“Ready to be scrapped?” The younger engines gasped in horror.
“Yes,” said Culdee calmly. “It was a strange thing. It’s very sad to us, but he was relieved once he’d decided. One morning, he asked for the Manager to come to the Shed. They had a long talk after the rest of us left for our jobs. When we came back that evening, Godred wasn’t sad anymore. The Manager, he said, had made Arrangements for him the next day.”
“Didn’t you try to talk him out of it?” asked Alaric in alarm.
(more…)
One evening, the other mountain engines came into the Shed to find Shane Dooiney already there and looking gloomy. They asked him what was the matter.
“A tooth broke off one of my pinion wheels,” he said sadly, ”and they say they have to replace it.”
“That’s not so bad,” said Patrick. “They know how to mend us at the Steamworks now. You won’t have to go to Switzerland like we used to.” Alaric and Eric agreed reassuringly, but Wilfred, Culdee, and Ernest were more sympathetic.
“Those were Godred’s wheels, weren’t they?” asked Ernest.
“Yes. They say they can’t just weld the tooth back on,” explained Shane Dooiney. “They can’t trust it not to break again. They’re going to give me new wheels instead.”
“When you used to tell me about Godred to scare me,” sniffed Patrick, “he sounded quite silly indeed. You ought to be happy not to have his silly old wheels anymore, Shane.”
“He was silly,” said Culdee, “but our Railway might have closed if not for him.”
“How’s that?” Alaric and Eric were listening raptly too.
(more…)
Edward chuffed into Wellsworth shed, feeling more his age than usual. He was glad to be home and was ready for a nice rest. Duck was already there, but he looked about as tired as Edward felt.
“What’s the matter, Duck?” asked Edward earnestly.
Duck hesitated a moment, unsure how to answer. Edward was patient and gave him time to collect his thoughts.
“I may have stressed the tension in my buffer springs when I helped Henry with a heavy load of cars today,” said Duck, averting his eyes. “I’ll have to get them checked tomorrow.”
Edward laughed, but it wasn’t unkind. “Oh I see!” he said. “You pushed hard at the start of the hills and all the way to the top.”
“I couldn’t tell how much help he actually wanted,” said Duck, lowering his voice a little. “He wouldn’t say what he wanted done.”
“You shouldn’t take that personally,” said Edward.
“They’re not speaking to me at all.”
“They don’t speak to me either when I’m banking them. We’ve all been doing it so long we don’t need to anymore.” Duck was not convinced by this answer, but he didn’t argue. Edward went on.
(more…)
“What colour paint would you like, Duck?” asked The Fat Controller.
Duck heard the question, but he was certain that he could not have heard it correctly.
“Beg pardon Sir?”
“All the engines on this Railway may choose what colour they would like to be painted,” explained The Fat Controller.
“There isn’t a livery?” asked Duck in confusion.
The Fat Controller laughed. “Not as such, no.”
(more…)
He didn’t recognize her all at once. Her voice hit him first, just like it had four years earlier when it knocked him right out of his mundane life as a beat reporter and sent him into a tailspin. Yes, that was what had done it. Her posh affectation, the slight slur of a child’s unpracticed speech that she never quite grew out of, and how she had used it to ask all those chemistry questions to show off her intelligence and yet look needy and helpless at the same time.
Since he’d gone off his Joy, he had remembered her, certainly, but only in terms of their youth. He knew beyond that, but he’d been careful not to let himself land on that topic. He’d distract himself with a deft tangent if he edged too close to thinking about Sally who left in that green and white checked dress and used that voice and everything else she had to win herself helpful new friends at every turn, how she had never used those things on him.
And look, here was a helpful new friend now! Didn’t Sally’s latest companion look spiffing with his hat tilted at a jaunty angle to belie what carefree and lighthearted company he must be. He was fit and fashionable and not too tall as well, not awkward and gangling like Arthur was. He’d look just right with his arm interlocked with Sally’s. Glasses too, of course. Sally always did love an intellectual, didn’t she?
