appeared so puzzled, so I cleared my throat and asked.

  “A few hundredweight of what, sir?”

  The fireman grinned sinfully as if in collusion with me.

  “Oh, I understand, there’s someone about,” he winked, shovelling dusty black rocks into the firebox. “We have to be discreet about these things, eh? Usual arrangement, is it?”

  Still I did not understand.

  The LSWR locomotive, its firebox at last sated, belched dense yellow fumes aloft with a hollow grunt. The bronchial fog, caught upon a fickle breeze, swirled down across the platform and enveloped me. My distress, it seemed, was comical, causing the footplatemen to cluck with laughter.

  “Filthy stuff,” I reviled them, brushing the smuts from my shoulders. “Filthy!”

  “That’s what I call poetic justice,” the driver guffawed. “We got this ‘filthy stuff’ from Giddi’. Ay, that’s right, we coaled her on that soft Kentish slack of yours. Our steed is accustomed to a diet of good Yorkshire to keep her breath sweet.”

  He leaned from the footplate confidentially.

  “So it’s Widdlecombe’s turn this week, is it?” he purred. “You should have said. I thought you were just being coy.”

  The footplatemen’s words continued to make no sense and I frowned angrily, causing Herod’s cab to boom with laughter again. The creaking locomotive crept away to the water column, taking with it the smell of hot metal and sizzling tallow.

  I straightened my hat and crossed to Platform One. Here Humphrey approached me for a word.

  “Did I hear e complain about the quality of the coal, Mr Jay?” he asked. “If e asks I, twern’t diplomatic to do so under the circumstances.”

  “Showering a stationmaster with smuts is not diplomatic either, Humphrey,” I replied.

  “But e don’t understand,” Humphrey sighed with exasperation. “Didn’t ol’ Mildenhew tell e about the coal ration, Mr Jay? Didn’t he tell e we don’t get enough house coal for the winter?”

  “Not that I recall,” I replied with a sinking feeling.

  “Well, sir, generally speaking, the official ration’s all used up by the end of January, e see, so we gets engine coal when we can. We has an arrangement, so to speak. Builds up a stockpile.”

  “I see,” I said, realising that I had blundered.

  “When a foreign engine comes up the branch and takes on South Exmoor coal, the crew don’t usually wants to take it back to the mainline, e see. Our coal be banned in Exeter. Residents complain about the smoke, I hears tell. So we gets the leftovers from the tender and Headquarters don’t have a tally on her.”

  “When you say ‘we’ get the coal, Humphrey, who exactly do you mean?”

  “Upshott station, as a rule, but if we aint quick about it then Widdlecombe gets her,” he advised me.

  “Then I have a feeling that Widdlecombe will be warmer than Upshott this winter,” I said, and retreated to my office shame-faced.

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  Chapter Seven — Peculiar people, at Upshott

  The Timber and Goods train was departing, its trucks percussing and spreading out with a caterpillar ripple as their couplings lost slack. The exhaust beat of two locomotives rapped upon Upshott hill like carpet beaters as two terraced columns of smoke rose majestically into a sky becoming prismatic with rain-clouds. A hitherto oppressive day was freshening up portentously, the silvered hills now dappled with galloping shadows, so I made for the Booking hall to tap the barometer. I had taken no more than a few steps in this direction when a wail emanated from the Goods office. The peculiar sound blundered through my troubled mind and anchored my feet to the spot.

  Although I had been warned of my Goods clerk’s inclination to burst into song I was shocked by it nonetheless and found the noise difficult to reconcile with contentment. Apparently Mr Phillips’s passion was for the opera, his knowledge of which being sustained by the occasional excursion to Covent Garden. Indeed, since being widowed, paying for such trips was the gentleman’s only use for money, and succumbing to the urge to emulate the performers he so admired was, in the meantime, his only other indulgence.

  Apparently the scholarly fellow had agreed, as a result of an impassioned request by his colleagues — nay, an angry demand — to render his aria only while alone in his office, and then only with all windows and doors closed. Clearly such baffles were no match for the fulminations of this clerk and I was compelled to unseat my top-hat and peer around the Goods office door to applaud him.

  Edwin Phillips fell to a flustered silence upon
discovering that he had attracted an audience. His studious, alabaster face erupted into an uncomfortable grimace and his monocle fell from his eye.

  “Gilbert and Sullivan,” he declared obliquely then, with a curiously blank expression, awaited my response.

