The Last Train to Scarborough

by Andrew Martin

'Nothing,' said the Mate'... He got wet,' he added, at length.

  'Why did he jump?'

  'Yes,' said the Mate. 'Why? I would like to know too.'

  Stumbling onto the deck, I saw that our ship had arrived at its rightful home, for it was now one of hundreds or so it appeared. Under the dark blue, roaring night sky, I had the impression of ships in lines stretching fore and aft; some were on the wide channel in which we were anchored - the Thames Estuary, of course - while others appeared to have been picked up and set down amid the streets. I saw a ship that had interrupted a line of street lamps; a ship at close quarters with a church. I had the impression of many smaller vessels patrolling the lines of the big ones like prison guards, and I had the idea that this was also a city of one-armed men, a city of cranes that were all lit by small white lights like Christmas trees. Most were still but every so often one would stir, as though it wanted to confer with its neighbour, or couldn't stand the sight of its neighbour, and so must turn aside. The fore-deck of our collier seemed to command the whole of the great docks but I knew I saw only a fraction of the mass; that Beckton stood only on the fringes of the London docks proper and that I had imagined beyond the limits of my vision.

  'Where's the gas works?' I asked the Mate, who was eyeing me with his chin sunk into the up-turned collar of his brass- buttoned coat. He shifted his grey-bearded chin so that it came clear of the collar, and indicated an expanse that shone moonlike a little way for'ard on our starboard side - it was perhaps a quarter of a mile off. I saw a jetty crowded with cranes, and two colliers docked there. All was silent and still on the jetties, but you could see the way things would go on come first light. High-level railway lines ran back from the jetties and these penetrated the factory buildings set down amid the great fields of pale blue dust; the lines smashed through the front walls, came out through the backs and ran on to the next, like lions jumping through hoops in the circus, only these were not factories but retort houses, where the coal was taken to be burnt and the gas made. The York gas works, at Layerthorpe, ran to one retort house but here were dozens, all tied together by the railway lines and set in the wide expanse together with their companions the gas holders, which were perfectly round, like great iron pies.

  'Have we made the turnaround?' I asked the Mate, and he didn't answer but indicated with the revolver that we were to walk along to the bridge house once more. As we made our way, there came one repeated clanging noise, echoing through the night, the beating heart of the London docks, as I imagined.

  Once again, there was nobody about on the fore-deck, and I saw nobody but the Mate prior to being sat down before the Captain in the chart room. The chart lay on the table as before, the oil lamp and the coffee pot on top of the chart. I doubted that the Captain had given it as much as a single glance on our way from the north. He and the Mate evidently navigated by second nature or force of habit. Running the ship was something they did casually, while attending to other business.

  The Mate gave the revolver to the Captain. Behind the Captain's chair, the door leading to the bridge was closed and there was no man out there. For the first time since waking, I noticed the silence of the ship.

  The Captain sat with arms folded, and his eyes never left me. I would have said he was a handsome man, although he looked a little like a marionette. There was something neat, cat-like about him.

  'Coffee?' he said, and he leant forward and poured me a cup.

  'Do you want some carbolic?'

  He knew his man had crowned me. I shook my head.

  'Food?'

  'Later,' I said, and the Captain flashed a look at the Mate that I didn't much care for.

  'Do you want to go to the heads?' enquired the Captain.

  'Come again?' I said.

  'For a piss,' the Mate put in,'... or the other.'

  He wouldn't say the word. They were quite gentlemanly, this pair, after their own fashion. I thought about the Captain's question: going by the state of my trousers I must have pissed myself at some earlier stage in the proceedings, but I was not going to boast about the fact if the stink coming off me hadn't made it evident. As for the other business - that had all somehow gone by the board. I shook my head.

  'Then carry on with your story,' said the Captain.

  'I'll start it if you tell me what happened to the kid.'

  No answer.

  'I reckon he was scared half to death,' I ran on.'... Now have we unloaded the coal? No, don't reckon so, because we're still sitting low in the water, and the ship'd be even filthier if we had done. When's the turnaround?'

  'For you,' said the Captain, 'it could be quicker than you think.'

