A Station In Life Read online

  A Station In Life

  James Smiley

  Digital edition first published in 2013

  by The Electronic Book Company

  www.theelectronicbookcompany.com

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  A New York Times Best-seller listed publisher

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This ebook contains detailed research material, combined with the author's own subjective opinions, which are open to debate. Any offence caused to persons either living or dead is purely unintentional. Factual references may include or present the author's own interpretation, based on research and study.

  Copyright 2013 by James Smiley - All Rights Reserved

  Language: UK English Spellings and Word Usage

  CONTENTS:

  Introduction

  Chapter One — Unshared pride

  Chapter Two — Ominous stirrings

  Chapter Three — Threats from a pig farmer

  Chapter Four — Too distracted to be diverted

  Chapter Five — Reverie on the footbridge, then bang!

  Chapter Six — Woe overload

  Chapter Seven — Peculiar people, at Upshott

  Chapter Eight — Downhill struggle

  Chapter Nine — The handless stranger

  Chapter Ten — First day ends with kissing conundrum

  Chapter Eleven — Second day begins with bully conundrum

  Chapter Twelve — Accident on the viaduct

  Chapter Thirteen — Dream or reality?

  Chapter Fourteen — Big stones and bigwigs

  Chapter Fifteen — Porter hunted by women

  Chapter Sixteen — Third day brings a sad tale

  Chapter Seventeen — Fisticuffs

  Chapter Eighteen — Unrest in the spirit world

  Chapter Nineteen — Perpetual something or other

  Chapter Twenty — Spoiled Bloomers

  Chapter Twenty-One — The walking hog pudding

  Chapter Twenty-Two — The terror of a moorland storm

  Chapter Twenty-Three — Morse code sickness

  Chapter Twenty-Four — A spook comes to stay

  Chapter Twenty-Five — The trouble with progress

  Chapter Twenty-Six — Shop talk

  Chapter Twenty-Seven — Snow on the line

  Chapter Twenty-Eight — Mistletoe bliss

  Chapter Twenty-Nine — A station in life

  This my era, this my age

  Steam, not muscle, turns this page

  And want drives the peasant from the farmland raw

  To the pit, the crucible, and factory floor

  Forge and hardship, street and row

  Rivers of white hot metal flow

  And run through the valleys to set rock hard

  In rail, and junction, and marshalling yard

  Not my era, not my age

  Oil, not steam, turns this page

  When frenzied souls must bide their game

  To toil, by legion, each day the same

  Methinks they’ll say of this land of scars

  When scarce there is room between the cars

  That the steel which once in these valleys shone

  Has been, and now, alas has gone

  Horace Ignatius Jay 1838 - 1911

  Back to contents page

  Introduction

  How can it work? How can fledgling stationmaster, Horace Jay, journey from erotic fantasist to devoted husband in the face of such distraction? Endangered by the charms of a scheming music hall dancer and burdened daily by the wiles and whims of arrogant aristocrats, devious local peasants and artful railway employees, how can this troubled bachelor gain the upper hand and find time to woo the woman he really loves, at the same time keeping his job by concealing from the company his fear of the electric telegraph? Horace’s struggle can lead only to rapture or ruin.

  A quirky romance set in Victorian England, told with authenticity and humour.

  Back to contents page

  Please note: This book was written, produced and edited in the UK where some of the spellings and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English. We know from reviews of professionally edited books, that these differences can sometimes be wrongly interpreted as typographical errors.

  Chapter One — Unshared pride

  Imagine utter silence. Imagine not one aeroplane or motorcar anywhere on Earth. Imagine a world in which the loudest manmade sound is the clatter of a horse-drawn carriage running over cobbles or the strike of a smith’s hammer. Imagine, then, the all pervading stillness of pre Victorian England.

  Now imagine the coming of the railways.

  The year is Eighteen-Seventy-Four and the tentacles of Britain’s railway network continue to grow, most of the earlier lines now convulsing in the demands of rapid progress. This is the story of Horace Ignatius Jay, a fledgling stationmaster on one such railway, the rustic South Exmoor line. Horace begins…

  I reported for duty at Upshott station on a fine Monday morning in June, having arrived by the 5.05am Mail train. The former stationmaster, Mr Mildenhew, had vacated his rooms in the station house to meet me on Platform One. The gentleman insisted upon a formal handing down of the books and keys with a solemnity that I believe was intended to sober me to my new post, but as a time-served railway employee I required no such ceremony. Afterwards, with a glance at his silver pocket-watch, Mr Mildenhew reminded me that I had but half-an-hour to unpack my trunk, don my top-hat and frock-coat, and receive the 6.45am Market Goods train.

  As a final gesture, Mr Mildenhew handed me his company time-piece, declaring that I had inherited it with the job. His stoicism now betrayed by a tear, and no longer able to speak, he shook my hand lingeringly and turned away. This was a melancholic episode which left me somewhat troubled, for in his faltering farewell I detected an unspoken warning.

  I summoned porters to assist me, one to carry my bags to my new quarters, and two others to ship a heavy wooden crate to my new office. This crate raised eyebrows but I said nothing of its contents.

