Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  I had pumped up the tyres using a foot-pump, which took quite some time, giving us ample opportunity to go over what had just happened with the gypsies, as well as reviewing the likely guilt or innocence of Noname, of Gerald Taylor and of Professor Jenkins. I had long since withdrawn my claim that Nancy might have been romantically involved with Maisie and was in some way involved with her death. It was a ridiculous suggestion, made only to counter Miriam’s equally ridiculous suggestion that Gerald’s sister had been involved in Maisie’s murder, on the basis that she was a bit of a shrew. For his part, Morley was beginning to come round to the idea that Gerald Taylor may have murdered his wife, and was absolutely adamant that Noname was innocent.

  ‘I have given my word,’ he said, ‘that I will do everything to assist the poor gypsies.’

  ‘Well, I do wish you wouldn’t be giving your word here, there and everywhere, Father, and making these ridiculous promises that you can’t possibly keep,’ said Miriam. ‘I really can’t see what you can do to help.’ Her borrowed gypsy clothes rather suited her, I have to say. She looked and sounded like a fearsome Kalderash – a gypsy played by Garbo in a film by Cecil B. DeMille. I, meanwhile, was still dressed in the ridiculous squire’s outfit that Morley had procured for me in Appleby’s gentleman’s outfitters. ‘I do feel very sorry for the poor man, but the police clearly want us out of the county, and I personally would be very happy to go. This entire trip’s been nothing but an absolute disaster from the moment we left London.’ Or in my case, from before we left London.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t see what we can do either,’ I added.

  Morley wasn’t listening. He had produced the paper bag of boiled eggs from the Tufton Arms, and a flask of tea.

  ‘Egg?’ he offered me.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Miriam?’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’

  He peeled a boiled egg slowly and carefully, as if unwrapping a precious jewel.

  ‘Ab ovo usque ad mala,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t see that Horace can help on this occasion,’ said Miriam, peeling her own egg.

  ‘From the egg to the apple,’ said Morley.

  ‘Yes?’ said Miriam. ‘And?’

  ‘From the beginning to the end.’

  ‘Yes?’ repeated Miriam.

  ‘I mean, I think we need to think more like archaeologists,’ said Morley. ‘Like Jenkins. We need to crack through the layers, as it were, the outer surface, in order to get at the truth buried beneath.’

  ‘Mmm?’ said Miriam, through a mouthful of boiled egg.

  ‘We need to go back to where this all began,’ said Morley, holding a shiny white egg aloft.

  ‘Back to the site of the crash?’ I said.

  ‘Precisely!’ said Morley, popping the egg entire into his mouth. ‘Shall we?’

  We parked at Appleby Station. It was unsettling to be back at the site of so much recent sorrow and pain – like picking at an unhealed wound. The station itself was locked and there were signs everywhere saying that the line was closed until further notice and indeed that the entire area was closed to the public. It gave the place a rather forbidding aspect. But this was no deterrent to Morley, of course, or indeed presumably to anyone else: we simply wandered round the station and onto the platform. It had turned into a bleak afternoon, with clouds forming again, and everywhere was wet and slippery from the earlier showers. I found myself growing more and more anxious with every step and Miriam seemed equally uncomfortable. Morley seemed to have no plan other than to go back to the beginning, which was not a place either of us was particularly interested in visiting.

  The platform was being used temporarily to store big black sleepers and all sorts of track-laying tools and equipment, vast and gnarly, but set out neatly, like a giant’s torture equipment. In the distance down to the right there were gangs of men working away on the line, dozens of them shovelling ballast, and laying iron, and doing whatever else it takes to remake a railway line. But instead of going down towards the scene of this activity, towards the crash site – which is why I thought we were there – Morley started making his way in the other direction, up the line towards the signal box.

  ‘Father!’ called Miriam. ‘Father? You can’t just … Shouldn’t we—’

  ‘Shall we leave him?’ I said. ‘He’ll probably just wander back in a minute.’

  ‘Have you met my father?’ asked Miriam. ‘He doesn’t wander back. He wanders off.’

  She was right. He didn’t wander back. He walked along the line towards the signal box and bent over to scoop up a handful of dirt, which he carefully pocketed.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I said.

  ‘Goodness only knows,’ said Miriam. ‘Panning for gold?’

  He then continued walking further into the distance and up the steep steps into the signal box. Before we could call out again he had disappeared inside.

  By the time we got up there Morley had already made himself at home and was happily chatting away and drinking a cup of tea. This was surprising – though it would probably have been more surprising if he was alone. He was not alone, because there in the signal box – inevitably – was the signalman, George Wilson, the man we had last met in the bar of the Tufton Arms on the evening of the crash and who had been less than impressed with Morley’s analysis of his moral and ethical dilemmas. He and Morley seemed to have overcome their differences and were deep in conversation.

  ‘You couldn’t have chosen better,’ George was saying. ‘She’s the finest line in England.’

