Tilly left Ena with her mind racing, and ideas for how to follow up on the little she’d gleaned. How had Ena’s father died? What was his connection to the railway? Had he worked for it or just been a passenger? It had been the death of him, Ena had said, repeating her mother’s words. Did that mean some tragic accident? Had he been run over by a train or something? If so, it must have happened very near the end of the railway’s period of operation. Ena had said she was born after the railway ceased running. She recalled the story of the Lynford ghost – a man who’d died in the station building. Could that be Ena’s father?
As Ena was clearly unwilling to say anything more, it was up to Tilly to go through the archives and discover the truth. It was the key to persuading her to sell that all-important strip of land, that much seemed certain.
Back home, she decided to concentrate on the last year the railway was in operation. She began Googling and searching online newspaper archives. She was becoming skilled at it, knowing what key words to put into the search boxes for best results. It wasn’t long before she found an account of the last day of the railway.
Article in the Dorset Herald – 21 September 1936
Despite heavy clouds hanging over the hills all day, the rain managed to hold off for the last day of operation of the Michelhampton and Coombe Regis Railway. Approximately 600 people turned up at Michelhampton to see the last train leave, and even more were there to greet its return. Enterprising local businesses had set up stalls selling refreshments and memorabilia, and appeared to be doing a roaring trade. Michelhampton station maintained a carnival atmosphere throughout the day, though one tinged with sadness when the final train pulled by locomotive Coombe Wanderer made its final return and was then shunted into a siding along with the other locomotives, to await its fate, whatever that might be.
The last services to and from Coombe Regis were packed to the rafters. If only a tenth that number had travelled the line regularly throughout the year, it might well have proved profitable enough to be kept open! But as one passenger remarked on the journey, the line cannot survive on quaintness alone.
Stations along the route were bedecked with bunting, and at each there was a small crowd paying their final respects to this much-loved railway line. Shepherds in fields waved as the train chuffed past. Motorcars near Rayne’s Cross, where the railway and road run alongside each other for a while, tooted their horns. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to say farewell. Only cows in fields near Michelhampton were indifferent. At Coombe Regis, a brass band played ‘The Last Post’ as the return train pulled out of the station for the last time.
Staff employed by the railway are to be redundant from next week – their only remaining duties being to close up the stations and help with the selling-off of railway assets, scheduled for November. Some have worked on the railway for many years, so leaving it will be a wrench. One stationmaster, Mr Edward Morgan at Lynford station, said: ‘This railway’s been my life. It opened the very day I was born. I began work aged 15, as a porter at Rayne’s Cross and then took the job as stationmaster here sixteen years ago. It’s all I’ve ever known.’
As Stationmaster Morgan blew the whistle to allow the return train to depart, there was a definite sadness in his demeanour. He looked at the whistle after blowing it, shook his head, and placed the whistle in his pocket, having no further need of it.
Back at Michelhampton, as passengers disembarked from the last train, they stopped to peer at a wreath of bronze chrysanthemums that had been delivered by an unknown hand since the train departed in the morning. ‘Perchance it is not dead, but sleepeth,’ read the card pinned to the flowers.
Perchance, indeed. What a wonderful thing it would be if somehow the line could be reawakened for future generations to enjoy.
It sounded like a jolly occasion. Stationmaster Edward Morgan at Lynford station – hurray, she had a definite name for one of the staff! Tilly jotted it down. It was a good, solid, dependable kind of name. Perfect for a stationmaster. Something occurred to Tilly, and she fetched the detailed logs of the railway operations that had been in one of the boxes of archive material. She opened one of them at random, and studied the signature that appeared at the bottom of every page. The hand was tight and the writing spiked and hard to read, but it did seem to say, ‘T. Morgan’. T, not E. Perhaps he called himself Ted, or Teddy.
In which case his initials were T.M. – and those were the initials at the end of the inscription inside the tunnel.
‘So, Edward, or Ted Morgan, stationmaster of Lynford station in 1936 and for sixteen years prior to that: you loved someone called Annie Galbraith, did you? Who was she, I wonder? Did you marry her, in the end?’ Tilly muttered to herself as she wrote notes and questions. More questions than answers, but it was intriguing.
*
A few days after meeting Ena, Tilly was sitting with Alan Harris in the tearooms at Lynford station, ready to interview him about his uncle, when her phone rang. It was an unknown number, and she answered hesitantly, expecting it to be either a spam call or, perhaps, a solicitor engaged by Ian calling about beginning divorce proceedings. It would only be a matter of time, surely, before all that got underway.
‘Hey, Tilly. How are you? Rob Coogan here.’
