A Station In Life (31 page)

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Chapter Twenty-Seven — Snow on the
line

Christmas eve dawned
white and tumbling, a charcoal sky lending the station a very queer
atmosphere.  Having crept in quietly during the night the snow’s hushed
cascades had produced a picturesque scene but threatened to disrupt services,
so I dressed myself quickly and made for the Telegraph room to gather
intelligence before the circuits failed.  On my way there I noticed that
someone had lit the platform lamps, zigzag footprints about the station revealing
that at least one of my staff had made it to work.

Now being a competent
telegrapher I was keen to use the Morse key as often as possible, and today I would
discover from Headquarters what effect the snow was having upon the railway.  From
the instrument’s bursts of electric chatter I learned that whilst no services
had been cancelled, all were delayed, and that I should expect the first train to
come through Upshott thirty minutes late.

When the Giddiford train
arrived, an hour late, Mr Hales held it outside the station while workers from
the nearby Lacy estate unblocked the loop points.  Their toil continued until
the Blodcaster train arrived in the opposite direction, whereupon Mr Hales
admitted both trains to the station simultaneously.  From the footbridge I saw
Élise and Diggory alight the ‘down’ train and hug briefly before going their
separate ways, Élise making precariously towards the village and her son
reporting to me with the shivers.  Apologising for his lateness, the lad
explained in clouds of breath that he had been unable to walk across the
viaduct because of blinding snow.  I did not see fit to chide the boy on this
account, for to come via the valley bottom would have been both lengthy and
perilous, but when I dismissed him he tarried as if troubled by something
further; something unmentionable.

With a little persuasion
I got Diggory to voice his concern, and learned that his mother had proposed a
rendezvous between the three of us aboard the last ‘up’ train of the day so
that I could spend the night in Widdlecombe.  Avoiding the risk of being stuck
in Upshott was a practical idea, I had to admit, and it made a most pleasant
prospect, but the suggestion presupposed continued operation of the trains and
Diggory thought this unlikely.  Upon reflection I had to agree with the lad and
was more inclined to advise him and his mother to return to Widdlecombe post
haste lest they be stranded themselves.  Strangely, as if to contradict my
anxiety, the sky brightened up and the snow eased to a light flurry.

“Your mother is very
gracious to be so concerned,” I told the lad.  “Thank her for me, and tell her
that we must keep a watchful eye upon the weather throughout the day.”

Even as Diggory set
about this errand the sky darkened as never before and heavy snowfall
returned.  Indeed, conditions now worsened until an outright blizzard was upon
us and the decision came from Head Quarters to cancel all trains.  Company
policy dictated that I release my staff from their duties and send them home
before the roads became impassable.  Likewise I despatched Diggory to fetch
Élise then waited for her to return to the station so that we could make
whatever progress was possible.  Diggory’s silhouette appeared first, closely
followed by his mother enlarged by a black fur coat that she had borrowed from
a neighbour.  In addition to this she was wearing, of all things, a cotton mob
cap.  As she struggled into the Booking hall carrying a snow encrusted box of
documents I could scarcely contain my amusement.

“And what is so funny,
Horace?  It is thickly lined and keeps my head warm,” she checked me, shaking
the cap and causing a small blizzard of her own.

“I think we shall at
last have that horse ride together,” I changed the subject quickly.  “There are
no more trains running today and Mr Maynard’s poor nags could do with warming
up.”

Élise gasped in horror
at my joke.

“Oh, Horace, and I kept
you waiting,” she apologised, “but I was so busy in the shop I did not notice
how bad it has become.  I fear I have spoiled all our plans.  How shall we
reach Widdlecombe if the trains are stopped?  Who can ride safely in this snow? 
Do you think we can hire a private carriage?”

“Alas, all the roads
across the valley will be impassable by now,” I replied grimly.

Surprisingly, Élise’s
reaction to this news was a suppressed smile, and by her next remark I learned the
provenance of her son’s shocking sense of humour.

“Then we shall have Mr
Maynard construct a sleigh,” she suggested.

I frowned, believing
that I had not illustrated our predicament with sufficient gravity.

“Forgive me, Horace,”
she apologised.  “I should not make light of the situation, I know, but over
the years I have learned that good humour denies misfortune its trophies.  What
do you suggest we do?”

