A Day in the Life Read online

  Months back, Eli, swearing blue fire, had set about getting around the new regulations. He’d had a dozen trailers modified to carry fifty gallons of water in a galvanized tank just abaft the drawbar. The tanks took up next to no space and left the rest of the bed for payload; but they’d be enough to satisfy the sheriff’s dignity. Jesse could imagine the old devil cackling at his victory; only he hadn’t lived to see it. His thoughts slid back to his father, as irrevocably as the coffin had slid into the earth. He remembered his last sight of him, the gray wax nose peeping above the drapes as the visitors, Eli’s drivers among them, filed through the mourning room of the old house. Death hadn’t softened Eli Strange; it had ravaged the face but left it strong, like the side of a quarried hill.

  Queer how when you were driving you seemed to have more time to think. Even driving on your own when you had to watch the boiler gauge, steam head, fire . . Jesse’s hands felt the familiar thrilling in the wheel rim, the little stresses that on a long run would build and build till countering them brought burning aches to the shoulders and back. Only this was no long run; twenty, twenty-two miles, across to Wool, then over the Great Heath to Poole. An easy trip for the Lady Margaret, with an easy load; thirty tons at the back of her, and flat ground most of the way. The loco had only two gears; Jesse had started off in high, and that was where he meant to stay. The Margaret’s nominal horsepower was ten, but that was on the old rating; one horsepower to be deemed equal to ten circular inches of piston area. Pulling against the brake the Burrell would clock seventy, eighty horse; enough to shift a rolling load of a hundred and thirty tons. Old Eli had pulled a train that heavy once for a wager. And won . . .

  Jesse checked the pressure gauge, eyes performing their work nearly automatically. Ten pounds under max. All right for a while; he could stoke on the move, he’d done it times enough before, but as yet there was no need. He reached the first crossroads, glanced right and left and wound at the wheel, looking behind him to see each car of the train turning sweetly at the same spot. Good; Eli would have liked that turn. The trail load would pull across the road crown, he knew, but that wasn’t his concern. His lamps were burning, and any drivers who couldn’t see the bulk of Margaret and her load deserved the smashing they would get. Forty-odd tons, rolling and thundering; bad luck on any butterfly cars that got too close.

  Jesse had all the haulers’ ingrained contempt for internal combustion, though he’d followed the arguments for and against it keenly enough. Maybe one day petrol propulsion might amount to something, and there was that other system, what did they call it, diesel. . . . But the hand of the Church would have to be lifted first. The Bull of 1910, Petroleum Veto, had limited the capacity of IC engines to 150 cc’s, and since then the haulers had had no real competition. Petrol vehicles had been forced to fit gaudy sails to help tow themselves along; load hauling was a singularly bad joke.

  Mother of God, but it was cold! Jesse shrugged himself deeper into his jacket. The Lady Margaret carried no spectacle plate; a lot of other steamers had installed them now, even one or two in the Strange fleet, but Eli had sworn not the Margaret, not on the Margaret. . . . She was a work of art, perfect in herself; as her makers had built her, so she would stay. Decking her out with gewgaws—the old man had been half sick at the thought. It would make her look like one of the railway engines Eli so despised. Jesse narrowed his eyes, forcing them to see against the searing bite of the wind. He glanced down at the tachometer. Road speed fifteen miles an hour, revs one fifty. One gloved hand pulled back on the reversing lever. Ten was the limit through towns, fixed by the laws of the realm; and Jesse had no intention of being run in for exceeding it. The firm of Strange had always kept well in with the JPs and sergeants of police; it partially accounted for their success.

  Entering the long High Street, he cut his revs again. The Margaret, balked, made a frustrated thunder; the sound echoed back, clapping from the fronts of the gray stone buildings. Jesse felt through his boot soles the slackening pull on the drawbar and spun the brake wheel; a jackknifed train was about the worst blot on a driver’s record. Reflectors behind the tail-lamp flames clicked upward, momentarily doubling their glare. The brakes bit; compensators pulled the trail load first, straightening the cars. He eased back another notch on the reversing lever; steam admitted in front of the pistons checked Margaret’s speed. Ahead were the gas lamps of town center, high on their standards; beyond, the walls and the East Gate.

