Station Jim

by Louis de Bernières

  Going to the fair

  Said Simple Simon to the pieman

  ‘What have you got there?’

  Said the pieman to Simple Simon

  ‘Pies, you idiot.’

  He chanted the word ‘idiot’ as if it were the amen from the end of a psalm.

  There was a man with a scrapyard who collected anything metal that was broken or unwanted. He had a cart, and a piebald cob with blinkers at its eyes and its face always in a haybag, and he would go up and down every street once a week calling out ‘Any old iron! Any old iron!’ Back at the yard he would sort the metal into its different kinds, and take it out to the big forge, or to Smiffy’s smaller one, where it would be turned back into useful things.

  The Any Old Iron Man lived at his yard, with his horse and a three-legged mongrel called Tripod. He had a big lean-to against the back of the station wall, with a coal-burning stove that he fuelled with coal that spilled from the trains when they were refuelling. Mr Leghorn and the other railwaymen pretended not to notice, because it saved anyone from having to clear up the spillage, and they weren’t entirely innocent themselves. A railwayman’s cottage was always warm.

  The Any Old Iron Man cooked for himself and the dog on top of the stove, and what he ate was a constantly evolving stew. Every day he would put something new in to make up for what he had eaten the day before, and this could be anything from a carrot to a marrowbone. It would be heated up and eaten with dunked bread, and every day it was the same but a little bit different. As he became older and his teeth began to fall out, he would simply put in things that were less chewy, until, by the time he reached eighty, it was more of a soup than a stew. After his meal he would sleep soundly on a heap of sacking, warmed up by Tripod and the lingering heat of the stove.

  There was another man, the poorest of the lot, who also had a cart, and a pony with blinkers and a haybag. Most men of his kind only had a handcart, so Mr Spirtle counted himself lucky, even though he never earned more than sixpence a day. He was the Rag-and-Bone Man. He was bald on top, with lanky grey hair at the sides and back. He had a crooked spine, was very thin, and he dressed in the best and cleanest of the rags that he collected. Sometimes he was obliged to wind rags about his feet when no one had recently discarded any shoes. All day, every day, he would trundle slowly through the streets calling ‘Raggabone! Raggabone! Raggabone!’ and people would bring him out any useful rubbish they might have. Mr Spirtle received threepence a pound for white rag, and tuppence a pound for coloured. For bones he also raised tuppence a pound. The rags went for making paper, and the bones could be made into knife handles, ornaments and little toys. Sometimes he sold them to people who made chemicals, and any fat left on them could be scraped off and sold for making soap.

  Some people called him a totter, and others a bone-grubber, but Mr Spirtle called himself a Rag-and-Bone Man. His was the most humble job on earth, but he had some pride. If anyone gave him anything particularly useful, he would give them a donkey stone, so that it would be fair swaps, and not just taking. These donkey stones were used for cleaning up doorsteps and making them non-slip, and there were whole streets full of women who spent hours every week on their knees, making sure that theirs was the best and non-slippiest of all. That time down on your knees, scrubbing alongside your neighbours doing the same, was the explanation for the lightning spread of gossip back in the old days.

  One day Mr Spirtle passed Number 4 Railway Cottages, just as Station Jim was sitting outside, waiting for any dogs to pass by that might be worth sniffing. It was in the evening, after a long day, and Mr Spirtle was tired and hungry, with very little to look forward to. His pony was tired too, and they were going slowly. It was impossible not to notice that between his feet, Station Jim had a big knuckle bone that must have weighed at least a pound. That bone was worth a whole tuppence.

  Mr Spirtle stopped the cart, and called out ‘Raggabone! Raggabone! Raggabone!’, as if this would stir Station Jim’s conscience, and induce him to take pity on the poor old man. It failed to work. Instead, Jim sniffed at the air and detected a large number of bones on the back of Mr Spirtle’s cart. Abandoning his own bone, he trotted out into the street, and hopped up into the back of the cart, where he began to ferret about in the rags.

  ‘Here, you! Get off !’ cried Mr Spirtle. ‘Get off, yer little bleeder!’

  But Jim would not get off. He carried on burrowing away with his forelegs, letting out little barks of anticipation.

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Spirtle. ‘If you’re after my bones, I’m having yours!’ and he went to the doorstep and picked up Jim’s knuckle bone.

