The Railway Girl Read online

  NANCY CARSON

  The Railway Girl

  Copyright

  Published by Avon

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

  Copyright © Nancy Carson 2016

  Cover illustration © Debbie Clement 2016

  Nancy Carson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008134860

  Source ISBN: 9780008157005

  Version: 2016-02-05

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author’s Note

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  1856

  The train escaped the tunnel’s blackness, half obscured by a billowing veil of white steam, into the balmy sunshine of a late July afternoon. As soon as she heard the mechanical din of the locomotive, Lucy Piddock turned her head to watch, stepping back from the platform’s edge. She urged her friend Miriam Watson to do likewise with a token pull on her arm. The engine and its unholy racket, offensive to the ears, passed them slowly, delivering its string of coaches to precisely where the rest of the passengers were waiting. As it groaned and hissed to a halt, Lucy smiled at Miriam, opened the door of an empty third class compartment and allowed Miriam to step up inside before her. They were going home after browsing the shops in Dudley.

  ‘How did we manage to get about before we had the railway?’ Lucy remarked as she and Miriam sat facing each other next to the window. The railway line had been open four years and Lucy did not yet take for granted the novelty of it, nor the convenience. ‘We’d never have gone to Dudley before of a Saturday afternoon, would we?’

  ‘Better than walking to Stourbridge,’ Miriam agreed. ‘It’s a tidy walk to Stourbridge from Silver End … especially if you got a nail sticking up in your boot.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder if it’s quicker to walk down to the main station past the castle or this one.’

  ‘Depends where you am when you’m done, I reckon,’ Miriam surmised. ‘Which end o’ the town you’m at. Neither station’s close to the shops, but you don’t have to put up with going through that dark tunnel when you go from this one.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Lucy agreed. ‘And it costs a bit less.’

  She gazed out of the carriage window onto the platform, while Miriam took off her boot and rubbed her bunion where the offending nail was puncturing it. A young guard, smart in the livery of the Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and wearing a cheese-cutter cap, checked the door to the compartment of the four-wheeled coach. He caught Lucy’s eye through the window and smiled, giving her a waggish wink that made her insides churn, then pressed on to check the forward coaches.

  ‘Miriam, did you see that chap?’ Lucy asked with a broad grin. ‘The guard. I fancy him.’

  ‘Trust you to fancy somebody you’ll never see again.’

  ‘Course I shall see him again,’ Lucy said with a certainty that defied argument. ‘He’ll be coming back this way in a minute to get back in his guards’ van.’

  ‘Well, you ain’t gunna get the chance to talk to him. The train’ll be pulling out in a minute.’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘I only said I fancied him. I didn’t say as I wanted to have a chat about the weather, or whether the Queen and Prince Albert will have more children.’

  ‘Ain’t there no decent chaps where you work?’ Miriam enquired. ‘We’ll have to get you fixed up with somebody soon, else you’ll end up an old maid.’

  ‘Chaps don’t seem to fancy me, Miriam. I reckon I ain’t pretty enough. Let’s face it, I wasn’t at the front of the queue when they was giving out pretty faces.’ Lucy saw the guard returning and perked up at once. ‘Aye up! Here he comes again. Have a peep at him.’

  As he passed the window he turned and smiled once more, so both girls grinned and waved saucily.

  ‘Well, he seems to think you’m pretty,’ Miriam said. ‘He seems to fancy you. He was smiling at you, not me.’

  ‘I bet he’d be a bit of a gig as well.’ Lucy felt herself reddening. ‘I hope he gets off the train again at Brettell Lane.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t hanging about just to see if he does. Get yourself a local chap, Luce. That guard might come from Worcester or even Oxford for all you know. It’d be no good courting somebody from Worcester or Oxford. You want a chap to be where you am. Somebody who can sit with yer nights on the settle, and tickle your feet for a bit o’ pleasure and comfort.’

  They heard a whistle, and the locomotive huffed, hauling them forward, slowly at first but quickly picking up speed.

  ‘Oh, I give up on chaps,’ Lucy pouted. ‘I never seem to get anybody. What’s wrong with me, Miriam?’

  ‘Nothing, you daft sod. There’s nothing wrong with you. And besides, you am pretty, even if you don’t think so. You got a good figure. You got lovely dark hair and big blue eyes.’

  ‘Pale blue eyes!’ Lucy repeated with exasperation. ‘I wish I’d got brown eyes like you, or dark blue ones like a baby’s. Pale blue eyes look that washed out. Even green eyes would be better than pale blue.’

  ‘Be thankful for what you have got, Luce. A good many would be glad of your eyes and your looks.’

  ‘Then if I have got decent looks, why can’t I get a chap? Have I got a dewdrop dithering off the end of my nose that I don’t know about? Have I got a squint? Do I smell, or something?’

