The Railway Girl. Nancy Carson

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СКАЧАТЬ to be. I mean, there’s nothing to get excited about any more – well, not at the Whimsey, anyroad. There’s no bull-baiting or cock-fighting these days to get folk worked up. All right, there might be the occasional badger-drawing when the Patrollers ain’t about … I remember Coronation Day—’

      ‘Oh, spare us the details, Haden.’

      ‘No, Mother, I’d like to hear,’ Lucy insisted. ‘My dad always comes out with some good tales.’

      ‘Except I’ve heard ’em all afore, our Lucy. Too many times.’

      ‘Well, I haven’t. So tell us, Dad.’

      Haden took a long quaff from his beer. ‘It was June in thirty-eight,’ he began again with a smile for his daughter. ‘It started the day afore the Coronation of our young queen Victoria, God bless her. We’d heard that there was due to be a bear-baiting at the Old Bell up in Bell Street. The bear had been brought over from Wednesbury, and to keep him comfortable for the night they found him an empty pigsty. Next day, everybody as had got a bulldog – and that was a good many in them days – brought ’em along to bait poor old Bruin. So the bear-herd fetched the bear out o’ the pigsty and led him over to the old clay pit. They drove an iron stake into the middle and put the ring at the end of the bear’s chain over the stake, so as the animal could move about easy but not too far. Course, loads o’ spectators lined the clay pit, a chap in a clean white smock among ’em.’

      Bobby had installed himself at the side of the table near Haden and waited patiently with imploring eyes for a morsel to descend to the stone flags of the floor. But Haden was in full flow.

      ‘As it happened, the ground had been softened by rain a day or two before, and as the kerfuffle started nobody noticed that the stake had come loose in the mud. I tell yer, there was plenty fun as them dogs baited the bear, but then it dawned on everybody that the bear had got free. We all ran for our lives, and the poor bugger in the white smock fell over. He was rolled over umpteen times in the mud as folk trampled all over him.’ Haden laughed aloud as he recalled it. ‘He was a sight – the poor bugger did look woebegone.’

      ‘Then what happened?’ Lucy asked, wide-eyed.

      ‘The daft thing was, the poor bear was as frit as everybody else, and run off back to the pigsty.’

      ‘The poor, poor bear,’ she said full of sympathy for the animal. ‘I’m glad they put a stop to all that savagery.’

      ‘Savagery?’ Haden repeated. ‘I’ve seen savagery. I’ve watched bull-baiting at the Whimsey – in the days when everybody called it “Turley’s”. Once, a bull gored a bulldog, pushing his horns right into its guts. He ripped it open and tossed it higher than the house.’

      ‘Ugh! That’s enough to put you off your dinner,’ Lucy complained, turning her mouth down in distaste.

      ‘Another time at a wake,’ Haden went on, ‘I watched a bull, that was maddened by the dogs, break free of his stake and cause havoc among the crowd. When they caught him they slaughtered him without a second thought and cut him up, and the meat was sold to anybody as wanted it at a few coppers a pound. Then they all trooped off to watch the next baiting.’

      ‘I’m only glad it doesn’t go on now,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you remember it, Mother?’

      ‘I remember it going on. I’d never go and watch such things meself, though. But then I had you kids to look after.’

      ‘Yes, they was rough days,’ Haden admitted. ‘We only had one parish constable in them days and he couldn’t be everywhere. Like as not he was paid to turn a blind eye, especially by the street wenches or their blasted pimps. But folk was poor and nobody had any education. They knew no better, knew no other life. These days, there’s work about and while they’m still poor, they ain’t as hard done by as they used to be.’

      Bobby impatiently tapped Haden’s leg with his paw to remind his master that he was still awaiting a morsel.

      ‘Lord, I forgot all about thee, mutt,’ he said, picking a thigh bone from his plate and tossing it to the dog. ‘Here, that’ll keep thee going for a bit.’

       Chapter 2

      Arthur Goodrich, a man of average height and average looks, was twenty-five years old. He was a stonemason by trade, employed in the family firm of Jeremiah Goodrich and Sons, Monumental Masons and Sepulchral Architects. While Jeremiah, Arthur’s father, tended to concentrate on the sepulchral design and construction side of the business in the relative comfort of the workshop along with Talbot, Arthur’s older brother, poor Arthur, by dint of being younger and thus subordinate, was meanwhile generally despatched to the further reaches of the Black Country to effect the more menial, though no less skilled, work of cutting and blacking inscriptions on existing headstones in the area’s sundry graveyards. For Arthur this was an eternal source of discontent to add to his many others.

      Thus it was one Saturday morning in late September. Arthur, complete with a toolbag full of freshly sharpened chisels, several wooden mallets, a cushion to sit on and various other appliances of his craft, had been despatched early to the hallowed ground of St Mark’s church in Pensnett, a good twenty minutes’ walk even for a sprightly lad like himself. The apathetic morning had rounded up a herd of frowning clouds that matched Arthur’s mood. He hoped that the rain would keep off, for today was the last cricket match of the season, against Stourbridge Cricket Club, and he had been picked to play.

      He had been assigned two headstones to amend that day and possessed a rough plan on paper of where they were situated within the graveyard. He located the first, a shining black grave, the granite imported at vast expense on behalf of the occupier’s wife. The deceased had been a local claymaster, piously religious and a pillar of local society. Arthur put down his toolbag, sat on the grave and read the inscription to himself:

      ‘To the memory of Jacob Onions who passed away 15th October 1853.

       Farewell dear husband must we now part,

       Who lay so near each others’ heart.

       The time will come I hope when we

       Will both enjoy Felicity.’

      Composed, obviously, by a grieving Mrs Onions, hoping for the better fortune of someday lying together again. Well, now that same grieving wife had joined her beloved husband, and Arthur was to append the inscription that confirmed it. He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket for the two pieces of paper that told him which words to cut on the relevant headstones. Just at that moment, an ominous pain convulsed his stomach and he trapped the piece of paper under the grave vase so that he could clutch his aching gut. Within a few seconds the pain had gone.

      Wind.

      A decent breaking of wind would relieve it. He lifted one cheek experimentally but nothing happened, so he took the cushion from his toolbag, an essential item of kit when sitting or kneeling on cold graves for hours on end, and placed it beneath him near the headstone. He opened a jar of grey paint – some magical kind that dried quickly and could be easily scraped off afterwards – grabbed a brush and daubed the area to be marked out with the lettering. While it dried, he located the other grave and performed the same task there. He read the inscription already carved on that СКАЧАТЬ