Last week saw the two hundred year anniversary of the historic train journey from Stockton to Darlington which is widely regarded as the inauguration of the age of rail, and perhaps even the start of the industrial revolution. We were taught about it very early on in primary school, and I can remember struggling to read, phonetically, the name Gee-orgy Step-henson, much to my parents’ amusement.
BBC Radio 3 chose to celebrate the occasion, and despatched Petroc Trelawny on a train from Inverness bound for London Kings Cross. If the anniversary had fallen only a few months earlier, he would have been able to travel all the way to Penzance. That was the longest rail journey in the UK, but the service is no longer being offered, so Kings Cross it had to be. Other Radio 3 announcers chatted with Petroc along the way, and a nostalgic railway retrospective was interspersed with railway-related music. I think it was a brave project to take on. I wonder if Radio 3 had a Plan B, in the event that Petroc got delayed, diverted into some remote siding down the east coast, and transferred to a bus. Rather than being a panegyric to the golden age of steam, the programme would have become a farcical reflection of “Broken Britain”. Perhaps Petroc could have played it for laughs.
I only dipped in and out a couple of times, so I’m not sure what the choice of music was. Surely they would have had Honegger’s Pacific 231, and also the highly evocative The Little Train of the Caipira, which forms the last movement of Villa Lobos’ Bachianas brasileiras No. 2. They certainly played Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, which was the sound track for Brief Encounter, the 1945 film starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. The action takes place almost entirely within a railway station tearoom. It was shot in black and white, which must have reflected the drab post-war age of austerity. It’s a kind of yearning for high romanticism as perceived, imagined, and yearned for, within a situation of humdrum mundanity. Celia Johnson’s character, Laura Jesson, is not unhappy. On the contrary she is happily married with two children to whom she is devoted. She sits quietly at home in a plush armchair doing embroidery, while her husband struggles with the Times crossword. She only becomes unhappy when she falls in love with the dashing doctor, Alec Harvey, who happens to remove a fleck of dust from her eyelid. They sit in quiet despair in the station tearoom, the background of bells and whistles reminding them that their time is running out.
Their brief affair is never consummated. There is a story – apocryphal for all I know – that during an early screening, somebody in the cinema yelled out, “When’s he going to have relations with her?” That at least is the gist of what he cried. But it was a different world, the world of the novels of Nevil Shute. Watching the film now, one is struck by the lack of multiculturalism. Much more apparent is class difference. There are people who speak RP, and people who speak Cockney.
The lovers’ affair is constrained by railway timetables. In the end, when they only have a few precious moments left, an acquaintance of Laura sits down beside them and starts wittering on. It’s excruciating. Alec disappears to Johannesburg, and Laura briefly contemplates throwing herself under an express. But she doesn’t. Instead she goes back to her husband Fred, still struggling with the Times crossword, but showing himself to be much more astute than one might have thought. “You’ve been a long way away. Thank you for coming back.” Actually he says, “Thank you for coming beck.”
(Incidentally, and apropos of nothing, the Sunday Times runs a weekly crossword clue competition. A month or two ago we were invited to submit a clue for the word “Biped”. I submitted a train-related clue.
Upstanding young woman coming out around 3.14, westbound (5)
Didn’t win.
Yehudi Menuhin rather admired Brief Encounter. He himself had a brief foray into the world of cinema when he took a screen test for the role of Paganini. I think he played it for laughs. He said he “didn’t disenjoy” the experience. The role eventually went to Stewart Grainger, but Menuhin recorded the sound track.
In 1936, W. H. Auden wrote a poem for a film about the dissemination of the post across Scotland, entitled The Night Mail. The music is by Benjamin Britten. The combination of film, words and music, is extraordinarily powerful. But it all belongs to a different age, an age of confidence.
Ian Fleming had a particular penchant for trains, but his journeys are always abroad, particularly in the States. Bond never had any qualms about consummating relationships, especially to the background throb of a train engine, in Live and Let Die, and again in From Russia with Love. A train in Diamonds are Forever becomes a funeral pyre, and the scene of a shoot-out in The Man with the Golden Gun. Train stations and trains seem to open up a world of endless possibility, but only abroad. British Railways? Bond sighed.
I can sympathise. The last time I made the journey to London by rail, it became something of a saga. We went down the east coast. Two trains ahead of us broke down, and we stopped to pick up the passengers. The carriages became crammed with people, seated and standing, and luggage. We ran very late. It was inconvenient, but the return journey was truly a nightmare. Everything that could conceivably go wrong, went wrong. Signal failures, mechanical failures, line obstructions… We sat motionless outside York for an unconscionable period and then, in an effort to find a way forward, crossed over to the west coast, only to encounter more difficulties. Moreover I was developing a sore throat and a fever, and was feeling wretched. We crawled into Stirling around midnight. I staggered back to my car, to find I had a flat tyre.
And now we have, or don’t have, HS2. HS2 seems to me to be scandalous. Eye-watering sums of money have been spent, and no progress has been made. People’s homes have been compulsorily purchased. And to what end? What, in any case, is to be the advantage of reaching your destination twenty minutes earlier? But HS2 has been parked on the back-burner, while our attention is diverted by a second runway at Gatwick, and a third at Heathrow. Meanwhile, paddy fields have been installed in the south of England, and rice, basmati and risotto, I believe, successfully grown, perhaps beside the Gewürztraminer vineyards in the Somerset Levels. You will recognise the connection. Our politicians don’t. They cannot join up the dots.
jamescalumcampbell 