Ten Tales Tall and True Page 9

  “My father feels that way too, though he won’t admit it. Will you Dad?” says the housewife, but the old man mutters, “Shut up Miriam.”

  “I feel that too dear,” murmurs the rigid lady to her husband who murmurs, “I know you do dear. Please shut up.”

  The teacher at once thinks of the married couple as Mr and Mrs Dear. Delighted to have started a conversation before the journey begins she says, “In most railway accidents the train is struck in the rear, isn’t it? So statistically speaking we are safer near the engine.”

  “That’s stupid!” squeaks the child.

  The mother says, “Don’t be rude Patsy,” but the teacher says eagerly, “Oh please, I’m a teacher! Retired! But I know how to handle difficult children. Why is what I said stupid Patsy?”

  “Because in collisions the front of one train always hits the front or back of another, so the safest place in a train is always the middle.”

  The old man chuckles slightly, the other adults smile. After a moment of silence the teacher opens her purse, removes a coin and says, “Patsy, here is a bright new silver-looking fivepound coin. I give it to you because what I said was stupid and you were right to correct me.”

  The child grabs the coin. The other adults stare at the teacher and the conversation seems about to take a new direction when it is interrupted.

  A melodious chime comes from the upholstery of the chair-backs then a quiet, firm, friendly voice saying, “Good day good people! This is Captain Rogers, your driver, welcoming you aboard the 1999 Aquarian from Bundlon to Shaglow, stopping at Bagchester, Shloo, Spittenfitney and Glaik. The Aquarian leaves at the end of this announcement, arriving at Bagchester exactly forty-one minutes later. Tea, coffee, sandwiches, will be served at half twenty-three hours, and in accordance with the latest stock-market reports, tea will be one point sixty pounds, coffee one point ninety-nine. Sandwiches are still last week’s price and expected to remain stable for the duration of the journey. The bar is now open. British Rail trust you will have a comfortable trip. Thank you.” Through the window on her left the teacher sees a pillar supporting the station canopy slide sideways, then a view of slate rooftops and shining tower blocks turning indistinct and vanishing.

  The other passengers are complaining about the price of tea. The teacher says, “But I’m glad they warned us. When is half twenty-three hours? It’s a sign of senility for a retired teacher to admit this, but I can’t grasp this new way of telling the time.”

  “Half past eleven, isn’t it?” says the housewife uncertainly.

  “A.m?”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  The old man says abruptly, “Don’t be daft Miriam. Half twenty-three hours is twelve from twenty-three and a half, which is eleven and a half, so half past eleven p.m.”

  “No no no!” cries the child excitedly, “Our headmaster says we shouldn’t think about time in twelves because of computers and demicals. Computers can’t count in demicals, so half twenty-three hours is half past twenty-three.”

  “Patsy!” says the old man in a low steady voice, “If you say one more word within the next ten minutes I shall remove the whole weight of my fist from the side of your jaw!” but the teacher merely sighs. Then says, “I wish they had let us keep the old noon with the twelve hours before and after it. But even the station clocks have changed. Instead of a circular face with all the hours and minutes marked around the edge, past AND future, we have a square panel with nothing in it but the minute we’re at now. Nothing eight hours twenty minutes, then flick! – it’s nothing eight hours twenty-one. That makes me feel trapped. Trapped, yet pushed at the same time. And I’m sure computers could be taught how to count in twelves, I hear some of them are quite intelligent. I hate that little flick when one minute becomes the next.’

  “I hate it too dear,” murmurs Mrs Dear and, “So do I dear, please shut up,” says her husband.

  “Time and money!” says the teacher sighing again, “So much disappeared so suddenly: the little farthings with jenny wrens on them, thick brown threepennies, silver sixpences, the old ha’penny. Did you know, Patsy, that ha’pennies were once a whole inch in diameter, the size of the modern twopenny?”

  “What’s an inch?” says the child.

