Station Jim

by Louis de Bernières

  The greatest fire was the one in the marketplace. This was a tradition in that town, whose origin was completely unknown. There had always been a Christmas fire as well as a Guy Fawkes one, and that was that. There would be a man selling hot sausages and pies, a woman selling beer, and somebody else making cocoa.

  Just before Jim’s first Christmas, Alfie said, ‘I want it to snow! I want it to snow!’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn. ‘It messes up the trains like nobody’s business, and there’s all that shovelling to do, and putting salt on the platform, and then the snow gets too heavy on top of the signals, and it gets in the works and freezes up, and the points get frozen solid, and three miles down the line a whopping great branch falls off a tree. And there’s always some poor old codger who goes arse … who keels over and breaks his hip. Don’t wish for snow, Alfie, my lad. We might get some.’

  ‘But we can make a snowman, and whizz down the hill on the tea tray! And have snowball fights.’

  ‘Two snowmen side by side,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn, striking his joke-telling pose. ‘Guess what the first one said to the other one. He said … “I can smell carrots!”’

  ‘Oh, Dad!’ chorused the children.

  ‘I’m going to do my snow dance,’ said Alfie.

  ‘A snow dance; this is something I’ve got to see,’ said his father. ‘Let’s be having it, then.’

  Alfie began to jump from side to side, raising an arm and a leg together as he hopped from one foot to another. ‘Let it snow!’ he chanted.

  ‘Let it snow!

  Let it snow!

  Let it snow!

  So that we don’t have to go

  To go to go to go to school

  Tomorrow!’

  ‘That looks tiring,’ said Ginger. ‘Where’d you get that from? Did you make it up?’

  ‘He got it from Sophie at school,’ said Sissy.

  ‘And Sophie got it from Caroline,’ said Beryl.

  ‘Well, it’s a rum little dance,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn. ‘But there isn’t any school tomorrow anyway. Let’s just hope it doesn’t work.’

  But it did. It worked exactly the right amount. The chill intensified, and a light snow began to fall gently during the night, the delicate flakes dancing about in the small breaths of wind, until by morning three inches had settled on the roofs and pavements. Out in the backyard Tildo tentatively placed one paw in front of the other as he tried out the unfamiliar, crunchy new carpet, and Jim stood with his forepaws on the windowsill, whining with excited incomprehension.

  Mr Ginger Leghorn looked out and was satisfied that his beloved GWR would not be having too much bother, and the children ran straight outside with woolly hats and mittens on, to make snowballs and thrust them down each other’s necks. ‘There’ll soon be tears,’ said Mr Ginger Leghorn, and ‘Wonder who’ll get hurt first,’ said Molly.

  It was Beryl, who slipped and cracked her knee on the cobbles, but she soon recovered, and returned to the fray. Then Sissy cried because Alfie put too much snow down the back of her collar. Then Albert slipped and broke a tooth against the railings, but luckily it was only a milk tooth, and was due for replacement anyway, and the split lip would repair itself soon enough.

  The following evening the town’s brass band, who had been practising their carols for weeks, and the Salvation Army band too, marched into the town square from different directions, their bass drums booming, playing different tunes in different keys, competing very ably with each other for volume and verve. One or two bandsmen skidded on a patch of ice in their hobnails, bringing about some interesting mayhem, and a few entertainingly elephantine oompahs.

  Usually, on this occasion, it would be raining, or too cold and windy, or the fire would not light properly, but this was one year that everybody would always remember. The night was fine and starlit, the air was still, and everybody who ought to be there was there. Mr Draggit brought a brazier and sold piping-hot, slightly charcoaled chestnuts in small brown paper bags. The crisp air was full of the sweet scent of the roasting, and people squealed and blew on their fingers as they peeled their chestnuts open.

  The particularly memorable thing was that the Leghorns brought along their family dog, who wore a galvanised bucket on his head and howled melodiously and mournfully along to the strains of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Silent Night’. Mr Ginger Leghorn told Alfie to take Jim home, but the crowd would have none of it, and in subsequent years people would ask him, ‘You bringing the dog to the carols, Ginger?’ It was a rare and wondrous thing, a dog with a bucket on his head who could sing more or less in key, and every year it made the papers.

