Station Jim

by Louis de Bernières

  Bonaparte, despite his fearsome size, was a very gentle and well-liked dog. In his own mind his job was to meet and greet visitors, which he always did with great joyfulness, even if he had never met them before. It was quite something to have a huge pair of paws descend on your shoulders, to have your face licked by an enormous slobbery pink tongue, and be breathed on by truly fetid dogbreath.

  The landlord of the pub thought that Bonaparte’s job was to be an especially intimidating guard dog, and it is true that at night his great deep voice would set to belling in the event of anything worrying, such as a fox coughing in the distance, or someone calling in their cat. Otherwise he would growl in his sleep as he dreamed of epic ancestral battles with other gigantic dogs, and men with axes and matted beards.

  Station Jim and Bonaparte were quite good friends, because Mr Ginger Leghorn liked to go and drink at the pub on the evenings when he was not on duty at the station. Jim did not seem to mind being completely flattened by Bonaparte as they romped in the yard, and sometimes they fell asleep on their sides, with Jim tucked up like a Russian doll, in between Bonaparte’s legs, and up against his belly. All it needed was a corgi to make a set of three.

  Because Bonaparte was a popular dog, as well as a local wonder who attracted visitors in his own right, some people used to bring him presents of postmen’s legs. These were in fact the leg bones of cows, and you could pick them up for a few pennies at the butcher’s.

  Station Jim also liked postmen’s legs. They would arrive all shiny and white, apart from the lovely bits of gristly meat that were still attached to them. He got a postman’s leg every Christmas, to get him outdoors while the children opened their presents.

  One day Bonaparte had been disrespectful. He had tried to embrace the Mayor, so he had been tethered on a chain to the big stout post in the courtyard until such time as that very important and worthy gentleman had finished his pint of porter and departed. Poor Bonaparte was having a frustrating time meeting and greeting the customers because even he could not go beyond the length of the chain that held him captive. He had been reduced to lying on the ground, sighing, and raising his eyebrows alternately.

  Then, luckily for him, the butcher came by in his cart, called out ‘Here, Boney! Catch!’ and tossed him a magnificent postman’s leg. Bonaparte pinned it down with one forepaw, and set about killing it all over again, savaging it and shaking his head from side to side. The sight of that would have been enough to deter any intruder.

  Bonaparte’s luck was short-lived, however, because Ginger Leghorn turned up with Station Jim, who was still wearing his collecting box.

  Normally, Bonaparte would have been delighted to see Jim, and they would have frolicked together in the courtyard, but on this occasion he was not remotely pleased. Not only was he chained up, which made him feel vulnerable, but he had a postman’s leg to defend. He was not a dog who had any generous notions about how nice it was to share your food with friends. When Jim trotted up to him, he rose to his full height, placed one vast paw on the bone, bared his teeth and snarled.

  Jim was mystified. Why had his friend so suddenly turned against him? But then he smelled the bone, made his eyes follow his nose, and spotted it, safely in Bonaparte’s custody, under that stupendous paw. The mystery was over; Station Jim did not believe in sharing his food either, and all this snarling and growling and menacing struck him as perfectly reasonable. Even so, he sat down and thought the situation over. It would, after all, be rather nice to get his own jaws around that postman’s leg.

  Ten minutes later, Ginger Leghorn and the other inmates of the coaching inn heard a powerful and mournful howling from out in the yard. Only one hound in the whole district would have been capable of howling as loudly and mournfully as that, with the possible exception of Sniffy the Bloodhound. ‘What’s up with Boney?’ they said, taking another sip, and looking at each other. Ginger stood up and looked out of the window. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ he said.

  Station Jim had been busy. He had kept himself out of reach of Bonaparte, and at just the point when the mastiff was concentrating on a particularly threatening growl, Station Jim had nipped in and pinched the bone. Then, and this is the intelligent part, he had teased Bonaparte by staying just out of his reach, and walking in a circle.

  What Ginger had seen was Bonaparte up against the post, with his chain wrapped round it, howling, while his little friend settled down to a good gnaw and gnash on the postman’s leg, safely out of reach. Bonaparte could think of nothing but to go into a deep despair, his world having suddenly become a dark and tragic place.

