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village the High street climbed still higher to become the
Blodcaster road, thereafter dwindling to the proportions of a cart track
scribbled across a very precipitous approach to the pass which formed a droop
between Upshott down and Upshott hill.
    The serenity of this
beautiful morning was medicinal, floating upon its stillness a rhapsody of
birdsong themed by the thin, reedy call of pewits wheeling above their nests in
the fallow fields around Upshott.  The mournful lowing of cattle and the petite
splashing of a little watermill dripping its spent juices into a race at the
foot of a meadow were welcome companions to the warm breeze, and I was
comforted at least by the natural half of my new world.
    Noticing that Miss
Macrames was now almost upon me I turned away and looked east, from which
direction came a still more mesmeric sound.  High among the meagre slopes of
Splashgate hill where little ever happened, sparsely dotted sheep were bleating
with a haunting loneliness that invoked in me a most strange and idle
pondering.
    I wondered what caused
men to be so susceptible to female charm.  Reinforcement of the mystery came
when Miss Macrames blocked my view skilfully with a flirtatious smile.  Her
interception aroused in me a special interest in the alchemy of sensual relationship
and, moreover, the significance of women bearing fidelity to past infatuations. 
Should I draw a romantic conclusion from Miss Macrames’ most enchanting likeness
to my Elisabeth, for I could scarcely differentiate between the two lovely
creatures?  Until, that is, one of them spoke.
    “Horace, here you are,” she
squawked with what little breath remained in her lungs.
    This short railway may
have perforated my mind with muddle but Miss Macrames, by way of her hypnotic
persistence, was now threatening to collapse it altogether.  For some reason my
response to this woman’s allure was one of complete emotional turmoil.  I
suppose that bucolic bliss was no match for the menace of a faulty steam
engine, disturbingly mysterious ladies, an authoritarian squire, and a rotten
smell from which there was no escape.  Perhaps it was all just boiling inside
my head like a cauldron.  Anyway, briefly unable to focus my eyes, I measured
in myself a lack of composure that needed rectifying and reminded myself that I
was a stationmaster.  Overstretched incumbents such as I, the records showed,
were often driven to drink, women, or solitude, and eventually dismissed.  Just
now I perceived a shortfall in all three forms of escape taken together.
    Nevertheless, a man should
not crave retreat on his first day in a new job no matter how bad the onslaught,
so I reprimanded myself sternly.  Being of a reflective nature I looked to my
past for a clue to my fragile aloofness and concluded that the propensity
sprang from my singular upbringing rather than anxiety, recalling that even
when I had gone to work for the railways as a lad, joining some thirty other
junior clerks in a lively goods office, I had remained at my own disposal
throughout.  Truth to tell, my compulsive self-reliance, which had set me apart
from my contemporaries, was probably the reason for my rapid rise though the
ranks.  I had gathered few obligations outside of my work and appeared to my
seniors to be a dedicated railwayman.  Upon promotion to relief stationmaster
my isolation had been reinforced by countless short term postings around the
south-west, allowing me no opportunity to cast down roots.  So, if you will pardon
the pun, at Upshott it was to be a case of ‘all change’ because here I had the
opportunity to settle.
    During my earlier years
spent in the cities I had developed a distaste for the urbane way of life, the
company of society swells exchanging neoteric humbug over dinner being in my
eyes unequal to the simple offerings of a highly ordered, rural community. 
Upshott was a parish with no pretensions, and whilst I accept that such
communities are generally