Off the Rails (25 page)

Mr Denison drew himself up to his full height, which was considerably taller than his opponent. ‘Have a care, Hudson,’ he said, playing to his gathering audience. ‘I’ve warned you before now to restrain your language. You are a blackguard, sir, and I have done with you. Go, go away!’

The attentive eyes switched from the MP to George Hudson, avid to see what he would do next and as he looked back at them he knew he’d been outmanoeuvred and could be made to look a fool if he wasn’t careful. He turned on his heel and limped off the platform with as much
sang froid
as he could manage, given his gout and his temper. He was seething with anger but it was the only thing he could do. If he’d stayed where he was there would have been fisticuffs.

‘It was an abomination,’ he said to Lizzie when he finally got home. ‘To be shouted at on my own railway. God damn it. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I’m landed gentry now, Lizzie. Landed gentry. I’ve earned a little respect. He’d no right to treat me so.’

‘Nasty jealousy,’ Lizzie tried to soothe. ‘That’s what it is, George. Nasty jealousy. Take no notice.’

But he wasn’t soothed in the least and went on raging for nearly half an hour, vowing to be revenged. ‘Summat must be done,’ he roared over and over again. ‘I’ll not stand for it.’

Mr Leeman thought the story was all very amusing and showed just what sort of character Mr Hudson was at heart. He told Jane all about it the next time they met and the two of them stood on the pavement in the winter sunshine and enjoyed themselves at Mr Hudson’s expense.

‘It don’t surprise me in the least,’ Jane said. ‘He were allus a bully.’

‘It will be interesting to see what happens next,’ Mr Leeman said.

‘It will indeed,’ Jane said.

What happened next was that her third grandchild was born. She arrived at Easter when the daffodils were in bud and she was called Sarah Jane after her aunt and her grandmother, to her grandmother’s delight. Because the children were on school holiday the entire Cartwright family took the train to Foster Manor to see her as soon as they knew she was born. Mary was most impressed with her and thought she was very pretty. ‘Like a little doll,’ she said, gazing at her, enraptured. And when she was asked to stand godmother to the baby she was so pleased she was speechless for a full thirty seconds, which her father teased her was a thing unheard of.

Bully-boy Hudson can do what he likes, Jane thought, watching her, but he’ll never do anything to equal this.

What he did raised eyebrows wherever his name was mentioned. That summer he bought another two country seats, Newby Park, which stood by the River Swale and was next door to his estate at Baldersby and instantly became his principal residence, and after that, Londesborough Park, which stood in 12,000 acres of prime land in East Yorkshire and cost him half a million pounds.

‘The extravagance!’ people said to one another. ‘He’s got one country estate. What does he want with three?’ The general opinion was that he was ‘flashing his money about and showing off’.

‘It makes you wonder what on earth he’ll do next,’ Jane said to Mr Leeman at her next dinner party.

‘It does indeed,’ Mr Leeman said.

According to an announcement in
The Times
, what he did next was to put himself up for election as the Member of Parliament for Sunderland.

‘Although why he should want to be an MP is beyond me,’ Mary Jerdon said, as she and Jane and Nathaniel and the children sat at dinner that evening. ‘There’s never any end to him. He’ll go too far one of these days, you mark my words.’

‘He makes me think of the fisherman’s wife,’ Jane told her.

‘Which fisherman was that?’ Nathaniel wanted to know.

‘The one in the fairy story,’ Jane explained. And as he looked puzzled, she retold the tale. ‘She and her husband were so poor they only had a hovel to live in and then one day her husband caught a magic flounder that told him it could grant wishes. He was so overawed by it that he simply threw it back but when his wife heard what he’d done she was furious with him for being so foolish. “Go back,” she said, “and tell it you want to live in a pretty cottage.” So he went back and called to the fish and told it what his wife wanted. “Go home,” the fish said, “she is in the cottage already.” And she was. That should have been the end of the story but it wasn’t because the fisherman’s wife was greedy and no sooner had she had one wish granted than she thought of another even better. First it was to live in a castle, then she wanted to be king, then emperor, then pope. And the fish granted her every wish one after the other until she decided that she wanted to be the lord of the universe. And that time, when the fisherman told the flounder what she wanted it said …’ And she paused and looked at her
children
, who’d been following the story and grinning at one another because they knew what was coming.

‘Go home,’ they chorused. ‘She is back in the hovel already.’

