The Last Train to Scarborough

by Andrew Martin

It was a short rifle - barely three feet long - and Tommy stood there grinning with it in his hand, and rocking slightly on the footplate.

  'I'll be taking this in, if it's all right with you,' he said.

  He reached again into his kit bag, and took out a smaller bag made of cloth. From this he took a cartridge, which he put between his front teeth.

  'Hold on a minute,' I said.

  'I've another in the kit bag, and you can have that one,' said Tommy, still with the cartridge between his teeth. He pulled a lever behind the trigger; the gun broke, and he put in the cartridge. He snapped the gun shut once again.

  'See how it's done?' he said.

  He then pulled the lever again and the cartridge flew spinning upwards before landing on the footplate. Tommy caught it up, and frowned. 'Dented, that is,' he said, and he pitched it through the fire-hole door into the rolling white flames.

  'Shut the door, man,' I said. 'There's liable to be a bloody explosion.'

  But as I spoke there came only a soft, single pop from within the fire. I stared at Tommy, as we rattled into Malton.

  'You're a bit of a dark horse, en't you?' I said.

  'It's only little,' he said, running his hand along the stock. 'Carbine, point two-two calibre. Handy if you're on horseback or if you're a lad - or both. Yours'll be just the same, but you can have a feel of both, and take whichever one suits.'

  'Stow it, Tommy,' I said. 'Police don't go armed in this country ... Does the Chief know you've brought all this ironmongery?'

  'Why else would he send me?'

  That might be right.

  And as we rattled on through the night, I saw that in Tommy's eyes this gun - or these guns - made up for his crocked leg; gave him a value in this world that he didn't seem to get from driving an engine. The guns were the reason he'd come, and it was just like the Chief to have packed me off with someone like Tommy; part of his game of keeping me always on the jump. I was his favourite all right, but I paid the bloody price for it.

  'Look, this is a fishing trip, Tommy,' I said. 'Do you know what that means? We go in and keep our eyes skinned. I come back and write a report saying whether further questioning is required. There ought to be no bother. We ought to be perfectly all right.'

  'Ought to be?' he said. 'With these beauties, it's a surety. You know the firing positions, I suppose? There's standing ...'

  And he shouldered the weapon, with the dark streets of Malton rolling behind.

  'Kneeling...'

  At that, he did kneel down and aimed the gun in all the black dust of the footplate. I ought to stop him. Apart from anything else, the Chief had shown me the firing positions more than once, in hopes of getting me to take up shooting as a benefit to myself, the railway company I worked for, and the country I lived in.

  '... And prone.'

  Tommy baulked at that one, but I could tell he'd been contemplating lying flat to show me the third firing position. He was now stowing the rifle in the kit bag again. It appeared that he kept them wrapped in his clothes, towel, night-shirt; fairly buried they were by the time he'd finished. He then shut the locker door smartly, for Malton was coming up.

  Three minutes later we were at a stand in the empty station. It was 6.35 p.m., but you'd have thought it was midnight. Of train guard Leslie White there was no sign. A couple of people had boarded, one had alighted, and we were waiting for our starter signal and the whistle of the platform guard, who stood a little way off with hands clasped and head bowed as though someone had lately died.

  The signal gave a jerk, the platform guard looked up, and we were off. Tommy didn't wait for the whistle. For all that he seemed the most amiable of blokes, the business with the gun had set me thinking he was a bit crackers.

  With one hand on the regulator, he was talking now about how he hadn't told Joan, his intended, what he would be about in Scarborough; how he'd tell her after the event, on Wednesday, when they were going to the Electric Theatre on Fossgate; how they reserved seats for every Wednesday; how you could get ninepenny seats for sixpence if you reserved but no seats there were very comfortable, which was why for preference they'd go to the City Picture Palace on Fishergate, only it wasn't possible to reserve there so you had to take pot luck, which was no use because Joan always wanted an aisle seat, not on her own account but so that he, Tommy, could stretch out his leg - this even though he always said he didn't care where he sat. 'The leg does not stretch out, and that's all about it,' he told me, before embarking on a further speech about how he was looking for a house over Holgate way to move into with Joan ... and presently we were approaching Scarborough.

