Ted was planning to spend a quiet Christmas on his own at Lynford station, as he’d done for so many years. Norah always spent the festive period with her husband and children – there was not enough space for them all in the station anyway, and Ted was not able to go to visit her. He was entitled to a couple of weeks’ holiday each year, but never took them. If he’d had a wife and family maybe he’d feel differently, but his life was here, at Lynford station, and he wanted no other. Or at least, that had been true until he’d fallen in love with Annie Galbraith.
The last train before the short closure was to be the 17.21 – Annie’s usual train. She was working that day. He’d seen her as usual in the morning, when she’d flashed him a smile and waggled her fingers at him as she hurried through the station in her red coat. Ted had taken pains to make the station look welcoming and festive, festooning the mantelpiece in the waiting room with sprigs of holly, and attaching paper-chains around the edge of the ticket counter. It wasn’t much but it was more than he normally did, and it was all for Annie.
To his surprise she returned early that afternoon – just after half past four. Ted was in the process of setting a fire in the waiting room. She sashayed in, humming a Christmas carol, and sat down on one of the chairs.
‘Well, Ted, the bank closed early today and we’ve been sent home. But my father is not expecting me until the usual time, so I wondered – what shall I do for the next half-hour or so? I know, I thought to myself, I’ll come and see my favourite stationmaster. So here I am!’
‘A-Annie! You’re very welcome. I’ll just light the fire, and then w-would you like some tea, perhaps?’
He was rewarded with a smile, that lit up the room like a Christmas tree. ‘I’d love a cup, but only if you’ve time to sit and drink one with me.’
He tried to reply but could not trust himself to speak. But what about your gentleman friend, he wanted to ask her. The one with the motorcar. Instead he simply nodded and hurried off to make the tea, placing his best cups and saucers on a tray, finding a few biscuits to put on a plate. He brought it through and set it down on the waiting-room table, then sat down in a chair beside Annie’s. Half an hour in her company! He willed the station clock to slow down so that he could relish every second of it.
‘Oh, this is perfect,’ Annie said. ‘Shall I be mother?’
He was confused for a moment, until he realised she was asking if she should pour the tea. He swallowed and nodded. It was so good to be sitting beside her with little to do until the 17.21 was due.
‘Are you staying here for Christmas, Ted?’ Annie was asking. ‘Or are you visiting someone? That family who stayed here, perhaps?’
‘My sister? No. I have to stay here to run the station. There is only one day with no trains. Services restart on Boxing Day.’
‘You won’t be alone, surely?’ Annie put down her cup and placed a hand on his arm. He felt the warmth of her fingers burning through his jacket sleeve.
‘I-I … yes. I will be alone. But I have a joint of ham to cook and a book to read and the wireless to listen to.’ He did not want her to feel pity for him. He wanted her to love him.
She sighed. ‘Poor Ted. I wish I could come to visit you.’
‘I would n-not expect you to visit me. I mean, it would be lovely to see you, but of course you will be with your family.’ He knew he was blushing as he always did in her presence.
‘Just my father.’ She pulled a face. ‘It won’t be the most festive of occasions. To be perfectly honest, I really would much rather spend the day with you tomorrow. But of course, there are no trains so I can’t get here.’ She gazed into her teacup, apparently deep in thought.
‘Y-your father.’ Somehow that was all he could say.
‘Yes. There’s just the two of us at home. Mother died five years ago. Father’s a businessman. We have a large house for just the two of us. Sometimes I think I’d prefer to be in a cosy cottage. Or even a little station house!’ That laugh again.
‘W-will you see anyone else tomorrow? Any f-friends?’ He was desperate to know more about the man who’d collected her from work that day.
‘No. Just me and my father.’ It was as though she’d read his mind. Ted felt a surge of relief that she would not be seeing the other man on Christmas Day. Surely then it could not be anything serious? A small smile came unbidden to his lips.