  There was more snow on the following day, and the children wrapped themselves in scarves and coats and mittens, and went up the hill behind the railway cottages with tin trays. Their breath turned to steam in the freezing air, and their faces turned red. Alfie threw snowballs for Jim to catch, until his snout and head were covered with a fine dusting of snow. With Jim running behind them, they hurtled down, crashed into the fence, and trudged back up again until they were completely exhausted and their hands were blue with cold, so that, once back in the warmth of the house, they ached and stung as soon as they began to thaw out. In the house there were big baked potatoes waiting to be put in their pockets so that they could go back out again. Jim began to limp, and it turned out that snow had clagged up the fur between his pads. Mr Ginger Leghorn rolled the dog on his back, and sorted out the problem while Jim wriggled about and attempted to bite his hands.

  On Christmas morning the children awoke to find that they each had a stocking at the foot of their beds, filled with pencils, boiled sweets, Acme whistles, felt glove puppets and enormous oranges. Alfie swore that during the night he had woken up to see Father Christmas attaching his to the end of the bed. Later that day Tildo and Jim went bonkers among the wrapping paper, and knocked things over so that the family had to panic as they dealt with all the fallen candles. Tildo was given a catnip mouse and a ping-pong ball to play with, and Jim received an enormous postman’s leg. He liked his bones rotten and stinky, so he spent half an hour burying it in a flower bed, so that he could dig it up again in the new year. Then he spent the next couple of weeks gnawing away at its delightful disgustingness until it no longer tasted of anything at all, and finally he reburied it, just in case. For the rest of the year, Jim mostly had to make do with modest presents of paddywack, beef ribs and mutton bones.

  On Christmas evening, Mr Ginger Leghorn decided to roast some chestnuts on the glowing coals of the fire, and he arranged them in a neat pattern on the long-handled roasting pan. He forgot to pierce the nuts first, however, and they all exploded at pretty much the same moment, sending Tildo straight up the curtains from the surprise of it, and Station Jim under the table. Ginger got a very hot fragment down his shirt collar, which made him dance and hop and swear awhile as he tried to extract it, and Mrs Molly Leghorn spilled some cream onto the table from the shock of it. The children said, ‘Cor, Dad, put some more on and do it again!’ and Sissy deposited Tildo in front of the little white lake so he could clean up the spillage.

  STATION CAT

  At Jim’s station there was a cat that he mostly succeeded in avoiding, because it was really a signal-box cat. The signal box was some way down the track, and it contained two signalmen, called Mr Sharpe and Mr Simnick. Their real names were an irrelevance, however, because they were known by their nicknames. Mr Sharpe was known as ‘Curly’ because he was completely bald, and Mr Simnick was known as ‘Titch’, because he was absolutely enormous. His hands were the size of plates, and finding the right size in shoes was a nightmare. People liked to say that he could have hired out his shoes for rowing boats, and others said he was the human version of Bonaparte, the mastiff at the coaching inn.

  Titch and Curly worked upstairs in the signal box, where they had a bank of beautiful brass levers with which to adjust the points in the tracks. They handled the levers
with oily rags in their hands because they didn’t want the sweat of their hands to tarnish the sparkling brass, and both of them were very brawny in the shoulders because of the physical effort of operating their elaborate system of levers and greased cables.

  It was a highly responsible job, and Titch and Curly were proud that there had never been an accident on their patch because of the levers being adjusted wrongly. Their lanterns were always primed with lamp oil, and their flags were always immaculate. They even had a sewing kit to mend any tears or sew on patches, and a pot of varnish to smarten up the flagsticks.

  Inside their signal box there was a little coal fire for the cold days, and for that all they had to do was fetch coal that fell from the huge hopper that replenished the tenders. The only manner in which they were ever dishonest was in sneaking lumps of coal home after work, for their own fires and ranges. It was what they called ‘their little perk’. In those days the houses were cold and draughty, people had little money, and being warm in winter was the nicest thing in the world.