  We eyed each other for a good while.

  'Well,' I said,'... where was I?'

  'Paradise guest house,' said the Captain.

  'I know, but where had I got up to?'

  It was the Mate who answered.

  'Your engine was all fixed, but you did not take it home with you.'

  He made me sound like a schoolboy with a broken toy. Still, it was no fault of his own that he was bloody foreign.

  'You should have taken it, you know,' said the Captain, suddenly leaning forwards over his sea chart. 'You should have done it.'

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Adam Rickerby let me into Paradise without a word. It was midday. I could hear laughter from the kitchen, but made directly for my own room at the top of the house. Climbing the stairs, I realised that Rickerby was following me, and when we came to the floor being decorated I turned and said, 'I'm staying another night.'

  'I know,' he said, in his blank-faced way.

  I turned and climbed the final staircase, and he climbed it two steps behind. On the attic landing, I turned again and he suddenly seemed enormous, the roof being lower there. I asked his habitual question back at him:

  'Can I help you?'

  'Aye,' he said, and he was lighting the gas on the little landing.

  When the jet was roaring, he turned and held out his hand, saying, 'Two shilling.'

  'Don't worry,' I said, 'I'm not going to make off.'

  'Who said you were?'

  Again, the flash of intelligence.

  I paid the money over, and once again he dropped it in his apron pocket. I took my great-coat off, walked into the little room, and put it on the bed. Rickerby looked on from the doorway.

  'You've ter put that in t'closet,' he said.

  I turned and eyed him. I was minded to tell him to clear off.

  'Why? I said.

  'It's damp.'

  'What of it?'

  'Wants airing ... You might take a chill.'

  'That's my look-out, isn't it? Why are you so interested in trains, Adam?'

  'Why are you ' he said, and he stepped into the room. He was bigger than he ought to've been. Something had gone wrong in the making of him. He took another step towards me. I said, 'Go steady now,' but he still came on, and I damn near told him I was a copper, and that he'd better quit the room. But he went right by me, picked up my coat and put it into the closet, threatening to have the whole thing over and setting all the hangers jangling.

  'Why do you like train smashes, Adam?' I called after him, as he left the room.

  'Because I don't care for trains,' he replied, and I'd broken through at last...

  'How do you mean, you'd broken through?' enquired the Captain, as the rattling of the swinging coat hangers was replaced by the sound of the Mate running his hand over his grey beard, the coldness of the chart room, and the gas smell put out day and night by the Gas, Light and Coke Company.

  The Captain had brought me up short. I'd barely started again with my recollections. I'd been pleased to have them returning so clear and complete, and I was forgetting that I might have to answer for them; forgetting about the gun that lay on the table, which was not two feet away from me, but it was only six inches from the Captain's right hand. It was a tiny piece, but it would do the job. What was it that Tommy Nugent had said? 'How big a
hole do you want to make in their heads, Jim?'

  'I don't know,' I said to the Captain.

  The Mate smoked a cigar from the tin with the picture of the church on it. He also had before him a plain glass bottle containing a brown spirit of some sort - whisky or rum, not Spanish sherry - and a small glass, which he filled from the bottle pretty regularly. It seemed to be his reward for the ship having reached its destination. But the Captain did not take a drink.

  'It was the first obvious connection,' I said. 'The two follow on, do you not see? Why and then because. It proved he wasn't such a blockhead as all that.'

  'You thought that he had been making a show?' the Dutchman put in, but it was the Captain who came up with the right word:

  'Shamming?' he said.

  'I'm not sure.'

  'What happened next?'

  'I went to down to the kitchen.'

  'And?'

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  In the kitchen, Amanda Rickerby had her hair down (which made her a different kind of beauty) and was brushing it while she sat at the kitchen table, which was crowded with new- bought groceries. Instead of 'hello', she said, 'Mr Fielding is very chivalrously peeling the potatoes,' and he was most unexpectedly working at the sink with his suit-coat off and shirt sleeves very carefully rolled.

  'It is extremely unhygienic of me to brush my hair in the kitchen,' Miss Rickerby added, and I saw there was pen and paper in front of her.