‘Ah, Ted. It would be so wonderful to spend Christmas Day with you. You’re such a lovely man. But it’s just not possible … this year.’ She tilted her head to one side as she gazed at him for a moment, and then glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, look, it’s almost time for my train. You have signals to set and flags to wave. I must wish you a merry Christmas, say thank you for the tea, and let you be away to your duties.’
And then she stood, bent over him where he still sat in his chair, and kissed him on the cheek, before waltzing out to the platform leaving Ted feeling happier than he had ever felt in his life before.
*
After Christmas, once a week or sometimes more, Annie would arrive early enough to spend a few minutes sitting and chatting with Ted before catching her train. Ted’s good spirits lasted right through to mid-January, but then a letter came that changed everything. It was addressed to the stationmaster, type-written on official Southern Railway notepaper.
Please be advised that Mr Gerald Hornsby, Southern Railway’s Dorset Area Manager, will be paying a visit on Tuesday 21st January. All staff employed at Lynford station to make themselves available for an important announcement. Mr Hornsby will arrive at approximately eleven o’clock.
Ted frowned as he read it. Arriving eleven o’clock? There was no passenger train due at Lynford in either direction at that time. How could Mr Hornsby arrive then? He had only met the area manager on one previous occasion, when, shortly after taking the job, Hornsby had made a tour of all the stations under his control. Then, he had arrived by train, spending a day visiting each of the stations on the line, alighting from one service and resuming his journey on the next. Ted recalled a short, portly man in his early fifties, with Victorian-style whiskers. A career-man, Ted had thought. One whose aim was to advance up the management ladder, as quickly as possible. Not someone who loved the railways. Hornsby could have worked for any company – he was a pure bureaucrat.
He went out to the goods yard, where Fred Wilson was busy supervising the transfer of a wagonload of coal onto a truck that would deliver it to homes in and around Lynford.
‘Your attention for a moment, Fred. I’ve had word that next Tuesday morning we have the area manager paying us a visit. There’s to be an important announcement. I need you to be here, just for that meeting. In your best uniform, smart as you can manage, if you please.’ Fred had a habit of turning up with food stains on his jacket, his hair unwashed, his hands filthy. While it didn’t matter if he was working in the goods yard, at times Fred was needed on the platform, acting as a porter. His unkempt appearance gave a bad impression to passengers, Ted thought, especially in the summer months when they were busy with holidaymakers. He’d seen some wrinkle their noses as Fred, his expression surly, loaded their suitcases onto the small luggage-van that was part of the last carriage of every passenger train.
‘Supposed to be my day off,’ said Fred, flinging a sack of coal onto the truck.
‘I know, and I’m sorry. But the letter says all staff are to attend the meeting. It’ll probably only take a short while. Let’s make a good impression, eh? You never know, could be a pay rise for us, in the pipeline.’ Unlikely, Ted knew, but saying that might help get Fred to attend the meeting, properly attired.
‘Huh. Been a long time since I had a pay rise. All right, I’ll come. Only for an hour, mind. Then I’m off. Promised my girl I’d take her out in the afternoon.’
‘Good. Thank you.’ How Fred had managed to get himself a girlfriend, Ted would never know. But he’d been courting for a while, now. There was someone for everyone, Ted supposed, though he’d always assumed he himself was not part of that ‘everyone’. Could Annie be his ‘someone’? He doubted it. Even though they were spending more and more time together, there were still those days when she was not on the evening train. The thought of her friend with a motorcar made Ted press his lips together. How was it possible to be so envious of someone you’d never met?
*
A little later that day, when the 14.25 arrived slightly early, Ted took the chance to talk to its driver, Bill Perkins, about the mysterious announcement.
‘I don’t know what it is, Ted. But funny thing is, the other stationmasters have had the same letter. Sounds like Hornsby is going to be paying a visit to all the stations next week. And us drivers and firemen have been called to a meeting up at Michelhampton, at the end of the day. Must be something big.’ Bill was still in his locomotive’s cab, while Ted stood on the platform, one foot on the cab’s footplate.
