No Stone Unturned (26 page)

‘Here we are, lads,' bellowed Ted, as they reached two huge piles of crushed stone, heaped up on the embankment. ‘Let's get stuck in.'

‘That father of yours doesn't know how lucky he is,' said George as he passed by Billy and slapped him on the back. ‘You've got gumption, lad, I'll give you that.'

Ted threw him a shovel. ‘Here you go, Billy. You can use that.'

The four labourers set to their task, packing the ballast under and in between the rails and sleepers. Always backbreaking work, the job was made even harder by the conditions. The clay soil along the side of the track was saturated and sucked at their feet as they trudged back and forth to the ballast pile, coating their boots in heavy clods. The handles of their shovels were made slippery by the rain, and Billy lost his grip more times than he could count.

‘Don't forget to listen out for trains, Billy,' yelled Lewis, the youngest of the three men. ‘There mustn't be enough spare hands today to give us a look-out.'

Ted noticed the worried expression on Billy's face. ‘Don't worry, lad,' he laughed. ‘You'll feel the rails rumbling before you hear anything. And if you do, shout. Just don't wait until you hear the engine whistle. Don't rely on the driver seeing you first!'

Billy nodded, but his father's friend's advice didn't ease his anxiety. He had been so sure of himself when he left the cottage. He would protect his mother, prove that even though he had stayed on at school, he wasn't afraid of manual labour when it was needed, and shame his father into turning his life around. But now Billy's confidence was beginning to slide and he felt nervous and disoriented. Instructions were being barked at him from every direction and his senses were being invaded. The wind roared in his ears. The driving rain stung his face. His nose fizzed with the pungent aroma of creosote from the sleepers beneath his feet, and the sweat was turning his skin cold inside his clothes.

Think of Mother
, he repeated to himself, over and over again.
Just keep thinking of Mother.

By eleven o'clock, Billy's hands were raw and he had blisters on every finger. He hadn't thought to pick up his father's gloves and none of the others had a spare pair. But they were starting to make some progress and that helped to take his mind off the pain.

Meanwhile, the wind had picked up and was now lashing the rain down onto the track. At first, when Billy felt the rail beneath him starting to tremble, he thought it was just the wind, whistling over the metal. But then he realised that the trembling had a steady rhythm.

‘I think there's a train coming!' he called out to George, who was the closest to him.

George stopped shovelling and listened. ‘It's all right,' he shouted back. ‘It's on the other track, on the southbound side. But we'd best hold fire just in case.'

George shouted up the line to Ted and Lewis and all four men stopped shovelling and strained their ears to listen. Sure enough, they heard a whistle coming from the Wilmcote direction.

‘Carry on!' yelled Ted. ‘It's southbound.'

The men resumed work, the noise of the approaching train growing louder and louder, echoing off the low cloud. His eyelashes heavy with raindrops, Billy saw the engine coming into sight, bearing down on them through the mist. Unused to the noise and the proximity of the massive engine as it tore past, just feet away from him, Billy was terrified. He dropped his shovel to the ground and covered his ears as, one after the next, the empty goods carts roared by and flew round the bend towards Stratford-upon-Avon.

It felt like every inch of the earth beneath his feet was shaking and the rush of air from the passing train whipped his cap off his head and threw it into the dirt at the side of the line. Billy span round to see where it had gone, and his mouth fell open. But the blood-curdling scream that might have sent a warning to the others was lost amid the wind and the rain and the thunderous rattling of the southbound train.

Billy was the only one of the four men to see the second, northbound train hurtling at them, before it hit them.

* * *

In the driving rain, and with his line of sight obscured by the passing southbound train coming round the bend ahead of him, the engine driver had no idea of the devastation he was about to cause. With no advance notice given to him about workmen on the line, his hand never strayed to the whistle which might have given the men the notice they needed to step aside.

But he did feel the bump beneath his wheels: enough of a bump to cause him to pull on the brakes. Knowing how long it took his train, its wagons fully loaded with stone as they were, to come to a complete halt, the engine driver was prepared for a long trudge back up the track to check out the source of the problem. But nothing could have prepared him for the sight that lay scattered before him as he approached the Bishopton bend.

Chapter 32 – September 2012

W
hen Kelly arrived at school on Monday morning, she went straight to her tutor group room rather than going to the canteen to catch up with Leanne. She wanted to tell Mr Walker what she had found out over the weekend. In a way, she also wanted to prove to him that something positive had come out of her secret trip to the Records Office. It wasn't as if Mr Walker had been unpleasant with Kelly since her detention, but clearly he was disappointed with her for being dishonest, and it gnawed away at her. She wanted to make him understand why it had all been so important to her—even important enough to play truant.

And it seemed to be working. Mr Walker listened intently while Kelly told him all the information she had gleaned on William Denton, and said more than once how impressed he was with her research skills.

‘You really are going the extra mile with this project, Kelly. It's fantastic,' he gushed, taking a sip from his ‘Keep calm, I'm a history teacher' coffee mug. ‘I wish all the students put as much effort in.'

‘Thanks, sir.' Kelly grinned. ‘I'm really enjoying it, but it's kind of frustrating too. I keep running into so many dead ends.'

