I looked again towards the land. It was not above a mile away, and the famous Captain Webb had swum twenty-five, or whatever was the width of the Channel. But he had trained for years; he was in peak condition and had covered himself in grease, whereas I was half dead from cold to begin with. A sudden burst of sea came, and the crash of the wave was replaced by the sound of a bell in the darkness, and this one was not aboard the ship. It approached - or we approached it - at a great rate, and it came into view after half a minute, clanging inside a revolving iron cage. Here was a warning buoy of some sort, a tattered black flag flying from the top of it. Perhaps we were too close to land; perhaps this was the best chance I would get to strike out for the shore. But there were no welcoming windows to be seen now, just a low line of cliffs that rose and fell, but always in darkness. I wondered whether such continuous blankness could occur in my own country, or whether some disaster had over-taken the place since I'd left.
I was still held in check by the Mate. I glanced at the face of the kid at the mid-ships. He looked pale in the white light of the moon and the white light of the lantern; his eyes were restless, but I did not care for the expression that came over his face when they landed on me.
'I would not be you, mate,' that look of his said, 'for worlds.
'
Chapter Seventeen
The sitting room seemed to be filled with the night sky and the black sea. A man with his back to me stood at one of two tall windows, gazing out. Another, younger man lay on a couch. The room was surely the biggest in the house, and it might once have been two rooms - something about the way the floorboards rose to a gentle peak in the middle made me think so; and the way that the two tall windows did not quite match. They seemed to go in for knocking down walls in that house, as I would later discover.
The room was very old. The cornices were crumbling a little, the fireplace was small. Worn blue rugs were scattered over the black boards, but they were too widely spaced. Black and blue: they didn't set each other off right; they were the colours of a bruise. The articles of furniture seemed few and far between. Most notable of these was a very black upright piano, which had a wall to itself and was set somewhat at an angle by the slope of the floor. The man at the window stood some distance from an occasional table that held two books. I could make out the title of one: A History of the British Navy. The man at the window turned about. He was the fellow who'd answered the front door to me, only he looked older now. He stepped aside, as though politely allowing me a view of the sea.
On the harbour wall stood the harbour master's house and the lighthouse, both white. Against the black sky, the two together looked like a glowing white church with a round tower. The man who'd stepped aside was watching me as I noticed the scene on the dark beach, just to the right of the harbour. Two lines of men holding ropes hauled a boat towards the waves, beckoned on by a man at the front, who wore a long oilskin. From this distance the men looked tiny, the whole scene ridiculous.
The guardian of the window put out his hand.
'I'm Fielding,' he said.
'Stringer,' I said.'... I saw a maroon fired.'
He tipped his head to one side, as though questioning what I'd just said, although he was smiling as he did it.
'I saw it from my room,' I said.'... the room on the top floor.'
'Yes,' he said. 'It is the only one presently available.'
The man Fielding was trim, probably in the late fifties or early sixties, with carefully brushed grey hair, a high waistcoat, spotted tie very neatly arranged with a silver pin through it, and a decent, if rather worn, black suit under the smoking jacket. He seemed very proper and mannerly, although he had not yet introduced me to the man lying on the couch, who had not yet troubled to rise. I gave a bolder glance in his direction. He had a droopy moustache, and, as I thought, a lazy eye.
'Are you coming aboard tonight?' Fielding enquired.
'Coming aboard?' I said, shaking his hand. 'Well, I don't see why not!'
It was an idiotic answer, but the man smiled kindly.
'This is the ship room, after all,' he said, and he tilted his head again, as though I should really have known that already.
'That's because you over-look ships, I suppose,' I said with a nod towards the harbour.
'And are over-looked by one,' said Fielding, and with a neat little gesture, he indicated the wall behind me where hung a painting of a ship - two ships in fact, not sailing ships but steam vessels moving with great purpose through moonlit black and blue waters, the one behind looking as though it was trying to catch the one in front. What did you say about a painting if you wanted to come over as intelligent and educated? That it was charming? That it was in the school of . . . something or other?
