Off the Rails

by Beryl Kingston

  Nathaniel agreed that it was indeed a blessing and he and Jane exchanged an amused look because they knew it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Nat would become a railway engineer. His classics master thought he ought to go to Oxford and had told them so, when they’d gone to the school to discuss his future. ‘A clever boy,’ he’d said to them. ‘We feel he should sit the Oxford Entrance if you would be agreeable to it.’ They’d agreed at once. What parent would not? It would be such an opportunity and they could well afford it. But they’d decided not to say anything to their neighbours until after the results of the examination were out, just in case he wasn’t as clever as his teachers thought. But it was a wonderful secret to hug to themselves.

  The dinner party meandered amiably on, the latest news was dissected, the price of cloth deplored, the new railway to Whitby praised and the name of Queen Victoria’s latest baby discussed at length. When they parted from one another at a little after eleven o’clock, they were all in very good humour.

  ‘If you have any news of our esteemed friend,’ Jane said as she shook Mr Leeman’s hand, ‘I would be glad to hear it.’ Nathaniel was talking to Mrs Leeman and safely out of earshot.

  ‘If and when I have news, Mrs Cartwright,’ Mr Leeman promised, ‘you shall be the first to hear it. I give you my word. There is much being said, as you can imagine, but nothing to any purpose – as yet.’

  But in the event, when news did come, it was brought by Lizzie Hudson.

  The Railway King was in a temper. ‘Look at that!’ he shouted, throwing his copy of The Times across the breakfast table at his wife. ‘Who gave him leave to pontificate? Eh? Tell me that. Damned man. Carping and criticizing. Who asked him? Read it.’

  Lizzie picked the paper up very gingerly as if it might bite her, looked at it and tried to read it. It was a chilly morning and the fire hadn’t taken at all well so she was cold as well as nervous. If only he wouldn’t shout so.

  ‘Well, read it!’ he shouted. ‘Read it.’ And he leant across the table and squashed his fat finger against the offending passage.

  It was a letter in the correspondence column and, as Lizzie feared, it was all about him and none too complimentary.

  ‘I consider Mr Hudson to be a shrewd man,’ the letter writer said, ‘but for pity’s sake, Sir, call the attention of shareholders to the sway this person is obtaining. Shareholders should be cautious ere they raise a railway autocrat with power greater than the prime minister.’

  ‘Am I to be told how I’m to run my own business now?’ George shouted. ‘Is that the size of it? I never heard the like. God damn it, how do they think I can run a railway if I’m not to have any power? That’s how the system works. Power and brass. That’s the size of it. Power and brass. Which I’ve earned by t’sweat of my brow, dammit. And now this jumped-up pip-squeak comes along and thinks he can tell me how I’m to spend my own money. He’d not do such a thing if I were gentry. Oh no! It’d be yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, if I were gentry. I’ve said this afore, Lizzie, but I’ll say it again, I’ve a damned good mind to buy myself a country estate. That’d show ’em. Summat grand and costly. See how they’d treat me then. What do ’ee think of that? Eh? Shall I buy an estate?’

  Lizzie didn’t know what to think – or what to say. ‘If you think so, George,’ she quavered.

  ‘I do think so,’ he said. ‘Should ha’ done it years ago. I’ll get the opening of the Newcastle and Darlington out the way and arrange the dinner in Gateshead and then I’ll set about it.’

  ‘He means it,’ Lizzie said to Jane two days later when they were taking tea in Jane’s pretty parlour. ‘And how we shall mek out in some great house stuck out in the middle of the country I do not know, away from all our friends. I shall never see you and Richard ever again, which I couldn’t abide, I mean for to say after all these years. And what’s to become of Monkgate? Tell me that. We can hardly live in two places at once, now can we?’

  ‘Plenty do,’ Jane told her. ‘The gentry have houses all over the place, country estates and town houses in London and all sorts.’