‘Like what?' Mr Walker asked.

‘Like what happened at the inquest into the rail accident. I had another look on the internet yesterday on Mum's laptop, but I can't find any mention of it. All I have is this tiny newspaper cutting.' She held up the yellowed piece of paper.

‘We could try searching the British Newspaper Archive,' suggested Mr Walker. ‘The school has a subscription to that. It's online.' He checked his watch. ‘Come on, there's still ten minutes or so until registration. Let's have a quick look now.'

‘Wow, thanks, sir!' Mr Walker really was the best teacher ever.

He opened up the website on his computer screen and Kelly gave him the date of the inquest.

‘The fifteenth of March, 1861, Stratford-upon-Avon railway,' the teacher said out loud, as he typed the letters into the search box.

A long list of possible newspaper articles popped up, but as they scrolled down, none of them seemed quite right.

‘Hang on, let's try something slightly different,' said Mr Walker, peering at the newspaper clipping. He deleted the words Stratford-upon-Avon railway from the search box and replaced them with Bishopton Hill Railway Disaster. Once again a list of results appeared.

Kelly spotted it straight away. ‘There!' she shrieked. ‘There's something from the Birmingham Daily Post.'

Mr Walker clicked on the entry and opened up a full-screen view of a page from the paper.

‘Blimey!' exclaimed Kelly, shocked by how tiny all the type was. There were no photographs or big, bold headlines, like in modern newspapers. Just lines and lines of text, with all the stories squashed together and a handful of dull-looking adverts in a column on the left.

‘Here it is,' said Mr Walker, pointing to a heading which read: Stratford-upon-Avon Rail Disaster—Verdict Reached. He zoomed in and read out the whole report. The inquest had been held over two days, during which time the engine driver, the doctor who was called to the scene, a foreman and the Chairman of the Stratford-upon-Avon Railway Company, a Mr Reginald Adkins, gave evidence, as did some of the key shareholders in the railway, including a Member of Parliament, Sir Francis Throckmorton.

‘That's interesting,' commented Mr Walker. ‘Call me cynical, but with high-powered shareholders like that, it does make you question how much sway the railway company had over the jury's verdict.'

‘Exactly!' agreed Kelly, who had been reading ahead. ‘And look there. It says that no one cross-examined Mr Adkins. He could have said anything he liked!'

Kelly and Mr Walker looked at one another quizzically. Then they resumed reading. In spite of the fact that none of the victims' families had attended the hearing, the railway company had offered an undisclosed sum to the victims' families, but it had been made clear that this was in no way an admission of guilt. Rather it was simply in lieu of the bonus which had been promised to these men on the completion of the line.

‘So they came out smelling of roses and paid off the families to keep them quiet, by the sounds of it,' remarked Mr Walker.

‘I wonder if that's why the families didn't put anything about the cause of death on the joint gravestone—or even any full names,' mused Kelly. ‘Perhaps they were told to play it all down.'

‘Maybe. Who knows?'

Kelly sat back in her chair and shook her head. ‘I can't believe it. It's so wrong. Those poor men. Their poor families.'

‘I know. But workers' rights were very low on the agenda back then, Kelly. Just think of all the children they sent down the coal mines. They didn't stop that until 1841. And deaths in the railway construction industry were quite common. A lot of people paid a high price to get those lines laid all over the country. Believe me, this accident is small fry compared to some. There's a famous viaduct up in North Yorkshire, the Ribblehead Viaduct. It's got twenty-four massive arches, towering over the valley and the River Ribble. Hundreds of people died building that. There were accidents, and there was lots of disease among the workers, too, as they were living so close together. There was a smallpox outbreak and so many died that they filled all the graveyards and the railway company had to pay for a new one to be built nearby.'

Kelly was shocked. For once, she didn't know what to say. Behind her, a few of her fellow tutor group students had started to file into the classroom ready for registration.

‘I'll print this off for you, if you like,' said Mr Walker, nodding at the screen. ‘But I think you've got the gist of it. Hey, wait a minute, did you read this final paragraph?'

Kelly peered at the screen. A footnote mentioned that the opening of the Stratford-upon-Avon to Hatton railway line went ahead the day after the tragedy, despite local people's calls to postpone the ceremony out of respect for the four men who had died. The line, it explained, would not only provide passengers with vital links between Birmingham and Oxford but was also the new life-blood of the Wilmcote Lime and Cement Works, which was supplying stone to the late Sir Charles Barry's Westminster Palace project.

‘The
late
Sir Charles Barry!' remarked Kelly. ‘I wonder what happened to him? He must have died before the building was finished and he'd been working on it for years. I wonder what he died of.'

Mr Walker was already heading over to the printer. ‘Well, it looks like you've got plenty of good material for your project now, Kelly.'

‘Yes, thanks, Mr Walker,' said Kelly, taking the print-out from him. ‘There's just one more thing I'd like to find out, if I can.'

‘What's that?'

‘William Denton. I want to know how he's related to my friend.'

‘That should be easy enough to find out. You just need to ask his family.'

‘Funny you should say that,' laughed Kelly. ‘I've got an invitation to supper tonight which might just give me the chance to do that.'

Chapter 33 – 28th September 1860