'But we are diverted tonight by the one below,' said Fielding, and he faced the window again, spinning on his heel. He wore little boots, with elasticated sides - good leather by the looks of it, but perhaps with the cracks covered over by a good deal of polish, like boots in a museum. They made him look nimble, anyhow.
'But is there a wreck?' I said, for I was determined to crack the mystery of the maroon.
'I should hope not,' said the man on the couch.
He lay completely flat, like a man waiting to be operated on. He looked to my mind ... naive. It was a word of the wife's. I was naive too apparently, but surely not as naive as this bloke. His drooping moustache and long hair looked like a sort of experiment. He'd have a different moustache in a month's time, I somehow knew. He wore a greenish suit and a yellow and brown waistcoat, and that was naive too. It was meant to make him look like a swell, but he just looked as though he'd been at the fancy dress basket.
'Rehearsal,' he said, nodding down towards the beach.
'It is a lifeboat practice] Fielding corrected him, in a tone not completely unfriendly, but which suggested he'd held off from introducing the horizontal fellow because he hadn't really thought it worth doing.
'I don't like the look of that sea,' said the man on the couch, who had rolled to face the windows. 'It's sort of coming in sideways.'
He was perhaps five years older than me - middle thirties. Thin, with a high, light voice and long nails, not over-clean, I noticed, as at last he stood up, crossed the room, and put out his hand. He did not exactly have a lazy eye, but a droopy moustache, which pulled his whole face down, as though trying to make a serious person of him. We shook hands, and I saw that there was a black mark where his head had been on the couch.
'Stringer,' I said.
'Vaughan,' he replied.
He then gave a friendly smile that clashed with the downturn of his moustache, nodded towards the man at the window, and said, 'I believe it ought to be first name terms in this house, even if Howard here won't have it.'
'Then it's James,' I said.
'Now is it Jim or is it James?' he said, and he pitched himself back onto the couch in a somehow unconvincing way. I had him down for a clerk and the other, Fielding, for a head clerk, in which case I would outrank them both if and when I became a solicitor. But they both talked to me in the way people do when they want to make themselves pleasant to the lower classes.
'I'm Jim to my friends,' I said, feeling like a prize dope.
'I'm Theodore, which is a bit of bad luck,' said Vaughan. 'You can call me Theo if you like, Jim.'
'Theo, meaning God,' said Fielding from his post near the window, 'and doron, meaning gift. You are a gift from God, Vaughan. What do you say, Miss Rickerby?'
And he tilted his head at the beautiful landlady who was watching us from the somewhat crooked doorway, leaning against the door frame with folded arms, which I did not believe I'd ever seen a respectable woman do before. She said nothing to Fielding but just eyed him, weighing him up.
A gift from God?' Mr Fielding said again. 'What do you say to that, Miss R?'
'His rent is,' she said, and smiled, but only at me, causing me to blurt out 'But...' without the slightest notion of what I was objecting to.
I turned to the window, and found a way out of my difficulty in the scene on the beach.
'But... who's the one at the head?' I said, looking down at the men dragging the boat on the beach.
'That's the captain of it,' said Vaughan.
'The coxswain,' said Fielding.
'Cold tea tonight is it, Miss R?' enquired Vaughan, who was still lying down, but now propping his head on his right arm.
'In honour of the new arrival,' she replied, smiling at me, 'we are to have a hot tea.'
'Oh,' I said, 'what time?'
'About nine,' she said, smiling and backing away from the door.
'Of course Mr Stringer is not likely to be keen on that word,' said Fielding, who was still looking through the window, now with a rather dreamy expression.
'Supper?' I said. 'I should say I am keen on it.'
'"About",' said Fielding, still gazing down at the sea. 'You're a railwayman. No train leaves at about nine o'clock.'