  ‘Indeed she is, indeed she is. There are few journeys to rival it. Ah!’ said Morley, as Miriam and I entered. ‘This is my daughter, Miriam, and my assistant, Stephen Sefton. You remember George, of course? Mr Wilson? I was just telling George here about my book on the Settle–Carlisle line.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised it was him that had written it. It’s a classic,’ said George. ‘I’ve had it out the library two or three times m’self. I think they’ve more than one copy, so many of the lads want to read it.’

  (Morley’s fame often preceded him and made smooth his path, though at other times it caused unnecessary obstacles and complications. I never envied him his fame. ‘Fame,’ he writes, in Close-Up with Swanton Morley (1935), one of his endless books of rambling asides and observations and obiter dicta, ‘is neither a blessing nor a curse. It is simply a means of travel. In the future everyone will be famous, and all of us will be everywhere.’ I had no idea what he meant then, but I have a better idea now.)

  ‘You’ll have a drop of the chatter watter?’ asked George. Miriam looked at me. I looked at her. George looked at the teapot on the little stove in the corner.

  ‘Ah!’ said Miriam. ‘Tea. No, thank you.’ I also declined. ‘You’ve got it set up here very nicely,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Yes, I was just saying to George,’ said Morley, ‘that this is an exceptionally fine example of Midland Railway architecture.’

  ‘Home from home,’ said George.

  ‘I’m considering in the second edition of the book including much more detail about the buildings along the line,’ said Morley.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Miriam.

  ‘There’s plenty of them anyway,’ said George. ‘Keep you busy. As well as the stations and t’signal boxes you’ve got all the buildings along line where the gangers and t’platelayers put up.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Morley.

  ‘There’s the workman’s coach on the siding down at Horton, and then there’s the cabins the gangs sleep in during the summer – Tom’s cabin, Ted’s cabin. They’re basic all right, but some of them are done up nice, with the old plum and straw paint and all. Just a stove and a few benches inside, but they does the job.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Morley. ‘Did you, Sefton?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Folk don’t realise how much it takes to keep t’railway running, sir. There’s the slip and drainage gang, and the relaying gan
g, and the ballast gang – we’ve dozens and dozens of lads on this stretch alone.’

  ‘So you certainly don’t get lonely up here then?’ said Morley.

  ‘No, not at all, sir. There’s plenty to keep me occupied. Fourteen hours a day I’m here most days.’

  ‘Well,’ said Morley. ‘It’s a very fine workplace, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I wonder if I might take a few notes, if I may, while I’m here.’

  ‘I’d be honoured, sir. There’s no trains running, but I wanted to be here anyway, just in case, like.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Morley. ‘Once a signalman, always a signalman.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. A man has to take pride in his work, or what’s he got? And where else would I be? My wife wouldn’t want me under her feet all day.’

  ‘Dora?’

  ‘You’ve met my wife, sir?’

  Morley nodded. ‘Yes, we certainly have. We were lucky enough to sample some of her hospitality over at the archaeological dig at Shap.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’

  ‘Dora’s Station Café and Outside Catering – Catering For All Tastes. Quite a little business she’s got herself.’

  ‘She is a remarkable woman,’ said George.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Morley, ‘quite so.’

  ‘And a marvellous mother to our boys.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Morley. ‘Glad to hear it. A woman who can combine her role as a mother while running her own café – quite an example, eh, Miriam?’

  ‘Indeed, Father.’

  ‘Are you married yourself?’ asked George, rather hesitantly, of Miriam.

  ‘No,’ said Miriam.

  ‘I just wondered,’ he said. ‘Because you’re …’ He nodded towards Miriam’s gypsy get-up. ‘Are you a … travelling woman?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Miriam. ‘No, no, no. I’m just borrowing these clothes from a friend.’

  ‘Ah,’ said George. ‘Only my wife’s some gypsy blood in her, you see.’

  ‘Dora?’ said Morley.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morley. ‘Is that common, round here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said George. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Morley. ‘I wonder if …’ He started smoothing out his moustache – a sure sign that he was onto something. ‘I wonder …’

  ‘Father?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were just wondering about something?’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes. I was just wondering what … have you got here then, Mr Wilson, your lever system?’

  ‘This?’ said George, indicating the long row of important-looking signal levers, which stretched the width of the box and which stood tall and straight beneath an even more important-looking row of instruments, which included a bell, buttons, a telegraph and a telephone.

  ‘What is it,’ asked Morley, ‘a twenty-lever Midland tumbler?’

  ‘Twenty-two,’ said George. ‘There was levers added for the creamery.’

  ‘It is a beautiful frame,’ said Morley.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And what’s that distinctive smell in here?’ asked Morley.

  We all sniffed. I couldn’t smell anything.

  ‘It’s probably the polish, sir,’ said George. ‘We have to keep the levers perfect, you see. You only ever touch ’em with a cloth.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Morley. ‘Yes, yes, it probably is the smell of polish … And just remind me, how does the system work? I must add some more details for the next edition of the book.’