  Regrettably I had none, for I could think only that any member of the fairer sex would envy his abundance of fine curly hair, although she might not require the dark beard and moustache that accompanied it.

  “Gilbert and Sullivan?” I queried him.

  Brandishing an antique quill-pen, Mr Phillips applied a cavalier punctuation stroke to a neat column of figures then dipped his quill into an ornamental ink pot before condescending to enlighten me. This pen, incidentally, had earned him the cognomen ‘Scratch’ in certain quarters.

  “My latest discovery,” he told me imperiously. “You mark my words, Mr Jay, those two musicians will one day be famous or there is no justice.”

  “Then we must do them justice,” I replied vigorously. “The thunderclaps you are broadcasting in their names shall not enhance their prospects, I’ll warrant.”

  At this point the fanciful fellow saw fit to disregard my presence. With over-acted nonchalance he took up his quill and resumed scratching at his documents.

  The 12.32pm passenger train for Giddiford was to be the next disruption to my tenor and I calculated that I had just enough time to take a spot of lunch at The Shunter beforehand. The Shunter was a tavern conveniently located across the station yard, and before leaving I locked my office door and told Jack Wheeler where I could be found should anyone need me. Having taken care of this I set off for a pint of cider and a good, fat sausage.

  Jack Wheeler raced into the bar, fell into the chair next to me, and squealed in my ear.

  “The Stores ’ut’s been burgled again, Mr Jay, and in broad daylight too. I reckon the thief must be invisible. We’ve been usurped by a phantom.”

  I mopped my chin with a napkin and gathered my wits.

  “Phantom? What phantom?” I fretted.

  “The lamp oil thief,” Jack replied slowly as if instructing a sluggard.

  I managed to drain my glass before being ushered away but a distasteful break of wind prevented me from finishing my sausage.

  “That’s not all,” Jack reminded me with his nose pressed against his fobwatch. “Everyone’s gathered in the Booking ’all to make your acquaintance, Mr Jay. It’s three-quarters Eleven gone.”

  “Looking at my own timepiece I did not see the need for such haste, but haste we made.

  “Your watch runs wildly, Jack,” I remarked.

  The clerk ignored me.

  As we hurried across the forecourt I saw Lacy running ‘light engine’ towards Blodcaster, its speed reduced to allow a flying exchange of batons at the signalbox. Assuming Lacy was not running late, this put the time at 11.50am, therefore my watch was the one running wildly and Mr Hales would have another timepiece to repair.

  While running headlong to keep up with Jack, compelled to hold down my hat like an ungainly oaf, I marshalled my thoughts on how best to address my staff. I had been instructed by the General Manager to issue the lower ranks a warning about time-keeping, for it was reputed to be poor at Upshott, but before I could compose a sobering discourse upon the subject I was waylaid by a delegation of villagers whose untimely interception threatened to destroy my own good example.

  Thus was I placed upon the horns of a dilemma because either I stopped to receive the visitors, which would make me a hypocrite in the eyes of my staff, or I continued and made myself appear inaccessible to the public. Aware that either outcome was bad I decided to stop and receive the delegation, then redact from my speech the part about punctuality.

  The plaintiffs, I learned, had banded together to protest over the absence of a train to take visitors to Blodcaster for the cattle and yarn market each Monday. Their spokesman, a gruff fellow by the name of Collins, proprietor of Xissington tannery, pointed out that Mr Mildenhew had undertaken to do something about the ‘disgraceful situation’ yet not acted. I sympathised with him, for it was inconvenient to be limited to the regular services of 7.45am and 1.08pm on this increasingly popular day, but in so doing I unwittingly misled the delegation into believing that the remedy was in my gift. I doffed my hat, bade the lobbyists good day, and was gone like a will-o’-the-wisp, for the public little understood the stultifying administrative inertia of most railway offices.

  In the gloom of the Booking hall a line of expectant faces stood on parade before me and I squared my shoulders, venturing only as much levity as would not encourage indiscipline. With the exception of Jack Wheeler, whom at first I ignored, I shook hands with each employee in turn regardless of whether we had met previously. The reason why I did not shake Mr Wheeler’s hand was because he had chosen to observe events from his pigeon-hole window surrounded by tickets. In his case, therefore, I could do no more than smile and tap the glass as if consulting a barometer.

