The Necropolis Railway js-1

by Andrew Martin

  Coughing fearfully, he took me to Twenty-Nine and asked me to clean it.

  I mumbled, 'I am very sorry to say, Mr Nightingale, that when I was on the ride out yesterday with Mr Hunt, some things passed between us that -'

  But the Governor cut me off, saying, 'New trimmings are needed in all pots as well.'

  As I worked on that engine, my head was spirtning from the complication of everything and the smell of the linseed rags, and that night I was fair on the rocks for a sleep, but after a while the work became a sort of tonic, and I don't believe that Twenty-Nine had ever looked better by the time I'd finished going at her.

  I turned in without supper, and without replying to Smith. I wrote out my reply to that very vexing gentleman on the following day, the Friday, taking an age over setting down very little. Every word I could think of seemed highly dangerous. I cursed Smith for putting me to this, and I cursed the half-link for awaking all his suspicions of them in the first place. In the end I said nothing more than that I would be willing to meet him at his lodge if that was quite convenient, but leaving off time and date. Dad would have been horrified, for the usual compliments and pleasant touches were all left off. I was still set on going home, and with the decision made I felt easier: I had no doubt that I would never keep any appointment with Smith. Things went on as usual at the shed until the Thursday of the following week, 17 December, when Crook, handing me the token, said, 'I was thinking of you today.' 'Good thoughts, I hope, Mr Crook.'

  'Not especially,' he said, and took a long drink of tea. 'There's been an event,' he went on, his eyebrows jumping. 'An event touching on your arrival here.' 'Well…' I said, 'What?' 'It's not my place to tell you.'

  I walked out of Crook's room fast and in a high state of anxiety. The first thing I saw was my handiwork on show for all to see, for there was Twenty-Nine, gleaming, in full steam at the front of the shed and looking somehow like the point of an arrow on a day of marvellous blueness. I saw a fellow inside her feeding the fire irons into their hole. It was Vincent, and he was getting ready for a ride, all right – he must have finally passed up to the half-link.

  I began running along the barrow boards, crossing a hundred yards of track in no time, and when I came close I saw the driver was Barney Rose. He was wearing a black armband and lounging against the handbrake reading the Sportsman's Daily. 'What's up?' I said.

  'A. R. Wisdom is the new amateur billiard champion,' he said. 'No sporting matter too small to be missed,' said Vincent. Then he turned to me and said, 'We've got a special on.' He meant the funeral of a toff. "They've put you up, then,' I said. He nodded, as if too full of happiness to do anything more. 'As from today, I'm a full half-link man.' He had a grin on him like a street knocker – I'd never seen his teeth before. Then I realised what he'd said. 'Who's dead?' I asked.

  Vincent smiled at me. He seemed to have no objection to my questioning this time, but he wasn't answering. Rose was saying to him, 'Have you heard of A. R. Wisdom?' Vincent was at the injectors, looking down from the cab, checking the flow from the exhaust before bringing in the cut off and sending the water into the boiler.

  'Who's dead?' I asked again over the rushing of the water and the clanking of the pipe and Barney Rose saying, 'I never have and that's for certain. All the same, there was a capital attendance at the game.' As he turned over a page I asked my question again, even though I knew very well by now what the answer would be.

  Vincent leant down to turn off the injector, then stood up and looked at me. 'Mr Rowland Smith,' he said, sticking out his chin. 'I believe you were acquainted with the gentleman.'

  I looked at him as hard as I could, and he did the same to me, but at the last moment I turned away because I fancied he was going to grin.

  I thought: if I had replied to Smith earlier he might still be alive.

  Rose took out his pipe, sneezed, and said: 'Brilliant innings by Bosanquet yesterday.' Then I heard the Governor walking up, or rather I heard the sound of his cough. He asked me to come down from Twenty-Nine, and I followed him out over the glittering tracks, with Rose and Vincent no doubt staring after us.

  There was a newspaper under his arm, and he passed it to me folded in such a way that I had a choice of two articles: 'NEW AMBASSADOR TO AMERICA', I read, 'CORDIAL SPEECHES' – that was the wrong one. The other was under a headline reading, 'IN THE CORONERS' COURTS'. 'In the Camden Court,' I read, 'Mr Laurence Drew conducted an enquiry with reference to the death by fire in his apartment of Mr Rowland Hubert Smith, aged thirty-nine, of Grenville Mansions, Dartmouth Park…'