  “Two point five three nine nine nine eight centimetres. And the old pennies were lovely huge lumps of copper, two hundred and forty to the pound, we shall not see their like again, with Britannia ruling the waves between a small battleship and the Eddystone lighthouse. Britannia was a real woman, you know. Not many people realize that. She was copied from a – a girl friend of the Merry Monarch, not Nell Gwynne. The old pennies had room for so much history on them. They were history! Even in the sixties you still found coins with young Queen Victoria’s head on them, and the old Queen was so common we took her for granted. Just think! Every time we went shopping we were handling coins which had clinked in the pockets of Charles Dickens and Doctor Pritchard the poisoner and Isambard Kingdom Brunei.”

  “It might interest you to know, madam,” says Mr Dear, “That the weight of a modern penny, subtracted from a pre-decimal penny, left enough copper to construct circuits for nine hundred and seventy-three pocket television sets.”

  “But WAS IT?” shouts the old man so violently that everyone stares at him and Mr Dear says, “I beg your pardon?”

  “The copper!” says the old man excitedly, “The copper saved by switching to a smaller currency was NOT used to make cheap television sets for the masses! It was used to build the circuits of an electronic nuclear defence system that cost the British tax-payer a hundred and eighty-three thousand MILLION pounds and was obsolete two years before it was finally installed!”

  “I have no wish to discuss politics with you sir,” says Mr Dear, looking out the window again. The old man snorts and concentrates on his paper.

  The women are the most embarrassed by the ensuing silence. The mother sends Patsy to the buffet bar to buy a chocolate biscuit with her new coin, and in a low voice the teacher asks the mother the sex of her little child. The mother, also in a low voice, explains that she thinks there is too much sex nowadays, that her mother never mentioned it, that Patsy will make up her own mind as soon as he’s old enough to choose. The teacher nods approvingly, but says in her experience children are grateful for a little guidance. The mother disagrees; says that all a child should learn from its parents is proper manners; says at least Patsy won’t turn into one of these dreadful women’s lib ladies – or a teddy boy. The old man surprises them by saying suddenly,

  “A cat.”

  “What’s that Dad?” asks his daughter.

  “Teddy boys were forties,” he explains, “Beatniks fifties. Hippies sixties. Mods and rockers seventies. Punks eighties. And now they call themselves cool cats.”

  “Are you sure?” asks the teacher, “There have been so many strange names for young people – skinheads, bobby-soxers, flappers, knuts, mashers and macaronis – that I’ve started thinking of them as youths. The police reports always call them youths.”

  “And quite right too!” mutters Mr Dear, and would say more but again the musical warbling introduces the firm friendly voice.

  “Good day good people – Captain Rogers here. We are making excellent time. On our left we are flashing past the reforested bings of the outer Bundlon slag depot, on our right are the soya fields of the British Golliwog Jam Corporation. I regret that a special stock-market news flash has obliged us to raise the price of coffee to two point forty pounds a cup–” (the passengers’ cries of rage and disgust drown the announcement for a while) “–biscuits are expected to remain stable at least as far as Shloo. Passengers with an interest in transport will not need to be told that today is a special one for British Rail. In one and a half minutes it will be precisely the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the exact moment when Isambard Kingdom Brunei–” (“Brunei!” gasps the teacher) “– tapped the last ceremonial rivet into the Grand Albert Royal Pennine Suspension Bridge: the f
irst broad-gauge box-girder suspension bridge in the history of engineering. To honour the occasion we will now play you The Railways of Old England, orchestrated and sung by Sir Noël Coward. Through the length and breadth of Britain, in trains trundling through the lonely Pass of Killiecrankie or thundering across the Stockport viaduct, passengers are rising to their feet to hear Noël Coward sing The Railways of Old England.”

  There is a preliminary rolling of drums with a sombre yet challenging blast of trumpets. Mr Dear, Mrs Dear and the teacher rise to their feet and the mother seems about to do so when the old man hisses, “Miriam! Patsy! Stay exactly where you are.”

  “Excuse me sir,” cries Mr Dear, “Are you not going to stand?”

