Off the Rails (12 page)

The waiter was a burly man with a seafarer’s roughened face. He wore blue breeches, a checked shirt and a clean white apron, carried a clean white cloth over his arm and recommended the sea bass.

As he seemed to be knowledgeable, George asked him if he knew when Mr Stephenson would be arriving.

‘End of the week, sir,’ the waiter told him. ‘Very important man, is Mr Stephenson. He’s a-comin’ to tell us about the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. ’Tis all in the local paper, sir. Shall I bring you a copy?’

‘Aye,’ George said. ‘That ’ud be handsome.’

It was also informative. Mr Stephenson’s visit wasn’t until Friday which was a long time for George to cool his impatient heels, but the meeting was taking place in the Angel, so it would be easy enough for him to attend it, and it was plain that the local worthies in this little village had a deal more sense than their cousins in York. They certainly didn’t need anyone to wake
them
up. They’d already made up their minds that the North Yorkshire Moors Railway should come to their part of the world and had invited Mr Stephenson to come and tell them all about it. What was more, they seemed to have a sensible idea about what benefits a railway would bring to their village.

‘
The time will come
,’ their leader-writer said, ‘
when ordinary folk will be travelling abroad in the same way as the gentry do today, taking their ease in the spas and the fine towns. Some will undoubtedly come here to enjoy the sea air, which is well known to be beneficial to the senses and healing to the constitution. Let us make preparation for the changes that are coming
.’

Let us indeed, George thought, settling to his sea bass. The article had given him an idea. There was money to be made in this place and it wasn’t just from the railways. When trainloads of city folk started coming here to enjoy the sea air, they’d need somewhere to stay while they enjoyed it, in boarding houses, like as not, or lodgings of some kind, happen a hotel for the most affluent. There was plenty of spare land hereabouts. He’d seen that as soon as he arrived. I will stroll about this evening, he decided, and see what’s on offer.

What he found was several acres of unwanted scrubland on the hillside. Two days later he and the farmer who owned it had come to an agreement and the site was his. The next day he put an advertisement in the local paper asking for local builders – carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers and labourers – telling them to apply to him if they wished to work on a ‘prestigious new development in the heart of town’ and adding that he was offering a ‘fair wage with bonuses to such as suit’. Then, since it was Friday, he settled himself in the bar ready to take his chance to meet the renowned Mr Stephenson.

After a few minutes he became aware that there had been a steady procession of well-dressed gentlemen walking through the bar and heading for the stairs and, as they were obviously arriving for the meeting, he finished his ale and followed them. They led him to an upstairs room, which was loud with booming greetings and neatly laid out ready for the event with several rows of chairs standing in line and, facing them, a table covered in green baize on which stood a tumbler and a carafe of water.

‘Name of Hudson,’ he said, as he edged his way through the first arrivals to nab a place in the front row. ‘George Hudson from York. You’ve a good turn-out.’

‘Are you into railways too, sir?’ one man asked.

‘Oh aye, sir,’ George told him. ‘Heavily. Like all men of good sense. Railways are t’future.’

That was Mr Stephenson’s theme too and his audience cheered and stamped their feet to hear it. The most vociferous and obvious cheers came from Mr George Hudson. When the speech was over and the official thanks had been given, he stood up and walked to the table, holding out his hand.

‘First-rate speech, if I may say so, Mr Stephenson,’ he said. ‘Needed sayin’ did that.’

The famous man smiled his agreement.

It was encouragement enough. ‘I’m one as knows, sir,’ George said, ‘on account of I’m a man what means to build railways, wherever there’s a need of ’em.’ And because he could see that Stephenson’s interest was now
suitably
roused, he pressed on. ‘Happen you’d care to join me for a drink or
two, and I’ll tell ’ee what I have in mind. They serve an excellent brandy here. Name of Hudson.’

By the end of a brandy-soaked evening and after considerable technical conversation, both men had established that they were two of a kind where the coming of the railway was concerned and that they should and would work together. Now, George thought, as they finally parted company, I shall get my railway company. There’s nowt in t’way of it.

T
HE FIRST MONTHS
of Jane’s married life were so extraordinarily happy she felt she was still living in her dream. After years of being a servant in someone else’s house, it was a joy to organize her home in exactly the way she wanted, to plan her own meals and eat them in her own dining room with her dear Nathaniel beside her. Her dear Nathaniel. He was everything she’d hoped and dreamed he might be and even the delights of running her own home paled into insignificance compared to the private and delectable pleasures of being his wife. Her brief affair with George Hudson had left her feeling that love was passionately urged but brutish in the act; now she was discovering what tenderness and delicacy were like and her senses were blooming.

