A Station In Life (25 page)

To reassure myself I recited
Grace, prefacing it with a private, satirical quip.

“So, Miss Blake’s
infernal heathen pays me a visit, eh?”

My nerve broke when I
realised that my hog pudding was gone.  All that remained of it was a
tantalising smell and some pastry crumbs.  I tell a lie.  Such had been the
usurper’s haste that the tablecloth was splashed with gravy and a remnant of
pork lay upon the floor.  I was paralysed with disbelief.  Had my window not
been closed I should have thought it the snatch of a gannet.

Calming myself I studied
my empty plate and attempted to understand the meaning of it.  While doing so I
heard a peculiar cry.  Much like a whimper, if not an outright jibber, it came
from very nearby, but I knew that it was not the call of an evil spirit lured
from limbo by Miss Blake’s cooking because by now I had realised that it was a
mortal in terror.  To control my jibber I went to the window and took a deep
breath.  Noticing that Mr Troke was gone, I wondered if he was in some way
connected with the incident.

I went to my office and
summoned Mr Troke, but he had absconded so I called Diggory instead.  Diggory
had also gone to ground so I called Mr Phillips.  He too, having vacated his
office, was nowhere to be found and so, feeling a trifle queer, I strode the
platforms calling for help generally.  This I did until my strength failed and
I took support against the handle of a platform trolley.  With my echo mocking
me from Splashgate hill and a low sun cutting through a restless sky, the only
response to my distress call was a delegation of tall shadows like Russian
chess pieces.  Even the signalbox was unoccupied so I fled the dumb busybodies
and resumed my search.  But so keen were the chess pieces to escort me to their
alternative world of disappearing puddings and deserted stations that they
sprang up a wall beside me.  I fled them again and took to a bench.

How relieved I was,
then, to see Mr Troke amble out of the Parcels office shielding his eyes against
the evening’s rubescent glow and gaze to and fro as if puzzled.  Having espied
the cause of the commotion he sauntered over to me and spat out a quid of
tobacco, whereupon I drew breath to explain my alarm.  I faltered.  It had
occurred to me that my credibility was at risk as never before so I loosened my
collar instead of my tongue and gazed at him dumbfounded.

My artless Rollingstock
superintendent was bamboozled.  He scratched his beard and stared at me
helplessly, having no idea how to restart a stunned stationmaster.  Regaining
my composure I studied him and wondered if he was really as artless as he
appeared, for he had behaved most suspiciously at the time of my fright.  Also
a hog pudding would be of more interest to an employee with no scruples than an
evil spirit with no stomach.

“Do you know of any
reason why my dinner should disappear?” I challenged him.

“No, sir,” came the
fellow’s reply with a disarming ring of innocence.

At this point Mr
Phillips joined us, his alabaster cheeks carrying a rare hint of pink in the sunset
hues.

“William has been with
me for some while, Mr Jay,” he sprang to his colleague’s defence.

Thus apprised I was compelled
to postpone judgement.  Nevertheless I eyed Mr Troke’s uniform for traces of
gravy.  There being none I had to accept that the fellow could hardly have
scoffed the dish anyway, not without Mr Phillips complicity, and Edwin was too
much the gentleman to tell a lie even as a prank.  The episode, therefore, had
no rational explanation.

“Have you seen
anything?” I quizzed the clerk.

“Anything?” he eructed. 
“I have seen many things today, Mr Jay.  What had you in mind?”

“Anything at all,” I
replied with rising agitation.  “Anything unusual?”

Mr Troke and Mr Phillips
blinked at each other as if seeking mutual inspiration.

“No,” they rendered
their answer in unison.

“It is one’s lot in life
to remain perplexed,” I concluded.

I needed no crystal ball
to foretell the future should my vanishing hog pudding become known about.  The
story would spread like wildfire and invoke neither sympathy nor constructive
suggestion, keeping the station house reverberating with laughter at my expense
for weeks.

“The spinster woman is a
Jonah and we shall speak no more of the matter,” I closed the subject and
strode away to The Shunter for a supper of cheese and stout.