  “No I am NOT!”

  “Oh please sh dear!” whispers Mrs Dear to her husband who cries, “Shut up dear, I will not sh! You sir, I gather are one of those left-wing militant extremists who yearn for a discredited Bolshevik railway system. Well the British railway system has no harsher critic than myself. I was sorry when they nationalized it, saddened when they axed off the branch lines and appalled by how long the government took to restore it to a responsible private company. But despite its grisly past our rail system was built by a combination of Irish brawn, Scottish engineering and English financial daring which made us once the foremost steam railway empire in the universe. Does this mean nothing to you?”

  “Don’t talk to me about British Rail!” yells the old man over Noël Coward’s brittle patriotic tenor, “I worked all my life for British Rail. I was a fireman from the old LMS days to when they brought in bloody diesel! British Rail was destroyed by people like you – bloody accountants and lawyers and retired admirals on the board of directors–”

  “That’s ludicrous!” cries Mr Dear, and “Stop it Dad!” cries the old man’s daughter, but nothing stops the flood of his articulate wrath: “–when they nationalized us the government said ‘British Rail belongs to the people now’ but who did we get on the new board of directors? Linesmen? Footplate men? Station-masters? Did we hell! We got the same old gang – stockbrokers, lieutenant colonels, civil servants with posh accents, the gang that eventually sold us out to the car manufacturers, the building societies and the oil corporations!”

  “I am not listening to you!!” cries Mr Dear.

  “I never thought you would,” says the old man chuckling and picking up his paper again. The music has stopped. The others sit down, Mr Dear looking as if he would prefer to do something more violent. There is another embarrassing silence, then the teacher slips across the aisle to Patsy’s seat and tells the old man quietly, “I was to a large extent entirely on your side in that little exchange, even though I stood up. I like the tune you see, and old habits die hard. But the title was inaccurate. Our railways are British, not English.”

  She slips back to her seat as Patsy approaches shouting, “Mum Mum Mum!”

  Patsy, terribly excited, is closely followed by a tall, lean, mildly amused looking man who says, “Good day good people! Does this small person belong to any of you?”

  “Patsy,” says the mother, “Where have you been?”

  “Wandering far too near the engine for anyone’s good,” says the stranger.

  “How very naughty of you, Patsy. Thank the nice man for bringing you back.”

  “But Mum!” says the child excitedly bumping its bottom up and down on the seat, “Nobody’s driving this train! The driver’s cabin’s empty! I looked inside!”

  Mrs Dear gives a little gasp of horror. The mother says severely, “Patsy, that’s not a very nice thing to say, not with that bad rail accident in America last week. Apologize at once.”

  “But Mum, it really was empty!”

  “Dear, I’m terribly worried,” Mrs Dear tells her husband who says, “Don’t be stupid dear, the kid’s obviously gone the wrong way and blundered into the guard’s van.”

  The teacher points out that the stranger said he found Patsy near the engine, but “The child knows nothing about mechanics!” declares Mr Dear, “Hardly anyone knows anything about mechanics nowadays. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that modern trains are driven from an obscure cabin somewhere in the middle.”

  “And it wouldn’t surprise me!” cries the old man violently, “To learn that British Rail has sacked all its drivers and never told the public a word about it!”

  The women gasp in horror, Mr Dear snorts, the stranger laughs and tries to speak, but the old man talks him down: “You needed a driver in the days of steam – two of them counting the fireman – tough men! Strong men who knew the engine and could clean it themselves, and grasped every valve and stop-cock like it was the hand of a friend! Men who felt the gradient through the soles of their boots and heard the pressure in the thrusts of the piston. But nowadays! Nowadays it wouldn’t surprise me if the driver of this so-called train wasn’t lying back with a glass of brandy in a London club, watching us on a computer screen and half sloshed out of his upper-class over-educated skull!”

  “You’re wrong and I can prove it,” says the stranger. They stare at him.