The weeks passed in a glow of rewarding sensation. The months threaded her happiness with the heady colours of autumn. Now fires were lit to crackle in their new hearths and roar up their new chimneys and the first chills of coming winter brought hoar frost to the fields.

‘We must hold a party at Christmas, Nat,’ she said over breakfast one morning late in November. Outside their window a grey mist was swirling about the city walls but inside the room their fire was burning warmly.

‘Indeed we must,’ he agreed. ‘Whom shall we invite?’

Her parents, naturally, and Milly and Aunt Tot and Audrey Palmer ‘because she’s the kindest girl I know and she has no family beyond the farm’.

‘A family party.’ He understood. ‘You will need a new gown.’

‘I shall wear my wedding gown,’ she told him. ’Tis just the occasion for it.’

It was a surprise to her that the gown seemed to have shrunk. It was very
tight about the waist and didn’t fit at all well. She stood before the pier glass examining her image with some concern, aware that she’d put on rather a lot of weight since September, which was only just over ten weeks ago when all was said and done. And as she tried to adjust the dress over her burgeoning curves she suddenly realized what was happening to her. She was carrying. Of course. What a wonderful blissful thing. Oh, just wait till I tell Nathaniel. If he hadn’t gone off to work she could have told him there and then but, never mind, waiting would make it sweeter.

She told him late that night when their lovemaking was over and they were cuddled together in their comfortable bed. It was a great surprise to her that instead of telling her how wonderful he thought it was or kissing her or doing any of the things she’d expected, he sprang from the bed, lit the candle and ran across the room to their linen press.

‘Art tha not pleased?’ she asked.

‘Wait, wait,’ he said, pulling the sheets and towels this way and that. ‘I’ve something to show you.’ And he pulled out a small brown box, much scuffed with age, carried it to the bed and laid it tenderly in her lap. ‘Open it,’ he said. ‘’Tis for you, with my love.’

It was a gold ring, set with blue stones, shaped like the petals of a flower and set about a central stone that shone so brightly in the candlelight she knew at once that it was a diamond. ‘Oh Nathaniel!’ she said.

‘My father made it for my mother when I was born,’ he explained, ‘and when she died he gave it to me and made me promise I would give it to my wife when
our
first child was born. The blue stones are turquoise, which signify lifelong love, so he told me, and the one in the middle is a diamond, which signifies constancy.’

‘’Tis the most beautiful thing I ever saw,’ she said and took his eager face between her hands and kissed him lovingly. ‘Only ’twill be months afore our baby’s born. Should ’ee not wait till then?’

‘I couldn’t wait,’ he said. ‘I love you too much.’

Jane spent the next morning writing invitations to her Christmas party and the next afternoon she hired a pony and trap and went to visit her mother and father at Scrayingham, fidgeting with impatience all the way there because she couldn’t wait to tell them her good news.

Her father said he ‘wor reet glad to hear it’ and her mother wept and said
she
weren’t a bit surprised for she’d thought it likely last Thursday. ‘What does our Milly think on it?’ she asked.

‘Nowt yet,’ Jane admitted, ‘on account of I’ve not told her.’

‘She’ll be reet happy for ’ee,’ Mrs Jerdon said. ‘That’s certain sure.’

But Milly took the news coolly. ‘I thought it like as not,’ she said, ‘being
as you’re married. ’Tis the way of it wi’ married women. Look at Mrs Hudson. She has a baby every year.’

‘You do exaggerate,’ Jane teased. ‘Every other year I’ll grant but not every year.’

‘I’ll tell ’ee one thing,’ Milly said. ‘She gets cantankerous when she’s in t’family way and she were short wi’ my Dickie this morning. So nowt would surprise me.’

I’d get cantankerous if I were married to Mr Hudson, Jane thought, nasty bad-tempered thing, and she looked down at her new ring and was glad, all over again, that she’d chosen such a gentle loving man.

The Tory club was in the centre of town and in some disarray. The party funds were lower than they’d been in years and just at the very moment
when they had the chance of an excellent candidate, the son of a baronet, Sir John Lowther of Swillington Park, no less. Sir John was a wealthy man and would undoubtedly back his son, but, in all honour, they had to match his contribution pound for pound, they could do no less, and at that moment they couldn’t begin to see how it could be done. If they could persuade Mr Hudson to contribute….

Mr Hudson blew into their sober committee room like a gale, hand outstretched to greet them, the gold chain on his impressive fob-watch shining in the wintry light, loud, bold and the picture of confident wealth. Within minutes he had told John Henry Lowther he was just the man the town needed, commended the committee on the wisdom of their choice and invited them all to dine with him. They were swept along by his
enthusiasm
whether they would or no and, although some of them found his brashness hard to countenance, the gleam of his coin soon put such petty considerations to one side. By the end of that first dinner, they had decided that he was a strong, confident man, and one, moreover, who put his money where his mouth was. By the time they had partaken of his lavish hospitality at a party at his house in Monkgate, they had decided to invite him onto the committee.

