Off the Rails (14 page)

‘If anyone had told me when I were first wed that I’d ever, ever dream of doing such a thing,’ she said to Jane when the children had been coaxed to bed and they were on their own together in the parlour, ‘I’d have told ’em ’twere a nonsense. And yet I
did
. Can ’ee believe it? I don’t know what got into me.’

Jane was trying to make herself comfortable in the armchair, which, because it was so newly upholstered, was rather unyielding. It had been a long day with far too many new things to be absorbed and understood and she was missing Nathaniel a bit too keenly now that the rush of their journey was over and the children were settled for the night. She spoke out before she could stop to think that it might not be sensible to be so frank. ‘’Twill have done him good,’ she said. ‘High time someone stood up to him.’

Lizzie was horrified to hear her husband criticized. ‘Oh, we mustn’t say that,’ she protested. ‘I mean to say, he’s a good man. Allus has been. If it hadn’t been for the cholera and me being sick wi’ worry, I would never have done such a thing. Never in a thousand years. I know he has a bit of a temper but that’s on account of all the hard work he has to do. I mean to say, just think of what a lot he does, what with the railways and all these properties and the Board of Health and I don’t know what-all. I never knew such a man for work. He has to make a stand to get things done.’

‘Aye,’ Jane said, pretending to agree. ‘Happen. But making a stand and being a bully is two different things, don’t ’ee think?’

‘He’s never a bully,’ Lizzie said loyally.

He were a bully when he were a lad, Jane thought, and if I weren’t such a coward I’d tell you so.

It would have surprised her to know that at that moment bully-boy George was visiting the sick in the most evil-smelling slums in the city and not only commiserating with them in their distress but making diligent notes about what could be done to help them.

That afternoon the chairman of the Board of Health had requested that the members of the Board should provide him with the latest information on the progress of the epidemic. There was no one to keep him at home now that Lizzie had left so, as soon as he’d finished his solitary dinner and taken a glass of brandy to sustain him, he put on his hat and set off along Goodramgate towards old Christ Church and the Shambles to see what was happening.

Until that evening he’d never ventured into the squalid alleys in that part of town. There’d never been anything to take him there. It was just a place where the servants went to buy meat. A place to avoid. He walked boldly into the foetid darkness like a man exploring a foreign country.

At first he found it difficult to see where he was going because there were only a couple of rush lights attached to the walls, but after a while his eyes adjusted and then he was profoundly shocked by what he saw. The cobbles of the alley were so broken and distorted that what he was stepping over was largely bare earth trodden into a mire. The houses rose crookedly from the filth, leaning against one another like drunks, their walls scabbed by occasional flakes of chipped plaster, their windows so grey with dust it was impossible to see through them, their greasy doors standing ajar. The smell of vomit and shit was overpowering. Pity rose in his throat like bile and for a second he was tempted to turn back and go home. But he’d come here to see what was happening and he could hardly run at the first difficulty. There was no honour in that. He covered his mouth with his hand and stepped through the nearest door.

He was in a dark evil-smelling hall, where two dishevelled men wearing an extraordinary combination of ancient clothes and hats that were more grease than cloth were leaning against the walls smoking clay pipes. They looked at him with undisguised suspicion for several long seconds but
eventually
one of them leant towards him and spoke. ‘What would you be afther, sor?’

‘Board of Health,’ George explained. ‘Name of Hudson. Come to see what help you need.’

The man took his pipe out of his mouth and bellowed towards the nearest door. ‘Bridie! Bridie!’ And when there was no answer, he roared again. ‘Bridie, will ye come out of it dis minute, woman.’

The woman who appeared at the door was as down-at-heel as he was. She was wearing a man’s jacket, a filthy flat cap, a stained shawl and an apron made of old sacking tied round her waist with a length of rope. ‘Stow your row,’ she said to the man. ‘Who’s de gent’man?’

George introduced himself again, adding, ‘Happen you could show me round.’

She took him from room to overcrowded room, each one darker and more noxious than the last. There was a family in every room and at least one sick person in every family. The sick lay on the floor on straw pallets, their vomit beside them and their children huddled in corners, bare-footed and timorous as if the horror was too great for them to believe or
understand
. He hadn’t known until then that there were people living in his city in such utter squalor.