  At first sight there is nothing unusual in this man whose modest smile seems to apologize for his slightly taller than average height. The large pockets, the discreet epaulets of his well-cut, dove-grey jacket would look equally inconspicuous in a cinema queue or an officers’ mess, yet he faces the six pairs of enquiring eyes with a relaxed and flawless confidence which so acts upon two of the women that they sigh with relief.

  “Who the hell are you?” asks the old man, and the teacher says, “The driver – I recognize his voice.” “Correct! So you see, I’m not lying back in a London club, I’m here beside you. I really am one of you. May I join you for a moment?”

  Taking a small metal frame from a pocket the driver opens it into a stool with a canvas seat, places that in the aisle and sits down facing them. Although his chin now rests on his steeply angled knees he does not look at all ridiculous. Most of the company are impressed.

  “I feel so safe,” murmurs Mrs Dear, and “Stop scowling Dad, it isn’t polite,” says the mother, and Mr Dear says, “Excuse me sir, I have said harsh things about British Rail in my time …” (“Of course you have” says the driver genially) “… but I have never doubted that our trains are the safest in the world and our drivers second to none – if only the trade unions would stop confusing them with promises of Utopian conditions.”

  “Thank you,” says the driver.

  “Train driving seems to have changed in recent years,” says the teacher in a high clear voice.

  “Excuse me madam,” says the driver, “I’ll gladly explain anything you do not understand after I’ve had time to … to …” (and suddenly he looks confused, embarrassed, almost boyish) “… you see it isn’t every day I have a chance to speak to John Halifax!”

  “Eh!” says the old man staring at him.

  “You are John Halifax, the last of the steam men? Who took three whole minutes off the Bundlon to Glaik run in the great railway race between LMS and the LNER in nineteen thirty-four?”

  “You know about that?” whispers the old man with a wondering stare.

  “You are a legend in railway circles, Mr Halifax.”

  “But how did you know I was on the train?”

  “Aha!” says the driver waggishly, “I’m not supposed to tell passengers certain things, but to hell with security. The ticket office clerks are not the ignorant gits the public assume. They keep me informed. I used your grandchild’s escapade as an excuse to seek you out, and here I am!”

  “I see!” whispers the old man, smiling and nodding to himself.

  “Please don’t get cross, but I need to ask you a terribly personal question,” says the driver, “It’s about the last great railway race. Do you remember stoking the Spitfire Thunderbolt up the Devil’s Kidney gradient with only three minutes to reach Beattock Summit or the race would be lost?”

  “Oh I remember!”

  “Were you, on that heroic dr
ive, exhausting yourself, torturing yourself, pressing out every ounce of your energy and intelligence merely to advertise the old LMS?”

  “No, I was not.”

  “Then why did you do it? I know it wasn’t for money.”

  “I did it for steam,” says the old man after a pause, “I did it for British steam.”

  “I knew you would give me that answer!” cries the delighted driver, and Mr Dear says, “Excuse me, may I butt in? You see Mr Halifax and I kick, you might say, with opposite feet. He’s left and I’m right. I didn’t realize before now that we are essential parts of the same body. Captain Rogers has made me see that for the first time. Mr Halifax, I am no toady. When I offer you my hand I am merely demonstrating my respect for you as a man. I am apologizing for nothing. But here … is … my hand. Will you …?”

  Leaning sideways he stretches out his arm across the aisle.

  “Put it there!” says the old steam man and they shake heartily. Suddenly all three men are chuckling and the mother and Mrs Dear smiling happily and Patsy bumping boisterously up and down. But in a voice used to calling unruly classes to order the teacher says, “Perhaps Captain Rogers will now tell us why he isn’t with his engine!”

  The passengers stare at the driver who shrugs, spreads his hands and says, “I’m afraid, madam, the heroic age of engine driving went out with steam. The modern engine (we call them traction units nowadays) only requires my attention from time to time. Our speed and position are being monitored, at the present moment, from headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent. It’s a perfectly safe system. All Europe uses it. And America.”