Their father and their grandmother applauded them.

‘A very moral story,’ Nathaniel said, smiling at Jane. ‘You are right. It could be applicable.’

Amen to that, Jane thought. But for the moment she kept the thought to herself. If he was changing his mind about his hero, she must let him do it in his own time and his own way. But you wait, Mr Fisherman’s Wife, she thought, I’ll be even with you yet.

M
R
G
EORGE
H
UDSON
, parliamentary candidate for the Sunderland constituency, stood on the balcony of the George Inn in the high street with Lizzie and his children ranged obediently behind him and looked down at the crowd which had gathered below him. They weren’t a
particularly
friendly crowd – in fact some of them looked downright surly – but he meant to win them over and the first thing he intended to do was to scotch some of the rumours his opponent was spreading about him.

‘I am charged,’ he said, in his boldest voice, ‘with being a railway
speculator
and in favour of the Corn Laws.’ Then he paused to give them a chance to say things to one another, which they did. ‘To both,’ he went on, smiling at them, ‘I plead in some measure guilty and I’ll tell you why. It is all very well to
talk
about the poor—’ Another pause ‘—but I like to
act
for the poor. My opponents
preach
about the poor, while I give
employment
to the poor.’ Another pause during which there was a lot of murmuring. ‘Without which many of them might starve. Away then with the charge of being a railway speculator! If work a-plenty and food a-plenty flow from the railways to enrich the poor, as they do, then I have been a benefactor to my country.’ This time the pause was filled by a slight cheer. ‘Is it a charge against me that I have made a fortune?’ he went on. ‘Is it a bad thing to earn good money and spend it on your fellow men?’ And he looked round at them all and waited to hear what they would say next.

The surly expressions were gone. Most of them were looking decidedly attentive, some almost seemed enthusiastic. ‘No!’ some shouted. ‘No!’ And one man took up another cry. ‘Vote for Mr Hudson! He’s the man for us!’

He spoke to them for nearly ten minutes, outlining his plans for the Durham and Sunderland Railway, which he knew they wanted, and
speaking about the value of the Wearmouth Docks and how he would
rejuvenate
them. When he stopped, they cheered and clapped and threw their hats in the air. ‘Vote for Hudson! He’s the man for us!’

‘You’re so clever George,’ Lizzie said, when they left the balcony.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I know.’

The election took place three weeks later and, just as he expected, Mr George Hudson was elected Member of Parliament for Sunderland, having defeated his opponent by 627 votes to 497.

Nathaniel Cartwright was away in Scarborough that week and didn’t come home until several days after the election was over but he brought back the relevant copy of
The Times
and passed it across the table to Jane at dinner that evening.

‘The fisherman’s wife is now an MP, you see,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ she said, rather sourly. ‘Lizzie wrote and told me. Much good may it do him.’

‘Good may well come of it,’ he said, giving her his wry smile. ‘He’ll be able to push through any railway bill he wants instead of waiting for someone else to condescend to do it. It could speed up the process considerably, which would be no bad thing, you must agree.’

‘Aye,’ she said, setting aside the paper she’d been reading. ‘Happen. But read that.’

It was a copy of their local paper,
The Yorkshireman
, and the article she’d been reading was outspoken in its criticism of the great Mr Hudson, which had given her a rush of satisfaction, as it always did when someone else understood how appalling he was.

‘It is quite clear to us,’
it said
, ‘that Mr Hudson’s return to Parliament is quite the worst thing that could have happened to that gentleman. Out of Parliament he was a great man, and wielding immense influence. In Parliament he will be nobody, and destitute of all influence. He will discover this himself, by and by. It is quite a different thing to address a meeting of railway speculators panting for 10% and to face the congregated intellect, learning and gentlemanly accomplishments such as the British Parliament contains. Men find their level in the House of Commons and Mr Hudson will find his. Perhaps, too, it may do him some good.’

‘Um,’ Nathaniel said thoughtfully. ‘It could be true. He does tend to ride roughshod and he’ll not be able to do it there. I wonder how he’ll make out.’

‘He’ll get his own way,’ Mary Jerdon predicted dourly. ‘On account of he allus does.’

Jane ignored the prediction because she had something more pleasant to
talk about. ‘And now,’ she said, smiling at Nat, ‘we’ve got some really good news for
you
. Wouldn’t ’ee say so, Nat?’