  As he straightened up, he came face-to-face with Mrs Leghorn, who had come to the door to see what all the shouting and yipping was about.

  ‘What are you doing, nicking my dog’s bone?’ she said, putting her hands on her hips, and scowling down at him.

  He gestured towards the dog on the back of the cart, and said, ‘Well, he’s nicking mine, isn’t he?’

  Mrs Leghorn looked up, and called out, ‘Jim! Jim! Get off that cart, and get in at once!’

  In the end she had to drag him off by the collar and shove him indoors. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

  ‘Dogs will be dogs,’ said Mr Spirtle.

  Mrs Leghorn looked up and down the length of Mr Spirtle. He was a sorry sight indeed. His shoes were not a pair, and the left one had the sole flapping off it. His trousers were too short, were held up by a cord through the belt loops, knotted in a bow at the front, and were split across the knees. He wore a cardigan with most of the buttons missing, but no shirt beneath it, and his jacket had the filthiest cuffs she had ever seen. Around his neck he had knotted a brown tie, despite having no collar around which to tie it. Mrs Leghorn shuddered inside at the thought of having to work so hard only in order to live in such terrible poverty. She looked into his tired old eyes, and thought, ‘He’s human too. I’m just a lot luckier.’

  ‘I’ve got heaps of bones in the garden,’ she said. ‘When Jim’s chewed all the life out of them, he leaves them in a corner. Do you want ’em?’

  ‘Heaps?’

  ‘Well, a heap.’

  ‘I’d like that very much, missus,’ said Mr Spirtle.

  It turned out to be a whole sackful. Then Mrs Leghorn said, ‘If you go up behind the house on the hillside, there’s a dead sheep there. It’s been there for months. Should be easy to clear it all up. The ravens’ve picked it clean.’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you, missus.’

  ‘And while you’re up there I’ll make you some bread and dripping, and a mug of cocoa.’

  ‘Bread and dripping, missus? I’m much obliged.’

  It was a good day all round; Mrs Leghorn got rid of Jim’s bone collection, Jim found a pleasantly disgusting mutton bone on the cart, and Mr Spirtle had his first slice of bread and dripping in days. He arrived back to his hovel just as the gaslighter was beginning his rounds, and put out a bucket of oats for his pony. Tomorrow he would sort through his rags and bones, and see what the day would bring.

  Tomorrow he would not have to crawl through the streets on his hands and knees, looking for horseshoe nails between the cobbles, and he would drop off three donkey stones for Mrs Leghorn, because fair exchange is no robbery, and that sheep’s skull would be worth tuppence all on its own.

  STATION JIM’S FINEST HOUR

  His Majesty King Edward was by now much too fat, quite old, and very unhealthy. He smoked a great many cigars, because he had no idea they were bad for him, and was so out of breath that when he went to play golf someone had to carry a chair for him to recover in after he’d played each shot. He knew that he was not going to live very much longer, had become tired and sad, and was only prevented from abdicating by his friends.

  It seemed likely that his German cousin was working himself up to start a war quite soon, the people of Ireland were demanding Home Rule, and the two Houses of Parliament were building up to a huge confrontation. The politicians
were ignoring his advice. It was not a good time to be King, and he had become one of the few members of the upper classes who was definitely not enjoying the Edwardian age.

  Being a king is not as much fun as people imagine it to be, but it has its consolations. One of King Edward’s consolations was that he had his own special Royal Train for getting around the country quickly. It was a beautiful train, with all its brass work sparkling, and inside it was very elegant and comfortable indeed. Even this was not as much use as one might have hoped, because in different parts of the country the railway tracks were laid at different distances apart, so that sometimes you had to have two sets of tracks running side by side. When the King used the train, local people would come out in their best clothes to the stations through which he passed, in order to wave and cheer.

  It so happened that one day the King and Queen were in the Royal Train, on their way to the West Country, when it had to stop and take on coal and water. The King looked out of his window at the waving and smiling people, and thought it was a little awkward to have them all standing there while nothing very much happened. There had been no arrangement for him to dismount here, but he did not wish to appear rude, so, breathlessly, he struggled to his feet with the help of his cane, and went to the door. He let himself out, handed Queen Alexandra down, and turned and doffed his top hat to the locals who had gathered to cheer him. Everyone cheered even more, and then a little girl ran forward, curtsied awkwardly, and presented Queen Alexandra with a large Michaelmas daisy she had plucked from the embankment. It was Sissy Leghorn.