  Only half the lamps were lit, and the wide, dark terminus stood nearly empty. A long coal train was parked at the excursion overload platform, as though to send out a message: Forget about coming here for pleasure this time of year. Other coal wagons were scattered about on the approach roads, and a little pilot engine waited with a bloke leaning out of the cab. He'd no doubt be put to rounding up the wagons; meantime, he was smoking and watching us come in.

  Scarborough, being a terminus, had a strange arrangement that made the working complicated. We drew right up to the buffer beams on Platform One. We would then - as I supposed - uncouple our coaches, and the pilot would pull them back, releasing our engine. In the normal course of things we'd then work backwards to the engine shed, which was about a mile off, take on water, turn on the turntable, and head back to York. But our engine was not fit for the run back, or so we would make out.

  Tommy Nugent was already on the platform, and making his lop-sided way towards a door under a big lantern: the office of the night station master. He knocked, the door was opened, and in he went to start lying.

  I looked back, and the last of our half dozen passengers were stepping down from the carriages. They walked through the leaking steam and away towards the exit. Leslie White, the guard, was coming up through the steam as well. He stopped, and turned his specs in my direction.

  'Where's Tom?' he said, and I saw there was a wooden box and a folded board under his arm. I read the label on the box:

  The Empire Chess Set.

  'In there, mate,' I said, indicating the SM's closed door.

  White's spectacles tilted that way, then back to me.

  'You're running light back?'

  'Reckon not,' I said.

  And I indicated the steam whirling all around us.

  He gave the shortest of nods, turned on his heel, and went off. There was a crew room somewhere about. He'd book off there. When he'd gone, I was left quite alone on Platform One. I saw the pilot engine simmering away on the approach road, but the driver of it made no move. The door of the night station master's office opened, and Tommy stepped out.

  'He's telephoning through to the shed,' he said, and his voice echoed in the empty station. 'They'll look at the engine overnight.'

  The bloke in the pilot engine had now stirred himself, and was buffering up to the back of our coaches. Tommy was heading for the platform edge, prior to climbing down and uncoupling. But to spare his leg, I said I'd do it. I jumped down onto the filthy ballast, and began unscrewing the brake pipe. As I worked, I saw Tommy's boots, and he was talking at a great rate once again, as though to keep my spirits up.

  It'd only be the work of a moment, he said, to run up to the shed, make out the card describing our engine's defects, and book off. We'd have a bit of a spruce-up, but not too much because we did want to look like engine men after all, then it'd be off to Paradise to sort out that bad lot, perhaps with a stop for a pint on the way. He generally took a pint at the end of a turn did Tommy, if not several, and he didn't see why he should do any different this time. But I didn't know about that. Now that the journey was done I wanted to be off to the house of mystery as soon as possible, get in and out, have the whole business done with.

  It would be another half hour, though, before we untangled ourselves from the railway lands of Scarborough ...

  The pilot pulled back our coac
hes and took them off to the darkness, making for the tunnel that led to the main Scarborough sidings at Gallows Close, where excursion carriages by the hundred were stored in winter much as a lad's train set is stowed in a cupboard when school term begins. We then worked the J Class back to the engine shed, where Tommy fell into a long, echoing conversation with a very tall fitter, whose long brown dust-coat looked as though it might be hiding the fact that he was really two men, one standing on the shoulders of the other. The shed was dark, and smelt of the dying fires that had been dropped into the pits below the engines. Tommy Nugent's voice came drifting through the floating wisps of smoke.

  '... And that's how I know it's not the clack valve, you see. Now the stuff's not coming out full bore, so it's not completely shot, but of course the higher the pressure the faster the leak, and what it could really do with is ...'