  I found my South Exmoor Railway company uniform both comfortable and discriminating. The proximity of steam locomotives necessitated a strong black twill, and this serviceable livery rendered all the more relief to the company’s vivid crest. The crest had resulted from the railway being capitalised jointly by the local business community and landed aristocracy in the valley and was equitably distilled from the shareholders’ coats of arms, although dominating the motif was the shield of the Lacy family of Upshott. Each variant of the uniform bore the crest embroidered in gold and cherry thread by the mother of a junior member of staff.

  I watched a young horse rider gallop into the station with an artefact known to railwaymen as a ‘token’ or ‘baton’. This was a carved length of wood used to prevent head-on collisions between trains travelling in opposite directions upon a single line railway. The passing of wooden batons to and fro between stations was an early practise which I shall describe later because, used in conjunction with horses, it characterised most aptly this peculiar little railway.

  Having seen to it that the boy’s horse was watered and stabled I took a pinch of snuff and whiled away the following few minutes anticipating the arrival of the Market Goods, at the same time acquainting myself with the layout of the station. Fatigued by my journey to Upshott, I refreshed myself by patrolling the platforms in leisurely style savouring the cool, moist
air of Devonshire with its landscape still glistening with morning dew.

  In my solitude I reflected upon Mr Mildenhew’s reluctance to introduce me to the station staff. Whilst I could appreciate that many of them were indisposed to muster at this time, it would have been gracious of the fellow to at least summon the Booking Clerk and Senior Porter, if not the Switchman. Instead, he had sullenly deposited his trunk in the Parcels office for safe keeping and wandered away to the village, presumably to bid old friends farewell. Attached to his trunk was a company pass to travel by the first passenger train of the day, and so it was that I knew he would return in time for the 7.47am Giddiford Junction train.

  Despite his terse manner, I felt sure that the former stationmaster was really of a kindly disposition. Indeed I saw in him much of myself. Like me he had received little formal education and seized upon the railways to better himself unhampered by society’s class barriers. This relatively new vocation could, given time, reward the determined and self-disciplined equally with the privileged. As in my case, Upshott station had been Mr Mildenhew’s first permanent appointment after having served as a relief master, he for the London Brighton & South Coast railway and I for the London & South Western. Because it was customary for the South Western to supply the South Exmoor with relief stationmasters I was already partially familiar with this beautiful valley and its tortuous, eleven mile line.

  A man of about my own calibre, Mr Mildenhew had been dismissed for incompetence, and it was this aspect of his fate which worried me. You see, it was not a railway ethic to offer an employee a second chance of promotion, even if the employee had declined the first opportunity out of concern for his limitations. Put in plain English, you either seized every promotion offered or you became a dead duck. The result of this admirable precept was that the typical railway employee stopped elevating himself through the ranks only when already out of his depth.

  Of course, a cunning relief stationmaster could defer the knottier problems until the return of the full-time incumbent, but when poor Mr Mildenhew had become the latter he discovered that he simply could not balance the books in the long term. And since the company did not indulge in reappointing over-stretched stationmasters, I knew that he was not leaving Upshott for a less demanding railway position elsewhere. Sadly he was leaving the railway community indefinitely and would probably never hold a salaried position again.

  To my aunt’s wise advice ‘in all circumstances think constructively’ I had long since added ‘and deport one’s self with due bearing’. Mindful of this I squared my shoulders and forbade myself reflection upon Mr Mildenhew’s fate. Also I determined to gather my staff for a formal introduction at the approach of Noon when no train was due.

  From the top of the wooden footbridge connecting platforms One and Two I surveyed the tranquil and reassuring scene that was Upshott station, nestling halfway up the south facing slope of Ondle Valley. The station house had been constructed of stone hewn from nearby Splashgate quarry, the base of its salmon pink walls having yielded to dappled mosses and its grey roof-slates to bright yellow lichens. As if inspired by architectural megalomania, the little square building was top heavy with mock Tudor chimneys reaching impudently for the sky, yet still it remained dwarfed by the tribe of hills surrounding it. For here nature, not man, determined the skyline. The moorland’s natural steeples were founded in emerald, rose through vast expanses of wind-scorched heather, and aspired to granite peaks attracting lonely clouds.

  The creak of timbers beneath my feet and the rising smell of creosote transported me to my childhood. As a joiner my father had made his living building bridges just like this one, until gambling debts overtook him and destroyed his work and his reputation. His fall from grace tore our family apart.

  Upshott station, although serving only a single-line railway, boasted three platforms. Platforms One and Two flanked a crossing loop which allowed opposing trains to cross each other, and platform Three neighboured a short siding for handling parcels and goods. Beyond the goods shed were longer sidings serving a small grain dock, weighbridge, and horsebox shelter. Upshott station had no engine house but located in the forecourt were stables accommodating two shunting horses and two riding horses.