In the third room, Bridie confided that she was the midwife. ‘I lays ’em out, may God rest deir souls.’ In the fifth they found a small boy sitting in a corner howling like a dog and when George raised his eyebrows at the noise, she explained, ‘Sure he’s hungry, poor soul, since his ma went to glory.’ Her matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation made George feel angry. Dammit, he thought, this is no way to treat an epidemic. These people need cleaning up and proper nursing. The lad needs feeding. Something must be done and done quickly. He made notes in his notebook and moved on to the next room.

The next afternoon he presented his report to the Board.

‘Our first priority,’ he said, ‘must be to provide t’children and t’destitute with food, bread and soup and such like. That is imperative. We must open a public subscription fund to pay for it. I will personally donate
£
500 to start it. Then we must provide more beds in the hospital and more surgeons to attend ’em.’

‘How many beds did you have in mind?’ one of the more timorous members wanted to know.

His answer was immediate. ‘Fifty,’ he told them. ‘We’re dealing with an epidemic.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ his colleague demurred.

‘Well,
I
would,’ George said, forcefully. ‘I’ve been there and I’ve seen it.’

The first soup kitchen was opened three days later.

In Whitby the sun was shining, the sky was summertime blue and Dickie and Spot and the toddlers were paddling in the sea with Milly in happy attendance with her skirts pinned up, wading up to her knees in the water. It was a daily habit and one they never tired of, even though they were now into their fifth week away from home. On that morning Jane and Lizzie had packed a picnic lunch and gone down to the beach with them and watched while they jumped in the water and splashed one another.

‘This is doing them so much good,’ Lizzie said, ‘I’ve a mind to make it an annual occurrence. A holiday by the sea. What do ’ee think?’

‘’Twould depend on t’length of it,’ Jane said honestly. ‘I’d not want to be away from Mr Cartwright for too long.’ This five-week separation had been very difficult and although she was grateful to Lizzie for taking them all out of danger she couldn’t wait to be back in her own house.

But York wasn’t pronounced clear of the cholera until the end of June so they had to stay where they were. And by then George had become embroiled in a furious row with the Board of Health. When the two
families
returned, the town was seething with gossip about it. Peggy, Jane’s
parlour maid-cum-lady’s maid, regaled her with a detailed account of it almost as soon as she got back.

‘He called the chairman a blamed old fool,’ she said. ‘What a thing to say. A blamed old fool what wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him. And then he said he was a doddering idiot and he ought to stand down afore he fell down and mek way for someone who knew what was what. I never heard the like.’

‘What brought
that
about?’ Jane asked. It sounded exactly the sort of thing George would say. She’d heard worse when he’d been roaring at Lizzie. But there had to be a reason for it.

‘’Twas the dead bodies,’ Peggy explained, as she hung Jane’s jacket in the closet. ‘There were so many of ’em you see, and Mr Hudson reckoned they should be buried outside t’city walls, on account of the effluvia, what he said spreads the disease, what could be right when you comes to think on it, on account of it must be summat. Anyroad, he had a plot of land what would suit, seemingly, and he meant to have ’em use it. Only t’Board stood up against him and said he were out to mek a profit and it got nasty. ’Twere all over town the next day.’

‘What was the upshot?’ Jane asked, although she already knew the answer.

‘Oh, he got his own way,’ Peggy said. ‘They’ve been burying ’em in his graveyard ever since. But what a way to go on! Roarin’ an’ hollerin’.’

She was interrupted before she could tell her mistress any more for there was a sudden thunder of feet on the stairs, the door was flung open and Nathaniel strode into the room, beaming and holding out his arms to his family.

Then there was a commotion as the children ran full tilt at their father and were caught up in his arms one after the other to be tossed into the air and caught and kissed. Audrey and Peggy shadowed tactfully away and left them to their reunion and they were all so happy they never saw them go.

‘I
did
miss you, Papa,’ Nat said, clinging about Nathaniel’s neck.

‘And I missed you, little one,’ Nathaniel told him, ‘but never mind, we’re back together now.’

‘Did you miss me?’ Jane teased, smiling into his eyes.

‘Aye, a little,’ he teased back, but his rapturous face gave the lie to his words.

This is where I should be, Jane thought, here at home with my dear Nathaniel and my babies. Not with Lizzie Hudson, kind though she is. And as for George, he may do as he pleases and suffer the consequences. ’Tis all one with me. I’m home.