  Her Majesty patted Sissy on the head, and bent down to say thank you, and at that moment the King spotted Station Jim, with his collecting box about his neck, being held firmly by Ginger Leghorn. Otherwise Station Jim would probably have jumped all over his monarch, who suddenly thought that he’d seen the dog before. This small dog with its enormous toothy grin looked very familiar indeed. The King approached Ginger, who was so overwhelmed that he hardly knew what to do, and asked, ‘Is this the dog who went to sea, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes it is, Your Majesty,’ replied Ginger, ‘if it please Your Majesty.’

  ‘It does please me,’ said the King. ‘I was very entertained when I read about it in the paper. Would you be so kind as to follow me into the train for a minute or two? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

  A tall, distinguished gentleman in an immaculately brushed frock coat and top hat, who had been walking slightly behind the King, leaned forward and said, ‘Your Majesty, is this wise?’ and the King replied, ‘At my time of life, Ponsonby, it’s too late for wisdom.’

  So it was that Station Jim was formally introduced to Caesar, the King’s small black terrier. They sniffed each other cautiously, and gauged each other’s mood. Caesar yipped, set his tail into rapid motion, gave a little leap forward, and began a rumbustious play fight that only ended when Ginger and Ponsonby managed to grab them by the collar and pull them apart. ‘I’m very sorry, Your Majesty,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about, my good man,’ replied the King. ‘Who’d want a dog that lacks high spirits?’

  ‘Your dog is really very charming,’ said the Queen, tickling the end of Jim’s nose with the Michaelmas daisy that Sissy had given her. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen one quite like him before. What breed is he?’

  ‘Purebred accidental mongrel, ma’am. He’s an allsorts,’ replied Ginger, and the Queen laughed.

  The King bent down to read the legend on Station Jim’s collection box. ‘“Railway Widows and Orphans Fund”,’ he read, adding a mysterious ‘Hmm’. Then he snapped his fingers and said, ‘Ponsonby, the purse please.’

  ‘Sit!’ said the King, and Station Jim sat, wagging his tail and looking up expectantly, with his head cocked on one side.

  ‘Present arms!’ said His Majesty, holding out his right hand, and Station Jim shifted his weight to the left side and presented his paw.

  And that is how Station Jim, who had never collected a coin bigger than the half-crown that Mr Hamilton McCosh had given him at the beginning of his career, collected a gold sovereign from the sovereign himself, and met Caesar, who, a few months later was to become famous all over the world when he was photographed following his master’s cortège to the funeral at Westminster Abbey.

  For the rest of his life, Ginger wished that there had been someone there to take a picture of His Majesty putting a sovereign into Station Jim’s box, and then solemnly shaking his paw all over again. Instead, it had to remain as a kind of photograph in his memory, and the story was passed down through his children and his children’s children.

  They generally conclude the tale with ‘Station Jim was quite old by then, and Ginger didn’t think that anything better would ever happen to him, so he decided to let him retire and spend the rest of his days as an ordinary family dog’.

  So Station Jim retired, and spent his last years grinning, biting chairs, wearing a galvanised iron bucket on his head, chewing bones with his blunted teeth, or fast asleep with Tildo perched upon him like a tea cosy, just an ordinary family dog.

  When, after a long and happy life, Jim finally died, the local people quickly raised enough money to have him taken to Mr Packitt, the taxidermist. This gentleman, whose workshop smelled pleasantly of formaldehyde and varnish, mounted him in a sealed glass cabinet, wearing his Railway Widows and Orphans Fund collection box. The case was set up in the entrance of the railway station, with another collection box in the base, and there Station Jim still collects money for charity, more than a hundred years later.

  He has one paw raised and a huge grin on his face, and next to him is a small galvanised bucket and a plaster cast of a string of sausages, with the paint fading and flaking off.

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  Copyright © Louis de Bernières 2019

  Illustrations © Emma Chichester Clark 2019

  Louis de Bernières has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Harvill Secker in 2019

  penguin.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473569584

 

 

 
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