  The sergeant on duty saluted easily with his halberd, waving the Burrell forward. Jesse shoved at the lever, wound the brakes away from the wheels. Too much stress on the shoes and there could be a fire somewhere in the train. That would be bad; most of the load was inflammable this time.

  He ran through the manifest in his mind. The Margaret was carrying bale on bale of serge; bulkwise it accounted for most of her cargo. English woolens were famous on the Continent; correspondingly, the serge combers were among the most powerful industrial groups in the Southwest. Their factories and storing sheds dotted the villages for miles around; monopoly of the trade had helped keep old Eli out ahead of his rivals. Then there were dyed silks from Anthony Harcourt at Mells; Harcourt shifts were sought after as far abroad as Paris. And crate after crate of turned ware, products of the local bodgers, Erasmus Cox and Jed Roberts of Durnovaria, Jeremiah Stringer out at Martinstown. Specie, under the county lieutenant’s seal; the last of the season’s levies, outward bound for Rome. And machine parts, high-grade cheeses, all kinds of oddments. Clay pipes, horn buttons, ribbons and tape; even a shipment of cherrywood Madonnas from that New World–financed firm over at Beaminster. What did they call themselves—Calmers of the Soul, Inc. . . . ? Woolens and worsteds atop the water tender and in car number one, turned goods and the rest in number two. The trail load needed no consideration. That would look after itself.

  The East Gate showed ahead, and the dark bulk of the wall. Jesse slowed in readiness. There was no need; the odd butterfly cars that were still braving the elements on this bitter night were already stopped, held back out of harm’s way by the signals of the halberdiers. The Margaret hooted, left behind a cloud of steam that hung glowing against the evening sky. Passed through the ramparts to the heath and hills beyond.

  Jesse reached-down to twirl the control of the injector valve. Water, preheated by its passage through an extension of the smokebox, swirled into the boiler. He allowed the engine to build up speed. Durnovaria vanished, lost in the gloom astern; the light was fading fast now. To right and left the land was featureless, dark; in front of him was the half-seen whirling of the crankshaft, the big thunder of the engine. The hauler grinned, still exhilarated by the physical act of driving. Flame light striking round the firebox doors showed the wide, hard jaw, the deep-set eyes under brows that were level and thickly black. Just let old Serjeantson try and sneak in a last trip. The Margaret would take his Fowler, uphill or down; and Eli would churn with glee in his fresh-made grave. . .

  The Lady Margaret. A scene came unasked into Jesse’s mind. He saw himself as a boy, voice half broken. How long ago was that—eight seasons, ten? The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones. He remembered the morning the Margaret first arrived in the yard. She’d come snorting and plunging through Durnovaria, fresh from Burrell’s works in far-off Thetford, paintwork gleaming, whistle sounding, brasswork a-twinkle in the sun; a compound locomotive of ten nhp, all her details specified from flywheel decoration to static-discharge chains. Spud pan, belly pan, water lifts; Eli had got what he wanted, all right, one of the finest steamers in the West. He’d fetched her himself, making the awkward journey across many counties to Norfork; nobody else had been trusted to bring back the pride of the fleet. And she’d been his steamer ever since; if the old granite shell that had called itself Eli Strange ever loved anything on earth, it had been the huge Burrell.

  Jesse had been there to meet her, and his kid brother Tim and the others
, James and Micah, dead now—God rest their souls—of the plague that had taken them both that time in Bristol. He remembered how his father had swung off the footplate, looked up at the loco standing shaking like a live thing still and spewing steam. The firm’s name had been painted there already, the letters glowing along the canopy edge, but as yet the Burrell had no name of her own. “What be ‘ee gwine call en?” his mother had shouted, over the noise of her idling; and Eli had rumpled his hair, puckered his red face. “Danged if I knows. . . .” They had Thunderer already and Apocalypse, Oberon and Ballard Down and Western Strength; big-sounding names, right for the machines that carried them. “Danged if I knows,” said old Eli, grinning; and Jesse’s voice had spoken without his permission, faltering up in its adolescent yodel. “The Lady Margaret, sir . . . Lady Margaret . . .”