  Ginger went out and stood sternly over his dog. ‘You are a very bad boy,’ he said.

  Jim looked up with a ‘What? Me?’ expression, and Ginger said, ‘Drop! Drop it at once!’

  This time the expression said ‘What? Really? Are you serious?’

  ‘Drop it, or I will give you what for,’ said Ginger.

  Jim dropped it reluctantly, and backed off, with his own deep sense of tragedy growing in his heart. Ginger bent down to pick it up, even though it was disgustingly slobbery. He thought of giving it back by hand, but wondered if Bonaparte would remove it gently enough not to take his fingers off, so he tossed it to the dog’s feet. Happiness flooded back into Bonaparte’s heart, the universe settled back into a just and rational order, and he settled down to resume the destruction of the bone.

  ‘You’re a bad dog,’ said Ginger, as he put Jim’s lead on, but if Jim had been able to think in words, he would have been thinking, ‘Yes, but I am a very clever dog, and I have just experienced a great moment of glory, and several minutes of profound personal happiness.’

  STATION JIM’S CHRISTMAS

  Once upon a time, in the year 1714, there was a German aristocrat who became King of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. By not being able to speak a word of English he accidentally created our modern democratic political system, because he had to leave all the discussions and decisions to a group of ministers called the Cabinet, with a prime minister in charge. ‘Cabinet’ is an old-fashioned French word for ‘toilet’, but it also means a kind of box. Possibly the ministers met in a toilet, or in a box, who knows. Perhaps the ministers had to stand around while the Prime Minister got to be the only one to sit on the toilet. No wonder the King never showed up.

  More importantly, if you love your food, the new King brought with him a kind of pudding that you could make without meat. Perhaps you didn’t know that puddings were originally made inside an animal’s stomach, but after the animal was dead, of course. To this day in Scotland, a sheep’s stomach is used for making haggis, and that is a proper old-fashioned pudding.

  King George’s pudding was made by being squished tightly into a cloth, tied up and steamed.

  One Sunday Mrs Molly Leghorn was conversing with her neighbours on the subject of puddings, and there was some confusion about which Sunday was going to be the last Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent. There are four Sundays in Advent, which are the four before Christmas, so for Molly and her friends the truly important question was ‘Which is the fifth Sunday before Christmas? Is it this one?’

  Molly had already made a pound of breadcrumbs, and shelled and chopped the Brazil nuts, and blanched and skinned and chopped the almonds, and grated the cooking apples, and grated a lemon rind and squeezed out the juice, and stoned and chopped the dates, and bought some eggs and some demerara sugar and a little bottle of rum, and weighed out some sultanas and currants, and a little posset of mixed spices, and had even bought some green bananas. Most important of all, she had saved up nine silver threepences, one for each of the humans, and one each for Tildo and Station Jim.

  ‘I know what,’ said Mrs Draggit from next door, ‘one of us should pop into church, and report back.’

  ‘I always go anyway,’ said Mrs Molly Leghorn, who loved the hymns, enjoyed being dressed up in her Sunday best, liked to take a look at the other women’s hats, and wanted to keep on the right side of God j
ust in case there really was a Hell hereafter. ‘I’ll tell you when I come out. I’ll send one of the nippers round.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Mrs Draggit. ‘I’ve got to stay at home and do the roast, or there’ll be hell from his lordship when he reels in from the you-know-what.’

  Accordingly, when she heard the bell begin to ring, Mrs Molly Leghorn set off up the hill to the rather grand church, and settled in a pew as far away as possible from Mrs Middle, a very large lady who was married to a fisherman, stank of fish, seldom washed, ate a great many raw onions, and snored loudly through the services from start to finish.

  Mrs Middle’s capacity for sleeping through the services was often remarked upon, for the Reverend William ‘Boomer’ Crisp-Blethering was partially deaf, and had no idea how loud was his own voice. He boomed through his sermons and prayers like Gabriel summoning the dead on the Last Day, but without the trumpets. There was also something hypnotic about his immense red beard, the forests of hair sprouting out of his ears, his vermilion lips, and his intense blue eyes; it was impossible to take your eyes off him, unless you were Mrs Middle, fast asleep and oblivious in the front pew, with her chin almost in her lap.