  Miriam chuckled. ‘Course not. Anyroad, if you stunk I wouldn’t come a-nigh you.’

  ‘So what’s up with me? I swear I’ll step out with the first chap as ever asks me, even if he’s the ugliest, vilest freak ever to have worn a pair of trousers … I will … I swear.’

  Miriam laughed again. ‘You ain’t that desperate.’

  ‘Yes, I am. It’s all right for you. You got Sammy Osborne. And before him you had Jimmy Sheldon … a
nd Lord knows who else before him. Crikey, you must’ve collected enough men’s scalps to make a rug.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy …’ Miriam chuckled and sighed. ‘Somebody’ll come along and sweep you right off your feet.’

  ‘And that’s just what I want. Somebody to come along and sweep me off my feet, before I’m stuck up a tree and too old. Before I have to start reading the deaths regular to see who’s just become a widower … Oh, no,’ Lucy added after a moment’s pondering. ‘On second thoughts I could never lower myself to go with a chap who’s second-hand.’

  ‘What’s the rush? I sometimes think as men ain’t worth the bother anyroad. They can’t wait to bed yer, buying yer presents and giving yer all that fancy sweet talk just to get you there. And then, when they’ve had yer, they treat yer like flipping dirt.’

  ‘I’m sure they ain’t all like that,’ Lucy said distrustfully, and fell quiet.

  The train rumbled over the towering wooden construction that was Parkhead Viaduct and she gazed through the window at the busy network of canals that converged beneath it, and at the area’s countless smoking chimney stacks, without really seeing any of it. She was deep in thought, grieving over the imagined monumental flaw in her looks or demeanour that rendered her positively repulsive to men. Even though no such flaw existed, Lucy was lacking in self-confidence because she firmly believed otherwise. This erroneous conviction compounded the problem, rendering her a little bit reserved, which men interpreted as being ‘stuck-up’. And what ordinary factory wench had the right or reason to be stuck-up?

  Lucy was not yet twenty years old and most of her friends the same age were courting. Some were even wed. This fact nagged at her, not incessantly, nor obsessively, but sometimes; and this moment was one such time. But when she was among her own friends and family, and not blighted by misgivings over her fancied inadequacies, she was good company, bright and amiable, and even witty on occasions.

  ‘I think I ought to try and get out a bit more,’ she said to Miriam, releasing herself from her depressing daydream. ‘I think I should try and mix more with folk.’

  ‘You mean mix more with men,’ Miriam corrected with a knowing look. ‘I don’t know what you’m worried about. Are you sure there’s no men where you work?’

  ‘None as I’d want. There’s Jake Parsons who’s too old, Bobby Pugh who’s too ugly, Georgie Betts whose feet are too stinky … Then there’s Alfie Mason who’s got a wall eye and a hair lip … Oh, and Ben Craddock who never stops farting.’

  ‘You’m too fussy.’

  ‘I could afford to be fussier, if only chaps was falling over themselves and each other to ask me out.’

  ‘What d’you do nights?’

  ‘What is there to do nights? I generally sit with my mother, picking my feet and pulling faces at the dog, while my father goes boozing up at the Whimsey.’

  Miriam chuckled at the mental image. ‘So why don’t you go with your father up the Whimsey for a change?’

  Lucy laughed with derision at the notion. ‘Decent girls don’t go to public houses.’

  ‘They do if they work there. You could get a job nights serving beer. You’d meet plenty men.’

  ‘Yes, all fuddled old farts … like my father.’

  ‘Young chaps as well, Lucy. Hey, it’d be worth a try.’

  ‘I doubt whether my mother would let me,’ Lucy replied resignedly. ‘You know what she’s like.’ She lapsed into deep thought again, considering the possibilities.

  The train was drawing to a halt at Round Oak Station. When it stopped Lucy pressed her cheek against the window, looking again for sight of the chirpy guard. Those who had alighted made their way across the platform while others embarked, bound for Stourbridge, Kidderminster and beyond.

  ‘Can you see him?’ Miriam enquired, realising why her friend was scanning the platform.

  ‘No, but I just heard his whistle.’

  The train eased out of the little station. As it picked up speed down the incline towards Brettell Lane station, Lucy picked up her basket in readiness for when they would alight in just a minute or two.

  When they drew to a halt at Brettell Lane, Lucy opened the door and stepped expectantly onto the platform. She looked longingly towards the rear of the train, hoping to see the guard jump down from his van. She was not disappointed and she lingered, adjusting her bonnet via her reflection in the carriage window for a few moments, hoping he might beckon her to go to him, or reach her before her tarrying seemed indecorous. But Miriam cannily took her arm and urged her to move. Lucy complied with reluctance as she glanced wistfully behind her at the guard. He smiled again and waved and she waved back, with all the coyness of inexperience manifest in her blue eyes.

  ‘Come on, Luce, don’t let him think as you’m waiting for him. Pretend you ain’t bothered one road or th’other.’

