AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No sir, not quietly,” the clerk acceded. “An’ sometimes if it’s a big estate—aristocracy, or the like—then the railway just ’as ter go ’round it. No choice. ’Em as ’as got the power, in Parliament or that, can see their land don’t get cut up. An’ o’ course there’s gentry what object like mad to their ’unting being sliced in ’alf.”
“Grouse and pheasants?” Monk asked with slight surprise. He had imagined farmland.
“Foxes, actually,” the clerk corrected him. “Likes ter ride after ’em, an’ can’t get ’orses ter jump tracks like they do ’edges, an’ all.” The light in his eyes betrayed a certain satisfaction in this, but he did not elaborate. He had long ago learned not to have personal opinions, as far as anyone else would know.
“I see,” Monk acknowledged.
“Yer bin abroad, sir?”
“Why?”
“I was jus’ wonderin’ ’ow yer missed knowin’ all this kind o’ thing. Lot o’ fuss about it in the papers, goin’ back a bit, like. Protests, an’ all. Work o’ the devil . . . railways. If the good Lord’ad meant us ter travel that way, an’ at that speed, ’E’d ’ave made us with steel skins an’ wheels on our feet.”
“And if He hadn’t meant us to think, He wouldn’t have given us brains,” Monk countered immediately, and even as the words were on his tongue, he heard an echo of them as if he had said them before.
“Yer try tellin’ that to some o’ them ministers ’oo’s churches get knocked down an’ moved!” The clerk’s face was eloquent of his awe, and an amusement he was trying hard to suppress.
“Knocked down and moved?” Monk repeated the words as if they were incredible, but he believed them—in fact, he knew they were true. Again memory had jabbed at him and then disappeared. For an instant he saw a lean face, dark with outrage, above a clerical collar. Then it was gone. “Yes, of course,” he said quickly. He did not want the man to tell him more about it. The memory was unpleasant, touched with guilt.
“O’ course they protest.” The clerk shrugged his shoulders. “All kinds of ’em out by the score. Talk about Mammon an’ the devil, an’ ruin of the land, an’ so on.” He scratched his head. “ ’Ave ter say I wouldn’t take kindly if it were me mam an’ dad ’oo’s gravestones were took up, an’ they was left ter lie under the tracks o’ the five forty-five from Paddington, or whatever. I reckon I’d be out there wi’ placards in me ’and an’ threatenin’ ’ellfire on the profiteers as did it.”
“Has anybody ever done more than threaten?” Monk had to ask. If he did not, the question would remain in his mind, written across everything else until he found the answer. “Anyone ever sabotage a line?”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose almost halfway up his forehead. “Yer mean blow up a train? Gawd! I ’ope not!” He bit his lip. “Come ter think on it, though, there’ve bin a few nasty crashes, one or two of ’em nobody knows for sure ’ow they ’appened. Usually blame the driver or the brakeman. There was a real bad one up Liverpool way about sixteen years ago, an’ that was one as’ad a church removed, an’ the vicar was right cut up about it.” He stared at Monk with increasing horror. “Terrible one, that was. I was still livin’ at ’ome, an’ I can remember me dad comin’ inter the parlor, ’is face white as the tablecloth, an’ no newspaper in ’is ’and. It was a Sunday dinnertime. We’d bin ter church so we’adn’t seen the early papers.”
“ ’W’ere’s the papers, George?’ me mam asked’im.
“ ’We in’t gettin’ no papers terday, Lizzie,’ ’e answered ’er.
“ ’Nor you neither, Robert,’ ’e adds ter me.
“ ’There’s bin a terrible crash up Liverpool way. Near an ’undred people killed, an’ only God in ’Is ’eaven knows ’ow many injured. I’m a’tellin’ yer because yer’ll ’ear it any road, but don’ go lookin’ at no paper. There’s things in there yer don’ wanna know. Pictures they drawed yer don’ wanna see.’ That was ter protect me mam, o’ course.”
“But you looked?” Monk said, knowing the answer.
“O’ course!” The clerk’s face was pale at the memory. “An’ I wished I’adn’t. Wot me dad never said, fer me mam’s sake, was that a coal train’ad ’it a load o’ children on an ’oliday outing, one o’ them excursion trains. They was all comin’ ’ome from a day at the seaside, poor little beggars.” His mouth was tight with grief and he blinked away the vision even now, as if he could see the artist’s impressions back in front of him with all their horror and pain, the mangled bodies in the wreckage, rescuers trying desperately to reach them while there was still time, driven to try, and terrified of what they would find.
Was that what waited buried at the back of Monk’s mind, like a plague pit, waiting to be opened? What kind of a man was he that he could have had any part—even any knowledge—of a thing like that and forgotten it? Why, if he’d had no part in it, did it not stay an innocent grief such as this man felt?
What had he done then? Who had he been before that night nearly seven years ago when in an instant he had been obliterated and re-created again, washed clean in his mind but in his body still the same person, still responsible?
Was there anything on earth as important as learning that? Or as terrible?
“What caused the crash?” He heard his own voice as if from far away, a stranger speaking in the silence.
“Dunno,” the clerk said softly. “They never found out. Blamed the driver and the brakemen, like I said. That’s the easiest, seein’ as they were dead an’ couldn’t say nothin’ diff’rent. Coulda’ bin them. ’Oo knows?”
“Who laid the tracks?”
“Dunno, sir, but they was perfick. Bin used ever since, an’ nothin’ else’s ever ’appened.”
“Where was it exactly?”
“Can’t remember, sir. It wasn’t the only rail crash, o’ course. I just remember ’cos it were the worst . . . it bein’ children, like.”
“Something caused it,” Monk insisted. “Trains don’t crash for no reason.” He longed to be told it was human error for certain, nothing to do with the planning or building of the line, but without proof he could not believe it. Arrol Dundas had been tried and sent to prison. The jury had believed him guilty of fraud. Why? What fraud? Monk knew nothing about it now, but what had he known then? Could he have saved Dundas if he had been prepared to admit his own part? That was the fear that crowded in on him from all sides like the oncoming of night, threatening to snatch back from him all the warmth and t
he sweetness he had won in the present.