  Because Mr Hales was anxious to return to his duties I spoke to him first and sought his formal opinion of the new signalbox. Until recently he had been required to swing the level crossing gates by hand and change the points by way of cast-iron levers located around the station. Hostile moorland winters had made this no enviable task.

  “The comforts of my new workplace are famed, Mr Jay,” he grinned smugly. “I must turn away visitors continually if I am to go about my work.”

  I wondered if Mr Hales was implying that my own visit had been a hindrance, and considered countering his discourtesy by mentioning the evil smelling sack that he had hidden beneath the signalbox steps. Such an enquiry would not have made a good start to our relationship so I maintained silence upon the matter.

  Ivor was not a tall fellow and tricked one’s attention away from the fact by way of crisp mannerisms and dapper dress, in particular by wearing a brightly coloured woollen cravat. His style of apparel did not offend me because, truth to tell, I was captivated by his moustache, which he kept trimmed to a thin zigzag. I judged the fellow to possess all the qualities required of a reliable signalman.

  While shaking Mr Troke’s hand I noticed his billiard ball eyes whiten as he wished me luck in my new post.

  “I just hope you do better than Mr Mildenhew, and Mr Dux,” he said.

  “Oh? What became of Mr Dux?” I enquired.

  “He was here directly before Mildenhew,” Mr Troke’s eyes bulged. “The fool started drinking so they sacked him. Old Duxie was so ashamed, he went home to bed that night and never woke up next day.”

  “What an appalling tale,” I replied. “I suppose the poor fellow lost the will to live.”

  “No, he didn’t die,” Mr Troke frowned. “He just couldn’t get off to sleep.”

  Somewhat confounded I moved on and exchanged notes with Diggory Smith, the Junior porter, of whose singular sense of humour I was already acquainted sufficient to be wary. Apparently Master Smith was a willing lad, if a trifle gullible, with a penchant for climbing. I had been told that the duty he relished most was scaling the tall signal posts to refill the lamps with oil. Also I learned, by way of a secretive nudge from Humphrey, that the towering and bony youth was a ‘dead shot’ with the catapult, although I failed to see what constructive application this had for the railway.

  The company uniform did little to mitigate the boy’s scruffy nature. He appeared this day, and ever after, to have dirt around his mouth. Assuming this to be a delicate personal matter I did not question it. Instead, attempting to put the boy at his ease, I asked him an informal question or two.

  “Do you live with your parents, lad?”

  “There’s French blood on ’is mother’s side,” Jack Wheeler interrupted rudely through the ticket window. His remark precipitated lewd gesticulations amongst his colleagues.

  “Let the lad speak for himself,” I cautioned them.

  “I live with my mother in Widdlecombe, sir,” he answered with a disturbingly squeaky voice. “My mother makes lace.�
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  “So I understand. And what of your father?”

  “He was the master farrier in the parish of Widdlecombe, sir.”

  “Was he indeed,” I marvelled. “But since you use the past tense, lad, what prevents him from practising his most laudable skills today?”

  “He was undertaken, sir,” said the boy. “It happened five years ago, but I’m all right now. Mother explained that death becomes us all eventually.”

  Such blunt satire shocked me. I paused to clear my throat.

  “Well, I am sorry to hear that,” I sympathised, delivering my words with sufficient stridency to quell a growing ripple of bathos around the room.

  “Nobody had time to suffer,” the youth added with spurious compassion.

  I was touched by the young porter’s concern for my feelings and placed my hand upon his shoulder, for his bravado was probably borne of bitterness. To spare myself further embarrassment I did not delve into the circumstances of his father’s demise, instead preferring to change the subject. This was a wise decision, as it turned out, for I learned afterwards that the man had been struck by one of our trains, albeit during an ill advised perambulation in a drunken stupor.

  “And how do you deliver yourself to work each day?” I enquired. “Widdlecombe is nearly three miles away.”

  “I walk, sir,” the lad replied sheepishly, then confessed to a breach of company by-laws. “I walk along the railway.”

  I boggled briefly, then reflected that Master Smith had no need to risk his life treading the ballast, for in its wisdom as one of the line’s financiers the LSWR had insisted upon construction of a spare track-bed as far as Upshott to allow separate ‘up’ and ‘down’ lines to be laid one day. I regretted that the young man could not be found duties closer to his home, but Widdlecombe station had only a small complement of staff with vacancies arising very infrequently.