towards the end of the book, there’s a complicated bit of backstory as the old hypocrite is recognised as the man who ruined her by the grasping ex-whore. One of Wells’s Martians, an advance scout hiding tentacles under an extra-large ulster and experimentally dissecting human beings to find out if they’ll make suitable foodstuffs before giving a go-ahead for the full invasion. Dorian Gray – again, too obvious. Marlow, or some other Conradian world- traveller unhinged by experience of the heart of darkness? The Woman Who Did? Charles Pooter, so consumed with self-importance about his nobody status that he sets out to become somebody in the worst possible way. Mowgli, reverting to beastliness when brought to the heart of Empire? Alfred Doolittle, trying to catch the slut who bore his ungrateful daughter Eliza?
As it happens, none of these non-real people seem
DEAD TRAVEL FAST
First published in
In the great shed, a waterfall of molten iron poured into a long mould. Today, the undercarriage of a new engine was being cast, for the Great Western Railway, the Plymouth-to-Penzance line.
Massingham was confused for moments by the infernal glow, the terrific roar and the insufferable heat. No matter how many times he might be brought to the foundry, it was not an environment a man could become accustomed to. Those who worked here often ended up deaf or blind or prostrate with nervous disorder.
He looked around for the Count de Ville, and saw the foreign visitor standing much too close to the mould, in danger of being struck by spatters of liquid metal. The soft red drops were like acid bullets. They would eat through a man’s chest or head in a second. In twenty years’ service with the firm, Massingham had seen too many such accidents.
Whoever had let the visitor venture so close would answer for it. It was bad enough when one of the workers got careless and was maimed or killed, but to let an outsider, who had pulled strings to get a tour of the works, suffer such a fate would bring unpleasant publicity. The Board of Directors would most certainly hold Massingham responsible for such a catastrophe.
De Ville was a black silhouette, fringed with bitter crimson. He seemed to look directly at the white hot iron, unaffected by the harsh glow that ruined others’ eyes. All Massingham knew about the Count was that he was a foreign gentleman, with a great interest in railways. The Board scented an opportunity, assuming this toff was well enough connected in his own country to put in a word when it came to the purchase of rolling-stock. Two-thirds of the world ran on rails cast in this shed, riding in carriages made in the factory, pulled by engines manufactured by the firm.
‘Count de Ville,’ Massingham coughed.
He had spoken too softly, above the tinkle of teacups in a drawing-room not the roaring din of the casting shed, but the Count’s ears were as sharp as his eyes were hardy. He turned round, eyes reflecting the burning red of the furnaces, and bowed slightly from the waist.
‘I’m Henry Massingham, the under-manager. I’m to show you round.’
‘Excellent,’ said the Count. ‘I am certain to find the tour most enlightening. My own country is sadly backward by comparison with your great empire. I am anxious to be introduced to all the marvels of the age.’
He made no especial effort to raise his voice over the racket, but was heard clearly. His elongated vowels gave him away as someone whose first language was not English, but he had no trouble with his consonants save perhaps for a little hiss in his sibilants.
With no little relief, Massingham left the casting shed, followed by the tall, thin foreigner. The noise resounded in his ears for a few moments after they were out in the open. Though it was a breezy day, he could still feel the intense heat of the foundry on his cheeks.
Out in daylight, under thick clouds that obscured the sun, the Count was a less infernal figure. He was dressed entirely in black, like a Roman Catholic priest, with a long coat over tight swathes of material that bespoke no London tailoring, and heavy boots suitable for harsh mountains. Oddly, he topped off his ensemble with a cheap straw hat of the type one buys at the sea-side to use for a day and lose by nightfall. Massingham had an idea the Count was inordinately and strangely fond of the hat; his first English-bought item of clothing.
It occurred to Massingham that he didn’t know which country the Count was from. The name de Ville sounded French, but a rasp in his voice suggested somewhere in Central Europe, deep in that ever-changing patch of the map caught between the Russias and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Running rails up and down mountains was an expensive business, and a solid contract to provide a railway system for such an area could be a long-term high-earner for the firm.
Massingham escorted the Count about the factory, following the creation of an engine by visiting all the stages of the manufacture, from the primal business of casting through to the fine detail-work on the boilerplate and the polishing of the brass finishings. The Count was especially delighted, like a little boy, with the steam whistle. The foreman fired up an engine on the test-bed, purely so de Ville might have the childish joy of pulling the chain and making the shrill toot-toot that would announce the coming of an iron giant to some out-of-the-way halt.
The Count de Ville was a railway enthusiast of great passion, who had from afar memorised his Bradshaw’s guide to time-tables and was merely seeing for the first time processes he had read of and imagined for many years. He probably knew more about trains than did Massingham, whose responsibilities were mostly in overseeing the book-keeping, and wound up delivering more lectures than he received.
‘What a world it shall be, when the globe is encircled round about by steel rails,’ enthused the Count. ‘Men and materiel shall be transported in darkness, in sealed carriages, while the world sleeps. Borders shall become meaningless, distances will be an irrelevance and a new civilisation rise to the sound of the train whistle.’
‘Ahem,’ said Massingham, ‘indeed.’
‘I came to this land by sea,’ de Ville said sadly. ‘I am irretrievably a creature of the past. But I shall conquer this new world, Mr Massingham. It is my dearest ambition to become a railwayman.’
There was something strange in his conviction.
The tour concluded, Massingham hoped to steer de Ville to the board-room, where several directors would be waiting, hiding behind genial offers of port and biscuits, ready to make casual suggestions as to possible business arrangements and privately determined not to let the Count escape without signing up for a substantial commitment. Massingham’s presence would not be required at the meeting, but if a contract were signed, his part in it would be remembered.
‘What is that building?’ de Ville asked, indicating a barn-like structure he had not been shown. It stood in a neglected corner of the works, beyond a pile of rejected, rusting rails.
‘Nothing important, Count,’ said Massingham. ‘It’s for tinkering, not real work.’
The word ‘tinkering’ appealed to de Ville.
‘It sounds most fascinating, Mr Massingham. I should be most interested to be allowed inside.’
There was the question of secrecy. It was unlikely that the Count was a spy from another company, but nevertheless it was not wise to let it be known what the firm was working on. Massingham chewed his moustache for a moment, unsure. Then he recalled that the only tinkerer in residence at the moment was George Foley, of the improbable contraption. There was no real harm in showing the Count that white elephant, though he feared a potential customer might conclude the firm was foolhardy indeed to throw away money on such an obvious non- starter and might take his business elsewhere.
‘We have been allowing space to an inventor,’ said Massingham. ‘I fear we have become a safe harbour for an arrant crackpot, but you might find some amusement at the bizarre results of his efforts.’
He led the Count through the double doors.
Several shots sounded, rattling the tin roof of the shed. Bursts of fire lit the gloom.
Immediately, Massingham was afraid that de Ville was the victim of an assassination plot. Everyone knew these Balkan nobs were pursued by anarchists eager to pot them with revolvers in revenge for injustices committed down through the centuries by barbarous ancestors.
A stench of sulphur stung his nostrils. Clouds of foul smoke were wafting up to the roof. There was a slosh and a hiss as a bucket of water was emptied on a small fire.