  ‘It’d take me more than a while to explain it, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure it would, but Miriam and Sefton here would doubtless be very interested to know the basic working of the system, wouldn’t you?’

  Miriam was too busy coughing to reply. She’d clearly caught a chill, and anyway I doubted she was very much interested in the basic working of the lever system in the Appleby signal box.

  ‘Here, miss,’ said George, indicating that Miriam should sit herself down in the armchair by the stove.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Do go on, though,’ said Morley, who was not always entirely attentive to the needs of others. I was ready to go on myself.

  ‘I might just take a walk here, Mr Morley,’ I said, ‘warm myself up a bit.’ My clothes were still damp from earlier.

  ‘You’d want to hear how the system works though, Sefton, wouldn’t you?’ This was not a question. It was an instruction. ‘It’s basically a block working system, isn’t it?’ Morley spoke to George, and my eyes began to glaze over.

  ‘That’s right, sir. The line’s divided into sections or blocks, and when a man has a train he wants to despatch to a section—’

  ‘A signalman, you mean?’ said Morley.

  ‘That’s right, he requests from the next signalman whether he can send her forward.’

  ‘And he requests it how?’

  ‘Using the Morse tapper here’ – he indicated his Morse tapper – ‘which rings a bell code in the next signal box.’

  ‘So you’re sending codes both ways up and down the line, is that right?’

  ‘That’s it, in summary, sir.’

  ‘And what would the code be for all-clear, say, to allow a passenger train through to the next section?’

  ‘That’s a 3pause1, sir.’

  ‘And that must have been the signal you sent on that fateful day last week then, before you saw the gypsy children?’

  I began to see why Morley was so interested in the working of the system.

  ‘That’s right, sir. I’ve been over it all a thousand times in my mind.’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘I’m sure I did the right thing, at the time.’

  ‘I’m sure you did.’

  ‘I’ve not been sleeping right, actually,’ said George. ‘For a railwayman, it’s the baddest thing that could have happen’t.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Morley.

  ‘And a tragedy for the town, like. All the people who are employed on the railway. The goods office, porters, maintenance. Everyone’s been affected. I feel bad for them.’

  ‘Not to mention the family of the little girl who died,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ said George.

  ‘You must feel very guilty,’ I said.

  Morley looked at me harshly. He was never a man to rush to condemnation.

  ‘So just tell me exactly what happened,’ said Morley. ‘On the day of the crash.’

  ‘I saw the children—’ said George.

  ‘The gypsy children?’

  ‘That’s right, on my last check and so I rang once to call attention, and then I put the near signal to danger. I didn’t have time to change the distant signal. I was acting on pure instinct, sir. As a railwayman. I knew I had to change the points, or the children would …’

  ‘Yes, that would have been a terrible tragedy, of course. And would you have had gypsy children on the line at other times?’

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware, sir.’

  ‘Because you’d have reported it, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And have you had trouble with the gypsies generally?’

  ‘Folk in t’town complain around the time of the fair, of course, but I haven’t got a bad word to say against them myself.’

  ‘No,’ said Morley. ‘I suppose, with Dora—’

  ‘That’s right. I haven’t had no troubles with them. Sometimes they come and take a few tatties or what have you that’s been spilled when the wagons are loading, or they come selling rabbits, but apart from that, no.’

  ‘Never on the line?’

  ‘I’ve had lads in the summer, during the fair, who get up to mischief, trying to go swimming in the tank house by the stables, but never on the line, no.’

  ‘And when do you think the track will be open again?’

  ‘It’ll be a day or t
wo yet.’

  ‘I think I’ll just go out for a smoke,’ I said.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Morley. Apparently I had heard everything he wanted me to hear, and so I left Morley quizzing George more about signalling practices, and Miriam warming herself by the stove.

  ‘You just mind the steps there,’ called George, as I opened the door of the signal box. ‘They’re more steep than you think.’

  It was a perilous descent.

  I wandered down to the scene of the crash.

  It was a mistake.

  The workmen had lit lamps against the early evening gloom and they continued to work with their shovels and lifting equipment, heaving and heaving and dragging, like miners of the surface of the earth. A man who I assumed was the gangmaster – a man dressed in a grubby Midland Railways uniform, with a neckerchief – called out at me as I approached.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I was in the crash,’ I said. ‘I just …’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Closed to the public. This is a dangerous area. You need to move on.’

  I stood and looked at the spot where our carriage had lain, and beyond that towards the field where Lucy had died. Everything had been cleared and everything was empty, but memories of the crash came back sharp and unexpected, like stabbing pains, or the sudden sound of incoming shells overhead in Spain: the jerking and shuddering of the carriage; the look of pain and fear on Lucy’s mother’s face, and the sound of the baby crying, and Lucy somehow not there; and the walking wounded dragging themselves away. I was about to walk away myself when I thought I saw something in the embankment, something familiar, something glittering in the workmen’s lights. It seemed to be calling out to me, beckoning me towards it. I walked straight past the gangmaster.