“We must pin our hopes
upon the Mail train,” I declared.

“The Mail train?” she
hushed with intrigue.

“Yes indeed, the Mail train,”
I affirmed.  “You see, no railwayman readily abandons the Queen’s mail, and so
it is sure to come through.  It will be late, of course, but I can use the
telegraph to monitor its progress.  The telegrapher in Blodcaster lives near
the station and will doubtless stay at his post.”

“Horace, how very clever
of you.  Then we must hope all the wires stay up long enough for our needs,”
she applauded me.

“I have good news even
now,” I revealed.  “A party of labourers is aboard the Mail equipped with
shovels, and the locomotive is to be crewed by none other than Percival Hiscox
and Morgan Jones.”

“Is that good?” she
asked, her exuberance suspended briefly.

“Driver Hiscox and
Fireman Jones make an invincible combination,” I ventured.  “Indeed, am quite
certain that we shall see Widdlecombe before nightfall.  Ay, and in good
spirits too, I’ll be bound.”

The outlook thus delineated,
Diggory rebuilt the fire in the Waiting room to warm his mother while I toured
the station to check doors and extinguish lamps.  After this I filled my
overnight bag and donned my Norfolk jacket and favourite hat, a brown felt
Derby, then returned downstairs to join my travelling companions.  With the
pair warming themselves at the hearth, now a glowing enclave of comfort in a
world drained of colour, I visited the Telegraph room one last time to see if
the Mail train was on its way.  Perhaps because the wires were down, or I was
now the only operator using the system, I could raise no reply.  It was ironical
to think how silent telegraph apparatus had once been my greatest joy.  But no
more, for now I needed its sorcery to cement a developing relationship.  I
returned glumly to the Waiting room and stared out of the window while Élise
found her dreams in the flicker of blazing coals.  Diggory, still full of
Christmas expectations, had settled to a trance with his eyes upon Spook.

Our growing melancholy
was broken by a faint whistle, prolonged and defiant, piercing the fickle
swirls outside.  We awoke from our hibernation with a restrained, almost
disbelieving countenance, then roused ourselves to investigate.  If there was a
train to be flagged down, however, Spook had no care, for he remained
undisturbed by the fire while the rest of us braved the storm’s icy arcade.

A flickering locomotive
lamp, crowned by the golden aurora of an open fire-door, brought rays of hope to
the domesday gloom of the moor and educed a protracted sigh from Élise.  As
Briggs emerged into sombre view with the flecked silhouette of an iron phantom,
I instructed Diggory to gather our bags while I dragged Upshott’s mail sacks to
the edge of the platform where they would be seen by the driver.  As luck would
have it the loop points were stuck in favour of the ‘down’ line, which meant
that even though the Mail was an ‘up’ train we had no need to brave the
giddying squalls of the footbridge.  Warming us briefly as it crawled past,
Briggs came to a halt with four vehicles in tow, each one a testament to Driver
Hiscox’s determination to reach Giddiford junction.  Along with the Mail van
and Guard’s ‘birdcage’ he had entrained a water bowser, complete with stirrup
pump, and a truck filled to capacity with coal, the whole ensemble contrived to
service the locomotive come what may.  So carpeted with snow was the train that
it looked like an illustration chalked upon a blackboard.

Presently Hiscox leaned
from the footplate with a word of guidance.

“There’s a stove aboard
the Guard’s van,” he shouted, squinting quizzically through huge snowflakes.

Élise took his advice
readily and climbed aboard the train with her box of documents, followed by
Diggory carrying my overnight bag and a sleepy puppy.  Before joining them I
helped the Guard stow the mailbags for the journey, tipping my hat to a handful
of navvies who were slouched among the bags already aboard, then trudged my way
along the platform to go aboard myself, each of my footfalls collapsing with a
‘crump’ in the deepening snow.  I found my travelling companions huddled around
the Guard’s pot-bellied stove drawing what little comfort they could, for
melt-water had run down the chimney and dampened the coals.  Indeed, the heat
from the flames was so feeble that we looked to the Guard, Mr Hayward, for an
explanation.

“Yer’ve never seen an
icicle like it,” he recounted with an insalubrious wheeze and phlegm laden
cough.  “It knocked the stove-pipe cover clean off as we came out of Splashgate
tunnel.”