The tap room in The
Shunter was always lively with hands.  Lively, that is, until a stationmaster
appeared in the doorway.  However, the sudden change in atmosphere never
unsettled me, for in a public of this kind any figure of authority would dampen
the atmosphere.  Yet so harmless was my demeanour that the lull in conversation
was short-lived and by the time I had taken myself to my corner table the smoke
filled room was booming with laughter again.  Ay, and the telling of yarns so
apocryphal as to cause good humoured jeering, apart from the ones about the
beast of Exmoor of course.  Had I been disposed to join these men as they
puffed their clay pipes and loosened their tongues on cider I could have
recounted my own far eerier experience.  But a wise stationmaster always remains
aloof in such places, lest he be bothered by hearing of illicit activities or
set himself up for ridicule.  Besides, taking a glass of ale in solitude does
no harm to a man with a fertile intellect, for there is much in life to ponder,
such as nature’s purpose in creating a woman like Serena Blake.

While waiting for my
cheese to be cut I took a pinch of snuff and beheld myself in an oval mirror
hanging lop-sided on the wall.  I noticed that my hair was thinning, but I was
no fashionable swell and would countenance no hairpiece.  I had not the vanity for
such an uncomfortable measure even should I become bald and have to live in
fear of the rogue jackdaw said to live in Upshott wood.  This allegedly
attacked shiny heads, although so far only the wigmaker of Blodcaster had seen
it, reporting that birds of similar proclivity were at large everywhere.

With no sign of my
cheese I gazed out of the window at the tavern sign.  This illustrated an old
shire horse marshalling beer trucks in the days when Upshott was a terminus and
I reflected how much simpler life must have been then.  Drowsy with the thought
of it I was served my Cheddar by a young maid and went fully into the trance of
the lonely diner.

Returning to my quarters
I detoured to help Diggory place a cumbersome bag of coal aboard the Giddiford
train, then found the spinster woman in my kitchen scrubbing earthenware.

“I see yer enjoyed my
’og pudding’, Mr Jay,” she chirped.  “Yer didn’t leave a scrap uneaten.”  She
stooped to pick up the lump lying on the floor and looked at me
disapprovingly.  “Apart from this one.”  I received another such look when she
removed the tablecloth and examined the gravy stains.  “Change that, shall I?”
she said with narrowed eyes and quivering top lip.  “T’wer clean on this
mornin’ though.”

As we gentlemen know,
domestics never gossip.  We know this because they tell us so, just as they
tell each other. 
‘Well, Mrs Brown, you know me, I never gossip, but I
really must tell you about the new stationmaster.  He flicks his food across
the room while eating.’
  My social standing in the community was about to
sink even lower, sneers greeting me at every turn.

Miss Blake took up my
ewer and announced her intention to refill it downstairs.  On her way to the
door she stopped abruptly and gave me a groggy smile, from which unnerving
intermission I sensed that I was about to audience another of her
blood-curdling stories.

“My mother finally told
I why this location were chosen to take the heathen under,” said she as if this
burial business was a burden upon us all.

Indeed, by now it was. 
My heart sank as she abandoned the ewer by my washbowl and set about imparting
the gruesome details.  Truth to tell, I did not hear a word, for such
utterances could not compete with my continuing mental struggle to reconcile
the pudding incident with normality.

“I be tellin’ yer about
the dead body, Mr Jay,” she bullied me back to life.  “The one I found
underneath this station.”

“Oh, that one,” I
replied, wondering how many others there were.  “But I thought it was only a
skull you unearthed, Miss Blake, not an entire body?”

I removed myself to a
more comfortable chair and Miss Blake followed me there with her unique brand
of torment.

“T’wer the skull of a
local charcoal burner,” she continued.  “The man came from a family as lived
deep in Bessam forest and survived by ’urdle makin’ and charcoal burnin’.  They
were outcasts one and all, for they dabbled in strange rituals and never
attended church.  My mother told I they were wicked folk who always buried
their dead in the shadow of them standin’ stones up on Splashgate ’ill.  Yer
see, Mr Jay, when the sun comes up in the mornin’ them stones forms a point
right ’ere on yer station.  T’is on a lay line, yer see.”

“A lay line?” I
coughed.  “My goodness!  I thought it was a railway line.”

The spinster woman
laughed wheezily then begged me to take her seriously.

“Miss Blake,” I
cautioned her, “if you allude to devil worship then I shall hear no more of it.”

“Oh, but yer must, sir,”
she urged me gravely, finding it necessary to brush her long, red hair.

I sighed with
resignation and removed my shoes.  A dose of Miss Blake’s story telling was painful
enough without aching feet.  Tugging at her flaming fleece she continued with a
downward shift of voice that I found most unsettling.