‘I hope you will consider it so, Papa,’ Nat said. At seventeen he had grown into a very personable young man with his father’s height and colouring and his mother’s fine brown eyes. ‘I have been awarded a
scholarship
to Corpus Christi,’ he said. ‘To read Philosophy and Theology.’

‘That,’ his father told him, smiling fit to split his face, ‘is the best news I have heard in a long time. The very best. But no more than you deserve, young man, for we all know how diligently you’ve worked for it, do we not, Jane? We must have a special celebration. A dinner in your honour at the Star and Garter. How would that be?’

Nat was blushing. ‘It would be …’ he began and then he was lost for the right word to say.

His sister finished for him. ‘Just what you deserve,’ she said, hugging his arm. ‘He’s such a clever old stick, ain’t he, Pa?’

And at that they all told him how clever he was and how much they admired him and how well deserved this scholarship was so that he blushed even more deeply and held up his hands as if he was warding them off. When the uproar had subsided into laughter, he looked at his parents one after the other, and spoke again, rather hesitantly.

‘Could I ask you a favour?’ he said, looking at his father.

‘Ask away!’ Nathaniel said. ‘You can have the top brick off the chimney today.’

‘It’s my friend Toby,’ he told them. ‘Toby Henderson. He’s won a
scholarship
to Corpus Christi too and he’s every bit as deserving as I am, probably more so, only he has no family to praise him – only a grandmother and by all accounts she’s so deaf I don’t think she hears what he’s saying half the time – so what I’m wondering is whether we could include him in the dinner too. He’s my very best friend.’ Then he paused and waited.

‘No sooner asked than granted,’ Nathaniel said. ‘It’s a splendid idea. Now we’ll have two scholars to praise.’

Jane didn’t know which of her menfolk she admired the most, Nathaniel for his instant generosity – wasn’t that just typical of him – or Nat for thinking of his friend and wanting to include him in his celebration – which was typical of him too. They are both such good men, she thought, and Nathaniel has the right of it. This is a splendid idea. What a time we shall have.

Which they did, although not quite in the way she expected. The trouble was that ‘my friend Toby’ was impossibly shy and extremely gauche. He was shorter than Nat and rather more stocky and that made him look the clumsier of the two, especially as he had large hands and very large feet, and to make
matters worse for himself, he blushed and stammered when anyone spoke to him and spent a great deal of the meal earnestly contemplating his plate and clearing his throat. And then, when the family raised their glasses to drink to his success and Nat’s, he was so overcome he knocked his own glass of wine all over the tablecloth and was then miserably embarrassed by the stain he’d caused. Nathaniel assured him that it could have happened to anybody, but he wasn’t comforted and blushed so deeply and for such a long time that they all had to look away from him to give him time to recover. But when the meal was over, he surprised them by taking his leave with an unexpected grace, thanking them all for their kindness and telling them he would never forget it.

They were so impressed by his little speech that it wasn’t until he’d left them that they realized he was on foot and would probably be walking all the way to Haxby. Jane was concerned and wondered whether they should get the carriage and go after him but Nat said a walk would do him good and in any case by the time they’d got the carriage ready he’d be halfway home, which was true enough.

‘He’d not want to inconvenience you,’ he told his mother. ‘That’s the sort of chap he is. Salt of the earth.’

They didn’t disabuse him of his opinion, which Jane allowed afterwards was like to have a grain of truth in it, but she and Nathaniel told one another privately that the young man had been extremely hard work. Mary was even more outspoken.

‘He’s an oaf,’ she said to her mother the next day. ‘Staring at his plate all the time and doing that silly coughing and forever pulling at his sleeves. That coat was much too small for him. He looked an absolute freak. He should get a new one and make sure it fits.’

‘Happen he can’t afford a new one,’ Jane tried to point out. ‘He’s no family to speak of.’

But Mary wasn’t having any of it. ‘He’s going to Oxford, Mama,’ she said, ‘and poor boys don’t go to Oxford. He could afford it if he wanted to. Or he could have worn summat wi’ a bit more style. There was no call for him to come to dinner looking like a tramp. He should have made an effort. We did. No, it’s like I told you. He’s an oaf. And I don’t know
what
he thought he was doing with that wine. The cloth was awash. I can’t think why you invited him. I hope you won’t do it again.’

‘He did thank us,’ Jane said, trying to stick up for him.