‘Perhaps they’re expanding the line? There was always talk about running another branch off it, down to the coast at Beremouth.’ The original plans, from the 1890s, had included this second branch, with a junction just outside Lynford station. If built, it would do for the sleepy coastal town of Beremouth what the existing line had done for Coombe Regis – bringing in thousands of day-trippers all summer long.
Bill laughed. ‘You think that’s likely? Sorry, Ted. More likely my lovely Coombe Explorer here’ – he patted the locomotive’s cab – ‘will grow wings and fly. We carry barely enough passengers to keep this branch going.’
‘We’re full to bursting during summer weekends!’
‘But is it enough to finance the rest of the year?’ Bill shook his head. ‘Sometimes I run end to end completely empty, carrying nothing but the post. An expensive way to deliver a few letters. You’re closer to the accounts than I am, Ted. You tell me. Does this branch line make money for Southern Railway, overall?’
‘I only know the figures for Lynford,’ Ted replied. ‘And most people buy their tickets at Michelhampton or Coombe Regis. I hope to God you’re not right. How would this area survive without a railway? How would the goods get through? Coombe Regis owes everything to this line. It was nothing before the railway came, and if the railway closed, it’d decline again.’
‘You’re living in the past, Ted, mate. The roads are so much better now than they were last century. The goods would be moved about by road. The tourists would still come – by omnibus. There’s a new service just started, that’s going to run from Michelhampton to Coombe Regis all year round. My neighbour tried it out and said it’s quicker than the train, and stops in all the village centres, so it’s more convenient, too.’
Ted didn’t know how to respond to that. The railway was his life, and he’d assumed it was the lifeblood of the whole area, too.
‘Well, then, Ted. Right now we’ve still got a railway to run, and I think I’d best be off, now. We’ll hear soon enough what’s in store for us.’
‘Indeed we will.’ Ted nodded to Bill, stepped away from the train and went off to change the signal and do the final checks to allow the train to depart. There were a half-dozen passengers on board. Not bad for middle of the day, on a Wednesday in January. The railways surely couldn’t be in such a bad way that the company were considering closing it. Bill Perkins must be wrong. Ted certainly hoped so.
*
It seemed a long wait until Tuesday finally rolled around. Ted had spent all his spare time on Sunday making sure the station was in the best condition possible. He’d swept the goods yard, weeded the track-sides, repainted the windowsills on the front of the station, cleaned the station signs, polished the ticket-office floor. He’d also ensured all the trains – the reduced service that operated on winter weekends – ran on time. Like clockwork. He was good at his job, he knew. It was all he’d ever wanted to do. If the railway did close, what on earth would he do then? Look for a job as stationmaster on some other line, he supposed, though the thought of moving away from Lynford – away from Annie! – filled him with horror.
And that’s when it really hit him. If the railway did close, even if he found another job locally, he would no longer see her twice a day. Their occasional chats when she came early for her train would end. There would be no chance of a repeat of that magical Christmas Eve, when he had felt the softness of her hand and then her lips against his cheek. Those moments that he lived for and could no longer imagine life without.
No, the railway could not close. He could not contemplate losing this way of life.
On Monday evening Ted switched on his wireless to listen to the day’s news. A statement from Sandringham House, where King George V lay dying, was read out. ‘The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close,’ the king’s physician had said.
‘God bless him,’ Ted muttered to himself. ‘And I pray that the Michelhampton and Coombe Regis Railway is not going the same way.’
The first train of the day on Tuesday, the 07.42 from Michelhampton, brought the day’s newspapers as usual. ‘Heard the news?’ Bill shouted from the cab, as he threw the bundles of newspapers onto the platform. For one heart-stopping moment Ted thought Bill had heard something about the railway, before Mr Hornsby’s big announcement, but then he saw the newspapers’ headlines: DEATH OF THE KING, above a full-page picture of the late George V.