  There is in the service a little item called the Collect, which is somewhat like a little extra prayer that seems to have been thrown in for luck, much as a greengrocer might give you an extra plum as well as the pound of quinces that you asked for.

  This is what Mrs Molly Leghorn and the congregation (apart from Mrs Middle) were waiting for:

  ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded.’

  On this Sunday, the ladies of the congregation heard these words boomed out by the redoubtable Reverend William ‘Boomer’ Crisp-Blethering, and lifted their heads like athletes at the beginning of the countdown. Old cavalrymen were reminded of the snorting and bridling of their chargers at the sound of the bugle as they formed up in line abreast at the commencement of battle.

  When Mrs Molly Leghorn got home, she sent the children off in different directions with the message: ‘Ma says it’s Stir-up Sunday ’cause she heard old Boomer say it in the collection.’

  After church, and into the afternoon, the Ginger Leghorns made Christmas pudding. Every one of the family, apart from the two animals, made a wish as they stirred the mixture from east to west, in memory of the journey of the Magi. Alfie wished for snow on Christmas Day. Arthur wished for a piece of shortbread. Beryl wished for a proper new pair of shoes instead of the terrible old cobbled-up pair of hobnails she had inherited from another family. Sissy wished for a new kitten. Albert wished for a grey pet rabbit with lop-ears and a twitchy nose. Mrs Molly Leghorn wished for a hat like Mrs Middle’s, with artificial flowers in the band, and Mr Ginger Leghorn wished for a pay rise. Grinner the dog would have wished for a postman’s leg, if only he had known, and oddly enough, Tildo the cat would also have wished for a rabbit.

  When everybody had had a stir, Mrs Molly Leghorn bound up the pudding in an old tea cloth, and put the handle of a wooden spoon through the knot. She took the kettle from the top of the wood burner, where it had been singing away in anticipation of an infinity of pots of tea, and replaced it with a large saucepan. She poured the water from the kettle into it, and set the pudding to hang above, covering the whole thing loosely with a lid so that not too much steam was lost. The lid rattled for hours, and whenever the music of it slowed down, everybody knew it was time to put in more water. Last year Mrs Molly Leghorn had left her husband in charge, and he had gone out to fetch more coal from the station and allowed the bottom of the pan to burn out and wreck the pudding. This was the nearest that Mrs Molly Leghorn had ever come to demanding a divorce.

  Just as it was beginning to get dark outside, she lit the lamps and took the pudding off the steam. On Christmas Day she would install the silver threepenny bits at even intervals, to make sure that everybody had one, and she would make Camperdown sauce, which she had learned from one of her friends who had once been the servant of a don of Clare College in Cambridge. Everybody loved Mrs Molly Leghorn’s Camperdown sauce, which, with her fingers crossed behind her back, she liked to say was fantastically complicated and difficult to make. The hard work was always left to Alfie and Arthur, who took it in turns to whip the butter and sugar together until they had gone beyond fluffiness and the mixture was almost running.

  That evening there was the usual quarrel about what to eat on Christmas Day. ‘Well, shall we have sheep’s tongue, a boar’s head or a goose?’ asked Mrs Leghorn, and as always Mr Ginger Leghorn said, ‘A boar’s head. It’s more traditional, i’n’t it?’

  ‘Oh but, Dad,’ cried Beryl, ‘it’s so horrid having a big fat face on the table and then watching it all being cut up!’

  ‘You get used to it,’ said her father. ‘And it’s got a big Bramley in its mouth, and that’s really nice. And we can give the bones to Jim.’

  ‘I want sheep’s tongue!’ cried Alfie, banging the table with his fist.

  ‘No you don’t,’ said Sissy. ‘Tongue’s disgusting. You’re only saying that to be a noisy nuisance.’

  ‘A noisy noise annoys a noisy oyster,’ chanted Albert.

  ‘A noisier noise annoys a noisy oyster more,’ chanted Beryl.

  ‘The noisiest noise annoys a noisy oyster most,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn.

  ‘Come on, what are we going to have?’ demanded Mrs Leghorn.

  ‘Let’s have a vote,’ said Beryl. ‘Who votes for sheep’s tongue?’

  Alfie put up his hand.

  ‘And who votes for boar’s head?’