'Well,' I said, 'you'd be surprised.'
'Perhaps,' he said, smiling and turning towards me, 'but I do have some experience of railways.'
Nice, I thought. I've an expert to contend with.
'Me too,' said the man on the couch.
But somehow I didn't believe Vaughan.
'It's not tolerated on the railway,' Fielding said, 'but in this house it is the lynchpin: "about" ... "roughly" ... "there or thereabouts". It's the Lady's way.'
I couldn't tell whether he was cross about it, or just making fun.
'What did you say was wrong with your engine, old man?' enquired Vaughan, who'd evidently had the tale from Miss Rickerby.
'Leaking injector steam valve,' I said.
'Doesn't sound too bad. Couldn't you sort of wind a rag around the blinking thing?'
'There were other things up with it as well,' I said.
'Like what, Jim?' said Vaughan, as Fielding looked on smiling.
I thought: Are these two in league?
'Oh,' I said, 'stiff fire hole door . . . some clanking in the motions.'
'You know, I think I've had that...' said Vaughan.
Fielding shook his head at me, as if to say: 'Whatever are we to do with him?'
'You worked on the railways, you say?' I asked Vaughan.
'After a fashion. Tell you about it over a pint, if you like?'
This was a bit sudden.
'Where?' I said, feeling rather knocked.
'I know a decent place in the Old Town.'
I was thinking: What is he? Alcoholic? Because we'd barely met.
'I generally take a pint before supper,' he said.
Howard Fielding had turned towards the window and gone dreamy again. There seemed no question of him coming along.
'Hold on then,' I said to Vaughan. 'I'll just get my coat.'
'Meet you in the hallway in two minutes,' he said, and it seemed he meant to remain in the room with Fielding until then.
Besides fetching my coat I would change my shirt and put on my tie in place of my necker. This way, I'd be able to hold my own at supper, which was to be supper after all, and not 'tea'.
As soon as I stepped from the sitting room, the door closed behind me.
Who had closed it?
Odds-on it had been Fielding, except that he had been over by the windows, and furthest off.
I climbed the narrow stairs between the faded green stripes. The stair gas made more noise than light - a constant, rasping exhaling. Bronchitic. It troubled me somehow, and here came the old man, glaring from under his curls. He ought to have been happy with hair like that. I reached the attic storey, pushed open the door of my room, and I was checked by a sharp bang.
By the low, red light of the oil lamp I saw what had happened: the card had once again fallen from the window frame, and a surge of sea wind had hurled itself at the glass. I sat down on the bed, inched along towards the end of it, and jammed in the card once more. Coming away from the window, I swung my legs in such a way that my boots clattered against the first of the two scuttles on the hearth - the one that held the kindling and paper - and knocked it over, spilling the papers.
There were many folded sheets from the Scarborough Post. 'Yesterday the sea was black with bathers,' I read, under the heading 'Shortage of Lifeguards Complained Of. The paper was dated Tuesday, 25 August. There were also handwritten papers headed 'Menu'. The first offered a choice of celery soup or shrimp paste and biscuits; then beef and macaroni stew could be had, or cottage pie. No date was given, but just the word 'Wednesday'.
I looked down again, and saw another piece of paper - this one printed - and it looked familiar. It was a fragment torn from a booklet I'd often seen but never owned: the rule book for North Eastern company engine men. I reached down slowly, and with shaking hand caught it up: 'On Arriving at the Shed', I read. And then, beneath this heading, 'On arriving at the shed, your engine requires to be thoroughly examined.'
Was it Blackburn's? Had this been his room? I thought of his black eyes reading it. Or had they had another engine man in since? If it was Blackburn's property, how did it come to be in the scuttle?
I began to put the papers back, including the torn page from the rule book, but I was checked by a further discovery: a thin item, small, brown and reduced almost to the condition of scrap paper, but still recognisably a cigar stub. According to Tommy Nugent, the limit of Blackburn's vices was the smoking of the odd cigar.
