He said, 'I've a bottle of whisky in the office, if you fancy a nightcap,' and he was trying to steady himself, as though he was on board a ship.
It was such a strange turn-up that I immediately agreed, and re-stowed the lamp in the saddle bag.
'What's brought this on, Wrighty?' I asked, as we stepped through into the station.
He made no reply, but just concentrated on walking straight.
In the station, I saw few people. Instead, the trains were in charge - they had the run of the place. There were not many, it being late, but the night-time trains seem to make more noise and let off more steam than trains of the day. The last Leeds train was making hard work of pulling away from the bay platform, Number Six. We were on the main 'up' platform, where the police office stood, and Wrighty was veering wide, approaching the white line of the platform edge. Then, half running, he climbed the steps of the footbridge and crossed to the main 'down'.
'Wrighty!' I called out. 'What's going off?'
But I was drowned out by the thundering of a great coal train coming up on the 'down' line. The loco was black, the smoke was black, and every wagon thoroughly blackened. It was as if the English night itself had been put on rails and carted north. I crossed the footbridge as the train ran underneath, and I saw Wright on the very edge of the main 'down'.
'What's up, Wrighty?' I shouted at him.
'Nowt,' he said.
'Well then!' I shouted, and Wright kept silence but the train did not. It seemed to come on eternally, like the turning of a wheel, and Wright stood at the platform edge facing the wagons as though expecting them to stop so that he might climb aboard. He stood too close to them for my liking. I pulled at his sleeve to draw him back away, at which he turned about, and I saw that his face was quite different. He didn't look as if he was blubbing, but I knew that was what the alteration signified. He said something, and I couldn't make it out for the thundering of the wagons.
'Come away from here, Wrighty!' I shouted.
But he made no move, and once more addressed the flying coal wagons.
'Jane's left me.'
'Eh?'
'She's left me!'
I could hardly credit it. Wrighty had been married to Jane for forty years. I couldn't think what to say, but after a dozen more wagons or so, I shouted, 'Don't take on, Wrighty!'
'I was always home to her directly!' Wright shouted at the train. 'I was never a stop-out!'
'Your missus is a decent sort!' I shouted back, 'You must be able to ...'
But I couldn't think what.
Suddenly a flying, flimsy brake wagon signified the end of the train, and Wright and I stood in silence, the empty tracks before us.
'Let's go into the office and put a brew on,' I said, but Wright shook his head. I tried to pull him back from the platform edge in case he had it in mind to wait for another train, and pitch himself in front of it. I thought: This is more like the kind of drama that happens when you've missed the last tram, and I pictured Jane Wright: a sensible woman with a lot of grey hair. She smoked cigarettes and had a smile that was fetching on account of teeth that went in. I'd never been able to make out what she saw in Wright, who didn't have a nice smile, or any at all come to that. After forty years of marriage, that might become rather wearing.
Wright turned away from the platform, saying, 'Weatherill's told you what's going off in Scarborough, has he?' and he was about back to normal, in that he was asking questions instead of answering them.
'He has that,' I said.
I saw that the offer of whisky had just been a ruse on Wright's part to achieve... well, something or other to do with his own difficulties.
'Walk you home, shall I?' I said, and he gave a half nod.
'When are you off, then?' he said, as I collected my bike.
'To Scarborough,' I said. 'Sunday.'
'You going on your tod?'
'No, the Chief's fixed me up with a mate. A driver. We're going there as a footplate crew. Don't tell anyone, mind you,' I added, grinning at him.
'Weatherill's putting a train driver to police work?' said Wright. 'That's rum.'
So he hadn't heard that part.
'The Chief has it all planned out,' I said.
We'd come out of the station, and turned down Leeman Road. I was pushing my bike, and Wright was occasionally colliding with it as he walked. We came to the beginning of Railway Walk, which was a kind of dark alleyway running along by the main line. Only you couldn't see the railway for the hoardings that were all down that side. From the railway they were bright, cheerful things advertising Heinz Beans, Oxo and whatnot, but on Railway Walk you just saw the shadowy backs of them, and the tall sooty timbers holding them up. Wright lived along one of the terraced streets that ran off the Walk on the other side.