  Mr Ginger Leghorn put his hand up.

  ‘And who wants goose?’

  Everybody except Mr Ginger Leghorn and Alfie put up their hands.

  ‘You’re overruled,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn. ‘I’m in charge around here. We’re having a boar’s head. If I’m paying for it out of my hard-earned wages, that’s what we’re having.’

  ‘You may think you’re in charge,’ said his wife, ‘but I’m the cook, and I say we’re having goose, because the grease is perfect for roast potatoes. And that’s that. And I’ll stuff it with chestnut, pork and apple, and we’ll have bread sauce.’

  ‘What about boar’s head next year?’ asked Ginger forlornly.

  ‘Well, are you offering to cook it?’

  ‘If you show me how.’

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ said Mrs Leghorn. ‘I’m not having you galumphing about in my kitchen with your filthy fingernails and your dropping things on the floor and putting them back in the dish, and helping yourself to girt mouthfuls before anything’s even got to the table, and you licking your fingers. Alfie, be a dear, and tomorrow after school you run down to the farm and ask them for a big goose to be collected on the 23rd, and I’ll give you half a crown to give Mr Major for a deposit.’

  ‘Can we all go?’ asked Sissy.

  ‘Safety in numbers,’ said Mr Leghorn. ‘But don’t take the dog. He’ll set to chasing the ducks and chickens and being a bloody nuisance.’

  In the days that followed, the orange box full of Christmas decorations was retrieved from the cupboard under the stairs and the ones that were too worn out or mouse-eaten were thrown on the fire. Alfie and Arthur and Beryl and Jim went out into the woods between Lady Huffington’s house and the railway line, to collect strands of ivy and small branches of yew and laurel. They found a holly tree covered in red berries, and brought home some sprigs of that too. Best of all, Alfie spotted some mistletoe a long way up a very high tree, and climbed all the way there with the kitchen scissors in his mouth, like a pirate raiding a ship with his cutlass between his teeth. It was the bravest thing he had ever done, and his heart was pounding all the way up, but when he finally came down and thumped back to earth, he puffed out his chest and swaggered confidently as if it had all been a doddle.

  Back in the railway cottage, Molly Leghorn and the little ones tied
gold ribbon into bows and stuck them everywhere they could think of on the walls and doors. Sissy cut out new stars from cardboard, and glued onto them the gold foil from Ginger’s cigarette packets, which they had been saving for weeks. Albert cut out rectangles of cardboard for the others to make Christmas cards, but he drew nothing himself because he knew he was a terrible artist, and Beryl would do it so much better, with her swirly and squiggly handwriting that was like no one else’s and that had not apparently been learned from anyone. She knew how to make little pictures out of scraps of cloth, and she even knew how to make the glue out of flour and water.

  Sissy helped her mother make peppermints and sugared almonds to give away as presents, and after the children were in bed, Molly Leghorn lovingly embroidered with their names a handkerchief for each of her children. She did it so beautifully that they never got used, and there they remained, forever pristine, smelling faintly of lavender, in the drawers where the children’s clothes were kept.

  The children were sent in all directions to deliver the Christmas cards by hand, and were often lucky enough to be rewarded with a toffee or a stick of liquorice, or a humbug. Jim came along too, hoping for morsels of biscuit, and straining at the leash at each glimpse of a cat. Mrs Leghorn knew that the more cards you sent out, the more you received in return, and it was her ambition, one of these Christmases, to get so many that there would hardly be a surface in the house that was not covered with them.

  Best of all was the singing around the piano by lamplight in the many houses of those who had them, with the coals glowing ardently in the fireplaces, and the aroma of strange family drinks, such as Mrs Lilly Posnett’s mulled cider boosted with sherry, cloves, ginger and cinnamon. Mr Posnett knew how to sing ‘The Lost Chord’ at the piano, and did it so well that it had never occurred to him to learn to play anything else, not even the plantation songs of Stephen Foster.

  In those days, if you stood before the fire on a cold night, your front became very hot if you were facing it, and your back became very cold. Then you would turn round and shiver as your front cooled down and your back warmed up. Old ladies who knitted or read by the fireside would develop one mottled leg unless they changed from one side of the fire to the other often enough.