Her stomach gave a lurch as she recognised his voice even before he’d given his name. She mouthed an apology to Alan and moved away to a quiet spot to take the call.
‘Hi. I’m good, how are you?’
‘Great. I was just phoning to see if … well, I was wondering about going to see the new Marvel superheroes movie. Not sure if you’re into that kind of thing? But it’s on in Michelhampton this week, so if you’re at a loose end … we could have a drink after, if you like?’
Tilly was silent for a moment, considering. Was this a date? Did she want a date? No, but did she want an evening out? Yes.
‘You still there?’
‘Yes, sorry. I was just thinking. Not really into Marvel comic heroes but I do like to go to the cinema. Just one thing … this is just us going to the pictures, right? Not …’
‘Not a date. It’s OK. I remember what we agreed the other morning. It’s just a trip out to the cinema with a friend. Deal?’
She laughed. ‘Deal. Wednesday’s good for me, or Thursday.’
‘Thursday’s perfect. Shall I pick you up?’
‘I’ll meet you there. Text me the time and cinema.’
‘Will do. See you then.’
Tilly smiled as she saved his number to her phone. She didn’t want a boyfriend, but she most certainly wanted a local friend, someone she could go out with now and again, and Rob looked perfect to fit the bill. She returned to Alan and opened her notebook at a blank page, ready to take some notes.
‘Sorry about that. So, tell me all you can remember about what your mother said about the railway,’ she said, her pen poised above the page.
‘Straight in there, no beating about the bush,’ Alan said, smiling. ‘I like that. Well, I phoned my older brother and sister to see what they could remember. Margot was only little and doesn’t remember much but Tom does. He said Mum used to bring them all – I had another brother, Peter, as well, but he died two years ago – to stay with our uncle, at least once a year. I never met our uncle. He died when I was a baby. I’m quite a bit younger than the others, the baby of the family, believe it or not.’
‘And where did they stay?’
‘Right here, it turns out! I hadn’t realised. Our uncle was stationmaster here at Lynford.’
‘He was Edward Morgan then!’
‘Uncle Teddy, they called him. But Morgan was Mum’s maiden name, so yes. How did you know his name?’
Tilly told Alan about the railway logbooks, and the inscription in the tunnel. ‘Have you heard the name Annie Galbraith?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘Was your uncle married?’
‘Not when my family used to visit. Tom said he was a single man then. Margot used to sleep upstairs in the spare room with Mum, and Peter and Tom slept on the floor in the sitting room – right here! There was no woman in the house. Mum used to do all the cooking when they visited.’
‘What happened to him after the railway closed?’
‘We don’t know. Tom says the last visit they made was a few months before the railway closed. Mum was pregnant then, with me. Tom said he and Peter pestered Mum to take them back for the last day of operation, but I’d only just been born so there was no chance. And then after the closure, she just never mentioned him again. Tom said it was odd – when they’d ask about Uncle Teddy she’d clam up, shake her head sadly and say nothing. After a while they stopped asking, and being kids, more or less forgot all about him.’
‘That’s very sad.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? I didn’t even know of his existence until after I retired. I’d always had an interest in heritage railways, then I read in a railway magazine about the Society getting going with this restoration. I mentioned it to my brothers, and was so surprised when they said, “Oh yes, isn’t that the railway we went on when we visited our uncle?” That connection is what drew me down here. Bit like your dad really – I’d lost my wife and wanted a project I could really get stuck into.’ Alan gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance for a moment.
‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ Tilly said.
‘It was ten years ago now. But I still miss her. Married to this place now, in a way.’ Alan chuckled, slapping the wall of the tearoom. ‘So, any of that any use to you in your research?’
‘It all adds up. I’m trying to build up a picture of the people who lived and worked here. Your uncle was stationmaster for sixteen years.’
Alan nodded. ‘Tom remembers a man wedded to his job. Obsessed with doing everything on time and by the book. Apparently, he once let Tom change a signal, and the lever was too stiff. The train was late leaving and Tom was mortified.’
‘Aw, wasn’t his fault though, if your uncle had left him in charge! Didn’t something like that happen on the gala weekend?’
‘Yes, indeed. Boys never change, do they?’ Alan chuckled. ‘Tom’s other memory is of Uncle Teddy being late for lunch one day, because he’d been rescuing a sheep that had got onto the track.’
‘He sounds like a kind man.’
‘Yes, I think he was, according to my siblings.’
*
Later, with her tea drunk and plenty of notes written, Tilly had just about finished interviewing Alan when a shout came from the ticket office. ‘Anyone got small hands?’ It was one of the volunteers, Sid, who was repairing the wooden panelling behind the ticket counter where there’d been a leak in a pipe.