  ‘But we’re not gentry,’ Lizzie said. ‘I mean for to say, gentry are born and bred. You’ve only to listen to ’em to know that. You should hear young Georgie these days. He speaks so grand I can hardly understand what he’s saying half the time what with stuff about the beaks, which is what they call the masters at Harrow seemingly, and capping and shells and yearlings and I don’t know what all. Not that I’m saying he’s gentry, mind, I’d not presume to that, but he sounds like gentry, there’s no gainsaying it, what I suppose I should be glad on. George says ’tis first rate and ’twill stand him in good stead when he gets to Oxford, where he’s a-going apparently. He should know, shouldn’t he, mixing with the gentry an’ all – George, I mean not Georgie, although I suppose he’s mixing with the gentry in Harrow, because they all seem to be gentry there. Some of ’em are Honourables. What I can hardly believe, my son hob-nobbing with Honourables. I mean for to say.’ Then she paused to gather her thoughts. ‘Oh, what if I have to leave York, Jane? I wouldn’t see you or Richard ever again.’ And she began to cry, the tears running down her long nose and into her mouth.

  ‘Try not to fret, my dear,’ Jane said, full of sympathy for her poor weeping friend. ‘It might not come to it. He might change his mind.’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie said, resignedly, wiping her eyes, ‘he won’t. Once he’s set his heart on a thing he never changes.’

  She was right. He bought his first country seat that summer, just after the Newcastle and Darlington Railway had been officially opened. It was a very large estate called Octon and he bought it for £100,000 from the Duke of Devonshire, no less, along with a considerable piece of land at Baldersby near Thirsk.

  ‘Now let ’em criticize me,’ he said to Lizzie when he’d shown her round his enormous building. ‘This is the style, eh? That’ll show ’em.’

  ‘What will happen to Monkgate?’ Lizzie ventured. ‘Shall we go on living there?’

  ‘We’ll live there for the time being,’ he said, ‘until this is signed and sealed. Then I shall put it on t’market an’ this’ll be our home and we’ll live here. This is just the place for us. Plenty of room. We can hold some rare old parties here. Think on it, Lizzie.’

  But Lizzie was thinking of her dear brother Richard and her dear friend Jane and wondering how she would ever get to see them when she had to live in this awful great place, stuck out in the country.

  Had she known it, Jane was ‘out in the country’ that afternoon too. She’d had a letter from Milly that morning that had sent her rushing to catch the first train to Foster Manor. ‘Dearest Ma,’ the letter had said, ‘I feel so sick and ill I hardly know which way to turn. You would not believe how ill I feel and Felix is worried silly and told me to write to you. Please, dearest Ma, come and see me. I long to see you. Please come as soon as ever you can. Your miserable and loving daughter, Milly.’

  It seemed like a very long train journey and Jane worried through every mile of it. But when she got to Foster Manor and was ushered up to her daughter’s bedroom she only had to ask two questions and she relaxed at once, for Milly wasn’t in a fever or covered in spots or blisters or anything untoward like that. She was nauseous because she was carrying again.

  ‘Have ’ee been very sick?’ Jane asked, sitting herself beside the bed and holding Milly’s hand.

  ‘Endlessly,’ Milly sighed. ‘On and on. You’d never believe it. It starts as soon as I sit up. I can’t understand it. I wasn’t like this with the other two.’

  ‘Um,’ Jane said. ‘It does happen sometimes. How far gone are you?’

  ‘Nearly three months,’ Milly told her. ‘Mrs Hardcastle said everything was coming along well but I don’t see how it can be when I’m feeling so ill. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘’Twill pass when you’ve reached the third month,’ Jane promised. ‘And I’ll come in and see you every day until it does.’

  In fact it took
another twenty days and Jane travelled to Foster Manor on every one of them. When Lizzie’s unhappy letter arrived to tell her she had moved to ‘this awful great house where I shan’t see anyone and what will become of me here I cannot think and now he is going to put Monkgate on the market, what I can’t see the necessity for, and he is so cross on account of this other railway’, it was nearly a week before she could find time to answer it. And then she couldn’t think what to say because it was such a rambling letter she didn’t understand a lot of it.

  It wasn’t until Nathaniel came back from Durham that she found out about ‘this other railway’.

  ‘There is a new railway being proposed,’ he told her. ‘The company was formed in May. It’s going to be called the London and York Railway because it’s to run from London to York. Mr Hudson is furious about it.’