John Henry was bewitched by him. Having been reared in the sedate and cultured environs of Swillington Park, he had never come across such a storm of a man.

‘You should meet him, Father,’ he said to his wealthy parent over dinner two weeks later. ‘He’s a rough diamond, I’ll grant you, but a man of great strength and considerable vision. He saw at once that I was the man for York.’

Sir John condescended a faint smile.

‘Believe me, Father,’ John Henry urged, ‘you really should meet him. In my opinion you would agree with him a deal more than you might imagine. He holds the soundest opinions.’

‘A tradesman, I believe,’ Sir John said.

‘Yes, sir. A draper.’

‘Does he hunt?’ Sir John inquired.

‘I doubt it,’ his son had to admit. ‘Drapers ain’t huntin’ men, by and large.’

‘No,’ his father agreed. But he had already decided that despite his shortcomings, Hudson was a man to be cultivated.

George Hudson’s, on the other hand, ending with a bout of violent
sickness
. He’d drunk so much at the table he’d been feeling queasy ever since he retired to his room. Lizzie was sound asleep with her mouth open and she didn’t stir as he splattered the carpet with the remains of his meal. Selfish woman.

He poured a little cold water from the ewer into the bowl and washed his face and hands, groaning and feeling sorry for himself. He was having to work far too hard to get this railway company up and running. Far too hard. Still, even if things
were
moving slowly, they were moving in the right direction. He’d discovered several very useful things during the course of the conversation that evening – most of them from John Henry, who was indiscreet when he was in his cups. The first was that Sir John was planning to set up a bank in York. He even had a name for it, apparently, the York Union Banking Company, so the plans must be well under way and, even more significantly, he’d estimated how much capital would be needed to get it established which, according to his son, was half a million pounds – a clear indication of how wealthy he was. Then, as if that weren’t good news enough, he also discovered that the baronet had a powerful friend, one George Glyn, who besides being the chairman of Glyns, which was the best known bank in London, had also been appointed chairman of the proposed London and Birmingham Railway Company. Give me time, George thought, and I shall dine with the great. Meanwhile he couldn’t lie here in this stink. He’d never get to sleep if he did. There was only one thing for it and that was to take himself off to the blue room. He groaned to his feet, stepped delicately round his vomit and staggered off to a cleaner bed.

The new year progressed from a very chill winter into the ease of spring and Jane began to make preparations for her baby’s arrival. At the end of May she wrote to Audrey Palmer asking her if she would consider leaving her job as a dairy maid and coming to live in Shelton House with her to be the baby’s nursemaid. ‘
You were so good to me when my Milly was born
,’ she wrote, ‘
I
can’t think of anyone I would rather have to help me when this child arrives
.’

Audrey needed no urging. ‘
I could not think of nothing better
,’ she wrote back, adding ‘
I could be there by Friday, that being the carter’s day for York
.’ And Friday it was. By the time June and the baby arrived, everything was ready and orderly. Audrey had moved into the house and her new job, delighted to have a bed of her own in the nursery corner, and Mrs Hardcastle was making daily visits, not because there was anything amiss with either her patient or the baby but because Mr Cartwright had insisted on it.

He needn’t have worried. His baby arrived with so little fuss that he was born, fed, washed and dressed within five quiet hours. Nathaniel would have named him only for some unaccountable reason Jane seemed to have taken against the name he’d chosen, which, naturally enough, given how much he admired the man, was George. She said it wouldn’t do at all and her voice and her face were so fierce he gave in to her at once and tried to think of another name that would suit her better. In the end, for want of any other inspiration, he suggested Nathaniel, since that was his own name and his father’s and she said that was much better and to show how well she approved of it shortened it at once and lovingly to ‘my little Nat’.

He was an affable baby, and made no complaint even when he was passed from hand to hand like a sleeping parcel. Milly was very taken with him and spent more than an hour nursing him on that first afternoon, saying she’d forgotten how small newborn babies were. ‘He makes Matthew look enormous.’ And Audrey was totally enamoured, calling him her ‘dear little duck’ and waiting on him as if he were royalty. It was the happiest, easiest time.

Lizzie came to visit a fortnight later when Jane had finished lying in. She was so sorry to have taken so long to come and see them, she said, and tried to explain, getting steadily more and more flustered. ‘Mr Hudson is so … What I mean to say is, he has such a lot of work to do and he does need me to be there although why that should be I can’t imagine. ’Tis not as if …’ But then Audrey carried the baby into the parlour and rescued her. ‘Oh, what a dear pretty baby! Such big eyes! How happy you must be my dear, dear friend.’