“Come on, love. I thought I finally found him a girl who understood how this was going to work. Someone who wasn’t going to get emotional about it,” Virgil appeased. “You knew what you were signing up for.”
“Oh, I know! You explained it so nicely, just like one of your bloody lyrics! ‘He’s only any good when he’s doing something bad,'” Petunia fumed.
“Then I don’t know why you’re acting so wounded about it. You knew he was going to step out on you. That was the whole point!”
“HE. FUCKED. MY. SISTER.”
As soon as Sally was clear of the fence, James started in on Roger.
“Dr. F said not to tell anyone she was alive. She said she didn’t want anyone to ask her for anything.”
“But she likes Sally,” Roger scoffed. “Everyone does.”
“Yes, I noticed you putting on your little show for her.”
“You can not be serious. We just had this argument thirty minutes ago!”
“Don’t you realize that you’re living a lie? The world you live in is a fiction! This rainbow road leads nowhere! It is a dead end! And we all know it,” William Godwin started his speech, shattering the serenity of Dogberry Park. He stood on the basin of the fountain base of the revolving statue and the eyes of several canoodling couples peppered about the park turned on him. “But we hide it from each other! We conspire in our own fantasy. We wake up to Uncle Jack, and we go to sleep with Uncle Jack, and we nod our heads, and only in our dreams do we dare confront the truth!
“And the truth is,” he said, encouraged by their now undivided attention, “that the rich are robbing us blind! The tiny minority living in the Parade District has taken all the bread and all the butter. And those who live in that Emerald City say, ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’ It’s time to pull aside that curtain and see that our lords and masters are rubbish wizards and aren’t any better men than we are!”
The couples were getting up now and coming to surround him, and they looked mad! Rightfully so, William thought. He was getting through to them!
Though he had been conscripted into the role long ago, Jack Worthing took his responsibility to Wellington Wells seriously. “Uncle” Jack was the face of optimism and stability. He acted as master of ceremonies through the good times and saw the town through the bad, emboldening them when prudent, encouraging them to endure when it was not – or rather he would have if indeed they’d ever had any bad times. When anyone wrote to him about their worries and concerns – which was surely a symptom of having too few problems – he allayed any doubts or questions and set them back at ease. He saw it as his duty to be the very embodiment of keeping calm and carrying on, a shining example of stalwart English spirit that Wellington Wells could rely on and emulate.
He didn’t have much of a memory of how his fellow entertainers felt about their similar standing in the world. So many of them left the industry at some point between the indeterminate then and now, preferring a life of anonymity. Jack was very nearly the only one left, save for some hobbyist musical acts. He had the vague feeling though, that the way Nick Lightbearer was fidgeting and looking unsure of why everyone else seemed so pleased to be in his presence was not becoming of an entertainer of his notoriety.
September 7th, 1964
“How do you feel today?” Verloc asked. He bent down in front of Gemma and inspected her pupils for dilation. He spoke with more interest today than he’d shown yet to date. It was progress. She made herself smile just a bit more than she had yesterday and perked up her eyebrows a smidge to look more open and at ease. She couldn’t actually do anything about her pupils but with the rest of her adjustments, maybe his own wish for success would convince him they looked bigger too.
“Better. I still have a headache but I forget about it sometimes,” she answered. “I think the fever’s broke finally, but I still feel warm. And sort of… fuzzy?”
“What do you mean by ‘fuzzy’?” he asked, leaning back.
She’d just been laying it on a bit thick throwing that detail on the pile and hadn’t expected to be asked to elaborate on it, but that wasn’t a problem. “You know how Joy- Oh. No, I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you?” she said, catching herself with a little laugh. Verloc didn’t share her amusement and just gave her a look of impatience. Gemma got back to the point. “Joy makes everything seem a little softer. And when you think about things, any things, you never really think that hard. Everything is just… fluffier? I feel like I’m just on the verge of feeling like that.”
Not bad for some absolute bollocks.