A Station In Life (11 page)

The clerk sauntered over
and asked what was wrong.  I introduced him to my mocker, intending our strange
conversation to be witnessed, then stood back.  Alas, Jack did nothing.  He
just stared.  And very soon he was as perplexed as I by the cove, whose next
remark was particularly impertinent.

“Good heavens, sir, that
will not do.”

The blighter, audacious
enough to ridicule a railway timepiece, was aiming a long, bony finger at my
fobwatch.  This robbed me of my composure and I raised my stick to him, a prod
from its studded silver cap being likely to hurt, but was now unaccountably
afflicted with a peculiar sensation; a growing distance from reality.  With
Rose’s note forming a damp patch in my trousers I was placed at a further
disadvantage and compelled to retire, inviting Jack to fight my corner for me. 
It took only a wink for him to realise that, for once, I expected no tact when
dealing with the public.

It was now that I began
to fear for my sanity.

“E’s right, sir,” Jack
suddenly agreed with the objectionable stranger.  “Watches and clocks don’t
record the passage of time.”

“At last, someone who
comprehends!” the stranger reciprocated stridently.

I knew of my Booking
clerk’s fondness for second-hand science books but, until now, had assumed him
incapable of understanding them.  The stranger nodded towards Jack
encouragingly and presumed upon him to explain:

“You take anemometers,
Mr Jay,” the clerk began.  “They measure the wind by using paddles that get
turned around by it.”

“I say, Mr Wheeler, you
do take my meaning well,” the stranger put in, leaving me to wonder how he knew
my Booking clerk’s name.

Continuing the science
lesson in Jack’s stead, the stranger added:

“It is the same with
electricity, sir.  A galvanometer measures electricity by detecting the current
flowing through it, does it not?  But what, I ask you, drives the hands of a
clock?  Certainly not time.  It is a fact, is it not, that a clock has to feign
measurement because its inventor could find nothing to harness.  And the cause
of the inventor’s plight, if you have not guessed, is that time does not
exist.”

With characteristic verve,
Jack added his weight to this spurious assertion.

“It’s true, Mr Jay. 
Clocks only tell you that a spring is unwinding.”

The stranger held his
handless fobwatch aloft and sneered.

“Quod erat
demonstrandum.”

I wondered if I was in
the company of an asylum escapee, and attempted to study the imbecile’s face so
that I could report him to the Blodcaster constable, but all I could see of him
was his silhouette.  No matter what angle I adopted to observe the fellow my
attempt was thwarted by poor light, twisted shadows, or the accumulation of
rain upon my eye-lashes.  My patience expired.

“Scientific twaddle makes
me dizzy,” I halted my tormentors and drew the stranger’s attention to the
long-case clock upon the platform.  “If you wish to know the time, sir, there
it is.”

When I turned back to
bid the stranger good day I found Wheeler standing alone.

“Pooh, now the bounder
withdraws without so much as a by your leave,” I erupted.  “Perhaps the squire
is right about the railway bringing unwanted strangers into the valley.  And I
will thank you to show better style in future, Mr Wheeler.  I do not expect my
staff to drag me into ridiculous conversations about clock springs with every
Tom, Dick and Harry who passes this way.”

“What ’ave I done now,
Mr Jay?” Jack rebounded defensively across my desk.  “You were talking to
yourself so I came in to see if you were alright.”

Rose’s note was in my
hand again.  Being dry, I hid it in a drawer.

The confusion caused by
my bizarre dream took a while to overcome, mainly because I did not realise
that I had fallen asleep.  It was the ethereal pelting of another cloudburst
upon the platform canopy masking the clatter of the evening Giddiford train
coasting into the station, and the sudden trembling of the floor which finally
aroused me to my surroundings.  I stepped outside to the station’s creamy orb
of gaslight and greeted the little carriages taking refuge from the charcoal
landscape beyond, and noted from the station clock that the train was running
two minutes late at 9.37pm.

