Growing Up

CHAPTER IT O the youth of England, except to that small and misguided section who prefer model aeroplanes to model railways, the station at Winter Overcotes, as all students of Barsetshire know, represents History and Romance in their highest form, for here is one of the few remaining survivals of the main or high level line crossing the low level or local line. Every right-minded little boy who has travelled by this route has wished to spend the rest of his life at the station, with the firm though unexpressed hope of becoming station-master when he is grown up. Under the spell of Winter Overcotes the noble names of Hornby and Bassett-Lowke become as dust. In vain did those benefactors, in the days of peace, vie with each other in producing engines, coaches and trucks, finished to a thousandth of an inch, exquisitely painted, running by clockwork, methylated spirits or electricity. Something was wanting. Their young patrons, having spent all their Christmas tips and drawn heavily on their Post Office Savings Bank accounts to boot, found that all was vanity. In vain did they exercise their ingenuity in constructing viaducts propped on volumes of the Encyclopœdia Britannica or the New English Dictionary; in vain did they compose flights of stairs from cardboard, or the nursery box of bricks. Again and again would the engine fall from the viaduct and lie on its back kicking and whirring. No rails were subtly enough curved to represent the great sweep by which the low level rejoined the main line some four miles nearer London, and by which one through train a day used to run to Worsted and Skeynes. Such words of blasphemy and despair as “Mother! Hornby’s an i***t!” or “Mother! why doesn’t Bassett-Lowke have some sense?” would burst from the mouths of young gentlemen between six and sixteen. Even undergraduate brothers had to confess themselves at a loss, while fathers would devote an entire week-end to the railway, rising at last to their feet shakily, dusting the knees of their trousers, and uttering such obviously untruthful words as “Of course it would be quite easy if you had a few more left-hand curves, and now you had better put it all away before you go to bed,” thus reducing the owner of the railway to soft, sullen rebellion. For every owner knows that if only he had one more box of nuts and bolts he could attain the unattainable, or so Tony Morland said, and Tony was, by his own account, the world’s highest authority. And though his railway system had long ago been given by him, rolling-stock and all, in a rather ostentatious way to a much younger boy, it is not impossible that Tony, on leave from his guns and out of uniform, might have spent a whole week-end on hands and knees, wrestling with the enchanting problem. Though Mr. Beedle the station-master no longer appeared to Tony and his contemporaries as a demigod, ten feet high, endowed with miraculous powers and if not wearing a halo, at least surrounded by a golden effulgence, it was the fault of the times. Gone were the happy days when Mr. Beedle, born of a line of railway men in a tradition of faithful service to the Best Line in England (and hence in the world), was proud to touch his gold-laced cap to the local nobility and gentry, who had an equal respect for him, taking at Christmas the form of game, cigars, bottles of wine and treasury notes. Gone were the days when he could usher old Lord Pomfret who hated motors, returning from a visit to General Waring at Beliers Priory, into the first-class smoker which he had kept locked for his lordship. Old Lord Pomfret was dead, Sir Harry and Lady Waring now used their local station of Lambton, changing at Winter Overcotes for the main line. Both these changes grieved Mr. Beedle, a staunch upholder of the old order, but even more was he grieved that first-class carriages, except on a few longdistance trains, had been abolished. England was at war; English locomotives, unable to voice their dislike of the sea and foreigners, had been sent abroad; porters had been called up; no longer was the station after dark or on foggy days a great beacon of light on the high level platform; all this Mr. Beedle hated, but understood. In moments of stress he had helped to sort luggage and unload goods vans with his own sacred hands; he had even swept the up platform in a moment of emergency when five of his six porters had gone; for to him nothing connected with what he proudly called Our Line was below his dignity. But the abolition of first-class carriages struck to his heart, and Mrs. Beedle was able to state with truth that he hadn’t never seemed to fancy his supper since. Mr. Beedle was loyal to the core. What Our Directors did was right, but his personal sense of shame at having nothing better than third-class to offer to his own local magnates did not lessen with time. In fact, so unhappy did this change make him that he was, as it were, made immune to any further bludgeonings of fate, and when two women porters were appointed for the duration of the war, he made no sign of disapproval, though Mrs. Beedle knew that his uniform hung more loosely about him and he did not sleep well. Here fate was kind. Doris Phipps and Lily-Annie Pollett, though they looked incredibly plain and depraved in oyster satin blouses, tight-seated, bell-bottomed trousers, red nails on dirty hands, greasy curls hanging on their shoulders, a cigarette for ever glued to their lips, were really very nice, kind girls. Their families lived at Worsted, a few stations down the line, and the two girls bicycled in summer and came by the local train in winter. The summer route had the advantage of taking them past a large aerodrome, but on the winter route they could shout at friends out of the carriage window at every stop, besides having more time to make up their faces. When Doris and Lily-Annie had been at the station for some months, and doing very well, a new porter was sent to join them. “It doesn’t seem natural,” said Mrs. Beedle to Mr. Beedle while he was having his tea. “In my young days the girls liked to have a boy about, but Lily-Annie ran in for a talk in her lunch hour and she and Dawris don’t seem at all keen on your new young man. What’s his name?” “Bill Morple, from Melicent Halt,” said