  ‘Is that the way to play it?’ Lucy asked doubting her friend’s advice. ‘Shouldn’t I let him see as I’m interested?’

  ‘You already did. It’s supposed to be the man what does the chasing.’

  ‘But what if he don’t?’ Lucy asked ruefully. ‘He needs to know as it won’t be a waste of time chasing me.’

  ‘Listen, if we go to Dudley next Saturday afternoon and catch the same train back, he’s ever likely to be on it, ain’t he? You can flash your eyes at him then.’

  ‘I can’t wait a week, Miriam.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so daft. In a week you’ll very likely have forgot all about him.’

  The girls went to Dudley again the following Saturday and caught the same train back, but there was no sign of the guard. There was a guard, of course, but it was not the same man, to Lucy’s crushing disappointment. They repeated the exercise over the following three weeks, each time with the same result, and poor Lucy realised she was never going to meet this man who had bewitched her, who had introduced a swarm of butterflies to her stomach.

  ‘It’s Fate,’ Miriam told her flatly. ‘You ain’t meant to have him. If you was meant to have him you’d have seen him by now, and very likely have stepped out with him a couple o’ times. You ain’t meant to have him, Lucy. Anyroad, if we come to Dudley next week I want to catch an earlier train back.’

  During high summer in Brierley Hill a breeze was regarded as a blessing. It not only cooled, but helped clear the air of the grimy mist and the sulphurous stinks perpetrated by the high concentration of ironworks, pits, firebrick works and bottle factories, whose chimney stacks belched out smuts and smoke like the upended cannons of an army in disarray. It was one such breezy summer evening in August 1856, the week following Lucy’s final disappointment, that Haden Piddock, her father, was returning home from his labours at Lord Ward’s New Level Iron Works, more commonly known as ‘The Earl’s’, to his rented cottage in Bull Street. On the way he met Ben Elwell, carrying his pick and shovel over his shoulder like a soldier would carry a pair of muskets. Ben was not only a reluctant miner but also the eager landlord of the nearby Whimsey Inn in Church Street.

  ‘I’ll be glad to get me sodding boots off,’ Haden commented. The clay pipe in his mouth, held between his top and bottom teeth, was amazingly not detrimental to his speech for, over the years, he had perfected the knack of conversing with clenched teeth. The pipe, however, had gone out and Haden had not been able to re-ignite it. ‘Me feet am nigh on a-killing me. As soon as I get in th’ouse, I’ll get our Lucy to fetch me a bowl o’ wairter from the pump so’s I can give ’em a good soak.’

  ‘Yo’ need warm water to soak yer feet, Haden, lad. Otherwise you’ll catch a chill.’

  Haden turned to look at his mate, surprised he should feel the need to remind him of what was blindingly obvious. ‘Yaah!’ he exclaimed sarcastically. ‘D’you think I’m saft enough to stick ’em in cold wairter, you daft bugger?’ He took his pipe from his mouth and cursorily inspected the inside of the bowl. ‘I’d get our Lucy to warm it up on the ’ob fust.’

  ‘That daughter o’ yours looks after yer well, Haden.’
>
  ‘Better than the missus, when there’s fetching and carrying to be done.’ He tapped his pipe against the palm of his hand to loosen the carbonised tobacco, and allowed the debris to fall to the ground.

  ‘Yo’ll miss her when her gets wed.’

  ‘If her ever gets wed,’ Haden replied.

  ‘I tek it then as yo’ ai’ coming for a drink now?’ Ben said.

  ‘No, I’ll send our Lucy up with a jug to have wi’ me dinner. I’ll see thee later, when I’n finished me scoff and had a bit of a wash down.’

  ‘Aye, well I don’t expect I’ll be shifting far from that tap room of ourn.’

  ‘I don’t envy thee, Ben,’ Haden remarked sincerely as he slid his pipe into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Yo’ ain’t content with swinging a blasted pick and digging coal out all day. Yo’ have to serve beer all night an’ all, to them buggers as yo’ve bin working alongside of.’

  A smile spread over Ben’s blackened face. The whites of his eyes sparkled and his teeth, which seemed dingy when his face was clean, seemed bright now by comparison. ‘It has its compensations, Haden. I drink for free. As much as I’ve a mind to, eh? And the missus brews a worthy crock, whether or no I’m behind her.’

  ‘Her does, an’ no question … And that reminds me, Ben … I’ve bin meaning to ask … Our Lucy wondered if you needed a wench to help out nights like. Her wants to get out more. It’d tek some of the load off thee an’ all, give yer a bit more time to yourself.’

  ‘Funny as yo’ should mention it, Haden. Me and the missus was on’y saying yesterday as how we could do with somebody to help out. Somebody presentable and decent like your Lucy. Honest and not afeared o’ work. How old is she now?’