Kathleen McGurl - The Stationmaster’s Daughter

‘Hey, Annie! How was your weekend?’ Ted heard a girl cashier call out, as the object of his attention disappeared through a door marked Private. A supervisor came up behind the girl. ‘Now then, Muriel, attend to this gentleman. You can catch up on Miss Galbraith’s gossip during your lunch break.’

Ted suppressed a smile. So his angel’s name was Annie Galbraith. He stepped up to the counter and spoke to the cashier for a few moments about the interest rates available on savings accounts. He was furnished with a leaflet, and left, promising to think about it and return at a later date. He had no further glimpses of Annie, but it was enough. He knew her name. This evening when he checked her ticket, he could say to her, ‘Good evening, Miss Galbraith.’ If he could pluck up the courage to do so, that is.

Eventually, he did, but not until about a week later, when an unseasonably warm day had filled him with vigour, emboldening him just a little. He’d felt himself blush to the roots of his hair as he’d greeted her from the morning train, with a cheery, ‘Good morning, Miss Galbraith.’ She’d stared at him for a second, then recovered her manners and nodded an acknowledgement with a smile, before hurrying through the station as usual.

That smile. He treasured it. Every tiny, brief second it had been upon him.

*

Ted had been stationmaster at Lynford for fifteen years. He’d worked on the railway for eleven years before that – starting as a porter up the line at Rayne’s Cross when he left school aged 14, before being promoted to stationmaster aged 25, the youngest and proudest stationmaster in the whole of Southern Railway at that time. Then, he’d moved to Lynford, where a single building functioned as both station and stationmaster’s house. There was a ticket office where his Stationmaster Certificate hung proudly behind the counter, a ladies’ waiting room, ladies’ and gents’ water closets, a small sitting room, kitchen and scullery downstairs. Off the sitting room a narrow staircase rose, twisting back on itself to reach a tiny landing, which led to two small bedrooms. Ted slept in a single bed in the larger of the two, and used the other one for storage, though he cleared it out whenever his sister and her children came to visit. It was a small home, but adequate for his needs.

Behind the station was a goods yard – a siding ran off the main line and stopped inside a large shed. Here, the daily goods trains were shunted and the goods unloaded from wagons directly into trucks, to be delivered locally. Coal came once a week, and the other days brought various different commodities – groceries, goods for the various Lynford shops, occasional livestock bought at markets by local farmers. A larger station would have employed a dedicated goods yard manager, but here, it was Ted’s job to organise the goods yard, marshalling the trucks and carts as they turned up to deliver or collect goods, operating the hoist that was used to lift crates off wagons and onto trucks. He was aided in these activities by Fred Wilson, a skinny, sallow, surly lad of 18, who was officially employed as a porter, but in reality took on any job that needed doing, albeit usually with poor grace. ‘I’m supposed to be a porter,’ he’d grumble, when Ted called on him to help unload a goods wagon. ‘If I gets me uniform mussed up on the wagons, Ma will have me guts for garters. And that’ll be all down to you, Mr Morgan.’

‘Take your jacket off then, lad,’ Ted would reply, every time he heard this grumble. ‘And put on a set of overalls.’

‘They’re as mucky inside as the wagons are on the outside.’ And Ted would roll his eyes at the boy and get started himself on the task at hand. Fred would soon join in, still muttering but eventually getting the job done.

Every day the post came by rail, too, and Ted brought them into the ticket office, where the Lynford postman collected them for onward delivery. A bundle of morning newspapers arrived on the 07.42, and was left in the ticket office until the newsagent’s paperboy collected them on his bicycle with its enormous wicker basket balanced on the back.

There was always something that needed doing, from early morning till mid-evening, in and around the station and goods yard, and of course all of it had to fit around the arrival and departures of the dozen trains a day between Michelhampton and Coombe Regis. Some services were quiet, almost empty, in the winter months, but summer brought an influx of holidaymakers and day-trippers. Most went through to Coombe Regis, but some would stop off at Lynford for a few hours, or maybe overnight, and visit the village’s fourteenth-century church and ancient witch’s dunking stool that overhung a stream, or spend a day walking over the hills between Lynford and Coombe Regis, which rewarded the more energetic visitors with the best views of anywhere, in all of southern England. At least, Ted thought so. He’d lived all his life in this area and could not imagine a more beautiful place. Why would anyone want to leave? He had no interest in going anywhere. Michelhampton was the furthest he’d been, other than a couple of railway training sessions held in Dorchester. That was a big enough city for his taste. Why anyone would want to go somewhere like London he couldn’t understand.

No, Ted was content with his life here in Lynford. Contented and happy for it to continue as it always had – up until the moment he’d fallen in love with Annie Galbraith. Suddenly, making sure the trains ran on time and the railway functioned smoothly seemed no longer enough, and he found himself fantasising about another life, one with Annie by his side, a clutch of children at their feet, a home away from the railway with roses around the door …

Tilly awoke, wondering for a moment where she was. A bright, blue room, with white bed linen. Not her bed with Ian, not Amber’s pink princess bedroom. Not the hospital bed she’d spent a few days in either.

It came back to her slowly. Her father’s bungalow. Of course. He’d driven her down to Dorset, made her shepherd’s pie, and she’d then polished off a bottle of wine. Or was it two? She’d cried a lot, as well. And her dad had loaned her his soft, neatly ironed handkerchiefs and let her cry as much as she needed to.

Her eyes felt sore and her mouth was parched. She needed cold water on her face, a thick coating of moisturiser and about a gallon of tea. As if he had heard her silent cry for help, at that moment Ken tapped on the bedroom door and entered, carrying a large mug.

‘Thought you might be in need of this, pet,’ he said, placing it on a coaster on the bedside table.