Free Flint and Roses by Brenda Jagger

had been able to compete with their affluence, had dared to demand a share of their privilege. And now this railway track, this engine, was ours, not theirs, made necessary and possible by the yarn we spun, the cloth we wove, by the industry and enterprise, the thrift, the stamina, the self-discipline of which we were so justly proud.
    Everyone, of course, among that favoured platform-party, had desired to ride on Cullingford’s first train; many had been disappointed; and we had talked of little else for weeks past. My Uncle Joel’s place had never been in question, nor that of Messrs. Hobhouse, Mandelbaum, Rawnsley and Oldroyd, whose claims were almost as well substantiated. Sir Giles Flood of Cullingford Manor had been approached and had disdainfully refused, but his cousin, Sir Charles Winterton, who had property in Cullingford and debts in just about every other city in the West Riding, and whose son, ‘the Winterton boy’, had now placed himself among the multitude of those who wished to marry Caroline, had been less proud. Mr. Corey-Manning, the lawyer, had eagerly accepted the invitation, despite his age and Aunt Hannah’s loud-voiced opinion that he would do better to stand down in favour of Jonas, although with Uncle Joel’s help she had secured a seat for Mr. Agbrigg, a triumph, she felt, which would assist immeasurably in his mayoral campaign.
    The landlord of the Old Swan, our most important coaching inn, was to make the journey—a gesture, one felt, of recompense for the loss of business he would be bound to suffer when those fourteen coaches which set off every day from his inn yard became passengerless, obsolete. But competition for the remaining seats had been so murderous that when Uncle Joel proposed taking his two sons, Mr. Rawnsley his five, and Mr. Hobhouse all ten of his, each gentleman had been limited to one son apiece—the eldest—to which restriction all had grudgingly agreed.
    Freddy Hobhouse, then was to go, and Jacob Mandelbaum, young Jack Rawnsley and Benjamin Battershaw of Battershaw’s Light Ales; and, to represent the next generation of Barforths, my cousin Blaize, a decision which, had given rise to sharp words between Uncle Joel and Nicholas, who was exceedingly interested in trains, and between Nicholas and Blaize, who, while openly avowing his total indifference, seemed determined to make the trip if only to annoy his brother.
    â€˜Such a fuss.’ Caroline told me, wrinkling a fastidious nostril at the first whiff of engine smoke. ‘They agreed eldest sons, so eldest sons it must be, and one can hardly blame Blaize for being born first. It’s not a question of whether one wants to go: it’s a question of privilege. If one gets a good offer, one takes it—it’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t have stepped down, if I’d been invited, for anybody.’
    But Nicholas, standing at the footplate with his father, seemed to be bearing his disappointment well enough, holding an animated, probably very technical, conversation with a group of railway employees, his dark eyes keen and interested, the first sight of him causing my stomach to lurch in a most shocking fashion, so that the whole of that raucous crowd was instantly reduced in my mind to a set of nondescript, wooden images; and Nicholas Barforth. And, for the life in me, I could not have said why.
    The moment of departure, it seemed, was very near, drawing—as the favoured few began to climb aboard—an ear-splitting, cheek-bulging crescendo from the bands, a great whistling and steaming from the train, a tremor of anticipation that interrupted even Aunt Hannah’s conversation with the wife of our new Member of Parliament, whose good offices she was clearly seeking on her husband’s behalf. There was a flutter of applause from correctly gloved, ladylike hands, a certain feeling of relief since the spring weather was unreliable, the sky clouding over