  'Don't worry on my account,' I said.

  'I'm most awfully sorry. I'll stop just as soon as I've finished.'

  Vaughan was not present. Adam Rickerby stood by the range, and paid me no mind. He was gazing at his boots, as he was being quizzed by a round, jolly looking woman - evidently Mrs Dawson the daily help.

  'How are we off for tinned rhubarb?' she was asking him.

  'We've none in,' said Rickerby.

  'Prunes?'

  'None in.'

  'Vanilla essence.'

  'Eh?'

  'Never mind. Rice?'

  'We've none in ... I reckon.'

  'Ah now, I detected a flicker of hope there, Mrs Dawson,' Howard Fielding said from the sink, moving a quantity of peeled potatoes onto the draining board.

  'There,' said Amanda Rickerby, who'd finished brushing her hair, and was putting it up. 'What do you think, Mr Stringer?'

  Being so curly, it didn't look much different; but it did look beautiful.

  'Good,' I said, thinking: As you know very well.

  'Good,' she repeated. 'But I wish there was a looking glass in here.'

  'It's not your boudoir, love,' said Mrs Dawson, who was now in the larder. 'And I wish you wouldn't move everything about from one week to the next. I know it's you and not Adam. He's perfectly neat-handed.'

  'We should put up a notice,' said Fielding from the sink. '"A place for everything, and everything in its place.'"

  He'd turned around now, and was smiling at me, drying his hands on a tea towel and giving me that questioning look of his.

  'Yes,' said Amanda Rickerby, 'but where would we put it?'

  It was then that I saw the glass of wine - white this time - at her elbow, and not only the glass but the bottle. 'But where would we put it?' she repeated, in a dreamy sort of way. Looking at me, she picked up her pen, and said, 'How about "excellent in quality"?'

  But it seemed that she was speaking to Fielding, even though she had her back to him, for he replied,' Superior in quality,' and Amanda Rickerby wrote that down. 'No tinned meat,' he added. 'You have that down?'

  Miss Rickerby nodded, more or less to herself. She then said, 'Tariff furnished on application,' and she gave me a lovely, mysterious smile at that. She'd seen that I'd noticed the bottle. It said 'Chablis' on the label, and I could not have pronounced that word but I knew it signified good wine.

  'Now I need fresh cheese,' said Mrs Dawson.

  'Can you have fresh cheese?' asked Amanda Rickerby. 'Mr Fielding's special reserve,' she said to me, indicating the bottle.

  'Help yourself to a glass of wine, Mr Stringer,' Fielding called out from the sink. 'It's a rare event to find the Burgundy whites in Scarborough.'

  'And he should know,' put in Miss Rickerby.

  She found a glass, and poured me some wine.

  'It's been standing in cold water since breakfast time,' she said, regaining her seat, 'and what do you think? Mr Fielding sent Adam with a sovereign to buy some lovely fish from the harbour.'

  Vaughan now entered in his cape, looking flushed and damp but in good spirits. I wondered where he'd been since the women's pub. Seeing the fish lying in white paper on the kitchen table, he said: 'Good-o, I like a bit of cod.'

  'It's haddock,' Fielding called out. He had now acquired his own glass of the Chablis, and it appeared that a regular party was in the making.

  'We're going to have it with cheese sauce,' said Amanda Rickerby,'... and creamed potatoes.'

  But of course she was not lifting a finger to help her brother, who was doing all the work with some assistance from Mrs Dawson.

  'Is this normal?' I said. 'For a Monday in Paradise?'

  'It is not, Jim,' said Vaughan. 'Potted shrimps and stewed fruit would be near the mark for normal. What are we having for pudding, Mrs Dawson? I fancy treacle tart.'

  'All right, Mr Vaughan,' she said, 'I'll just immediately make that for you.'

  'Hang about,' he said, 'I'll give you a hand.'

  And he walked into the larder and came out with a tin of Golden Syrup, which he passed to Mrs Dawson before sitting back down again and taking a copy of Sporting Life from the pocket of his cape. Mrs Dawson took the lid off the tin, saying, 'That's no earthly use,' and passed it to Amanda Rickerby, who peered in before handing it in turn back to Vaughan.