‘Yours are very dainty,’ Alan said with a wink.
Tilly grinned and went into the ticket office to see what was needed. ‘Can I help?’ she said, holding up her hands.
Sid pointed to the missing panelling. ‘I’m trying to fit a new piece there, look, but it won’t slot in place. There’s something behind, stopping it, and I can’t quite get at it with these great lumps of meat.’ He held up his own gnarled hands. ‘I can touch it but can’t grasp it to pull it out.’
‘I’ll have a go.’ Tilly knelt down beside the panelling, pushed up her sleeve and shoved her hand inside. It was a tight fit, but there, wedged behind a batten that the panelling was fixed to, was a package. She adjusted her position so she could reach further in and got her fingers around the top end of it, so she could pull it towards her. It budged a little, then suddenly slipped down. ‘Bugger. Nearly had it.’
‘There’s a monkey wrench here – can you hook it out with that?’ Sid said, but Tilly shook her head. She lay down on the floor and reached in again, from a lower position, and this time was able to get a firm grip on the package and pull it out, at the expense of a scratch along her forearm from the edge of the panelling.
‘Here,’ she said, passing the package up to Sid. It was the shape of a book, wrapped in a piece of brown paper that had clearly suffered some water damage from the leaking pipe – the reason the Society had needed to open up the panelling in the first place. Tilly hauled herself to her feet and brushed off her clothes, watching as Sid carefully removed the remains of the paper wrapping. Alan had come in too, to see what the commotion was about.
‘A couple of notebooks. Here, you found it, you should be first to take a look.’ Sid handed the books back to Tilly. It was a small pile of exercise books, the type she remembered from schooldays. She felt a frisson of excitement as she carefully separated the pages of one and opened it. The writing was spiky, hard to read, but strangely familiar.
‘Looks like a diary,’ she said, looking at Alan. ‘And if I’m not mistaken, that looks suspiciously like your uncle’s handwriting.’
*
It was later that same day, when Tilly was back home and preparing a dinner for herself and Ken, that her phone rang again. She answered it without looking to see who it was.
‘Hey, Tilly. How are you?’
The voice made her stomach lurch. After … how long was it, since she’d spoken to her husband? Not since she’d been in Dorset. Not since … She put down the potato she’d been peeling and the knife, and sat down at the kitchen table, forcing herself to sound as calm and nonchalant as possible as she answered. ‘Ian! Well … this is a surprise. I’m … all right. You?’
‘Fine, yes, fine. Look, I’ll get straight to the point. We need to get divorce proceedings underway. I want to … marry Naomi, as soon as possible. So that our child has two parents who are married. It’ll make everything easier.’
‘Sure.’ It’s all Tilly could think to say. He’d already made it clear that he intended staying with Naomi, because she could provide him with children, whereas Tilly had failed in this. Divorce – it seemed like a big step, but she realised it had to be done.
‘So, I’ve engaged a solicitor. You should do the same. I think it’s easier that way.’
‘OK.’
‘OK? Is that all you have to say? We’re ending our fifteen-year marriage here and you’re just saying OK?’
It was all she was allowing herself to say, even though inside she was raging at him. Her heart was pounding with the effort of staying calm. ‘What do you want me to say, Ian?’
‘I don’t know. Show a bit of emotion, I suppose.’
Emotion? She was using every ounce of strength she had to hold back a torrent of abuse. He was the one who’d instigated their separation. He was the one with another woman, who must be heavily pregnant by now. And he wanted her to, what? Cry? Scream and shout? Beg for him to come back to her?
She remembered how he’d broken the news to her, on her last day of work. How he’d then gone to Naomi’s, leaving her to ‘celebrate’ her redundancy on her own. It had all led to … that event she still couldn’t bring herself to think about, let alone talk about.
Her instinct was to scream at him, let him have all the emotion he wanted. Maybe it would make him feel better. Maybe he needed to hear her shout, so he could feel sorry for himself or feel sorry for her, so he could defend himself, and feel vindicated in his decision to leave her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted. But she wasn’t going to give him anything.
‘Tilly? You still there?’
‘I am, yes,’ she said, making her voice as flat and cold as she possibly could.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Are you going to say anything more about it? Or is that it – you just walk away from our marriage?’
‘You’re the one who walked away, Ian. There’s nothing to say. I’ll engage a solicitor, as you suggested, and then we can leave it to them. Text me your solicitor’s details to pass on. And then there’s no need for you to ring me again.’
