Off the Rails (30 page)

His daughter Ann had much the same fighting spirit. Within three days of her uncle’s suicide, she announced to her mother that she was going to marry Count Suminski. ‘I’ll not let folk mock me,’ she said. ‘Not when I’ve a suitor ready and willing.’

‘But I thought you told me no one would have you,’ Lizzie said. ‘How did you…?’

‘I wrote to him,’ Ann said. ‘He asked me by return of post.’

‘But he’s foreign,’ Lizzie objected. ‘You’ll have to live abroad.’

‘Aye, I will,’ Ann said. ‘And a good job too. I’ve no intention of staying here to be a laughing stock.’

She was married and gone within three weeks. Poor Lizzie was distraught. ‘First Richard and now my Ann,’ she grieved.

But George wasn’t listening. He had battles to fight.

Jane Cartwright had spent a happy summer preparing for her daughter’s wedding, supervising the making of the bridal gown which was to be in white like Queen Victoria’s wedding dress, sending out invitations, and watching the transformation of the vicarage, but she took time off now and then to check on her adversary’s downfall because it gave her such a wonderful sense of satisfaction. It really was so exactly what should be happening to him. Poor Richard hadn’t deserved his terrible fate at all but George most certainly had. Now that Nat was working with
The Yorkshireman
, she had an almost daily source of gossip, although for the most reliable news she had to wait to read the reports in
The Times
like everybody else in York. There was only one thing that troubled her and that was what would become of the people Hudson employed – and in
particular
of her Nathaniel.

She worried for more than a week before she decided she must talk to him about it, for if he were to lose his job, they might have to move from their lovely house, which would be extremely sad, especially with the wedding coming.

He was instantly reassuring. ‘There are plenty of railways,’ he told her, ‘and more being built or at the planning stage. Hudson may be gone but his
companies are still up and running and they can’t build railways without the engineers to design them and build the bridges and the viaducts and all the other things they need.’ Then he noticed her expression and asked, ‘Were you worried about it?’

‘I was,’ she confessed, ‘but I’m not now.’ And she was thinking, those courts can do what they like with George Hudson, if that’s the case.

What they did, as the months passed, was to strip him of all his assets, ordering him to pay back all the money he owed, to every company he had cheated. One by one his expensive properties were sold and naturally, given the situation he was in, all of them went cheaply. Albert Gate was sold to the French government for a mere
£
21,000. By August, even Newby Park was lost and by the time he and Lizzie had to leave it, he had no property left and precious little money. And to make matters worse he was still heavily in debt.

‘I shall have to go abroad now we’ve lost this place,’ he said to Lizzie, as he closed the door for the last time. ‘There’s nowt else for it.’

‘Abroad?’ she said. She was finding all these changes very hard to contend with but the thought of leaving the country was the worst thing she could imagine. ‘How will I see my boys if I’m not in t’country? I mean for to say. Bad enough losing Ann and William wi’out being cut off from the others.’

‘You’re not going,’ he told her. ‘’Tis just me.’ And he tried to explain. ‘If I stay in this country, I shall be arrested for debt and sent to prison. That’s the long and short of it. I’ll find you somewhere in London until I get myself an appointment. Don’t ’ee fret. ’Twill all work out. I know more about
railways
than any man alive. I’ll find some government that wants a railway built. They’ll jump at me. You’ll see.’

‘Where are we going now?’ she asked, waddling after him.

‘To t’station,’ he said.

T
HERE WAS A
harsh rain falling when the Hudsons arrived in Euston on that August afternoon and Lizzie was tired and miserable. She’d had a most uncomfortable journey because something seemed to have happened
to their usual coach and they’d had to travel in an ordinary one, which was none too clean and crowded with people. Now she trudged along the narrow streets between the most ugly soot-black houses she’d ever seen, damp with rain and burdened by a great bag full of shoes and clothes and all sorts of things that he
would
have her bring, and wondered where on earth they were going.

‘Is it much further, George?’ she said as they turned down yet another street of poverty-stricken houses. They really were hideous, with their peeling paintwork and their rickety doors standing askew and all those windows caked with such thick dust it looked as if it had been there for centuries. She pitied anyone who had to live in houses like this, she truly did, but then the people they were passing were a rough-looking lot and probably didn’t notice how bad they were. The women wore men’s flat caps and filthy shawls and broken-down boots and the children were in rags. There was a group of them lurking about on the corner with no shoes on their feet. One of them was smoking a clay pipe as if he were a man. It made her shudder to look at them. ‘Is it much further?’

‘This’ll do,’ George said, stopping in front of one of the houses. There was a clumsily written notice propped up against the filthy window and, peering at it through the rain, she saw that it said
‘Rooms to let’
. Surely he’s not going to take a room here?