  Their stove in the signal box had a circular metal plate on top for boiling a kettle, and both men were always so full of thick, milky, sugary tea that they had to pop downstairs and out into the bushes every ten minutes. Curly smoked Capstan Full Strength, and Titch smoked Woodbines. Like everyone else in those days they had the bad luck of not knowing that smoking is a deadly habit; you could even buy a brand with cork tips that was advertised as being good for your lungs.

  Titch and Curly, snug in their signal box in a fug of smoke, mainly talked about the old days when they were young and used to go poaching together, and also about the royal family, who were always reported as doing or about to do something in the daily press. From the way they talked, you’d think they knew the royals personally, which, in a way, they did, because King Edward and Queen Alexandra occasionally passed through in the Royal Train, and once the King had surprised them in their signal box when his train was taking on water and he had fancied a stroll. At the moment he turned up, Titch was coming back from the bushes, doing up his flies, and he had the horrible thought that he might have to shake the King’s hand without having washed it first. He and Curly had been so tongue-tied that they could think of nothing to do but pat the King’s dog on the head, and bow repeatedly, until the King told them to stop and asked them to tell him about their families. When he left, the King’s dog, Caesar, weed on the bottom of the steps, and to make up for it His Majesty gave Curly and Titch an enormous cigar each, which they treasured too much to smoke, and which are still preserved by their descendants more than a hundred years later.

  Several times a day they would amble down the track to inspect the points, and with them ambled Mr Jenkinson, the station cat, known as ‘Jenks’ for short.

  Jenks was a sociable silver tabby cat who took an interest in the milk that went into the signalmen’s tea, and spent much of his ample spare time foraging on the embankments for mice and voles, and the occasional rabbit. His greatest conquest had been a cock pheasant, which Curly had taken home for his family when Jenks had declined to eat it.

  When a train came in Jenks would hurry along and sit next to the stationmaster, who was checking tickets at the platform exit. This was an excellent place to receive pats on the head, ear fondling and chucks under the chin. Best of all, it was the ideal place to collect the titbits that regular passengers saved for him from their sandwiches. Oddly enough, his second favourite thing was Gentleman’s Relish, which most people think is absolutely vile. It tastes of rotten anchovies, but, inexplicably, some people love it. Because he received so many morsels from passing passengers, Curly and Titch never had to feed him themselves.

  His very favourite thing was haddock, lightly poached in milk. It was brought to him every day by Lady Huffington, known locally as ‘Huffanpuff’ because she was somewhat large and unwieldy, with a great big red face under the most enormous floral hats.

  On the surface, Lady Huffanpuff was a jolly and friendly person who was kind and generous with everyone. She had a powerful voice and an enormous laugh, spreading merriment wherever she appeared. She lived in a vast empty house on the hillside above the town, and had almost no money at all. Her sons had gone away and died in South Africa in the Boer War, her daughter had married and gone to America, and her husband had disappeared to Singapore, whence he occasionally sent cheques for very small sums. Lady Huffanpuff earned a tiny income for herself by translating French novels into English for a publisher in London, and so she liked to sprinkle her speech with French expressions.

  Lady Huffanpuff turned up with poached haddock every day, and dined off it herself in the evenings, along with a mug of sherry and piles of heavily buttered bread. She felt that she and Jenks were kindred spirits. When she went to the station with his haddock, he wound himself round her stumpy legs and purred.

  One morning Curly and Titch came in to work early and found that Jenks was not in his basket, where he would normally have been asleep on one of Curly’s old jumpers. ‘Out mousing,’ they thought. But he was not there the next day, nor the day after, and then they began to worry. They walked for miles down the track to see if he had been run over by a train, and found not a trace. They called his name, and looked under things and inside things, and on top of things. They put up a notice in the station, which read:

  MISSING.

  MR JENKINSON ( JENKS)

  HAVE YOU SEEN OUR TABY CAT?