She hung up, before he had a chance to say anything more, and sat quietly, taking deep breaths until she felt in control. A moment later, her phone pinged with his solicitor’s name and contact details. She saved the text then blocked Ian’s number. It felt strangely cathartic. She’d had so little to do with him since that fateful day and wanted nothing more. Was this it then? Was she better? Stronger? Able to move on?
She returned to her potato peeling, then found to her surprise there were tears running down her cheeks again.
‘Are you all right, pet?’ Ken had walked in, back from his day at Lower Berecombe, and spotted her tears. ‘Ah no. Crying again. Want a cuddle from your old dad?’
She fell gratefully into his arms. When was this going to stop, this constant need to collapse in a heap of tears? ‘Sorry. I had a call from Ian and it’s set me off again.’
‘Good job I wasn’t here. I’d have told him exactly what I think of him, for what he’s done to you. Come on. You sit down, I’ll finish those spuds. Let your dad look after you, eh?’
She brushed away the tears. ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll do them. I mustn’t let him get to me. I’ve blocked his number, anyway. He can’t call again. But do you know any good solicitors? He wants us to get the divorce proceedings underway. And so do I. Sooner the better.’
‘There are a couple in Coombe Regis and lots in Michelhampton. None I’ve dealt with, but I can ask around.’
*
‘Did Alan give you some good information?’ Ken asked Tilly later, as they worked together to clear up after dinner.
‘Yes, he did. His uncle was the stationmaster at Lynford for many years. I think those books that we found in the ticket office may be his diaries. I’m going to start looking through them later.’
‘Lovely, pet. You’re doing so well – building up a history of the railway.’
‘I’ll get back to it all this evening. Take my mind off Ian.’
Ken nodded. ‘I’ll come and help.’
When the dishwasher was loaded and switched on, they went together into the dining room. Ken picked up a pile of old editions of Railway Magazine. ‘How about I scan through these? I’m assuming they’ve been kept by someone because they contain mentions of the line.’
‘Great, thanks. I’m interested in anything about how the restoration got going as well.’
‘Lots in the MCR Society magazine on that. I’ll pull out a few.’
While Tilly began trying to carefully separate the stuck-together pages of Ted Morgan’s diaries, Ken worked through the piles of magazines. He passed her a couple of articles, the magazines folded back at the right page ready for her to make a copy. They covered the formation of the MCR Society back in 1984, and then the purchase of Lynford station and a half-mile of trackbed, for just short of £100,000, in 2005.
‘It was twenty years after its formation before the Society could start actual restoration works. A long time,’ Tilly commented.
‘Well yes. It took that long to raise the money. The Society couldn’t get a mortgage to buy the station, of course. So – lots of jumble sales and raffles and manning stalls at church fetes. Quite an achievement, really. And then another seven years before they were able to start running trains at Lynford.’
‘Amazing what you can do with a handful of volunteers, isn’t it?’ said Tilly. ‘But listen to this, Dad. These notebooks are definitely Alan’s uncle’s diary.’ She read out an undated entry from midway through one diary.
My dearest Annie spent some time chatting to me today, having arrived five and a half minutes early for her homeward train. I had everything ready for the arrival of the service, so was able to spend four minutes, possibly a little over, with her. She was wearing the green suit and coat that she looks so well in. Her shoes did not match. It is easier being a man and wearing black shoes and a black uniform, without having to choose outfits and worry about whether they are right together. But I digress. It is Annie I wanted to write about. I still feel the same for her. I think I will never feel any different, even if she treats me only as one would treat a pet dog. As long as she notices me, speaks to me and is kind to me, I will be happy. If ever she stopped travelling through Lynford each work day, I would be devastated. She is all I live for.
Tilly finished reading and looked up at her father.
‘He had it bad, didn’t he?’ Ken said. ‘Annie. Now wasn’t that the name carved in the tunnel wall?’
‘Yes, Annie Galbraith. Alan hadn’t heard the name, but obviously she was the love of his uncle’s life.’
‘Did Alan say if his uncle married?’
‘He doesn’t know,’ Tilly replied. ‘Definitely not married at the time the railway was closed, but after that his brother says their mother never spoke about him again. Alan doesn’t know what happened to him.’ She waved the exercise book. ‘Perhaps this will tell us. It’s so tricky to read though.’
‘You could also look for marriage records for them?’
‘Great idea.’ Tilly added it to her ever-expanding list. And what about Ena Pullen’s father? Who was he? Tilly had not yet come across the name Pullen in her research, but he had to have some sort of connection to the railway, for it to have been the ‘death of him’, as Ena insisted it was.