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be a minute.’ And he walked in through the squiffy door, calling as he went, ‘Anyone at home?’

She waited awkwardly, standing on the pavement in the rain but at a distance from the house, because she wouldn’t want any of the passers-by to think she had anything to do with a place like that, and keeping a wary eye on the dirty children who were eyeing her up and down. What if one of them were to jump out on her and attack her? They looked capable of anything and that one with the pipe was downright ugly. Oh, do hurry up, George, she thought, looking at the blank face of the house. I don’t like it here.

The boy with the pipe sauntered towards her. ‘You waitin’ for summink, missus?’ he said.

‘No, no,’ she said in confusion. ‘’Tis all right.’

‘Not from round these parts, are yer?’ the boy said.

‘No,’ she said, looking round rather wildly for George. And there he was, striding out of the door towards her. Praise be!

‘That’s settled,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

He was leading her into the house. Why was he leading her into the house? ‘I’ve got you a couple of rooms,’ he said. ‘First floor front. Best in the house so the landlady says.’ He was leading her up the stairs, and nasty
rickety stairs they were. It was a wonder they didn’t fall headlong. They reached the landing. ‘There you are,’ he said, opening a door and inclining his head to show her that she should step inside. ‘This one’s the bedroom. ’Tis all paid up and reg’lar. You’ve got it for six months.’

It was a dreadful room, dark and gloomy and very scantily furnished, with no curtains at the windows and only very dirty boards on the floor. There was a lumpy-looking bed against one wall with a decidedly dirty coverlet pulled clumsily across the top of it and a chamber pot rather horribly visible beneath it, a chipped wash stand with a plain jug and basin lurking in a corner and a plain deal table and one plain deal chair standing forlornly in the middle of the room. But if the bedroom was bad, the sitting room was worse. It smelt sour and every item of furniture in it seemed to be suffering from a sort of palsy. There were two chairs that were leaning on one another like a pair of drunks, the table had one of its legs propped up by an old book, there was a filthy dresser and a sofa that was so lumpy she could see the bumps in it from where she stood. The grate was empty and showed no signs of ever having been used. A dreadful, dreadful room. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘It’s a foul place.’

‘You’ve no choice,’ he told her brusquely. ‘It’s either this or live on the streets.’

‘But it’s a hovel, George.’

‘Don’t fuss,’ he said. ‘There are pie shops just round the corner so you’ll not go hungry, and they do a good ale at the Pig and Whistle, which you’ll be able to find easy enough, so Mrs Grimshawe says, and there’s a baker’s, and a butcher’s and you’ve got your things. You’ll mek out.’

She was tired and hungry and her coat was soaking wet and her hat was wrecked and her back ached and her feet were sore and she didn’t want to make out. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said.

‘Like I said, you’ve no choice,’ George said. ‘I’ve not got the money for owt else. You’ll just have to make do wi’ this till I can find a job and start making money again. You’ll be fine here with Mrs Grimshawe. She comes from Leeds.’ And he kissed her forehead, once and perfunctorily, and left her.

She sat on the bed and cried for a very long time. But there was nobody to hear her and nobody to take any notice of her, so in the end she dried her eyes as well as she could on her damp sleeve, took off her coat and hung it on a nail that was sticking out of the door, and unpacked her bag. Almost the first things she found were the pen, ink and paper he’d told her to pack that morning. That’s it, she thought. I’ll write to my boys. They’ll look after me. And she sat down at her nasty cheap table and began to write.

‘My dear George, You will be shocked to know that I am living in a 
very small room in a dreadful place called Burton Street, which is
somewhere
near Euston Station. Please, please come and visit me. Your father has gone abroad and for the life of me I don’t know what to do or where to turn.’

Two days later the sun was shining and Shelton House was heady with the scent of roses because it was Mary’s wedding day and her bouquet lay ready for her on the dining room table. The guests had been arriving all morning and the excitement was increasing with every arrival. Milly and Felix had brought Audrey and her two nursery maids with them because Milly said she didn’t think young Albert could be trusted not to disgrace himself, which he duly did, being suddenly sick all over his pretty new dress so that he had to be carried away upstairs to be cleaned up and changed, while his mother sighed. Sarah Jane was being angelic and looking extremely pretty in her blue bridesmaid’s gown with a chaplet of rosebuds on her fair hair. She was very conscious of being part of an occasion and stood between the two other bridesmaids, who were school friends of Mary’s and had been commissioned to look after her, holding their hands and watching the comings and goings, owl-eyed.

What with friends and family and neighbours, there were so many people come to wish the young pair well that they made a noticeable procession as they all set off together for the church, laughing and chatting through the crowded streets, as passers-by waved and nodded at them and the church bells rang above their heads. Jane felt quite dizzy with the success of it all.