  ‘But we’ve already got a railway from London to York,’ Jane said.

  ‘Exactly so,’ Nathaniel said, ‘which is why Mr Hudson is so annoyed. ‘This is another one, taking another route. It will run through St Neots, Peterborough, Lincoln, Grantham and Doncaster and it will be a great deal quicker than Mr Hudson’s route on account of it being more direct. The MP for Doncaster is backing it, so I believe, and another MP called Astell.’

  ‘Competition,’ Mary Jerdon observed, grinning at him. ‘Now there’ll be ructions.’

  ‘They’ve started already, Nanna,’ he told her. ‘According to Mr Leeman, he’s asking the Midland to put up two and a half million pounds to build more lines.’

  ‘He spends money like water,’ Mary Jerdon sniffed. ‘There’ll be ructions.’

  The ruction, when it came, was so violent and so public that it sent shockwaves all along the route of the proposed new line from York to London.

  It happened on a cold January day and in the middle of Derby railway station and its onset was almost accidental. The great George Hudson had just stepped ponderously down from one of his fine, new, first-class carriages, moving carefully because his gout was playing him up, when he found himself precipitously face to face with his arch enemy, Mr Edmund Beckett Denison, MP for Doncaster and co-founder of the London and York Railway. The two men eyed one another for several seconds and then Mr Denison greeted his rival with apparent courtesy but in tones that indicated unmistakable disdain and hostility. ‘Your servant, Mr Hudson, sir.’

  ‘Servant be dammed,’ George said, instantly in a fury. ‘Out of my way, sir. I have no truck with men who raise capital by foul means.’

  ‘Have a care, sir,’ Mr Denison warned. ‘I’m not a man for foul means, not for any of my endeavours, which is more than can be said for some. You would be well advised to watch your tongue, sir.’

  ‘You watch your own tongue, sir,’ George roared. ‘God damn it, I won’t be spoken to in that way in my own station.’

  They were toe to toe and bristling like fighting cocks and their furious voices and hot faces were attracting a crowd.

  ‘You’ll be spoken to in any way I choose,’ Mr Denison shouted.

  ‘I will not, God damn it,’ George shouted back. ‘Foul means I said and foul means I meant. I’m a man as speaks my mind.’

  Mr Denison drew himself up to his full height, which was considerably taller than his opponent. ‘Have a care, Hudson,’ he said, playing to his gathering audience. ‘I’ve warned you before now to restrain your language. You are a blackguard, sir, and I have done with you. Go, go away!’

  The attentive eyes switched from the MP to George Hudson, avid to see what he would do next and as he looked back at them he knew he’d been outmanoeuvred and could be made to look a fool if he wasn’t careful. He turned on his heel and limped off the platform with as much sang froid as he could manage, given his gout and his temper. He was seething with anger but it was the only thing he could do. If he’d stayed where he was there would have been fisticuffs.

  ‘It was an abomination,’ he said to Lizzie when he finally got home. ‘To be shouted at on my own railway. God damn it. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I’m landed gentry now, Lizzie. Landed gentry. I’ve earned a little respect. He’d no right to treat me so.’

  ‘Nasty jealousy,’ Lizzie tried to soothe. ‘That’s what it is, George. Nasty jealousy. Take no notice.’

  But he wasn’t soothed in the least and went on raging for nearly half an hour, vowing to be revenged. ‘Summat must be done,’ he roared over and over again. ‘I’ll not stand for it.’

  Mr Leeman thought the story was all very amusing and showed just what sort of character Mr Hudson was at heart. He told Jane all about it the next time they met and the two of them stood on the pavement in the winter sunshine and enjoyed themselves at Mr Hudson’s expense.

  ‘It don’t surprise me in the least,’ Jane said. ‘He were allus a bully.’

  ‘It will be interesting to see what happens next,’ Mr Leeman said.

  ‘It will indeed,’ Jane said.

  What happened next was that her third grandchild was born. She arrived at Easter when the daffodils were in bud and she was called Sarah Jane after her aunt and her grandmother, to her grandmother’s delight. Because the children were on school holiday the entire Cartwright family took the train to Foster Manor to see her as soon as they knew she was born. Mary was most impressed with her and thought she was very pretty. ‘Like a little doll,’ she said, gazing at her, enraptured. And when she was asked to stand godmother to the baby she was so pleased she was speechless for a full thirty seconds, which her father teased her was a thing unheard of.