‘He’s gone, then,’ Ted said.
‘Heard it on the wireless yesterday that they didn’t expect him to last long,’ Bill said. ‘Very sad. End of an era.’
‘It is, that,’ Ted replied, praying again that another era wasn’t about to end.
Fred turned up at five minutes to eleven, looking just about respectable. ‘We’ll use the ladies’ waiting room for the meeting,’ Ted said. ‘Unlikely to be any ladies needing it for the next half-hour. Make yourself useful, Fred, and bank up the fire in there.’
‘It’s my day off,’ Fred grumbled. ‘I’m not working. I’ll go and sit down till the big-wig gets here.’
Ted rolled his eyes but didn’t push the point. The waiting room was ready, anyway. He stayed in the ticket office, from where he could keep an eye on the street outside. Why Mr Hornsby was arriving by road and not rail, he couldn’t understand. It’d cost the company more to lay on a car and driver for him, when he could use his own company’s trains for free.
At last, at just after eleven, a Bentley pulled up outside. Its chauffeur got out and opened the rear door for Mr Hornsby. He was carrying a briefcase and his expression was grim. He was accompanied by a nervous-looking younger man Ted had not seen before. The two men entered the station and at Ted’s invitation, followed him through to the ladies’ waiting room.
‘I thought we’d be most comfortable in here,’ Ted said, throwing a few more lumps of coal onto the fire. It was a chilly day.
‘As you wish. This won’t take too long. Just you, Morgan, and the lad here, is it?’ Mr Hornsby said, indicating Fred.
‘Yes, just us.’
‘Right. Well, you’ll have realised, I suppose, that times are tough for railways right now. Every year the roads improve, bus services increase, people buy private cars and stop using the trains. Especially somewhere like this, where the countryside works against the railways. Trucks and motorcars can get up and down hills far easier than trains, as you well know.’
Ted nodded. He did not like the way this was going.
‘As a company, we have to be efficient. We’re here to provide a service, of course, but we’re also here to make money for our shareholders. And I’m sorry to say that the Michelhampton and Coombe Regis line does not do that.’
‘But, in the summer—’ Ted began.
Hornsby held up a podgy hand. ‘In the summer, of course it does well. But six weeks of full trains does not earn the company enough to subsidise the rest of the year.’
‘So what—’
Again the hand was raised, and this time Hornsby glared at Ted. ‘I’m getting to that. The company board has decided, and rightly so, in my opinion, that we have no choice but to close this line. We will keep it open for one more summer season, and then close the line in September. All employees will of course receive severance pay, and every effort will be made to help you find new employment. For some, such as train drivers, jobs will be offered elsewhere on our network.’
‘But … will the line open again next summer?’ Ted could not believe it. He glanced over at Fred to gauge his reaction, but the boy looked unconcerned, more interested in what he’d picked from his nose, that was now stuck to the end of his finger.
‘No, the line closes for good, this September.’
The King dead, and the railway receiving its death notice, on the same day. ‘Would some other company not consider buying it? It could be made profitable, I’m sure—’
‘Morgan, do you not think the company has explored all angles? The decision has been made, and that’s final. I have here’ – he pulled a document out of his briefcase and handed it to Ted – ‘a paper explaining the details of the closure and the reasoning behind it. Read and digest it. Nearer the time, I shall visit again to talk about plans for dismantling the railway. You may leave the company’s employ on the last day of operation, or if you prefer, there will be a little more work after that overseeing the disposal of assets. Of course, when the station house is sold, you will need to find alternative accommodation.’
Ted felt the words hit him like a punch to the gut. He was to lose his home, his job, his beloved railway, all in just a few short months. He’d lose too, any chance he had, however slight, of a relationship with Annie. Everything would change. He had never coped well with change, and this time there was so much more at stake than ever before. He tried to imagine what his future might hold but beyond September it looked like a dark and featureless void.