And then there they were, gathered in the cool and quiet of the church and there was the vicar waiting for them and Toby and Nat in their fine clothes standing before the altar rail and they were barely settled in their pews before Nathaniel and Mary were walking down the aisle towards them with the three bridesmaids behind them, Mary looking more beautiful than Jane had ever seen her, in her white dress with its fashionable
bell-shaped
skirt – the Queen was right, white was the perfect colour for a bride – and Nathaniel even more proud than he’d been at Milly’s wedding. And the congregation hushed as Mary handed her bouquet to Sarah-Jane and the age-old ceremony began. ‘Dearly beloved …’

‘I’ve never been as happy as this in the whole of my life,’ Jane said, as she and Nathaniel were walking back to the house at the head of their guests.

‘Not even at our wedding?’ he teased. ‘I thought that was rather good myself.’

‘This is different,’ she said and when he pretended to look crestfallen,
‘that was just us. This is our entire family, every single one of them and all our friends and neighbours. This is simply perfect.’

‘That I will allow,’ he said. ‘So it is.’ And he led the way into the house.

But there is a price to pay for perfection. Later that afternoon when the newlyweds had been driven off to the station, dappled with rose petals, and the guests had made their farewells and drifted away group by group and even Nat had left them to go off with his friends from the newspaper, she and Nathaniel were suddenly alone in a house that felt decidedly empty and lonely.

‘I shall miss them,’ Jane said. ‘It’s going to be odd in this house without them.’

‘Get your bonnet on,’ Nathaniel told her, ‘and we will go for one of our walks. I could do with some fresh air after all that crush.’

They followed the familiar pathways under the familiar sun, arm in arm, and for the first mile they talked about the wedding, reliving its moments and enjoying them all over again. Then Nathaniel surprised her by saying he had a bit of news he thought she would enjoy. ‘Time for a breather, I think,’ he said. ‘Under that oak tree would be the perfect place.’

They sat together on the grassy knoll beneath the tree and Jane took off her bonnet, closed her eyes and raised her face towards the sun like a country girl. ‘So what is it, this news of yours?’ she said. She wasn’t
particularly
interested. News was trivial after such a wedding.

‘Have you read the newspaper today?’

No, she hadn’t. ‘Newspapers were the last thing I were thinking about this morning.’

‘Then I will tell you,’ he said. ‘Mr Hudson has gone into exile.’

She opened her eyes at once. ‘Left the country, do ’ee mean?’

‘Left the country,’ he told her. ‘There are too many creditors after him and if he stays here, he’s like to be arrested and sent to debtors’ prison.’

She was delighted. ‘Well, good riddance,’ she said. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

He thought for a minute before he spoke again and then he said, ‘You really do hate him, don’t you?’

‘Aye,’ she said easily. ‘I do.’

‘I think I’ve always know it,’ he told her, ‘but I’ve never really
understood
why it should be. There must be a reason for a passion as strong as that.’

‘Aye,’ she said again, ‘there is. I’ve known him a long time.’ And then
she
spent a minute thinking. ‘Happen I should tell you a story.’

‘A fairy story on a wedding day,’ he said. ‘What could be better?’

‘No,’ she told him seriously. ‘This is no fairy story. I only wish it were. This is true.’ She paused again, only briefly this time, for he was looking at her so lovingly. ‘When he were nobbut a lad,’ she said, ‘the great Mr Hudson fathered a child. He were just a village lad in those days and village lads were expected to stand by the babies they fathered and marry the girl and make an honest woman of her. But that wouldn’t do for the great Mr Hudson. Oh no. He was above taking responsibility. Responsibility was for
other
people. He was all for himself, even then. Me, me, me, all the time. That was the great Mr Hudson. So he paid a bastardy fee and walked away from the village and left the girl to bring up her baby on her own. Which were mortal hard work.’

He finished the story for her. ‘But the child grew up into a fine young woman, did she not, and now she is Lady Fitzwilliam and has four fine
children
of her own.’

It should have been a shock that he knew but in an odd way it was what she expected. ‘How long have ’ee known?’

‘For about three minutes. Possibly less.’

That made her smile.

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he asked, and his voice was gentle and loving.

‘It wasn’t the sort of thing I could tell anybody. Folk are uncommon cruel to a mother wi’ no wedding ring on her finger. I thought you would think less of me if I told you.’

‘Less of you?’

‘Aye,’ she admitted.

‘Oh my dear girl,’ he said. ‘You were quite, quite wrong. I would have thought more of you, not less. I would have loved you even more than I already did. As I do now.’

She was close to tears. ‘Truly?’

‘Truly,’ he said and stood up, brushing the twigs and dead leaves from his trousers. ‘Time for us to go on with our walk, I think.’

She wiped her eyes, put on her bonnet and held out her hands so that he could lift her to her feet. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You’re right. ’Tis time for us to go on.’