“Now, I’ve picked some
garlic for to ’ang above yer door, Mr Jay.  T’is for yer own salvation, mind. 
My mother says ’e were nefarious.  She says yer be in grave danger.”

I could see by Miss
Blake’s hesitant grimace that she did not know the meaning of the word
‘nefarious’ beyond that it was bad, but was too abashed to ask.  Naturally I
did not assist.  Instead, I told her firmly:

“Miss Blake, you must
understand that I would sooner be haunted by your nefarious heathen than sleep
with the beastly smell of garlic in my room.”

There was a shudder of
incomprehension and matter was closed.

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Chapter
Twenty-Two —
The terror of a moorland storm

This night, unhinged by
the hog pudding mystery, I simply could not sleep.  Lying awake in my bed, my
nerves jarred by the shrieking of a barn owl imitating a lost soul, I wondered
if perhaps my dinner had been stolen by a jackdaw or some other bird with the
collecting instinct.  However, there was precious little comfort in this
theory.  Quite apart from the sheer bulk of the pudding my window had been
closed at the time of the snatch and the labyrinthine innards of Upshott
station house would have confounded even a jackdaw preferring a hog pudding to
a bald head.  For this reason my mind tumbled onwards in search of a more
plausible explanation and in the end settled for the possibility that an
abnormal rodent had taken up residence beneath my floorboards.

Clinging to this
ridiculous theory, sleep continued to elude me and as my eyes sank into my face
my denial of Miss Blake’s evil spirit lost ground.  In the early hours I was
menaced by the scratch of every mouse, the squeak of every bat, and the howl of
every dog, but my final undoing came with a disturbance which defied all
rational explanation.

Generally speaking,
rigor mortis is not a state which one describes with the benefit of personal experience,
but a very loud thump and prolonged groan coming from downstairs gave me a
unique insight to the condition.  My limbs became numb to their extremities and
my ears flattened like those of a frightened animal.  In short, a useless
object was cluttering my bed.  Despite the fact that a break-in might be in
progress, albeit by a very clumsy burglar, my duty to investigate was subsumed
by an obsessive desire to lie still and listen for the next sound.  Though not
normally so cowardly, on this occasion the small hairs of my neck would not lie
down any more than I could stand up, and thus stricken I decided that making
mental notes of all that I heard was the cleverest course of action.

After a while of hearing
no further noises my perspective shifted, for if the quiet of the night
amplifies an unaccountable sound, thereby intensifying one’s apprehension of
it, then so does the passage of time lessen that sound, thereby emboldening one
to take action.  Thus eventually was I able to quantify the disturbance as a
trifle and go to sleep.  After all, the grounds of Upshott station were home to
enough livestock, and thoroughfare to enough wild animals, to account for a
bump in the night.

Unfortunately another sound,
a much louder one resembling the scratch of fingernails upon wood and accompanied
by heavy breathing, robbed me of my slumber.  This was not the rummaging of a
nocturnal forager.  No hedgehog or fox, or even an asthmatic badger was the
cause of this disturbance, and thus I knew that I was in the uncompromising
presence of the inexplicable.  My heart pounded like a drum at a mediaeval
hanging.

Overcoming paralysis again
I propped myself against my pillow, flicked the bobble of my nightcap from my
face, and set about lighting my bedside candle.  With my hands shaking like
gelatine I did not meet with success until the very last match, by which time
the noise had grown louder.  I calmed myself with a few whispered words.

‘Have no fear,
Horace, it is only a burglar stealing company property.  There is no cadaver clawing
at a coffin lid.’

In case I was wrong,
however, I unhooked the walnut rood that I kept above my bed and uttered a
short prayer before setting forth.  It was upon opening my door very slowly to
prevent its hinges from creaking that I discovered how opening a door slowly
makes its hinges creak all the louder, a fascinating discovery which energised
my fear as I looked downstairs into the well of darkness below.  Who, or what,
had joined me in the station house, I wondered .  For even straining my eyes I
could see nothing suspicious.  No flicker of an intruder’s lamp, no carpet bag stuffed
with stolen property, no discarded jemmy.  Not one sign of a burglar.