  A bad thing that, speaking without being addressed. Eli had glared, shoved up his cap, scrubbed at his hair again and burst into a roar of laughter. “I like en . . bugger me if I don’t like en. . . .” And the Lady Margaret she had become, over the protests of his drivers, even over old Dickon’s head. He claimed it “were downright luck” to call a loco after “some bloody ‘oman. . . .” Jesse remembered his ears burning, he couldn’t tell whether with shame or pride. He’d unwished the name a thousand times, but it had stuck. Eli liked it; and nobody crossed old Strange, not in the days of his strength.

  So Eli was dead. There’d been no warning; just the coughing, the hands gripping the chair arms, the face that suddenly wasn’t his father’s face, staring. Quick dark spattering of blood, the lungs sighing and bubbling; and a clay-colored old man lying abed, one lamp burning, the priest in attendance, Jesse’s mother watching empty-faced. Father Thomas had been cold, disapproving of the old sinner; the wind had soughed round the house vicious with frost while the priest’s lips absolved and mechanically blessed . . . but that hadn’t been death. A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth. Eli had been a part of Jesse’s life, as much a part as his bedroom under the eaves of the old house. Death disrupted the processes of memory, jangled old chords that were maybe best left alone. It took so little imagination for Jesse to see his father still, the craggy face, weathered -hands, hauler’s greasy buckled cap pulled low over his eyes. The knotted muffler, ends anchored round the braces, the greatcoat, old thick working corduroys. It was here he missed him, in the clanking and the darkness, with the hot smell of oil, smoke blowing back from the tall stack to burn his eyes. This was how he’d known it would be. Maybe this was what he’d wanted.

  Time to feed the brute. Jesse took a quick look at the road stretching out straight in front of him. The steamer would hold her course, the worm steering couldn’t kick back. He opened the firebox doors, grabbed the shovel. He stoked the fire quickly and efficiently, keeping it dished for maximum heat. Swung the doors shut, straightened up again. The steady thunder of the loco was part of him already, in his bloodstream. Heat struck up from the metal of the footplate, working through his boots; the warmth from the firebox blew back, breathed against his face. Time later for the frost to reach him, nibbling at his bones.

  Jesse had been born in the old house on the outskirts of Durnovaria soon after his father started up in business there with a couple of plowing engines, a thresher, and an Aveling and Porter tractor. The third of four brothers, he’d never seriously expected to own the fortunes of Strange and Sons. But God’s ways were as inscrutable as the hills; two Strange boys had gone black-faced to Abraham’s bosom, now Eli himself. . . Jesse thought back to long summers spent at home, summers when the engine sheds were boiling hot and reeking of smoke and oil. He’d spend his days there, watching the trains come in and leave, helping unload on the warehouse steps, climbing over the endless stacks of crates and bales. There too were scents; richness of dried fruits in their boxes, apricots and figs and raisins; sweetness of fresh pine and deal, fragrance of cedarwood, thick headiness of twist tobacco cured in rum. Champagne and Oporto for the luxury trade, cognac, French lace; tangerines and pineapples, rubber and saltpeter, jute and hemp. . . .

  Sometimes he’d cadge rides on the locos, down to Poole or Bourne Mouth, across to Bridport, Wey Mouth; or west down to Isca, Lindinis. He went to Londinium once, and northeast again to Camulodunum. The Burrells and Claytons and Fodens ate miles; it was good to sit on the trail load of one of those old trains, the engine looking half a mile away, hooting and jetting steam. Jesse would pant on ahead to pay the toll keepers, stay behind to help them close the gates with their long white-and-red-striped bars. He remembered the rumbling of the many wheels, the thick rising of dust from the rutted trackways. The dust lay on the verges and hedges, making the roads look like white scars crossing the land. Odd nights he’d spend away from home, squatting in some corner of a tavern bar while his father caroused. Sometimes Eli would turn morose, and cuff Jesse upstairs to bed; at others he’d get expansive and sit and spin tall tales about when he himself was a boy, when the locos had shafts in front of their boilers and horses between them to steer. Jesse had been a brake-boy at eight, a steersman at ten for some of the shorter runs. It had been a wrench when he’d been sent away to school.