  Bully-boy Hudson can do what he likes, Jane thought, watching her, but he’ll never do anything to equal this.

  What he did raised eyebrows wherever his name was mentioned. That summer he bought another two country seats, Newby Park, which stood by the River Swale and was next door to his estate at Baldersby and instantly became his principal residence, and after that, Londesborough Park, which stood in 12,000 acres of prime land in East Yorkshire and cost him half a million pounds.

  ‘The extravagance!’ people said to one another. ‘He’s got one country estate. What does he want with three?’ The general opinion was that he was ‘flashing his money about and showing off’.

  ‘It makes you wonder what on earth he’ll do next,’ Jane said to Mr Leeman at her next dinner party.

  ‘It does indeed,’ Mr Leeman said.

  According to an announcement in The Times, what he did next was to put himself up for election as the Member of Parliament for Sunderland.

  ‘Although why he should want to be an MP is beyond me,’ Mary Jerdon said, as she and Jane and Nathaniel and the children sat at dinner that evening. ‘There’s never any end to him. He’ll go too far one of these days, you mark my words.’

  ‘He makes me think of the fisherman’s wife,’ Jane told her.

  ‘Which fisherman was that?’ Nathaniel wanted to know.

  ‘The one in the fairy story,’ Jane explained. And as he looked puzzled, she retold the tale. ‘She and her husband were so poor they only had a hovel to live in and then one day her husband caught a magic flounder that told him it could grant wishes. He was so overawed by it that he simply threw it back but when his wife heard what he’d done she was furious with him for being so foolish. “Go back,” she said, “and tell it you want to live in a pretty cottage.” So he went back and called to the fish and told it what his wife wanted. “Go home,” the fish said, “she is in the cottage already.” And she was. That should have been the end of the story but it wasn’t because the fisherman’s wife was greedy and no sooner had she had one wish granted than she thought of another even better. First it was to live in a castle, then she wanted to be king, then emperor, then pope. And the fish granted her every wish one after the other until she decided that she wanted to be the lord of the universe. And that time, when the fisherman told the flounder what she wanted it said …’ And she paused and looked at her children, who’d been following the story and grinning at one another because they knew what
was coming.

  ‘Go home,’ they chorused. ‘She is back in the hovel already.’

  Their father and their grandmother applauded them.

  ‘A very moral story,’ Nathaniel said, smiling at Jane. ‘You are right. It could be applicable.’

  Amen to that, Jane thought. But for the moment she kept the thought to herself. If he was changing his mind about his hero, she must let him do it in his own time and his own way. But you wait, Mr Fisherman’s Wife, she thought, I’ll be even with you yet.

  25

  MR GEORGE HUDSON, parliamentary candidate for the Sunderland constituency, stood on the balcony of the George Inn in the high street with Lizzie and his children ranged obediently behind him and looked down at the crowd which had gathered below him. They weren’t a particularly friendly crowd – in fact some of them looked downright surly – but he meant to win them over and the first thing he intended to do was to scotch some of the rumours his opponent was spreading about him.

  ‘I am charged,’ he said, in his boldest voice, ‘with being a railway speculator and in favour of the Corn Laws.’ Then he paused to give them a chance to say things to one another, which they did. ‘To both,’ he went on, smiling at them, ‘I plead in some measure guilty and I’ll tell you why. It is all very well to talk about the poor—’ Another pause ‘—but I like to act for the poor. My opponents preach about the poor, while I give employment to the poor.’ Another pause during which there was a lot of murmuring. ‘Without which many of them might starve. Away then with the charge of being a railway speculator! If work a-plenty and food a-plenty flow from the railways to enrich the poor, as they do, then I have been a benefactor to my country.’ This time the pause was filled by a slight cheer. ‘Is it a charge against me that I have made a fortune?’ he went on. ‘Is it a bad thing to earn good money and spend it on your fellow men?’ And he looked round at them all and waited to hear what they would say next.