Clutching my rood in one
hand and my candle in the other I embarked upon a hesitant descent to the
ground floor, reassuring myself with each exploratory step that my holy cross
would protect me from any intruder, be he spiritual or temporal.  After all,
with this weighty artefact I could supplicate repentance in the name of the
Lord or, if necessary, deliver a corrective blow.

My stealth was betrayed
by a creaking timber underfoot and the station house reverberated maddeningly
with my presence upon the stairs.  I halted sharply.  Creaking hinges. 
Creaking floors.  Upshott station was by far the creakiest building I had ever
had the misfortune to occupy.  I muttered furiously.

‘In this place one
could not stalk a dead man without waking him.’

Serena Blake’s voice entered
my head.

‘Why, Mr Jay, but that’s
what yer be doin’, Lord help us.’

A shiver ran up my
spine.

This shiver reversed and
sprinting back down my spine when an inexplicable draught wobbled the flame of
my candle and caused a mob of shadows to dance around me like savages.  Now, to
halve my dread, I resumed my descent of the stairs with one eye closed.

At the foot of the
stairs I cocked an ear to identify the direction of the scratching, but I was
too late.  Now only the wheeple of the barn owl drifted lethargically through
the darkness.  With both eyes open wide I advanced towards the Booking hall, keeping
my back to the wall lest I be set upon from behind, and ventured into each
shadowy office in turn with my feeble light.  With my rood raised aloft I
challenged every cupboard and recess, but not a burglar did I find.

To complete my
reconnaissance I unlocked the main door to the Booking hall and stepped
outside.  Here, upon the platform, the whispering breeze reduced the flame of
my candle to a useless blue droplet and chilled me as if my cotton bed-frock
was but a wisp of lace.  Nevertheless, feeling still more vulnerable, I walked
briskly to the east end of the platform to see if the goat or chickens had been
disturbed, but under tonight’s moonless sky I could not tell.  The darkness was
total, save for a small rash of stars in the zenith and a sprinkling of
glow-worms in the grass, and once again I was compelled to resort to my ears
for hint of what lurked abroad.  All I registered was hooting from the rustling
ash tree overhanging the footbridge and the soft, squeaky rasp of crickets.  To
this, nature’s night time lullaby, mankind had added only the steady clunk of a
platform clock and the chatter of my teeth.

Shielding my candle from
the fickle breeze I widened my search to include the goods shed, casting a
suspicious eye about its endless jigsaw puzzle of nooks and crannies, concluding
that any intruder had either done his business and taken nothing or was
invisible.  I locked the shed and returned to bed.

Reporting for duty
Sunday morning, Humphrey asked me how my new recruit was faring.

“If you refer to Miss
Blake, I am looking for a replacement,” I told him bluntly.

“Oh, be her a wrong’un
for the job?” he asked.  “Down at The Pheasant they tells I she be a splendid
cook and most reliable.”

The porter dealt me a
baffled look and began winding up his fobwatch.  I grimaced.

“I dare say she is a
splendid cook,” I replied, “but I would not know about that.”

Forcing his fobwatch
into a tightly stretched waistcoat pocket, Humphrey dealt me a second baffled
look.  I dealt him a second grimace and began winding up my own timepiece.

“The spinster’s presence
is having a disturbing effect upon me and it causes sleepless nights,” I
confided.

Humphrey blinked, then
broke into a smile.

“Arr, I see,” he
acknowledged knowingly.

“You do?” I asked.  “So
you have noticed it too?”

“Well, in truth, Mr Jay,
I wouldn’t have known if e hadn’t told I,” he answered, then conceded
grudgingly, “but I suppose she aint unattractive in her own way.”

“Humphrey, you shame me,
” I gasped.  “It is not what you think.  Of the matter I can reveal only that
the woman’s influence is disruptive, her effect upon the station being
confoundedly difficult to explain.  Let us just say that last night she fetched
me garlic and my dinner disappeared.”

“Jingo,” Humphrey
replied, then fell to a perplexed silence.

I stared at him in
dismay.

“I should have thought
it obvious that a man of my calibre would not yield to lustful fantasies,” I
reproved the fellow.  “And even were I to view Miss Blake romantically favourable
her garlic would repel me.”

In the pensive silence
that followed, my tongue found a voice all its own.

“Humphrey, irrational
though it may seem, I have come to the conclusion that Miss Blake’s return to
the station is causing a disturbance,” it said.  “By her very presence she
seems to have aroused some kind of sinful entity.”

