Nancy Carson - The Railway Girl

He had to hurry. It was a matter of dire urgency. He was desperate for a privy, for anywhere, hallowed ground if need be. Hallowed ground it would have to be, he decided … until a youngish woman, evidently a recent widow, accompanied by three of her children, tearfully presented themselves and a posy of flowers at a nearby grave. It would be the ultimate discourtesy to relieve himself in front of her at this moment. So he pressed on, cutting letters now as fast as he could, blunting one chisel and picking up another, till he had finished the first headstone. By this time his guts were about to burst. There was no time to complete the second headstone. He had to depart. Right now. This minute. He could return once he had procured relief. So he threw his tools into his bag and fled as fast as his tormented guts would allow. Clenching his buttocks stalwartly and with a fraught look upon his face, he strode across the graveyard and down the long winding path that led to High Street. If he didn’t find a privy soon, Pensnett would be subjected to the foulest pollution ever likely to strike it, an event that could become folklore for generations.

As he emerged onto the high road, behold, there was a row of houses in a side street opposite with an entry that led to a backyard. He must make use of their facilities without permission, for there was no time to seek it … and what if he did and they withheld their consent?… He could always knock on a door afterwards and confess his trespass, by which time it would be a done deed.

He crept up the entry and was thankful to find nobody in the backyard which served the terrace of four houses. He located a privy behind one of the brewhouses and burst the door open. It was a double-holer. Arthur had never seen a double-holer before. A roosting hen was perched on a shelf above and Arthur impatiently removed the fowl to a squawk of protest. Just in time he managed to lower his trousers and perch over one of the holes …

Arthur was wallowing in the ecstasy of blissful relief for a minute or two afterwards, in no rush to move lest another bout of the vile stomach ache assail him, when the latch rattled and the door opened. A woman about the same age as his mother entered.

‘Mornin’.’

‘Morning,’ Arthur replied, more than a little taken aback.

‘That’s my side …’

‘Oh … I beg your pardon.’ With hands clutched embarrassed in front of him, he shifted across to the next hole and made himself comfortable again.

The woman proceeded to hitch up her skirt and positioned herself over the other hole. ‘The sky’s a bit frowsy this mornin’, ai’ it? ’Tis to be hoped we have ne’er a shower,’

‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur agreed tentatively, hearing the unmistakable trickle of spent water into the soil below them. He was uncertain whether to proceed with the conversation and prolong their encounter, or to say nothing more in the hope of curtailing it. Never in his life had he shared a moment like this with a complete stranger, nor anybody familiar either for that matter. He wanted to get off his seat and scarper, and allow the woman her privacy, but there was the hygiene aspect of his sojourn that had yet to be attended to. He glanced around him in the dimness looking for squares of paper.

Happily, he was released from his dilemma when the woman stood up and allowed her skirts to fall back.

‘I’m mekkin’ a cup o’ tay. Dun yer want e’er un? I’ll bring thee one out if yo’ve a mind.’

‘No, thank you,’ Arthur replied with a shake of his head. ‘That’s very kind. But I’m just on my way. I just popped in for a quick one.’

‘Suit yerself then, my son. Ta-ra.’

Arthur lived with his father, whom he hated, and his mother whom he felt sorry for, in Brierley Hill in a lane called Lower Delph, commonly referred to as The Delph. His older brother Talbot had fled the nest to feather his own when he was married some five years earlier, to a fine girl rejoicing in the name Magnolia. The family business had been founded by his father years ago and was conducted from the workshop, yard and stables which adjoined the house. Arthur was a man of many interests, but his big love was cricket.

The only cricket team he had access to play for was the one loosely attached to the old red brick church of St Michael, which he regularly attended on Sundays. The solemnity of Anglican worship and the richness of religious language appealed to his serious side. St Michael’s cricket team played their home matches on a decently maintained area of flat ground in Silver End, adjacent to the railway line. Now Arthur was afraid that the acute bout of diarrhoea he’d suffered that very morning might manifest itself again on the cricket field, which would be to his ultimate embarrassment.

‘I’ve cut you some bread to go with this, my lad,’ his mother, Dinah, said as she placed a bowl of groaty pudding and hefty chunks of a loaf before him at the scullery table. ‘It’ll help bung yer up.’

‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur said miserably, repeating the supplication he’d made perched on the seat of the Pensnett privy. He wore an exaggerated look of pain on his face to elicit his mother’s sympathy.

‘Your father’s feeling none too well either.’ She returned to the mug of beer she’d neglected while serving Arthur’s dinner, and took a gulp.

Arthur dipped a lump of bread into the stew-like morass. ‘But I bet he ain’t got the diarrhee, has he? You can’t imagine what it’s like being took short in a graveyard with the diarrhee and no privy for miles.’

‘There’s ne’er a privy at the cricket pitch neither, but that ain’t going to stop you playing cricket there this afternoon by the looks of it,’ Dinah remarked astutely. ‘’Tis to be hoped as you’m well enough to knock a few runs without shitting yourself.’

‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur said again and grinned, thankful that his family were not so high-faluting that they could not discuss such delicate matters in plain English at the scullery table. ‘I’m nursing meself so as I can play cricket this afternoon.’

‘I wish I’d got the time to nurse meself,’ Dinah said, and took another swig of beer. ‘I’m certain sure as I’ve sprained me wrist humping buckets of coal up from the damn cellar.’

Arthur contemplated that it did not prevent her from lifting a mug of beer, but made no comment. ‘I’d have fetched the coal up for you,’ he said instead and winced as if there were another twinge of pain in his gut. ‘You know I would.’

‘Never mind, you weren’t here.’

‘It’s just a pity Father’s too miserable to spend money employing a maid. You could have sent the maid to the cellar for coal.’

‘A maid? He’ll never employ a maid. He’s too mean.’

‘That’s what I just said.’

Arthur finished his dinner, fetched his bat from the cupboard under the stairs and walked steadily and circumspectly to the cricket field, looking forward to the game against Stourbridge Cricket Club with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety.

St Michael’s team lost the match. Arthur was the sixth man to bat, surviving the remaining batsmen who came after him. His team needed fifty-five runs to win and Arthur felt it was his responsibility to try and get those runs. But he experienced that dreaded loose feeling in his bowels again and had no option but to get himself run out when they still needed forty-eight, ending the team’s innings. It turned out to be a false alarm, and Arthur sincerely regretted having thrown the match.

‘I couldn’t run,’ he lamented to Joey Eccleston, with whom he had been batting at the end. They walked back together to the tent that was always erected on match days, to a ripple of applause from the attendant wives and sweethearts. ‘I had the diarrhee this morning and I was afeared to shake me guts up too much for fear it come on again.’