Something was amiss. 
The driver sounded the engine’s whistle lengthily, piercing the night with its
shriek to attract attention, and my eyes were drawn to the absence of those
darting, yellow squares that had come to escort all night trains since the
introduction of carriage lighting.

The engine hissed
through the gloom and came to a stubborn halt, revealing the full extent of the
irregularity.  The First class passengers were in revolt over their
compartments having no artificial light while, expecting no such luxury, the
Third class passengers jeered them for their spiritless whingeing over such a
minor taste of deprivation.  Someone, it appeared, had fitted pot-lamps in the
First and Second class carriages but not lit them.

It was time for Diggory
to go climbing again.  The pot-lamps would have to be removed from their
rooftop receptacles, passed down to Snimple to be filled with oil, their wicks lit,
then returned to their receptacles.  With rain bouncing off every surface I
could see that the higher fare payers would get wet where they sat while this
job was in progress, for pot-lamp receptacles were simply large, round holes in
the carriage roofs.

I donned my cape and set
off across the yard to acquire from Stores a set of pot-lamp plugs to fill
these holes while the lamps were being filled.  This was when I learned that
Tom Turner’s sleepy spells were followed by fits of stubbornness.  The Stores
clerk had released a drum of lamp oil but was refusing to issue plugs because,
he complained, they were not readily accessible.

Diggory tried to service
the pot-lamps in situ but found that on SER stock it simply could not be done. 
During his gallant attempt atop a First class carriage I was horrified to see
him crouching over a roof receptacle shrugging off both torrent and tirade
while a fold in his cape channelled water into the lap of a lady sitting
below.  Imagine my pride, however, when he redeemed himself by acquiring a
towel and a foot-warmer to comfort the soggy passenger, first filling the
foot-warmer with hot water from the locomotive.  Prompted by this scene of
bedlam I returned to Mr Turner post haste.

“I am the stationmaster
here, Mr Turner,” I beseeched him, shouting against the storm thundering upon
his hut roof, “and all I require are three pot-lamp plugs so that each carriage
may be serviced in turn without passengers getting wet.”

“Someone was supposed to
light the lamps in Blodcaster,” he rumbled with glazed indifference.  “I’ll not
turn my shed upside down to accommodate other people’s sleepiness.  That’s it
and all about it.”

Mr Turner may have been
grappling with his own sleepiness but I could not allow his sluggish tenor to take
precedence over passenger comfort so I rounded upon him squarely.

“Pot-lamp plugs are
company property and the company needs them,” I drubbed him.  “It is not within
your remit to decide when and to whom they shall be issued.  Now fetch me three
plugs at once.”

To my astonishment the
fellow ignored me.  His face seemed to lose all its coarse features and turn
blank.  Unnerved by this I resorted to a new approach.

“Tom, if you will not do
this for me then at least do it for young Master Smith,” I pleaded softly.

Still nothing.  I tried
yet another approach.

“If your indifference to
colleagues stands in the way then I suggest that you do it for the sake of your
continued employment here,” I menaced him.

This threat finally
galvanised Mr Turner into action.  His bushy black eyebrows reappeared and converged
miserably as he strode away.  A while later, when he did not return with the
plugs, I came to realise that I had been left to continue our conversation
alone.  Concluding that the clerk was ill, I resolved to have him submitted for
a medical examination at some convent juncture.  Of the first moment was the
Giddiford train and its rebelling passengers, so I hasted back to the platform
to promulgate an apology.

With tempers so frayed
my apology rang hollow, but I was spared a great deal of invective by the dry
passengers who, God bless them, deflected much of the wet ones’ anger by making
sport of them.  While bowing contritely to someone I noticed Humphrey having a
word with Mr Turner outside the Stores hut, after which they both went inside. 
Although puzzled by this development I could not disengage to investigate because
of Diggory’s precarious situation.