Bent by another fit of
coughing, Mr Hayward made for the window to wave his green flag to the driver. 
There was a pop of acknowledgement from Briggs’s whistle, a violent jolt from
the couplings, and motion followed, but with compacted snow and ice trapped in
the mechanisms beneath our feet the wagons rumbled like millstones.  Though
outwardly calm, in truth I feared derailment.  The Guard, having heard the
commotion before, returned to his corner seat and sank into it with the grunt of
discarded bagpipes.  I took a poker to the stove and attempted to stir more
life into the flames but succeeded only in filling the van with damp, grey smoke. 
Having created the atmosphere of a Chinese laundry I decided to turn up my
collar and observe progress from the veranda.

The train was reluctant
to advance even as we passed over Natter lane bridge, and our progress through
Exmoor’s storm-sculpted landscape remained pitifully slow.  I observed in awe a
valley so deeply subsumed by swathes of white linen that all was obliterated by
its undulations, even the main thoroughfares passing beneath the railway.

Leaning further over the
handrail I observed the line ahead, where it traversed Fallowfield common.  Slightly
elevated, the rails here had been swept clean by powdery gusts and a little more
speed was possible, whereupon friction began to thaw the train’s axles.  Yet
even without accumulated snow to overcome, Briggs was prone to chatter occasionally
as its wheels slipped, and whilst confident that Driver Hiscox would control
the engine expertly over level rails I wondered how he would manage the steep descent
beyond the common.  Here lay the danger of us slithering all the way to the
viaduct, for Nineteenth Century carriages had no connecting brakes and their
momentum could coerce an engine forward against the driver’s will.  Should this
happen we would probably come to rest halfway across the viaduct, rocked by a
howling crosswind, the engine ruined.  Spending Christmas huddled aboard a
footplate was not my idea of rapture.

Eyes weeping, ears aching,
and face chafed by icy squalls, I allowed myself one last attempt to gauge our
progress before going inside.  Looking out for the Upford road I could see no
landmark bigger than a half-buried gate post in the honeycomb of white ridges that
had once been hedgerows, all beyond being obliterated by the blizzard’s
maculose twilight.  Unsure that the road crossing was still to come I cast my
eyes upwards into the frenzied cascade to see if I could find my bearings among
Exmoor’s high tors, but nothing was visible beyond Briggs’s dense breath
swirling wildly in all directions.

The falling snow was
both entrancing and surreal, the albino prairie that it created being punctured
only by the slow passing of telegraph poles.  I could see why Upshott had lost
communications, for each pole had acquired a white mane with its insulators seized
by claws of ice.  Wires that were not lying coiled and broken upon the ground
remained aloft as knife blades honed to ghostly white powder.  We were, it
seemed, the last living souls at large in the world, mankind’s greatest works
of civilisation erased with indifference.  I shunned the maelstrom in favour of
stillness and convivial company by returning to the cabin.

While exchanging tales
of gentler Christmases, a series of alarming knocks and bumps brought the train
to a halt.  Albeit it only a brief commotion, leaving in its wake nothing bar
the crackle of snow against glass and the faint hiss of a locomotive at rest,
it gagged us all with dread.  Mr Hayward was the first to stir, he lowering a
window to investigate.  Bracing myself, I returned to the veranda to make my
own observations.

Leaning over the van’s
icy handrail again I observed the cause of the stoppage.  The impediment was
Upford cutting.  It was impassable.  More than impassable, it was unrecognisable. 
So deeply banked with snow was its northern slope that it had been reduced to a
furrow in the hillside.  Personally I was convinced that we should now have to
reverse the train to Upshott, yet the Mail van door swung open and out spilled
eight labourers brandishing shovels, a lineside drift claiming them to their
waists.  I failed to see how they could even dig a path to the cutting, still
less excavate one wide enough to pass a train, yet none appeared daunted by the
task.  Indeed, as I watched the men start work they proved surprisingly
effective and made anything look possible.  Infected by their industry I passed
word to my shivering companions that we would probably be on our way again in a
few hours.  Sneering at my optimism the Guard snatched a lamp from behind a
bucket of coal and lit it to break the gloom.  Élise hugged Spook for warmth.