  Why did he have to go on so? The valve needed replacing, and that was all about it. They'd be very unlikely to have the right one in the Scarborough shed so we'd have all the excuse we needed to hang about in the town for ages if we wanted. I wandered into the booking-on vestibule, where there was a little less floating smoke, and a little more light, thanks to two gas lamps sticking out over a wide, green North Eastern Railway notice board. I walked up for a look. I was informed that two new dummy signals were in place on the Scarborough approach, and a certain water tank had been discontinued.

  Company employees were to refrain from removing the newspapers from the engine men's mess, otherwise newspapers would no longer be provided. A small quantity of gunpowder had been found under a seat on a train running between Scarborough and Filey and a general warning was accordingly issued to all employees of the railway. A fellow from the shed had won a barometer at cycle racing.

  In one corner of the board was a space for notices of a more general nature. A seven-roomed house was for sale in Scarborough: 'In splendid condition - large garden.' My eye ran on to the notice directly beneath: 'PREPARE FOR A RAINY DAY!' I didn't read that, but moved directly to the one below.

  Paradise Guest House. All rooms excellent and nicely furnished. Baths, hot and cold water. Sea views. Five minute walk from station. Railway men always welcome, cheap rates for short or long stay. Apply Miss Rickerby at Paradise Guest House, 3 Bright's Cliff, Scarborough.

  Miss Rickerby - she sounded a respectable enough party. A picture composed in my mind of a thin, jittery woman who almost outdid her white dress for paleness, but I realised I'd called to mind a Mrs Riccall, who worked in the pharmacy on Nunnery Lane, York, and was known to the wife. Just then Tommy Nugent came limping into the vestibule.

  'Well, I'm finally shot of it,' he said, meaning the J Class. 'I've told 'em we'll come back in the morning about ten to see what's what.'

  'We'll try to,' I said. 'It all depends on events.' Tommy stood still under the gas with his cap in his hand, and he made his eyes go wide, and blew upwards, which

  caused his curly hair to move.

  'Quick wash and brush-up, then Paradise it is!' he said.

  I didn't show him the notice posted by or on behalf of Miss Rickerby because I'd finally worked out what was making him talk at such a rate: Tommy Nugent was spoiling for a scrap, and I didn't doubt he'd prove a brave man if it came to it. But that didn't mean he didn't have the wind up.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I might have been sleeping in my metal quarters as I heard the sound of a bell amid the sea roar and the creaking iron. It might have been the bell that woke me. There came another, and I counted five strokes in all. Were we within earshot of a coastal church?

  No, the bells were floating along with us; we had made away with them, carried them off. They rang them for the watches, and five strokes did not mean five o'clock. I thought again of the run to Scarborough, and how I ought to have known not to head for the sea. I figured a boat approaching the Scarborough harbour, lurching on the waves like a. drunkard; I called to mind the clock tower above Scarborough railway station, white against the Scarborough night, a foreign look to it somehow. I thought of the porter who was keen to lock the station gate, as though he had secret and illegal business to conduct there; I saw a heap of razors, safetys and cut-throats, and a hot bluish room. I saw again the gigantic needle hanging in the air. I began to count, and the needle faded.

  The station clock tower came up once more, and I knew I had a brain injury of some sort - a concussion perhaps - because I could not see why a station would have a clock, leave alone a clock tower? It was asking for trouble, because the clock would only prove the trains wrong. I adjusted my position against the chain. No. It was churches that had clocks in the main, but why did churches have clocks? They did not operate trains. They were not in the business of time, quite the opposite really. But they did have them, and that was fact. It seemed to me that my brain was befuddled as before, but I was no longer subject to the flashes of electricity, and the sea was perhaps a little calmer. The violent rocking had been replaced with a calmer up and down, like a great breathing.

  More visions came. I saw in my mind's eye an oil lamp burning red, a gas bracket giving a shaking white light.

  I saw a knife polisher on a kitchen table, a packet containing rat poison and again the lamp burning red, as though by thinking of light, I might create light.