But in fact some of the consequences of George’s blazing row were not what she might have expected. Although there were plenty of people who castigated Mr Hudson for his boorish behaviour, there were as many others who admired it and told one another that he might have a rough edge to his tongue but he’d been right about the cemetery and, what was more, he was plainly a man who got things done.

Early in the new year, to his personal delight and few people’s surprise, he was voted onto the council and when spring came and the York Union Bank was officially opened, he bought a large number of shares and was appointed a director. Now, and at last, he had a position in the town. There was nothing to stand in the way of his railway committee.

T
HE UPPER ROOM
in Mrs Tomlinson’s hotel in Low Petergate on that crisp December evening was packed to the walls and loud with
excitement
. George stood behind the baize-covered table waiting to take charge of the meeting and watched and listened with enormous satisfaction as more and more men arrived to join the throng and the noise of their mutual greetings grew deafening. There was no doubt now that the wealthy lawyers and businessmen of York had finally understood that a railway would bring higher profits to the town and that
he
, George Hudson, was a man to follow. Time to call them to order, he thought, and boomed at them that they should ‘pray be seated, gentlemen’.

The speeches from the floor were extremely gratifying for they began with a clear statement that a railway would be beneficial to the town and it came from one of the town’s leading businessmen, a gentleman called James Meek, who was a Whig and had the ear of the local MP.

One or two voices were raised to express concern about the possibility that the trains might carry passengers. They reminded George of his Uncle Matthew, but he dealt with them patiently. He’d been sure of his success as soon as he called the meeting and the knowledge made him
uncharacteristically
tolerant.

‘Our line will certainly carry a deal of freight,’ he told them, ‘that being the principle reason for bringing it into existence, as we all know, howsomever, in my humble opinion, ’twould be folly to preclude the
possibility
of carrying passengers. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway carries passengers already, as I’m sure you know, and is making a
handsome
profit out of it. If I’m any judge, and I think I can say I know as much as most on the subject, rail travel will soon be the preferred mode of
transport
, being, as it will assuredly be, fast, comfortable and dependable.’

There was no gainsaying him. He made sure of that. By the end of the evening, after several rousing speeches and a steady consumption of brandy, the York Railway Committee had been voted into existence, with Mr James Meek as its chairman, Mr James Richardson as its solicitor, and Mr George Hudson as treasurer. It was, George thought, as he strolled happily home to Monkgate, with a sharp frost under his feet and a sky full of bold white stars above his head, a thoroughly satisfactory outcome. And the best thing about it was that it was only just the beginning. There was more and better to come. I’m the richest man in York by a long chalk now, he thought. Just give me a few more years an’ a few more railways, an’ I’ll be the richest man in England. There’ll be no stopping me. Wait till I tell Lizzie.

It was a disappointment to find that, late though it was, Lizzie wasn’t in bed and waiting for him. Fussing with one of the children, he thought, and strode off to find her.

She was in Dickie’s room, sitting by the bed, looking anxious, her long face darkly shadowed by the gas light, with Milly standing beside her, demure in her dressing gown and looking even more anxious.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘There you are. Come to bed, woman. I’ve summat to tell ’ee.’

She didn’t appear to have heard him. ‘He’s not at all well,’ she said, looking at the little boy, who certainly had a very flushed face and was tossing his head from side to side on the pillows. ‘Poor little mite. He’s been coughing half the night, hasn’t he, Milly?’

‘He’s in a blue funk because I told him he was going to school,’ George said. ‘That’s all. Come to bed. I’ve summat to tell ’ee. Summat important.’

She didn’t move. ‘I’ll be along presently,’ she said, not even looking up. ‘When I’ve just got him settled, poor lamb.’

‘Goddamnit!’ he roared at her. ‘Am I not to be allowed to speak to my wife in my own house? Do as you’re told, woman, and come to bed. The girl’ll see to him.’

The girl glared at him but Lizzie rose stiffly and reluctantly to her feet and bent to kiss the boy’s hot head. She was carrying again and her
pregnancy
was making her look fat and awkward. She bent her head towards Milly and whispered to her please to let her know if there was any change, then she waddled after her husband.

‘He’s such a bully,’ Milly told her mother three days later when she was visiting Shelton House. ‘He treats her like a servant.’

‘Nowt would ever surprise me wi’ that one,’ Jane said. ‘He’s a brute. Allus was. Come up to the nursery and see what your brother and sister have got for Christmas.’

‘Is it Christmas already?’ Milly laughed.