  'It's more like olden syrup,' she said, but the crack was for my benefit. She seemed most anxious for my approval of all her remarks, and so I grinned back at her - but were the smiles of a woman who was half cut worth the same as those from a sober one? And whenever I see someone drinking heavily in the daytime I wonder why they're about it, whereas evening drinking is only to be expected and quite above board.

  'Seems all right to me,' said Vaughan, inspecting the treacle and receiving a glass of wine from Fielding. He dipped his finger into the tin, and started licking the stuff.

  'It's just because we're all always so blue on Monday,' said Amanda Rickerby, 'and today we're going to be different, and you and I are going to have a lovely long talk, Mr Stringer.'

  I thought: At this rate, we're going to have a fuck, and that's all there is to it. All I had to do was let on I was married and that'd put an end to it, and I knew I should do it because if you fucked one woman who wasn't your wife, then where would it end? You might as well fuck hundreds, or at least try, and your whole life would be taken up with it.

  I saw that Fielding was eyeing me from his post at the sink.

  'Just at present, Miss Rickerby is composing an advertisement for the Yorkshire Evening Press! he said.

  'You mean you're composing it,' Vaughan interrupted. 'Old Howard's a great hand at writing adverts,' he added, turning to me. 'He advertised in the Leeds paper for a promising young man interested in post cards, and I thought: That's me on both counts! You see, I'd worked for a while on one of the travelling post offices, Jim.'

  'Which ones?' I enquired.

  'The Night Mail "Down".'

  I was impressed, for the Night Mail 'Down', with carriages supplied by the Great Northern and staff by the General Post Office, was the TPO.

  'You must have lived in London at that time,' I said, 'since you'd have worked out of Euston?'

  'Born in London, Jim,' said Vaughan, and I wondered whether that alone accounted for his appearing to be of a slightly superior class. I tried to picture him walking every morning through the great arch in front of Euston station.

  'Did three years on that,' he said, 'clerking in the sorting carriages and ... well, I saw the quantity of cards being sent.'
>
  'As a misprint in The Times once had it, Mr Stringer,' Fielding put in, 'the down postal leaves London every evening with two unsorted letters and five thousand engines.'

  I grinned at him.

  'Did you quit?' I enquired, turning back to Vaughan.

  'Chucked it up, yes. Didn't care for the motion of the train, Jim; gave me a sort of sea sickness.'

  'Mai de mer,' said Fielding, and everything stopped, as though we were all listening for the sound of the sea coming from just yards beyond the wall of the kitchen. Everything stopped, that is, save for Adam Rickerby, who had been put to chopping parsley with a very small knife, and was evidently making a poor fist of it. Mrs Dawson was eyeing him. I knew she was going to step in, and I wondered whether he'd really fly into rage this time - and with knife in hand. But there was something very kindly about the way she took the knife from the lad, saying, 'Let's do the job properly. You're worse than me, love.'

  With Mrs Dawson looking on, and the parsley chopped, Adam Rickerby then lowered the haddock into a big pot, poured in some milk, and set it on the range. At length, the room began to be filled with a sort of fishy fog. Theo Vaughan had finished his wine, and was now helping himself from the beer barrel on the table, saying 'You sticking with the wine, Jim?'

  In-between doing bits of cooking in consultation with Mrs Dawson, Adam Rickerby was trying to make things orderly in the kitchen. He was forever shifting the knife polisher about on the table, and presently took it away to the sideboard. Amanda Rickerby, disregarding her pen and paper, was now sipping wine at a great rate and saying things such as, 'I do like it when we're all in, and it's raining outside.' She then turned to me, enquiring, 'Tell us all about trains, Mr Stringer. Have you ever eaten a meal on one?'

  Adam Rickerby eyed me as I revolved the question. As a copper, I'd quite often taken dinner or luncheon in a restaurant car, usually with the Chief and at his expense. Would an ordinary fireman do it? Had I ever done it when I'd been an ordinary fireman, leaving aside sandwiches and bottled tea on the footplate? No.

  'Do you count light refreshments in a tea car?' I said.