  YELER EYES, WHITE SOCKS, WONKY BLACK MOUSETACH, VERY TALKERTIVE.

  ALL INFUMATION GREATEFLY RECEIVED.

  APLY TO TICKET OFFICE.

  After a week, Curly and Titch were down in the dumps, but becoming reconciled to the thought that they had lostJenks forever, until one evening somebody came up the steps of the signal box, and tapped on the door.

  It was Ginger, accompanied by Station Jim.

  ‘Still looking for Jenks?’ enquired Ginger, and Curly and Titch nodded sadly.

  ‘No sign of him,’ said Titch.

  ‘Not a dicky bird,’ confirmed Curly.

  ‘Well, I’ve had an idea,’ said Ginger. ‘I’m doing the yeomanry this weekend, and I’ll be seeing an acker of mine.’

  Accordingly, on Monday evening Smiffy turned up at the signal box with Sniffy, Jim, Mr Ginger Leghorn and the children, all in a posse of eagerness.

  Curly and Titch looked sceptically at the lugubrious bloodhound, who was, like his master, covered with soot and coal dust from the forge. ‘You reckon he can do it, then?’ asked Curly.

  ‘Just give him something to sniff,’ said Smiffy. ‘It’s almost guaranteed.’

  Titch went and got the old jumper from Jenks’s bed and held it out to the dog. ‘Here, sniff that,’ he said.

  Sniffy didn’t need to be told ‘Go seek’. Bloodhounds are inclined to become instantly obsessed by any new smell, and can follow one for a hundred miles, given a chance. When following a smell, they refuse to obey any commands, and all you can do is let them drag you along. Sniffy had a special harness with a strong leather lead on it, so that he could pull Smiffy in his wake without choking.

  Without hesitation, Sniffy sniffed the jumper, put his nose to the ground, and wandered in circles around the small cabin. Then he went down the steps, sniffed in a few more circles, threw his head back and belled, and set off through the woods on the north side of the track. Jim wanted to play, but Sniffy ignored him completely, now that he had more important things to do. Up they went, following a path so narrow that it was really only good for children and foxes. Ginger noticed that quite a few twigs had been snapped, so something large must have passed that way.

  Sniffy belled again, throwing his head up and singing with the pleasure of the hunt.

  By the time that they arrived at Lady Huffington’s house they were scratched up, dirty and exhausted, apart from Sniffy, who sat and sang, watched from the window with great horror by Jenks, who bared his teeth and hissed through the glass. Curly pulled on the big brass lever in the porch, and a bell
rang inside the house.

  When Lady Huffington came to the door and opened it, Sniffy tried to pull Smiffy indoors to get to the cat, but Smiffy managed to haul him back and restrain him. Lady Huffington went pale when she saw Curly and Titch, but said, ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, My Lady,’ said Curly, ‘but we’ve come for the cat. You’ve got to give him back.’

  ‘You can’t just go nicking people’s cats,’ added Titch, ‘it ain’t right.’

  ‘What cat?’ asked Lady Huffington.

  ‘Our cat Jenks,’ said Titch. ‘That one in the window that’s hissing at Sniffy.’

  Lady Huffington turned and saw Jenks, and said, ‘But … but … but …’

  ‘No buts, My Lady. You’ve got to hand him over.’

  To everyone’s surprise, Lady Huffington put her back against the pillar of the porch, and began to slide down it, until she was sitting on the ground with her legs splayed out. Her great round red face crumpled up, and big tears began to follow each other down her cheeks. Curly and Titch didn’t know what to do, so they just stood there in bewilderment. Jim whined and placed a paw on her shoulder.

  Albert and Sissy followed his lead, and they went up to Lady Huffington and gave her a hug, whereupon she began to cry even more. She cried about being lonely in that big shabby house with its neglected garden, she cried about her husband and daughter being abroad, she cried about not being young and beautiful any more, she cried about having nothing to look forward to, and she cried about having been caught out as nothing better than a cat thief. Most of all she cried at the thought of having to give up Jenks. There were a great many tears.