I sat still and heard only the eternal sighing of the gas from the landing beyond; I looked at the wallpaper: the ship in danger over and over again. I thought of Blackburn. Surely he was at the bottom of the sea.
I sat breathing deeply on the bed, telling myself that I could breathe whereas Blackburn could not. That was the main difference between the two of us. I thought of the Chief, who had sent me to this old, faded house and its queer inhabitants. Who, I wondered again, was the man the Chief had been talking to in the station when I'd come down from the tram?
I quickly changed my shirt and fixed the smarter of my two neckers in place without aid of a mirror. I stepped out of my room and was confronted by the cupboard door over-opposite. The man Vaughan would be waiting in the hallway but...
I pulled at the little door. At first, it wouldn't come. I tried again, and it flew open. The gas was saying 'Shuuuuush' as I looked down to see a crumpled paper sack: 'Soda 6d' read the label. There was a bottle of ammonia, a beetle trap. Propped against the wall a shrimp net with a long, uncommonly stout handle, two faded sunshades, two folded wooden chairs. I closed the door feeling daft for having opened it. What had I expected to find? The bleached bones of fireman Blackburn?
In the hallway, Miss Rickerby waited instead of Vaughan. She looked very grave, standing sideways before the front door, under the old glass of the fanlight, with arms folded. She turned and saw me, and slowly and surely she began to smile. She seemed to find great amusement and delight in the way we kept coinciding about the place, like two holiday makers repeatedly clashing in a maze. Vaughan now appeared from the side of the stairs, with coat over his arm, and hat in hand.
'Old Jim and I are just off for a quick pint, Miss R,' he said.
'We keep a barrel of beer in the scullery so that the gentlemen don't have to bother,' Miss Rickerby said, addressing me directly as before.
'But it's the Two X,' said Vaughan, putting on a brown bowler, 'and I generally go for the Four. Besides, I like a smokewith my glass of beer.'
'I don't mind smoking in the least,' said Miss Rickerby, again addressing me even though it was Vaughan who'd spoken. 'I like to watch it.'
It wasn't a coat that Vaughan was putting on, but an Inverness cape, and he'd acquired from somewhere a paper package.
'Shall I hold that for you?' said Miss Rickerby, indicating the package. 'That way you'll be able to use your arms.'
Vaughan clean ignored her, but just carried on wrestling with the cape.
'What about the lifeboat?' Miss Rickerby asked him.
'They've go
t it into the water,' he said, the cape now positioned about his shoulders.
'Well,' said Miss Rickerby, 'I suppose that's a start.'
She was responding to Vaughan, but she addressed the remark, and the accompanying smile, at me. With the cape on, Vaughan looked like a cross between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Theatrical, anyhow. He was trying his best to stuff the package into the pocket of the cape, but it wouldn't go. Meanwhile Miss Rickerby had taken a step towards me. I thought: There's nothing for it but to reach out and touch her. Begin with the hair. It was a little way in her eyes. Move it aside. That would be only polite ...
'Goodbye, you two,' she said, reaching out and opening the door for us. 'Don't be late back.'
And in spite of that word 'two', she'd again looked only at me.
Chapter Eighteen
We turned right at the top of Bright's Cliff, and were soon walking along the narrow cobbled lanes of the Scarborough Old Town. The gas lamps showed lobster pots, upturned boats and other bits of fishing paraphernalia at every turn, as though the sea had lately washed over and left these items behind. The sea wind came and went according to which way we turned in the narrow streets. Vaughan walked leaning forwards with his hands in his pockets and the mysterious paper parcel under his arm. Directly on leaving Paradise, he'd blown his nose on a big blue handkerchief, and this had left a trail of snot hanging from his moustache.
'Are there any other guests in the house apart from you, me and Fielding?' I enquired.
The Last Train to Scarborough Page 10