  The chain room was darker than when I had been put into it. A tiny amount of moonlight came down through the hole that the chain went through, and this only illuminated the remainder of the chain. There was no mystery about where the thing went. It was not the Indian rope trick. This was the anchor chain - it ran up to the windlass on the fore-deck - and I had a suspicion that the anchoring of the boat, the end of the voyage, would be the end of me as well, because there would be policemen where we ended, and law and order generally - and the Captain meant to avoid that. Yes, it would be very dangerous even to sight land, because it would remind the Captain and the Mate that they would have to account to someone for holding me prisoner and I did not think they were over-keen to do that.

  I was too bloody cold.

  I sat against the chain and pulled the tarpaulin around me. I was supposed to be becoming a solicitor, a notion that seemed more than ever mysterious. I tried to recall having done some lawyering but could not. I had stood up many times in the police court but only as a policeman-witness. I had meant to be going into a quiet office over-looking the sleeping wagons of the old station, but there had evidently been a change of plan, and I would be going to the North Pole instead.

  Running my hand over the tarpaulin, it came to me that it was not smooth as a tarpaulin ought to be, and it did not have the tar smell that generally came off a tarp. The smell in the chain locker was paint and oil, and I wondered whether it might serve as a sail locker as well. I swept my hand again over the canvas - for that's what it was - and found the thing I was after before I knew I was looking for it: a stretch of rope. I could not find the end of it and for all I knew it was longer than the anchor chain, but a length of it between my hands made a weapon. I sat back holding the rope and feeling there would be no half measures from now on. When the grey Dutchman came back, I would be on him; I would be on him quicker than thinking.

  But after a while I set down the rope. It was too cold to hold. A short interval of time later, I pulled the oilskin more tightly around me, and made also to wrap myself in the great sheet, which might have been a sailor might have been something else again, but as I counted the faint ringing of a further six bells, it didn't seem to matter one way or another, and the only thing to do was to give in to the darkness, the rise and fall and the deep cold, and to sleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We had a scrub-down in the engine shed wash room. Then we walked back to the station along a cinder track, and climbed up onto Platform One. We exited the station through the main gates that a porter stood ready to padlock. It was only just gone seven, but he was shutting up shop. It was depressing, somehow, that a fair-sized station like this should close so early.r />
  I said to the porter, 'Leslie White, our guard ... has he come by?'

  'Ten minutes since,' he replied.

  With the station behind us, we stood at the top of Valley Bridge Road. A few wagons rolled through the streets but there were no trams to be seen, and precious few people.

  Turning towards Tommy, I said, 'Paradise is on Bright's Cliff - it's on the south side, off Newborough.'

  'Not far, is it?' he enquired, as we began to walk.

  He came to Scarborough a lot but evidently did not leave the station very much. I mended my pace to his as we made our way along the dark canyon of the Valley Road. Tall houses stood a little way off on either side, beyond the Valley Gardens. They were beautifully tended, those gardens - and famous for it - but now they were enclosed in darkness. Halfway along, the sea came into view below us, with the white of the wave tops standing out clearly on the black water.

  'It's getting up,' said Tommy, when he drew level with me.

  He'd expected the sea to be quiet, like the town.

  The tide was coming in, and the waves were like an invasion sweeping right up to the empty Promenade. The Grand Hotel was in view high on our left, the four turrets making it look like a great castle - a fortress against the sea. Lights shone at barely a quarter of the windows. The flags on the roof were all stretched out to the utmost by the sea wind.

  'Bright's Cliff is on the other side of it,' I said. 'We've come a bit out of our way.'

  'Oh, wait a bit,' said Tommy. 'I'm missing a bloody bag.'

  It was true enough: he only carried one of his two.

  'Reckon I left it at the gate,' he said. 'I put it down when you asked the bloke about Les White. Will you just hold on here?'

  'Is it the one with the guns in it?'

  'One of 'em,' he said, which I didn't quite understand.

  'I'll go,' I said, because I was twice as quick as him and I wanted to get on, but Tommy wouldn't have it. He would fetch the bag himself.