Catherine Walker, the author of A Watch of Nightingales, is a keen historian. When writing her debut novel, she spent hours reading articles from the Toronto Reference Library, British Military historians, and historical societies, fascinated by the historical details she found there, many of which made their way into the novel.
She spent many happy hours researching what were the best kinds of sheep for Ewan’s farm. It was also natural to investigate the medical advancements of the time.
However, not all of Catherine’s historical details made it into the final pages of the book. In this deleted scene, Catherine delved into the details of how trains changed the social and economic landscape of England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and how the lives of her characters changed because of the new train system. To not break up the natural flow of the narrative, this scene was taken out in the final edit, but we are thrilled to share a version of it with you here.
This chapter occurred after the chapter of the mountain climbing adventure for Ewan, Tom, and Beth, just as Tom leaves Kirkby Stephen to begin his apprenticeship on the railroads – his aspiration, his heart’s desire.
Read on for an exclusive deleted scene from A Watch of Nightingales!
TOM: APPRENTICE
“…the loathsome form of devilry now extant…destruction of all wise social habit and natural beauty.” – John Ruskin
“Dear names, And thousand other throng to me…And washen stones, gay for an hour; /the cold graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;/ Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;” – Rupert Brooke, The Great Lover
September 1912
Railway tracks were crisscrossing England. The railway barons bought great tracts of farmland; new railway companies developed at an accelerated rate competing with each other for the control of the British countryside. What they couldn’t get for fair bargaining, they bullied, expropriated and pushed their way through. Most politicians supported them, allowing for compulsory buying or way lanes.
‘Creating jobs’ was often the duplicitous rallying excuse for ill thought-out policy. Jobs were created laying tracks, but not for locals; and once the tracks were laid, those poorly paid workers, many of whom were immigrants seeking a better life, were let go, surplus, no longer needed, used up – leaving them with sore backs, injuries and few skills to compete for the factory jobs. They were forced to sink into that gaping morass of poverty. The slums and tenements of London grew, as did the railways.
The railway barons gained great wealth and joined the new factory owners to form a politically powerful nouveau-riche. They developed a symbiotic relationship with the aristocracy clamoring for titles and acceptance by the nobility through marriage of their eligible wealthy children into the social class to which they aspired. The gentry in turn lusted for money to keep their massive estates solvent, willing to sit as directors on the railway boards and to sell their political support within the House of Lords.
Cotton spinning in Manchester and weaving in Leeds necessitated transport of goods, hence the factory owners also hailed the laying of more tracks, though there didn’t seem to be any logical planning or coordination of their directions or destinations except to meet the commercial interests. Wool from the Cumbrian sheep farms could make its way easily into new textile factories, however enhanced transport by trains also led to increased competition. Cotton from Turkey and wool from Belgium were cheap, so many smaller sheep farms couldn’t survive, and were gobbled up, becoming factory farms.
Germany and France had discovered the advantage of trains during the Franco-Prussian war. The war machines in each country were tirelessly building their fleet. Across Europe, trains would facilitate transport of supplies and troops, perversely making the waging of war more convenient – bullets, blankets, bandages, bully beef, all expediently delivered to the troops.
The economy of England was drastically changed by trains, in some ways for the better with cheaper, more accessible goods and expediting of mail. Travel was convenient, enabling the growing manufacturing or shop keeping middle class to take holidays at the beach towns heretofore only accessible for the rich. England was being transformed from an agrarian economy to one of manufacturing and industrialization.
This struck a blow to Ewan who held on to a romantic view of Britain – the Britain of his youth. There were devastating closures of family farms and traditional cottage industries. With each farm closure and field of crops replaced by a factory Ewan’s spirit seeped into the land like melting snow from the mountains – it was as if he was being diminished by changes that were out of his control.