Why had he been glooming at the coal train? Perhaps he was a regular on the main 'down' at eleven o'clock? That train came through every evening at about that time. It wouldn't stop in under half a mile and so presented a nightly opportunity for anyone wanting to make away with themselves.
'This is you, I think,' I said to Wrighty as we contemplated Railway Walk. But he made no move.
'Has the Chief let on?' he said '.. . He's dead certain that Leeds bloke was done-in.'
'Well...' I said.
'And that it was somebody in the lodging house that did him.'
'I'll get in there,' I said, 'and I'll run the bugger to earth!'
I eyed Wright, giving him the chance to say, 'Good luck with it,' but he moved off without a word, zig-zagging somewhat.
I climbed onto my bike, and set off for Thorpe. As I rode, it came to me that I ought to have asked Wright whether I might mention his trouble to Lydia, who was quite pally with Jane. I was assuming she'd stick up for marriage in general. But maybe she in turn would leave me for Robert Henderson. She wouldn't have to coach him up to being a big earner. He was that already.
Chapter Six
'They're all aft, skipper.'
The words revolved in my mind, a problem waiting to be solved. I first thought: That grey man talks just as though he's a sailor; wears a sailor's coat too. I did not want him to be a sailor, for sailors were in the habit of travelling further afield than it was normally convenient for me to go. But I took heart from the way that he was lighting a small cigar. Any sort of man anywhere might light a cigar.
'I feel ill,' I said, or anyhow I thought the words, and there was some sort of a connection between my thoughts and my lips, for some sound came out and it must have served well enough because the man replied:
'Just wait until we get some sea,' although it was really more like 'Just wade undil we get shum sea.'
'You'd best look out either way,' I said. 'I'm going to be sick no end.'
I tried to rise from my coal bed, and the two men, one above, one below, watched me do it. I found my feet after a couple of goes but it took an effort to stay up; I wanted to go back to sleep on the coal. I slowly looked down at my boots, feeling myself to be thinner than I was before ... and there was stuff all down my suit-coat. I contemplated it while trying to steady myself on coal. I raised my hand to the stuff, and I did not know my own hands. They were red, and I could not shake the notion that they had been stained by beetroot juice. When had I been near beetroot? I looked hard at them in the night sea light, which was partly moonlight, and partly something ghostly made by the waves. It was not beetroot. The redness was under the skin. Poison. I wiped my hand again over my suit-coat. The stuff was vomit... and my North Eastern company badge was missing.
'Where's my top-coat got to?' I said, and then: 'I've a hell of a thirst.' The top man, the skipper, seemed ready for this because he held a bottle of water. He dropped it down to the man below, who passed it to me. I held it with my stained left hand as I drank, and stood with head spinning as the water took effect. It made me feel better in some ways, worse in others. The grey man held out a tin of cigars.
'Do shmoke?' he seemed to say.
I could not rea
d the words on the tin; there seemed to be a picture of a blue church but it was covered in coal dust. I took a cigar.
'What's happened?' I slowly enquired. 'Have I been pressed into the fucking navy?'
No reply.
'Why are my hands red?' I demanded, but there came no answer, only the flare of the match rising up to my face. The cigar was lit, and the grey man threw the match onto the coal. There was just enough light for me to see it go out.
I looked up. The man above, the skipper, had been away - must have been away, for he now returned. He held a ladder, and he too now wore a tunic with brass buttons. He lowered the ladder, and placed the top of it by a wooden beam that helped support the roof of the great coal hole I was in. The grey man indicated the ladder with a turn of his head. Was I supposed to be smoking the cigar, or climbing the ladder? I contemplated the burning cigar, and dropped it. I was not up to smoking just then, and it struck me that I had been far too long on my feet. I wanted to sit down on the coal again, but at the same time it was necessary to rise from it, and escape the black air of this underworld. I climbed the ladder using not so much my feet as the memory of climbing ladders, and when the rungs ran out I was for a moment in a cool breeze at the top of the highest tree in my home village. The name came to me slowly: Thorpe-on-Ouse. But I stepped from it onto iron, where I stood face to face with the one set in authority over the grey man.