Mr. Beedle. “His mother was old Patten’s niece, Mr. Patten that’s station-master at Worsted, but his father—well, Ed’ard Morple was a foreigner.” “Ah,” said Mrs. Beedle. “Loamshire?” “Not so bad as that, Mother,” said Mr. Beedle. “But somewhere the other side of Barchester. A talking kind of man he was and a one-er for an argument. Young Bill’s like that. Talk the connecting-rod off an engine he would.” “I do feel sorry for those girls,” said Mrs. Beedle with unfeigned sympathy. “Argument’s no use to girls. What they want is a nice talk like, and if Bill Morple did happen to kiss them it wouldn’t break any bones.” “More likely they’d slap his face,” said Mr. Beedle, as he girded on his official coat preparatory to returning to the station. “That Lily-Annie’s as strong as a man any day and Dawris is getting quite a hand with the milk cans. When I see her putting them in the van, it makes me think of our Henry.” There was a moment’s silence. “Cheer up, Dad,” said Mrs. Beedle, clattering the tea-things together in a noisy way unusual in her, for she was a very neat, quick, quiet woman. “You’ll see the war’ll be over by next Christmas and we’ll have Henry back in the station.” “It doesn’t seem right him being a prisoner,” said Mr. Beedle, looking out of the window. “Him being so fond of the country and christened after Sir Harry and all.” “Don’t you worry, Dad,” said Mrs. Beedle, carefully not looking at her husband. “He said in his last letter that he was liking the land-work fine. It’s not as if he was an officer, having to sit about and read a book all day, poor gentlemen.” Mr. Beedle picked up his gold-laced cap and left the house, concentrating his mind fiercely on the new regulations about bombs that were high-explosive as well as incendiary, and rather relieved that the latest ruling was to the effect that the less civilians did about anything the better. And in any case the air-raid warden for the station was his own booking-clerk in whom he had great confidence. His first duty, after unlocking his office and reading a couple of letters, was to walk about on the platform when the 6.25, the down train from London, came in. As it was mid-November it was by now almost dark. A faint light came from the booking office, and the red and green of the signals glowed in the north-east. Two points of fire revealed themselves as Doris Phipps and Lily-Annie Pollett smoking cigarettes while waiting for the train. Mr. Beedle thought of the days when his station was what a station ought to be. He saw in his mind’s eye the bright electric lights, the gaily coloured bookstall, the brilliant scarlet cigarette and chocolate machines, the round-faced weighing machine, the well swept platforms watered in elegant patterns, the shining brass handles on waiting-room doors, the refreshment room with its stacks of crockery, its piles of sandwiches, pies and cakes under neat glass domes, the neatly painted seats. It was his great grief that a garden was not possible on the high level platform, but he had at his own expense put green window-boxes outside his office and the booking office. His porters were the liveliest and most willing on the line. No wonder they had won the silver cup for the best-kept station on that stretch three years running, with the right to keep it. Now the lights were removed or dimmed to darkness made visible, the bookstall was only open for an hour in the morning with little or nothing to sell, the penny-in-the-slot machines were battered and empty, the platform dusty and strewn with bits of paper and cigarette cartons which their owners had flung there sooner than use the wire baskets provided, the brass dull and tarnished. In the refreshment room he knew there would be a few heavy little pasties with nothing particular inside them and some dyspeptic buns made from the vitamin-stuffed and indigestion-producing Government flour. Cups there were few and saucers none, for travellers stole them to that extent that the Catering Department had stopped replacing. Only sugar remained for some mysterious reason abundant, so that travellers who said “No sugar, thank you” from motives of taste or patriotism found themselves provided with a nauseously sweet draught by the scornful middle-aged woman in charge who saw no reason to pay any attention to national economy or anyone’s likes and dislikes. The window-boxes had so often been rifled that Mr. Beedle had with his own hands removed them and Mrs. Beedle now grew mustard and cress in them outside her kitchen window. Where his porters had stood, alert for the down train, were two girls in trousers, smoking; good girls, but no pride in themselves nor in the station. As for the silver cup—but of it Mr. Beedle could hardly bear to think. Placed upon a fretwork bracket, in a glass case which was fixed to the wall, it was the pride of Mr. Beedle and his staff, the admiration of all travellers. Every week Mr. Beedle would unlock the case and his senior porter would lovingly polish it. In the first days of the war Winter Overcotes was invaded by a crowd of unruly London evacuees. Big loutish boys and equally loutish girls made the station arches, the station approach and finally the station itself their playing-ground. In vain did Mr. Beedle use his authority, in vain did he appeal to their schoolteachers. The boys and girls defied him with malicious words and deeds, the teachers were powerless or unwilling to interfere. More damage was done to the station in a few weeks than had been done since the line was opened. After a very unpleasant incident when spoons were stolen from the refreshment room and the benches in the waiting room hacked with knives, Mr. Beedle decided to remove the cup. But when he approached the case on the following morning the glass was smashed, the cup gone and in its place a dirty piece of paper on which were scrawled the words, “Old beetles a fool.” Mr. Beedle had said nothing in public. His friend, the chief inspector at the police station, caused inquiries to be made, but though he knew within twenty-four hours where the cup was, there was not enough evidence, as he regretfully said, to hang a louse. Mr. Beedle ordered his son Henry to take down the shattered case. Then Henry went into the Army and was made prisoner before Dunkirk.