“A natural urge b’aint sinful,
Mr Jay,” Humphrey attempted to appease me.

“For goodness sake,
Humphrey, I refer to a satanic stirring which would otherwise have remained
dormant,” I explained.

Humphrey’s silver
eyebrows lifted with incredulity.  Indeed, as I spoke, they rose by degrees
until hidden by the peak of his cap.  Expecting never to see them again, I
extended my reasoning.

“Truth to tell, Humphrey,
I think it has something to do with the heathen burial.”

It occurred to me that the
porter’s incredulity was caused not by the possibility of a station ghost but
that a stationmaster of my standing should believe in such a thing.

“Arr, e wants to see the
vicar of Saint Martha,” he warbled confidentially.  “This be a church matter.”

“I intend to,” I
confirmed.  “This very day!”

I had hoped that
Humphrey would dismiss my concerns as unfounded, but instead he tutted grimly
and wandered away to receive the 10.04am Giddiford train.

“I always knew her’d
rise up one day,” he mumbled.

Staggering out of the
Parcels office I stumbled over Diggory’s canvas bag, which for some reason he
had left crumpled in the corridor.  I summoned the lad to my office and, as ever,
he stood to attention like a foot soldier.

“I do not reprimand
you,” I opened, handing him back his unsightly bag.  “Although you might take
more care with this in future.  Now, tell me, how is your mother?  Does she
find the extra coal useful?”

“Oh yes, sir,” the lad
nodded energetically.  “She wants to thank you in person.  On Monday.  She’ll
be coming here to buy a season ticket.”

“Your mother is to
become a commuter then,” I surmised.  “Presumably she will be using the railway
until the accommodation above the shop is ready.  Well, I look forward to
seeing her.”

The lad nodded
energetically again and this continued until I dismissed him.

Sunday traffic was
light, with but three passenger trains and no freight, so the station was
generally closed around 5pm, this being half-an-hour after the last train. 
Today would be different, however, for I would lock up immediately and visit
the vicarage for advice.

The vicarage was a
small, square building almost completely overgrown with ivy.  Its front was concealed
from the High street by a row of mature chestnut trees and a mossy brick wall,
its rear overlooked by the tower of Saint Martha.  I passed through a
wrought-iron gate into the garden and paused briefly by a neatly trimmed holly
bush to check my timepiece and straighten my collar.  Here came to pass my
first great twinge of doubt.

‘Can I really be a
stationmaster who fears ghosts?’

Wondering what the
minister would make of me I moved on, parting the powder-blue fronds of a faded
wisteria that had devoured the porch.  Now came my second twinge of doubt, but
as this did not differ from my first I was left with a trepidation implacably
at odds with my surroundings.  For here was I, in the bright light of day,
dwarfed by the stout masonry of a peaceful, country vicarage, gleaming in the
gentle sunshine a polished brass bell upon a studded oak door, and my dim
purpose was to report a ghost!  Alas, before I could turn and leave I was
spotted.  A curtain moved.  I reviewed my position quickly and decided that I
did not necessarily believe in Miss Blake’s ghost.  Instead I would hold that
my presence here was merely to seek impartial advice regarding her claim that
one existed.  My rehearsal complete, I cleared my throat and pulled the bell
chain to seal my fate.

I was greeted almost
immediately by a chambermaid wearing a pale blue apron and lawn cap, to whom I
explained that although I had made no appointment with the minister I wished to
speak with him on a matter of urgency.  With a sweet smile the young servant
took my hat and stick and invited me to wait in the study.

Now, whilst I am not
nosey by nature, for I consider myself to be a gentleman, given that I was in a
room called a ‘study’ I took leave to study it.  After all, should I be kept
waiting, a few wry observations would pass the time harmlessly enough.

This diversion proved
unsettling, however, for I found in the vicar’s possessions a certainty of life
that made me feel strangely distant, as if evacuated from reality.  This, I
reflected, was a curious place for uncertainty to overthrow certainty, frequently
though it does elsewhere, for in a minister’s study where life’s tenor is
regulated by the reassuring tick of a carriage clock and the acuity of one’s
senses sharpened by the redolence of cut flowers and beeswax polish, the peace
of the bible ought to have been felt as deeply as in the church itself.  Yet,
for some reason, the room spoke of spiritual evasion rather than spiritual
engagement.  I curtailed my irreverent observation lest I be undone.