  This peaceful morning there were but two sounds upon the breeze; the station cock crowing from the signalbox steps and the punctuating crunch of a fuel merchant filling his handcart in the coal siding. In the distance I could see the viaduct that carried the railway across the valley. This elegant structure had all but lost its piers to a lake of mist, the streaky eoan light turning it into a giant pink comb in the silver hair of dawn. Soon its lofty arches would deliver a peace wrecker whose plumes of smoke and steam would stain the daylight and broadcast an intrusive clatter of wheels. Soon the dawn chorus would be subsumed by the asthmatic beat of a locomotive engaging the harsh incline through Upford cutting.

  I believe that my father would have been proud to see me standing here, his only surviving son top-hatted upon a railway bridge, master of all below. Sadly his pride was something I could only imagine because when I was a child he had run away to sea to avoid the consequences of his gambling obsession and was now, to the best of my knowledge, somewhere in Australia. The merchant navy may have gained a competent carpenter but I had lost both parents and a formal education, the work of the bailiffs leaving my mother in the workhouse and me in the care of an impecunious maiden aunt.

  The addition of an early ‘down’ goods train on Mondays, this being market day in Blodcaster, gave rise to increased activity around the station. Local farmers and drovers were arriving with their reluctant livestock in tow, warily traversing the level crossing that served the cattle pens.

  The Goods clerk, a fellow by the name of Phillips, emerged to rule over the loading and documentation of these noisome creatures. The plaintive bleating of black-headed sheep and the bellowing of disgruntled longhorn cattle grew to a comical symphony of protest during the boarding operation but the clamour ceased abruptly once this was over, whereupon the hapless creatures awaited in restless silence their next trauma. This would come in the form of some very rough shunting, for the schedule allowed the locomotive crew of the Market goods train just thirty minutes to marshal and entrain the miscellany of wagons strung out along Upshott’s grassy sidings.

  When I was a child my aunt had hired for me the services of a part-time tutor and this was the kind of scene that the tutor would have taken me to witness as part of my education in the modern world. The precious hours I had spent with this inspiring lady each week were the making of me and I reflected with embarrassment that I developed romantic feelings for her. Because my formative years had been shaped by this woman’s love of learning and energetic influence I had come to find all knowledgeable women alluring. Even now, as a scarred cynic, I still regarded women as superior to men.

  I sighed and lowered my head with dismay. My mother having passed away in a workhouse and my aunt likewise in an infirmary, there was no one with whom I could share this proud moment and it diminished me.

  All around me preparations were in hand to dispatch the community’s produce. On platform Three, watercress from Hunt farm was being weighed upon the platform scales before going aboard a rake of ventilated vans. Rabbit carcasses were heaped everywhere, and parcels marked ‘fragile’, containing pottery from Bessam, were being strapped judiciously aboard a flat-truck. On any railway, smell was a prominent feature of mixed goods going to market and Upshott was no exception. Stirred into the station’s unctuous atmosphere was the sweet fragrance of greenhouse fruits, the musty odour of edible mushrooms, the starch waft of local lace and the peppery reek of dipped livestock.

  Elaborate mechanical linkages had been laid underground in the station to allow the Switchman, or Signalman as he was now known, to swing the level crossing gates remotely by turning a hand-wheel inside his box. With all the merchants’ wagons and carts gathered he set the hand-wheel spinning, and with a wild, hesitant swing the frail level
crossing gates clattered across the cobbled road that served the station yard.

  A stout company dray-horse snorted as it struggled to pull a truck loaded with milk churns from the dairy siding to the south siding via the running line, dewy sleepers denying its hooves adhesion. The Horse Superintendent had no time to be sympathetic towards the beast and applied the crop, for looking down upon him impatiently from the signalbox was the occupant awaiting completion of the manoeuvre so that he could set the points and signals in favour of the approaching train.

  A few minutes after the dairy truck had been parked alongside all the other trucks on the weighbridge loop, the Market Goods became audible descending the far side of the valley and the atmosphere changed. To permit the train to enter the station, the signalman pulled one of his many levers and caused a disc signal located on a forty-foot post to ring out like a cracked bell as it changed aspect. Then, as if in response, the distant and elusive rhythm of the approaching steam locomotive increased in urgency and became the beat of a Zulu drum.

  Railways were regarded as a threat by many people; those to whom the tempo of nature was paramount, for they resented the accompanying electric telegraph system that imposed upon them adherence to universal time. Prior to ‘railway time’, itself synchronised daily with Greenwich Mean Time, the further east was an English town or village the more advanced were its clocks. I was proud to be associated with the demise of this confounding state of affairs and watched keenly as my station staff played their part in the nation’s great timetable. Alas, my couch of aloofness was not to last.

  The scent of straw yielded to a stink of sulphur as company locomotive ‘Briggs’ rumbled into Platform One with its whistle shrieking. I descended the footbridge steps and took the Giddiford-Upshott baton from its driver, handing it to Signalman Hales who then hurried back to the signalbox with it. Before moving on I turned and gazed at the small olive green and black engine, noticing that while a South Exmoor locomotive looked very elegant hauling a rake of green and white passenger carriages it made a somewhat less tidy spectacle heading a jumble of privately owned wagons painted in clashing colours and emblazoned with pretentious logotypes.