Chapter Five

THE RAIL MAKER

“The man is a Jew!” the late Mr Skilton senior had barked with some indignation one Easter when the dinner table discussion had turned to the subject of the new Premier, Sir Julius Vogel. As usual the Professor, Mr Skilton Junior, whom Max had always suspected of naming him Maximilian only to nettle the anti-Germanic old man, failed to let his Father's bigotry pass unchallenged. With a stage sigh and a folding of his napkin the younger responded, “As is Disraeli!”

“Who is a fool!” barked back the ancient malcontent.

“And Brunel!”

“What?!”

“Brunel was a Jew. Isambard Kingdom Brunel. And you rode his train for fifteen years, grinning like an idiot both ways, calling the Great Western the greatest railway in the world and banging on about Brunel's beautiful gauge! Right up to the day we squeezed your miserable hide into that blasted emigrant ship!” This seemed to finish the argument. Mr Skilton senior looked momentarily confused. Then Max rammed home the final nail.

“And God. God was a Jew.”

Max thought his Grandfather was going to explode. He was sure that it had run through the old man's mind to roar that; “God is an Englishman!”

But instead, he had stormed off to the sitting room to tend his pride, shutting the French doors behind him none too quietly.

Max's Mother had shaken her head at the Father and Son team and made that tsk, tsk, tsk sound with her mouth as she did so. Max and his Father grinned sheepishly at each other.

“You two are terrible, rogues the pair. Brunel was never Jewish!”

* * *

Premier, Sir Julius Vogel had been speaking for some minutes now, his teeth flashing white in his black beard.

“...Mr Moorhouse has been assured that funds will not be diverted from his most deserving work. But that the two great projects will exist and be completed in tandem. It gives me no end of pleasure to imagine us finally and so easily being able, once and for all, to slip our goods and our custom, past that nest of ever troublesome French on Bank's Peninsular.”

“Hear! Hear!” called the crowd in noisy and enthusiastic agreement, before Vogel went on.

“We will be once more eternally linked with our Scottish brethren. As it should be. As it is in the old country...”

But Max doesn't care.

Everything has gone grey. He feels hollow, like something important has been removed from deep within his stomach. The future, if he can even imagine one, has no colour. At the bar he sits, empty. Although the pint of Monteith's in front of him is only half gone it has lost all its flavour.

By contrast the crowd behind him in the public bar is happy, pleased with what they are hearing, swollen with the prospect of national prosperity, and what that can mean for individuals, and with rail-building.

At least Dickie, Max's real date, is following the proceedings with something near a keen interest. So maybe the evening is not a complete waste of time. Unlike Max he is swivelled on his bar stool to face the crowd. Max however can no longer bear to watch.

The Railway Hotel was a Dominion standard. A working man's watering hole. A big wooden box, polished on the inside, painted on the out. Two storeys, the first devoted to the large public bar and a small kitchen, the second to cheap sleeping rooms. Rooms that are chosen only as a last resort or if the chooser is the last to bed, for in most other cases the noise from the rowdies on the first floor always severely limits the sleeping done on the second. There are twenty such places in every boom town. Always one 'Railway', the rest 'Empires' and 'Albions', 'Junctions', 'Governors' and 'Admirals'.

Government business wasn't normally carried out in such places, but this wasn't normal government business, it was railway business. And therefore, this business had been brought down from Collingwood and lodged for a night in Gibbstown, where the men who would make it happen could get a good look at it.

But Max didn't care. He had been a deluded fool. His night had been over moments after it started. He would have left long ago if he could have made it through the crush to the door.

Max had managed to talk Dickie into joining him for the evening at the Railway, promising to pay for his limited drinks. They had arrived early and finding seats at the side of the long rimu wood bar, ordered their drinks and waited for the evening to unfold. The bar was already well full with tidy black and brown suited gents half an hour before the start of the meeting. They drunk their ales, porters and stouts in earnest moderation, all there for the talk more than the Monteith's or Dixon's.

Max hated himself.

And for the thousandth time he asked himself why he had imagined that someone like Harriet Leith would be single for even a moment?

Jeremiah Lavisham, majority owner of Coast & Main Railways and would be fox hunter was speaking now, it was after all his party.

“...the successful tender will provide a steam locomotive that has the torque to pull ten standard forty-seven foot, eighteen ton, passenger carriages, including dining and first class, so a tractive effort approaching twenty five thousand. Yes gentlemen it is possible, and I am without a doubt that one of your fine companies will be able to produce such a beast! The Haast Pass, as with the rest of Coast and Main's line, will be well built, thus articulation will not be required. We do not want to have to go offshore for this one, and don't believe we should need to...” A good few grunts of approval and appreciation at this. “...It will be our desire to make the run to Dunedin, which I will add is approximately six hundred and twenty miles, every second day, returning every other...” The crowd began to murmur as those processing the capacity to do so calculated that the mooted locomotive would need be able to maintain a good sixty miles an hour to make the run in anything under eleven hours!

But Max lost interest again as Lavisham was stating that “...all the required specifications are on the tender sheet provided.”

Max's heart had leapt into his throat when Harriet had entered the public bar. She was every bit as lovely as he had remembered. His mind had served him well, his imagination not having created someone that was not. Gone however were the long coat and trousers, the top hat, and tools. In their place she was slender in a white blouse and corset, a long dark skirt from under which stepped out high leather boots. Her red hair was up, although ringlets hung next to her ears. A simple black ribbon choker encircled her elegant neck, the emerald in its centre setting off her Celtic eyes. Max saw all this in a second.

