Odour of Chrysanthemums

The small locomotive engine Number 4 came clanking stumbling down from Selston

The small locomotive engine Number 4 came clanking stumbling down from Seton with seven full wagons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed but the colt that it startled from among the gorse which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon outdistanced it at a canter. A woman walking up the railway line to Underwood, drew back into the hedge held her basket aside and watched the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past one by one with slow inevitable movement as she stood insignificantly trapped between the jolting black wagons and the hedge; then they curved away towards the copping where the withered oak leaves dropped noiselessly while the birds pulling at the scarlet hips beside the track made off into the dusk that had already crept into the spinney. In the open the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough grass.

The fields were dreary and forsaken and in the marshy strip that led to

The whimsy a reedy pit pond the fowls had already abandoned their run among the alders to roost in the tarred fowl house. The pit bank loomed up beyond the pond flames like red sores licking its ashy sides in the afternoons stagnant light. Just beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the clumsy black head stocks of Brinkley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning fast up against the sky and the winding engine rapped out its little spasms. The miners were being turned up. The engine whistled as it came into the wide bay of railway lines beside the colliery where rows of trucks stood in harbor.