The Markyate Express and the Unexpected Tenant

My first customer in Markyate had put a notice on his garden gate: PASSENGERS MUST NOT EAT THE SCENERY.

Below it, in smaller writing, he had added: THIS MEANS YOU, CLEMENTINE.

Clementine turned out to be a spaniel with one leaf stuck to her chin and the expression of somebody unfairly singled out. I gave her a fuss before carrying my equipment round to the back of the house.

Oswin Peverell was standing beside a miniature railway in a waistcoat covered in tiny embroidered engines. The track wound through his garden, past a model bakery, round a washing-up-bowl pond and into a wooden tunnel beneath a thick evergreen shrub.

‘Opening day,’ he told me. ‘First proper run since autumn. My granddaughter’s coming at eleven.’

On a low table stood a line of toy passengers, including a plastic astronaut and a sheep wearing a paper scarf.

‘Broad appeal,’ I said.

‘We don’t discriminate on this railway.’

I had just started on the kitchen windows when the trouble began.

Oswin sent a little yellow inspection wagon down the slight slope towards the tunnel. It rolled inside and stopped. He tried again with a gentle nudge from a length of track. Something inside rustled.

He stepped back.

‘That’s new.’

By the time I had cleaned the first pane, he had decided it might be leaves. By the second, he was worrying about mice. By the third, he was staring at his watch as though eleven o’clock might be persuaded to wait outside the gate.

‘She’s made tickets,’ he said. ‘Proper ones, with different destinations. I’ve been telling her about this all winter.’

He reached for the tunnel roof, which lifted off on little wooden pegs.

‘Just a moment,’ I said.

I had noticed something in the reflection of the kitchen glass: a small bird on the fence, almost hidden behind a dangling gardening glove. It had a beakful of moss.

We moved away and stood quietly beside the house. After a minute, a robin dropped onto the tunnel entrance, paused, then disappeared inside.

Oswin looked at me.

‘We’ve let the station accommodation.’

‘Without checking the references,’ I said.

He smiled, but his shoulders sank a little. We agreed the tunnel should stay exactly as it was, with the wagon left alone too. Then I noticed several spare lengths of track stacked behind his empty plant pots.

‘Does every train have to go that way?’

That brought his shoulders straight back up.

While I finished the downstairs windows, he laid a new route across the open patio, well away from the shrub. Once my equipment was safely packed aside, I helped him shift the model bakery. Clementine supervised without eating a single building.

His granddaughter, Nellora, arrived carrying a ticket punch and wearing a cardboard stationmaster’s cap. Oswin explained the diversion with great seriousness.

She listened, then took a blank ticket from her pocket.

‘The robin needs a season ticket.’

By half past eleven, the little train was circling the patio with the astronaut, the sheep and a wooden button aboard. Nellora punched my ticket twice because, apparently, window cleaners qualified for a return journey.

As I left, Oswin was bringing out squash and biscuits. Through the beautifully clear kitchen window, I could see their two stationmaster’s caps bent over the timetable.

The gate notice had acquired one final line in Nellora’s careful handwriting.

PLEASE KEEP QUIET NEAR THE TUNNEL. SOMEBODY IS MAKING A HOME.