He held a small revolver, and behind him was a whole ship with more than a breeze blowing over it. I saw the expanse of the fore-hold running up to the great bulk of the mid-ships, with high-mounted lifeboats either side, tall masts, where derricks with steam winches were fitted, great white-washed ventilators for sucking air into the iron worlds beneath, and the whole thing set upon the roaring, crashing sea under the thousands of stars. I wanted to congratulate the fellow on the effect, to shake his hand, ask him, 'Now how did you manage all this? And how do you ride the thing with only the two of you on board?' For there wasn't another soul to be seen.
Chapter Seven
Before, in our old house, when I reached our front gate I knew I was home, but now the gate was the start of a fairly long walk - across the dark meadow. One light burned in the house, and Lydia was sitting up in bed. I knew my interview with Parker would be uppermost in her mind, and as it turned out, she mentioned it the instant I stepped into the bedroom.
'You've done brilliantly, our Jim,' she said, and she stepped out of bed in her night-gown, and handed me a little envelope. It was a telegram from Parker himself. 'Much enjoyed our meeting of today. Very happy for you to start in April. Particulars follow by post.'
'I'm very proud of you,' she said.
We kissed, and I said, 'You should be very proud of yourself. I mean, it was all your doing.'
She watched to see whether I smiled at this. I did, and the smile was meant. Parker was obviously a decent sort, and I found that I didn't mind too much the idea of being a solicitor, providing I didn't think too much about it.
'Wait until we tell your father, Jim,' she said. 'He'll just die of pleasure.'
My dad was a lovely old fellow, but an out and out snob.
'Actually,' the wife ran on, frowning, 'I think that really is a danger in his case. You're to break the news gently. At first, just tell him you're going into a law office and work up from there.'
She sat back on the bed, and picked up another letter.
'This came as well,' she said. 'It's postmarked London.'
She looked a little worried as I opened it, as if she thought it might contain something that would stop me becoming a solicitor. It was from Railway Titbits magazine, from the editor himself. He was delighted to inform me that I had won the competition in the January number: I had successfully named all ten termini pictured and placed them correctly in order according to date of construction. A one pound postal order would shortly be despatched to me. I showed it to Lydia, who said:
'It really is a red letter day.'
'There must have been hundreds got the answer right,' I said. 'I expect I was just the first name picked out of the hat... I probably shouldn't have entered, being a railway employee.'
The wife rolled her eyes.
'Send the pound back, why don't you?'
'It's the first competition I've ever won,' I said.
'How many have you entered?' the wife asked.
'One.'
'Well then,' she said.
'What did you get up to today?' I asked, as I undressed, for it had not been one of her days in the Co-operative Women's office. I knew that as long as Robert Henderson's name didn't come up, then I'd be happy.
It didn't. She'd worked about the house, dug some of the plot that was intended as the kitchen garden, pulled up two more sycamore saplings that had taken root in the wrong places, and gone for an evening walk into Thorpe with the children. I turned down the lamp, and we tried to sleep.
'I can't get off,' the wife said after a while. 'I'm so excited.' 'Let's read, then,' I said, and I turned up the lamp, and picked up my Railway Magazine, while the wife reached across to the night table, where she found a book that I knew to be called The Practical Poultry Keeper by T. Thornton.
'Now let's see what's what,' she said, and opened the book at the beginning. It was the umpteenth time she'd started it, and after five minutes she tossed it across the counterpane.
'That flipping book,' she said. 'But they're getting on with it now, you know...'
'Who are?'
'The hens. Three eggs today.'