‘It
is
for Mr Cartwright,’ Jane said, laughing too as she led her daughter upstairs. ‘He couldn’t wait to give it to them. Not even for a week. I never saw such excitement.’

It was a painted rocking horse with a leather saddle and a thick mane of grey horsehair. The sight of it took Milly straight back to the nursery of her childhood. ‘Oh, Ma,’ she said, ‘do ’ee remember our horse at Foster Manor?’

‘I’ve been remembering it ever since Mr Cartwright took off the wrapper,’ Jane said. ‘Remembering and wondering how they all are.’

‘Felix is up at Oxford,’ Milly said, automatically lifting her sister into the saddle. ‘Sarah told me in her last letter. Enjoying it no end, she said.’

‘He was such a dear little boy,’ Jane said rather wistfully.

‘And now you’ve got a dear little boy of your own,’ Milly told her briskly. ‘Hasn’t she, Nat? And two dear little girls, even if one’s not quite as little as she was.’

Outside their long window it was starting to snow, the light flakes tossing and dancing in the cold air.

‘Loo’! Loo’!’ Mary called, pointing at it. ‘Wha’s dat?’

‘That’s snow,’ Milly told her, ‘and if it settles we’ll go outside and build a snowman.’

Which they did, to the children’s intense excitement. Playing with them, as they wielded their spades and patted the solid sides of their creation and were lifted up to give their beautiful snowman a hat for his icy head and a carrot for his nose and two round black pebbles for his eyes, Jane knew she had never been so happy in all her life.

‘If I could only get my Milly to leave Monkgate and come and live here with us,’ she said to Nathaniel later that night, ‘I’d never want another thing.’

‘Happen she’ll join us when Dickie goes away to school,’ Nathaniel said.

But fate had other and more terrible plans for Dickie and his father, as they were to find out in the next three months, for the little boy was
seriously
ill and the racking cough and the exhausting fevers continued, despite everything Lizzie could do to ease them, like keeping a kettle steaming in
the bedroom or heating coal tar in a pumice-stone saucer until it let off healing fumes, which the pharmacist promised her was ‘just the thing’ for coughs and rheums.

‘He’ll be better come the spring,’ she said to Milly, her face strained with the need to hope. ‘’Tis just this bitter cold what does it, that’s all. He’ll be better come the spring, don’ ’ee think so.’

But the spring came, at first tentatively but then with encouraging warmth and strength, and the fevers continued and got worse. And then at the end of March, the child developed a rash of small red spots and when Mrs Hardcastle was called to attend him, she took one look at his labouring chest and diagnosed the measles, instructing that a sheet dipped in
disinfectant
should be hung across the bedroom door, that only Lizzie and Milly should enter the bedroom and that the other children should be kept well out of their brother’s way. ‘’Tis a mortal powerful infection,’ she said to Lizzie, ‘and you’ll not want them to tek it too.’

It was indeed mortal. Five days later, in the small hours of a very chill morning, Dickie Hudson gave up his unequal struggle against the terrible combination of consumption and measles and died in his mother’s arms.

Lizzie was wild with grief. ‘Three of them,’ she wept to Jane, when her old friend came hurrying round to comfort her. ‘Three! I can’t bear it. First my poor little James and he was such a pretty baby, you never saw such a pretty baby, and then my poor little Matthew just when I thought he was better and now my dear darling Dickie. Oh, what did I ever do to deserve it? I’ve loved them more than I can tell ’ee, much more, oh much, much more. I’d have given
anything
to keep them alive. Anything at all. I don’t know how I shall go on, I truly don’t.’

‘No, my dear,’ Jane said, putting her arms round Lizzie’s pitifully bowed shoulders and holding her gently. ‘I can see you don’t.’

‘’Tis more than human flesh and blood can stand,’ Lizzie wept. ‘’Tis all very well George saying ‘
you’ll have others
’. I don’t want others. I want my dear darling Dickie and my darling Matthew and my poor little James. Oh, oh, what’s to become of us? And that poor little dog howling all the time.’

It was impossible to find anything to say that would comfort her so Jane simply went on holding her and stroking her tear-damp hair until the worst of her grief was over. It was a terrible time. And it got worse when she finally said goodbye to Lizzie and went downstairs to the back door for she found Milly sitting in the kitchen, rigidly upright on one of the kitchen chairs, with a carpet bag at her feet and her face under such tight and ugly control that it hurt Jane simply to see it.