  He wondered what had been in Eli’s mind. “Get some bliddy eddycation” was all the old man had said. “That’s what counts, lad. . . .” Jesse remembered how he’d felt; how he’d wandered in the orchards behind the house, seeing the cherry plums hanging thick on the old trees that were craggy and leaning, just right to climb. The apples, Bramleys and Lanes and Haley’s Orange; Commodore pears hanging like rough-skinned bombs against walls mellow with September sunlight. Always before, Jesse had helped bring in the crop; but not this year, not anymore. His brothers had learned to write and read and figure in the little village school, and that was all; but Jesse had gone to Sherborne, and stayed on to college in the old university town. He’d worked hard at his languages and sciences, and done well; only there had been something wrong. It had taken him years to realize his hands were missing the touch of oiled steel, his nostrils needed the scent of steam. He’d packed up and come home and started work like any other hauler; and Eli had said not a word. No praise, no condemnation. Jesse shook his head. Deep down he’d always known without any possibility of doubt just what he was going to do. At heart, he was a hauler; like Tim, like Dickon, like old Eli. That was all; and it would have to be enough.

  The Margaret topped a rise and rumbled onto a downslope. Jesse glanced at the long gauge glass by his knee and instinct more than vision made him open the injectors, valve water into the boiler. The loco had a long chassis; that meant caution descending hills. Too little water in her barrel and the forward tilt would uncover the firebox crown, melt the fusable plug there. All the steamers carried spares, but fitting one was a job to avoid. It meant drawing the fire, a crawl into a baking-hot firebox, an eternity of wrestling overhead in darkness. Jesse had burned his quota of plugs in his time, like any other tyro; it had taught him to keep his firebox covered. Too high a level, on the other hand, meant water reaching the steam outlets, descending from the stack in a scalding cloud. He’d had that happen too.

  He spun the valve and the hissing of the injectors stopped. The Margaret lumbered at the slope, increasing her speed. Jesse pulled back on the reversing lever, screwed the brakes on to check the train; heard the altered beat as the loco felt the rising gradient, and gave her back her steam. Light or dark, he knew every foot of the road; a good driver had to.

  A solitary gleam ahead of him told him he was nearing Wool. The Margaret shrieked a warning to the village, rumbled through between the shuttered cottages. A straight run now, across the heath to Poole. An hour to the town gates, say another half to get down to the quay. If the traffic holdups weren’t too bad . . . Jesse chafed his hands, worked his shoulders inside his coat. The cold was getting to him now, he could feel it settling in his joints.

  He looked out to either side of the road. It was full night, and the Great Heath was
pitch black. Far off he saw or thought he saw the glimmer of a will-o’-the-wisp, haunting some stinking bog. A chilling wind moaned in from the emptiness. Jesse listened to the steady pounding of the Burrell and as often before the image of a ship came to him. The Lady Margaret, a speck of light and warmth, forged through the waste like some vessel crossing a vast and inimical ocean.

  This was the twentieth century, the age of reason; but the heath was still the home of superstitious fears. The haunt of wolves and witches, werethings and fairies; and the routiers . . . Jesse curled his lip. “Norman bastards” Dickon had called them. It was as accurate a description as any. True, they claimed Norman descent; but in this Catholic England of more than a thousand years after the Conquest bloodlines of Norman, Saxon and original Celt were hopelessly mixed. What distinctions existed were more or less arbitrary, reintroduced in accordance with the racial theories of Gisevius the Great a couple of centuries ago. Most people had at least a smattering of the five tongues of the land; the Norman French of the ruling classes, Latin of the Church, Modern English of commerce and trade, the outdated Middle English and Celtic of the churls. There were other languages, of course; Gaelic, Cornish and Welsh, all fostered by the Church, kept alive centuries after their use had worn thin. But it was good to chop a land piecemeal, set up barriers of language as well as class. “Divide and rule” had long been the policy, unofficially at least, of Rome.