Ewan continued to moodily reminisce about the peaceful, pastoral, agrarian England he loved while the inevitable advanced. Tom, however, single-minded and unabashedly optimistic, only saw the trains as freedom and power. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the imagination and intelligence to understand all the polemic. He simply didn’t think about the social disruption and economic upheaval that their existence created – or if he did, schooled by Beth and John, he swapped these thoughts for his love of the powerful smoke-spewing beasts. He remembered the powerful sensation on the bridge under his youthful feet. Trains needed tracks so sure, build them – he was all for growth and change, inclined to see the positive in everything. Luckily there was nobody wanting to build tracks through Alexander Stuart’s land.
Tom was apprenticed with the Great Western, London to Bristol, connecting with the trans-Atlantic steam ships – these carrying tourists from North America and emigrants leaving Britain to make their fortunes abroad. Trains were the new answer to leisure, dreams, necessity – a changing world and Tom would be part of the system that was facilitating this. The branch tracks that he rode took him into the heart of England. They transported workers who had left the farms and were now seeking their livelihood in factories like that of Lord Arby. Young people like him were either forced out or forsook a career in farming, seeking the ‘easy’ money to be had in factories.
He looked from his new perspective to the mountains that he had climbed with Beth and Ewan. As other viaducts were similarly built connecting Cumbria to the rest of England, the accessible geography of England was changing and igniting the imagination of this young man who had never travelled beyond the boundaries of his farm or town.
England was in a hurry for change. Track builders fell to their deaths due to inadequate safety measures, fodder to the insatiable greed of the railroad barons. An architecturally majestic Mosedale viaduct, twelve stone arches carrying trains across Mosedale Beck in the Pennine, now had two tracks and Tom loved travelling over them when he learned how to drive a train over complex terrain. Not usually an unimaginative or unsympathetic man, he simply was blinded to the cost being paid by workers building the tracks. The cost of progress was also kept from the public’s knowledge.
Tom took a room in London, his father’s stipend enabling some comfort. John would be going to Cambridge and residing there, but he also took a room in the same boarding house on the floor below for the occasions when they were in London at the same time. Could the relationship that faced so many challenges and had to be hidden survive? This boarding house was clean, and the food was adequate. This residence housed some students, artists, and young men seeking clerkships or aspiring to join the merchant class in London. Tom’s room was seldom occupied during his training. He had to kip in company dorms, especially when he was on night runs of the branch lines that serviced many distant small communities – he would gradually move from these learning routes to those that were busier and more challenging.
Tom faced his first day of apprenticeship with trepidation. This introspective young man was catapulted out of his comfort zone. Strong of back, he did not suffer from the hard physical labour. It was the shared comradery of the crew that he found difficult to penetrate, unaccustomed to their manly ribald jocularity. He tried joining them at the pubs, but he had never liked getting staggering drunk. To Tom the lessening of inhibitions was never worth the morning headache, and he had seen how his father depended on drinks to numb his grief. He had more education than his fellow apprentices and felt alienated, ‘other’. They teased him, calling him ‘farmer’, ‘professor’, because he read books during his breaks, and ‘red’ for his curly red hair.
The crew, especially the seasoned engineer drivers, liked Tom and recognized in him a hard worker, true aficionado, an eager and able learner. Thus, to the chagrin of some of the apprentices, he rose through the ranks quickly from fireman to junior engineer. He hadn’t minded his time as fireman – falling easily into the rhythm of six to nine shovels every three minutes. He understood that efficient feeding of coal kept the boiler building the steam needed to drive the piston and turn the wheels, recognizing how important the fireman’s job was to keep the smooth running of the train. He quickly learned the safety checks, the walk around the engine to examine the brake pipe, the correct interpretation of the pressure gauges, the security of the couplings with the tinderbox and carriages. He loved it when the freight trains would achieve eighty miles an hour on long straight runs. He put his head out of the door above the engine gate to feel the wind in his face. He pulled the whistle when he saw children waving from the banks or standing on bridges just like he and Beth had done throughout their childhood. He missed her and vowed to write a letter when he got back to his room in London. He had two days off.
Read more about Tom, Beth, and John in A Watch of Nightingales by Catherine Walker!