Was that a good rate of production for fifteen hens? The answer to the mystery lay in The Practical Poultry Keeper, but it was a stiffer read even than An Introduction to Railway Law.
Half an hour later, we were still not asleep.
'What are you thinking about?' the wife asked.
It'd been a while since we'd done any lovemaking, what with all our changes of life, and I thought this might be the moment. But then I thought of old man Wright.
I said, 'Did you know that the Wrights have separated?'
'Oh yes, that's very sad. Well, it's sad for him. She's overjoyed about it. She's gone off with Terry Dawson.'
'Who's he when he's at home?'
'Honestly, don't you pay any attention to Co-operative business?'
'No.'
'He's assistant manager of the Co-operative butchers on South Bank. You go there every week, Jim, just in case you've forgotten. But as from next month he'll be managing the new store in Acomb.'
'So he's the coming man of the York Co-op? Wright's very cut up about it. Do you think you might have a word with her?'
'I could do, but I wouldn't hold out much hope. He's such a misery. A woman's entitled to a bit of fun in her life, you know.'
'I can think of a way of giving you a bit of fun,' I said, and I put down the Railway Magazine. 'It only would be a bit, mind you.'
'Ten termini,' said the wife, as I inched over to her side. 'That's going some.'
'Railway Titbits...' I said. It isn't for the true rail enthusiast, you know. Come to think of it, I don't suppose most of its readers could name one railway termini.'
'You can't have one termini,' said the wife, as we fell to.
Later on, we still weren't asleep.
'What are you thinking about now ' Lydia asked.
'Just thinking on,' I said.'. . . I've been promised a lot of things lately: ownership one day of this house, perhaps; a start at Parker's office; a pound from Railway Titbits. Only thing is ...'
'What?' said the wife.
'I've got to go to Scarborough first.'
The wife eyed me.
'When?'
'Sunday.'
'What? For the whole day?'
'For the night.'
'The night?'
And that, somehow, was what bothered me: the idea of staying the night in Scarborough during the off-season, and the suspicion that the Chief hadn't so much given me a job as set me a trap.
Chapter Eight
The sky was not quite black. Proper blackness rolled upwards from the funnel, and the sky was different to that: a dark, drifting grey. The ship plunged and rose with no land in view as I walked before the Captain's pistol. The ship was about the length of an ordinary train and it moved straight, both over and under the waves like a needle going through cloth. The thread it dragged was a long line of white in the blackness of the water. Parts of the decks were picked out with the white light of oil lamps hung from railings, and here the decks shone with rolling water. The sea flew at the three of us as we walked. We were getting some weather now all right, and it was waking me up by degrees. To my right, a sail was rigged. It was higher than a house and a constant shiver rolled across it diagonally. It was both white and black, covered in coal dust. I knew that a steam ship would sometimes rig a sail if the wind served. We were advancing on the mid-ships, the bridge housing. I couldn't have named all the ship's points, but some of the right words came to me from Baytown, the sea-side place where I'd been born. In going to Scarborough I had returned to the sea and that had been a mistake, but I could not just then have said why or how. I had gone too near the edge of land and somehow fallen off the edge, and the sea had taken me.
I turned about and saw the Captain, with gun held out.
'Where are we going?'
'Aft,' he said.
Another sea came, breaking white over the decks and soaking me through, but that was quite unimportant. The pressing matter was the pain in my temples. Coming fully awake seemed to have brought it on. I did not want to look left or right - that was one result of it; and I wanted to sit down. I wanted badly to sit down and be sick. After that, I wanted breathing time to remember who I was. I had been imagining myself in all the places I knew a certain Detective Stringer to have been and I knew that I had at one time kept a warrant card in my suit-coat pocket that would very likely carry that name, but I did not want to look at it just in case I had confused myself with someone else. We stopped at another ladder, and another wave flew at us. We were like the clowns in the circus who attract buckets of water wherever they go. I was meant to climb this ladder; the Captain held my arm as I did it.
The Last Train to Scarborough Page 4
