The Necropolis Railway

Chapter Ten

Saturday 28 November

On the Saturday following – by which time I had recorded all the strange events in my Lett's diary, with notes as to possible meanings in the many spare pages at the back – I walked through the door of my lodge after a long and lonely day of cleaning at Nine Elms to find my landlady in the kitchen. She was about her Saturday clothes-washing, stirring the boiler with a black wooden stick, and very prettily too, with her head turned away from the rising steam, which had somehow unloosed her curls. 'Mr Stringer,' she said, nodding slowly.

I nodded back, and she gave me a glance which I took to mean there was something a little too forward in the way I had looked at her, so there was nothing for it but to leave the kitchen.

A few minutes later, however, when I was lying on my bed listening to the rumbling of the trains and looking once again at the notes in my diary (which had quite replaced The Railway Magazine for me), there came a knock on my door. 'Come in,' I said, standing up, but she would not.

She had put her hair to rights; the style was complicated but most effective. 'You forgot to put out your washing again,' she said. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Would it be too late to do it now?' 'I'm just about to drain the boiler.' 'Oh.'

She was looking all around the room, as if she had never set eyes on it before, but I was interested to see that she did not once look at the water on the floor. Should I say that it was a little hard to be paying six shillings a week, with a pound down, for a place with a puddle next to the bed? I was struggling for the right words here when she thrust a piece of paper at me, saying, 'Mr Stringer, would you be so kind as to post this somewhere about the premises of your railway company? It is an advertisement.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I would be very pleased to. Do you mind if I read it?' She shook her head.

'Unusually excellent furnished bed and sitting room with garden view offered to respectable person,' I read aloud. 'One minute from Waterloo Station. No servants kept, every comfort and convenience. Very moderate terms.' 'Well?' she said. 'What room is this concerning?' I said. "The one alongside this one, of course,' she said. "The one with the looking glass?' I said.

'It has a very pretty looking glass,' she said. 'Ought I to mention that?' 'You've put down "No servants kept",' I said, 'but -' 'I am not a servant,' she said, most indignantly.

'No,' I said, 'of course not. I only meant that your terms do include laundry.' 'I will wash clothes,' she said, 'if they are put out.'

'I think it's an excellent notice,' I said, handing back the paper, 'unusually excellent, in fact, and I know just the spot for it at Nine Elms.' I had in mind the noticeboard in the timekeeper's office. I put the notice into my waistcoat pocket, and my eyes drifted once again to the water on the floor. I noticed that my landlady's had done the same. 'I wonder what causes the water on the floor?' I said. 'A broken roof,' she said.

She was certainly very direct. She walked into the room and put the toe of her boot into the puddle in a very hypnotising way. She looked up at me and her face was caught mysteriously between smiling and not. 'It's the trains have loosened the tiles on the roof,' she said. 'What I call the dray-horse engines do it – those fearful draggers that bring the heavy waggons over the arches and set every house in the district shaking.' 'You mean the slow-goods?' I said. She did not seem very sure of that.

I somehow took her to mean that she fancied the expresses at any rate, and I asked if that was true.

'Well,' she said, 'I suppose I do. If I have to go to Bournemouth then I wish to go in a hurry.' 'You've been there?' I said, 'On excursions?' She nodded. "The Greyhounds can do it in two hours,' I said.

'Well, ours took four on the last occasion,' she said, walking rapidly towards the door as though I personally had been responsible for the slowness of her journey to the sea.

'High speed is my passion,' I said, to try and stop her going. 'But you are presently retained… not as a driver?'

'As a cleaner,' I said eagerly, 'but cleaning is the way to driving, did I not tell you that when I arrived at this lodge?'

She nodded quickly, and said, "The subject of trains is of great interest to some people – or so I would imagine.'

And then she was gone, but the puddle was still there on the floor.