But Mary snorted. ‘And so I should think,’ she said.

Later that night when she and Nathaniel were in bed and discussing the events of the day, Jane recounted the conversation. ‘She’s taken against him, poor boy,’ she said.

‘Aye,’ Nathaniel said easily. ‘So ’twould seem.’

‘I’ve never known her be so fierce. She said she hoped we wouldn’t invite him again.’

‘Then she’s summat to learn,’ her father said. ‘If we want to invite him again, and I see no reason why we should not, we will and she will have to accept it.’

‘She’ll not like it.’

‘Doubtless. But that’s the size of it. The young have to learn their place, like we did. We do them no favours to let them to think they may run the world. The lad is shy. That’s all. He’ll improve as he gets to know us.’

The matter seemed to have been decided so Jane let it drop. But she was still puzzled by the strength of Mary’s opposition to this poor shy boy and fell asleep thinking about it.

George Hudson was caught up in thought that night too, only in his case his thoughts were furious. He’d been at a civic dinner in York that evening and had been driven home to Newby Park in the early hours of the morning, cheerful with brandy and bonhomie and feeling wonderfully full of himself. As he staggered through the hall he saw the latest copy of
The Yorkshireman
waiting on the silver salver for his attention. He picked it up drunkenly and carried it upstairs with him, thinking he’d glance through it before he settled for the night. Happen they had some news of his latest triumph and praise was always welcome. The article was like a shock of cold water. He charged into the bedroom where Lizzie was peacefully snoring and yelled at her to wake up.

‘Have ’ee seen this?’ he demanded.

She opened her eyes, still drugged with sleep. ‘What?’

‘What? What?’ he roared, shaking the paper at her. ‘This, woman. It’s infamous, monstrous, insupportable. How dare they write about me like this? Don’t they know who I am?’

Lizzie was trying to pull herself back to wakefulness and finding it
difficult
. ‘What time is it?’ she trembled.

‘Time!’ he roared. ‘Time! Time I taught them all a lesson. That’s what time it is. They need teaching a lesson, dammit. Jumped up scribblers writing about me. How dare they! Very well then, I’ll show ’em. I’ll be the biggest success London has ever seen. That’s what I’ll be. I’ll buy the biggest house in London, you see if I don’t, and I’ll give the grandest parties. I’ll have all the big-wigs standing in line begging for an invitation, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll be the most successful MP they’ve ever seen. It’ll be a different story then. God damn it! How dare they treat me like this? I’ll get on to it directly.’

‘Yes, George,’ Lizzie said dutifully. ‘Happen it could wait till morning though?’

‘We will go to London on the first train,’ he told her. ‘I’ll not stand for this. Move over. You’re taking up all the bed.’

And he lumbered into the bed and fell asleep at once.

They caught the second train, because he’d overslept, but he set about finding a suitable house as soon as they’d booked in at their hotel. The one he chose was called Albert Gate East and was absolutely enormous. It stood on the north side of Knightsbridge, beside Hyde Park, and was one of a pair newly built by Mr Cubitt who was the most renowned builder in the capital. They had stood empty for rather a long time, so long, in fact, that the locals had nicknamed them the two Gibraltars because ‘nobody would ever take them’ and they were extremely
expensive
. Not that George worried about a thing like that. The more expensive his new house was known to be, the better. Albert Gate East would suit his purposes to perfection and he made up his mind to buy it as soon as he saw it.

Lizzie was overwhelmed by it, although naturally she didn’t say so. But really she had never seen anything so grand. It was built in the Italianate style and was five storeys high, with a splendid staircase that rose from the entrance hall to the third floor and was topped by a dome made of wrought iron and glass. There were marble fireplaces in all the principal rooms and more bedrooms than she could count and the moulded ceilings were a wonder to behold. It was built for entertainment on the grand scale.

‘As soon as it is legally mine, I will have it decorated in the very latest style,’ George said as they walked back to their hotel.

‘We shan’t have to live in it straightaway, shall we?’ Lizzie asked. She’d only just got accustomed to living in Newby Park and she really couldn’t face another move.

‘We’ll tek up residence in January when I tek my seat in t’House,’ he told her. ‘And we’ll hold our first ball the week before. I shall see to it. Then we’ll stay here until the end of t’Season and set our Ann on t’road to a handsome husband. And then we’ll go back to Newby Park and stay there till t’next Season. I’ve got it all planned.’