Affairs were verging
upon riotous when Humphrey, smiling like a lucky tramp, returned from the
Stores hut pulling a baggage trolley.  Aboard the trolley were three new
pot-lamps.  The porter approached me to explain.

“I reckons pot-lamps
themselves be as good as blanking plugs,” he chirped.

The solution being
obvious, I was ashamed of myself for not being the first to think of it.  I
took the fellow to one side discreetly to thank him.

“Oh, don’t thank I,” he
broadcast loudly.  “Twer Jack’s notion.  Ol’ Wheeler done it again, eh?”

I lowered my eyes in private
disgrace.

I had been hiding in my
office no more than a minute when Edwin Phillips knocked upon the door.  Having
dealt with the day’s goods invoices he was leaving for the night, but an
unexpected encounter had brought him to my sanctuary.

“There’s a gentleman in
the Booking hall to see you, Mr Jay,” he boomed delicately.

Sensing urgency, I went
there immediately and beheld in the pallid light the silhouette of a gentleman
wearing a cape.  The visitor removed his dripping top-hat and stepped out from
the shadows to reveal a severe face angled at one cheek to support a monocle. 
His hair was so receded as to be little more than a black film upon his head,
its colour contrasting starkly with a thin, grey moustache trimmed to a
precise, upturned ‘V’.  With my eye cast towards the puddle of rainwater
forming at his feet I waited for the stranger to introduce himself, praying
that he was not another oddfellow.  But this time there was no handless fobwatch
and I was not dreaming.

“I am Mr Albury,” he
whirred, removing his eyepiece to wipe it.

In view of the cabriolet
saga a visit from the squire was to be expected, but I was incapable of
wrangling at this late hour so I merely bowed deferentially and hoped for
leniency.  Alas, to wrangle was the dignitary’s intent, he probably having
chosen late evening to launch his offensive because he knew that a
stationmaster’s day was more exhausting than his own and I would no longer in
possession of my wits.

My sin, of course, was
to have taken a goose in payment for a service poorly rendered.  To make
matters worse, I could not return the goose because I had given it to a widow
of the alms houses.  Scant recompense though this would have made.

“I am here to register
my dismay at your handling of my property,” he declared.

There was a rich, almost
mesmeric quality to the squire’s voice, but the harmony of it was ruined by the
clicking of artificial teeth, probably made of wood or porcelain.

“The carriage you
defaced with your incompetence is now with the wheelwright of Upford Cross,
Jay,” the gentleman berated me, “and all expenses incurred shall be your expense. 
Do you understand?”

I nodded compliantly, a
response which appeared not to gratify.

Quite plainly the
purpose of the squire’s personal appearance was to engrave upon the mind of Upshott’s
latest newcomer the high standing of his family in the community.  Indeed, such
was his hostility in this endeavour that he failed to notice the redundancy of
his exertions.  He could not see that the bent and enervated stationmaster
before him was wholly contrite with no delusions of grandeur and no desire to compete
for anyone else’s jealously guarded unpopularity.  Yet without provocation he
became more incensed, frequently casting a marble eye towards the disturbance
over pot-lamps upon Platform Two.  Since this was none of his business I closed
the double-doors of the Booking hall to block his view.  The squire opened them
again defiantly.

“Your superiors shall
hear of this woeful episode, Jay,” he warned me.  “I will make it clear that I
doubt your aptitude for this post.  My God, man, if I ran this railway I’d take
a whip to the lot of you.”

Squire Albury started
his complaint with more dignity than he finished it.  His ability to incite
himself to rage by recapitulating his grievance was quite frightening and my
shuddering silence throughout his remonstrance, though not calculated to do so,
appeared to antagonize him further.  Had he been less bellicose, this
inveterate land owner would have realised that I was merely waiting for an
opportunity to apologise, but by the time the clicking of his teeth had ceased
I was myself incensed and decided that he could whistle for his apology.  He
would get no apology from me now even if he hired Mr Peckham do the whistling.