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And the next moment he saw that she was not alone, that the door had been held open for her, that she was in the company of a young man.

Gentlemen stepped aside and tipped their hats as she led him though the crowd. The pair made their way to where her bearded Father, Coval Leith, stood waiting. To Max's further shame Leith Senior greeted the couple warmly, grasping Gilbert Lavisham at the back of the neck and drawing him close to share some private joke.

For that was who Harriet's man was, Gilbert Lavisham. They both laughed, comfortable together, Coval Leith; the Master Engineer, and Gilbert Lavisham; the darkly handsome son of the owner of Coast and Main Railways. Max knew his hope was lost, ill-founded from the start.

Lavisham senior was finishing his address now and the clapping was starting. Max earnestly hoped that the evening was coming to an end and that they could be away from what had become a place of torture. He was embarrassed at himself for letting his infatuation run so far ahead and for reaching so far above his station. He told himself that he just needed to clear his head and get absorbed, focused on his university studies and that in a few days thoughts of Harriet Leith, whoever she might actually be, would drift away, and be replaced by something else.

He was a tiny bit thankful that he had never shared his excited hopes with his Mother, something young men often do in desperation, trusting that their Mothers are sympathetic, and believing them to be romantics and therefore are maybe able to say something helpful or encouraging. Such talk has the illusion of bringing the thing out of the son's head and into the real world, of it having been spoken about and becoming concrete, a real thing. He had got very close, many times.

Max would be able to escape with the thing burning only as his secret personal shame, almost. Dickie had been gracious and just once indicated that he knew why they were really there. It had been in relation to the one single interesting and stand out event of the evening, a little scene that had played out sometime after Harriet Leith had arrived but before the meeting formally commenced.

The Bar door opened, as it had been doing all evening, and in came a patron quite dissimilar to the rest. It was clear that he was not there to partake in the wonder of railway building, but to simply enjoy a drink, and to rest his backside. What set him apart so, more than his short stature, was his carefully patched suit, the bulging bag he carried, the Taqiyah skullcap on top of his head, and the fact that he was an Arab.

The little man looked around apprehensively for a moment, clearly unsure if he was where he was meant to be. Then apparently making up his mind, in favour of indeed being exactly where he was meant to be, strode across the room, and plonked himself up on a bar stool, across the corner of the bar, not far from Max and Dickie.

After a couple of false starts he managed to order and receive an ale. Then, as his hand wandered to the pocket of his rather colourful waistcoat, he froze. His face lost all expression, and the hand darted to the other waistcoat pocket, then both hands began patting his trouser pockets in the age-old gesture of 'where the hang is my wallet!?' At last, defeated, he pushed the ale back across the bar to the tapman and seeming to collapse in on himself sobbed very loudly;

“Oh where is my monies!? He has gone from me!”

This caused a general hush in the bar as many talkers paused to watch the strange Arab retrace his footsteps to the door, patting his pockets and studying the muddy floor the whole way.

It was then that Max noticed a movement at the table where Gilbert Lavisham was sitting with Coval and Harriet Leith, a table he had been trying very hard to ignore.

Miss Harriet was making to stand, but Gilbert had his hand on her arm as if requesting her to sit. There was disagreement on the couple's faces, forbiddance on his. But, saying something, she shook her head and brushed his hand away. It was a little thing. Standing she made her way across the room directly to the Arab. Nearing she reached out her own slender hand, in which was held a large roll of bank notes.

“Is this him?” she asked.

“Oh! But surely it is him!” he cried in happy response. She placed the roll on the polished bar, and he seized it up and clutched it to his chest. “So many thank yous to you my beautiful Cleopatra!”

She inclined her head graciously, an amused smile twisting the corner of her mouth. Max noticed a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose and looked away.

“I came upon it only now when walking on the beach. I'm glad it has found its way back to its rightful owner.”

“Me buy drink all everybody!” he shouted, his joy suddenly taking practical shape.

“There is no need for that my friend,” she responded quickly, before a greedy line had the chance to form. “There is enough money in this room to buy half of Cairo.”

“Ha, Ha. But I am Assyrian,” he laughed proudly.

“Damascus then,” said Dickie suddenly. Clearly also not wanting the little man to waste his money. “Enough money to buy half of Damascus.”

“Very much money then,” responded the little traveller nodding his head gravely. Then spinning on his seat to face Harriet once more and block the young men, “For you then my lady, a choice, a silk handkerchief or half-sovereign; which you think better?”

“Very kind. And if you won't be dissuaded, I choose then as my reward... the coin.”

The little Arab smiled and producing a half-sovereign from someplace, pressed it into her palm, before closing her fingers over it and holding her hand for what Max thought was too long.

Harriet inclined her head once before returning to her seat next to Gilbert Lavisham. Max's insides churned. He hadn't needed to hear that Harriet and Gilbert had just been romantically walking together on the beach. Although the latter currently seemed to be rather pointedly ignoring the proceedings and talking loudly, arms folded across his chest, to someone at another table. The Arab took back his beer.

“She has a kind heart then,” said Dickie, in his abrupt way. “Even if Master Lavisham would have preferred to keep the money for himself.”

“Dickie,” responded Max, keeping the exasperation he felt from sounding in his voice. “Are you looking forward to focusing on your studies?”

“Certainly. Not that I really stop. Why Max? Are you?”

“Yes Dickie, I am.”