‘My dear?’ she said. And Milly burst into tears.

‘I can’t stay here, Ma,’ she wept. ‘Not now. Not wi’ my Dickie gone.
There’s nowt for me to do now he’s gone and everyone’s so upset. I can’t bear it. And with the funeral coming and everything. Why did he have to die, poor little man? It’s not fair! He was such a good little boy and we all loved him. I can’t stay here.’

‘Quite right,’ Jane said, taking charge of her. ‘You must come home wi’ me and let me look after you.’

‘Can I bring Spot with me?’ Milly asked. ‘He’s been howling ever since and ’tis upsetting everyone. He won’t howl with us, I promise. I’ll look after him.’

So it was agreed that the dog should come too and Sally was instructed to tell everybody where they’d gone.

Even in the midst of this grieving household, Jane was glad to think that her daughter was finally coming home, but she brought her grief with her and ate so little and was so quiet during their first dinner together that Jane was seriously worried about her.

‘’Tis a dreadful thing to see her in such a state,’ she said to Nathaniel when they were on their own together in the bedroom.

‘Aye,’ he said, looking at her compassionately.

‘’Tis all so unfair,’ Jane said. She was very close to tears herself. ‘There’s not a scrap of sense or justice in any of it. When you think of all the hard work it takes to carry a child and bring it into the world. And the
weariness
of those last months. And then to have to watch him die. ’Tis the cruellest thing. She was so fond of him, poor Lizzie. And so was my Milly.’

He put his arms round her and held her protectively close. ‘I will look after your Milly, my dearest,’ he said. ‘She’ll be well cared for here. I’ll see to it.’

And at that, she wept.

The funeral was held in Scrayingham Church on a bright spring day. Jane and Milly were touched to tears as they watched that little white coffin being lowered into George’s imposing family crypt in the churchyard. He should have been buried in his own little grave, Jane thought. That would have been much more fitting. All that expensive marble looked too heavy to be used to cover a little boy and his tender wreath of daffodils, although she noticed that George seemed pleased by it and was standing with one hand resting on it in a proprietorial way. She also noticed that he wasn’t paying any attention at all to poor Lizzie. He could at least have offered her an arm to lean on. ’Tis all money with him, she thought, hateful man, and she walked across to put a comforting arm round her old friend’s shoulders.

‘Time for me to be off,’ George said, throwing the words in their
direction
. ‘Tha’lt be fine wi’ Mrs Smith, will ’ee not.’

Lizzie tried to dry her eyes. ‘When will ’ee be back?’ she asked, huskily.

He was already striding through the churchyard to where his groom stood patiently holding his horse. ‘No idea!’ he called. ‘Don’t wait up.’

Jane was appalled. ‘Where’s he going?’ she said.

‘Oh, ’tis business,’ Lizzie told her, as if that explained it.

Jane was too cross to be cautious or even polite. ‘Business!’ she said. ‘At his son’s funeral?’

Even in the terrible depths of her grief, Lizzie knew she had to defend her husband and struggled to rouse herself to do it. ‘People depend on him,’ she said. ‘He’s a great man, Jane. We must mek allowances. He wants to link his railway up with another one in Leeds. Or was it Derby? Anyroad, one or t’other, ’tis important. He were telling me only t’other evening. Linking two railways, you see. You
do
see, don’t you, Jane?’ And then she looked down at the little grave and cried again.

He’s a heartless beast, Jane thought, but she didn’t say anything more. Lizzie was too upset for that and if George wouldn’t look after her,
she
would. She put her arm round her friend’s shoulders and held her while she cried. But she carried her anger in her heart and by the time she got home it had hardened into the old familiar hatred.

‘He left her standing at the graveside,’ she said to Nathaniel, as they were getting undressed ready for bed. ‘I ne’er saw owt so cruel. And she with her son just buried and barely able to walk for the weight of the next baby and weeping so much ’twas a wonder she could see. There are times when he beats cock-fighting.’

‘But she had
you
to look after her,’ Nathaniel said easily, hanging his jacket in the closet. ‘She was in good hands.’

‘That,’ Jane said, stepping out of her petticoat and giving it a cross little shake, ‘is beside the point. ’Twas
his
job to look after her. He’s her husband.’

‘He’s a great man,’ Nathaniel told her, patiently, as he took off his shoes. ‘A man with a vision. You can’t expect a great man to play nursemaid to his wife. He has other things to do.’