The Stationmaster’s Daughter. Kathleen McGurl
a weird kind of empathy with the building.
‘Why don’t the trains run all the way from Lynford to here?’ she asked.
Ken pulled a face. ‘We’d love to do that, but we’ve had to buy back the trackbed from local farmers, bit by bit. Unfortunately, we’ve been having trouble buying that last piece of the trackbed. Owner won’t sell up.’ He pointed once again to the fence.
‘Why not?’
Ken shrugged. ‘Who knows? She’s got some sort of long-standing grudge against us but no one really knows what it is. Anyway. Come on, come and see my workshed.’ He walked along the old trackbed to just past the station house. Tucked in behind was a large metal shed – it looked like a shipping container. The doors at one end stood open, and inside was what Tilly instantly recognised as paradise for her father. There was a workbench strewn with tools along one side, a couple of rusty railway signals lay on the floor on the other side, and the far end held a large container filled with more rusty metal pieces. Ken picked one up and turned it over, lovingly.
‘This is a track spike. These are used to hold the rail to the wooden sleepers. We’ve acquired thousands of them over the years, and they all need cleaning up before we can use them on a new section of track. And those signals there, those are my next job. Clean them up, get them in working order, repaint them. If we ever manage to buy that bit of land, we’ll be wanting to extend the line to here as soon as possible, and then beyond to Rayne’s Cross. The owner of the pub there can’t wait for us to link up.’
Tilly was only half listening. Her mind was in no state to take in the details of railway restoration. She was gazing instead at the countryside, the gentle rolling hills, copses and hedgerows. ‘Dad? Mind if I go for a walk?’
‘Er, sure. Shall I come with you?’
She shook her head. ‘No thanks. I kind of want to be by myself for a bit.’
‘OK.’ He looked around at the rusty equipment and greasy tools. ‘I suppose this kind of thing isn’t really your cup of tea. Go on then. You could walk the old trackbed towards Rayne’s Cross, then there’s a footpath off to the left through some fields and along a lane that loops back round to here. Takes about an hour. You’ll be all right on your own?’
She heard the unspoken words – you won’t do anything silly, will you? – and nodded. ‘I’ll be fine. See you back here in a bit, then.’
She headed off along the old railway track, half-heartedly trying to imagine what it might have looked like eighty years ago when steam trains ran a regular service on the line. The path was straight and level, its surface a mixture of grass and gravel. It was flanked by overgrown bushes, some overhanging the trackbed. If ever her father and his restoration society managed to extend the track in this direction, they’d have a job to do to keep the foliage under control.
After a while she came across a gap in the hedge on the left, and a stile set into a short piece of fence. Deciding this must be the place her dad had suggested she leave the trackbed, she climbed over, and headed off across the fields, clad in their winter brown and dull green. Here and there a few sheep grazed on the short grass; in the next field two horses in heavy winter rugs stood dejectedly nose to tail under a tree. Tilly’s mind wandered as she walked. She found herself reliving the events that had brought her here to Dorset. It wasn’t healthy to do this, she knew – she should look forward rather than back. But her future was too uncertain to dwell on. It was too depressing to think of it. And so she found herself thinking about Ian, the way he’d left her, her redundancy, and her miscarriages. The way it had all come to a head one day and she’d felt there was no way forward. Her dad didn’t know about all of it, yet. One day maybe she’d tell him the details, perhaps when she felt strong enough to talk about it.
She crossed a couple of fields, following a lightly trodden path. Ken had said it came out on a lane and looped round back to the station. She stopped and looked around, and realised she had no idea where she was, or what direction the station lay. Where was this lane? The weather was deteriorating – grey skies were becoming darker and the threat of rain hung heavy in the air. She’d been walking for over an hour. She pulled out her phone to call Ken for directions but there was no signal.
A little further on there was a farmhouse. That must have an entrance onto a road, she thought. Maybe from there she’d be able to figure out the way back. She headed towards it and realised she was approaching it from the back, through the farmyard. There were a couple of near-derelict barns and a rusty old tractor sat forlornly to one side, its tyres flat and weeds growing up around it. Not a working farm anymore, then. She headed round to the front of the house, to the gravel track that led to a lane, but then she wasn’t sure which direction to walk once she hit the lane.
The farmhouse looked scruffy and uncared for, its front door painted with peeling dark-red paint, but there was a light on inside so it was clear someone lived there. Tilly sighed with relief and knocked on the door to ask for directions.
The door was opened by a stooped woman who looked to be in her eighties. She was wearing an old-fashioned pink nylon housecoat, of a type Tilly had last seen on her own grandmother thirty years before.
‘Er, hello, I am sorry to bother you, but could you tell me the way back to Lower Berecombe?’ Tilly asked. ‘I seem to be a bit l-lost.’ To her horror she found her eyes welling up with tears as she spoke.
‘Of course, dear, it’s not far, but – you look upset? Won’t you come in for a moment until you feel better? A cup of tea, that’s what you need. And I have a pack of chocolate biscuits somewhere.’
‘Oh, but I m-mustn’t disturb you,’ Tilly said, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue.
‘Nonsense. Disturb me from what, daytime television?’ The old woman scoffed and rolled her eyes. ‘Come on in, dear. I’m not turning away a crying stranger.’ She stood back with the door wide open, and Tilly followed her inside. Perhaps a cup of tea was what she needed. Some time away from her thoughts, with someone who knew nothing about her or her troubles.
The old woman had gone into the kitchen – a clean but tatty room that looked as though it had last been refitted in the Seventies. She filled a kettle, switched it on and dropped a couple of teabags into an old brown teapot. ‘Sit down, do,’ she said, gesturing to the group of mismatched chairs arranged around a battered Formica-covered kitchen table. She took a box of tissues from a work surface and put them in front of Tilly.
Somehow this quiet gesture was too much. As if she hadn’t cried enough over recent weeks, Tilly found herself with tears coursing down her face once more. She pulled out a couple of tissues and tried to compose herself while her host finished making tea and laying biscuits on a plate.
A few moments later the old woman put a cup of tea in front of her and sat down. ‘I’m Ena Pullen,’ she said, pushing the biscuits nearer to Tilly.
‘Tilly Thomson,’ Tilly replied, taking a biscuit. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me in.’
‘You look like you are having a tough day,’ Ena said. ‘I’m not going to ask you what’s wrong, but I hope when you leave here you feel a little better than when you arrived. If you do, I’ll have done my job.’ She smiled, and it was all Tilly could do not to begin crying again. Tea and sympathy always set her off.
Ena chatted about inconsequential things – whether her favourite contestant would win the latest TV reality singing competition, the likelihood of the summer being warm or not, the different types of birds who visited her bird-feeder over the winter months. Tilly listened and nodded but said little in return, allowing the trivial topics to fill her mind, pushing everything else out.
When her tea was drunk, Tilly reluctantly got to her feet and shook Ena’s hand. ‘Thank you so much. I feel a lot better now, but I’d better get going. Dad will be wondering where I am. Could you just point me in the direction of the old station at Lower Berecombe?’
‘The station?’ Ena’s expression darkened. ‘Don’t say you are anything to do with that old railway?’