  So there were no letters after his name, and here was the proof. I continued to read: Mr George Collins, a doorkeeper, said that he had noticed smoke pouring into the lobby at 7 p.m. on Friday 11th of December. On rushing upstairs he determined that the smoke was coming from the apartment of Mr Smith, which was to the rear of the building on the lower floor, but the smoke was too dense and the heat too great for him to enter. After raising the alarm within the building, Mr Collins was able swiftly to alert the fire brigade at Kentish Town, the apartment block being equipped with a telephone. The brigade turned out shortly after, at 7.30 p.m., and they succeeded in dousing the flames at 8.30 p.m., having run their hoses into the garden of the apartments and directed them through the windows of the flat. Mr Smith was found on the remains of his bed, horribly burnt, and quite dead. Mr Collins stated that he had spoken a few words with the deceased on his arrival at the flat from his business. He had said that he was tired and in need of a good rest, but otherwise seemed to be in the best of spirits. Mr Collins also stated that Mr Smith was a prodigious smoker of cigarettes. He had never seen him without one in his hand. The coroner conjectured that he had lain down on his bed for a brief rest with a cigarette still in his hand, and that this had sadly caused the bed to catch alight. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

  When I'd finished the article, I told the Governor of the letter I'd received and the one I'd posted two days later, which Smith would have received on the day of his death.

  He nodded for a while, and said, "The police think the fire might have had a bit of help.' 'A bit of help from what?'

  The Governor took a box of cigars from his pocket. 'A can of paraffin.' 'That's not in the paper.' 'They don't let on that they know that kind of thing. He was done in' he said, taking a cigar from the box. 'Will there be a police investigation?' 'There will if I can help it' he said.

  We strolled over the barrow boards, further away from Twenty-Nine. We both looked about to see whether Vincent and Rose were watching us, but Rose had gone underneath and Vincent was at his fire. There were engines coming off-shed all about us, and I had the sensation of many other men turning around on their footplates to keep me in view for as long as possible.

  'Smith told me he believed Henry Taylor was murdered,' said the Governor. He lit the cigar, and neither one of us spoke for quite a while. 'He had the idea that you were a bright spark' he said, blowing smoke.

  'I was sent here to be his eyes and ears,' I said quite suddenly. The Governor nodded once. 'Why didn't he tell me that's what he was about?' I said. 'I expect… Because then you would have known.'

  Crook the gatekeeper was prowling past us. The Governor smoked for a little while longer, looking across to Twenty-Nine, which was doing the same. 'As from this morning,' he said, 'Vincent is firing on the half-link. I couldn't keep him off any longer.'

  'Why were you keeping him off to begin with, Mr Nightingale?'

  'Because I didn't like him; I was obliged to give him a few firing turns, but I wanted him in the shed as much as possible where I could watch him.' 'He's Hunt's nephew, isn't he?'

  The Governor nodded. 'But Taylor and Mike were brought on by myself – well, it was Mr Smith's doing, really. He wanted to change the way things went on here, with any engine man thinking he could get a start for his own grandmother if he wanted. We were worried over what happened to Taylor, and told the investigators so, although we could never pro
ve anything. But we also told them we were set on not going back to how things were. Any new lad corning in would have to be from outside, otherwise… well, they'd have won the day, wouldn't they?' 'So that's how I got my start.' 'I expect that now you know, it all seems a bit heartless,' said the Governor after a while. 'I was to be a sort of spy.'

  'I was under instructions to watch out for you on-shed,' he said, 'but also to let you see as much as possible of the half-link off-shed, where their tongues might be a bit looser, so that meant getting you on a few trips with them. I knew Mr Smith had it in mind to quiz you, and when Mike got bashed he said it was going to be done directly, but I don't suppose he had the time until he came to write you that note.'

  'How could Mr Smith control so much here, Mr Nightingale, after he'd left the South Western?'

  'It was his aim always to come back. Our lot were only lending him to the Necropolis, so to speak.' 'Why exactly is Mr Hunt on the half-link?' The Governor drew on his cigar.

  'Because he's a fucking socialist, and you've always got to watch out for those fellows.' He was smoking and smiling at the same time, which made a strange sight. 'Hunt ran the strike here in 1901, so they cut him down to size.' 'Who's they?'

  'Who's they? Rowland Smith, giving orders to the District Locomotive Superintendent, with a little help from myself, I don't mind admitting.'

  He gave me time to let all this sensational stuff sink in, then he said, 'Now look, the shed's not safe for you and I want you out. There's going to be a bit of a paper war over it, but I can get you a start in any station on the territory.' 'You mean I'll be back portering?' I said. 'Nothing's fixed up' he said.

  One of the Atlantics came out alongside us under steam, sending out a mass of blackness. 'I'll have that bastard' said the Governor, eyeing the chimney.

  Why did I not take the chance to flee? I did not want to go back to portering, but there again I could see the moving shadow coming for me, and present in my mind always was the cemetery, with the railway on hand to take me there on a one-way ride. It was better to be a porter imprisoned in a too-tight, over-decorated waistcoat than to take that trip before my time. But I now somehow knew that all these horrors had always been waiting for me, because becoming an engine man was no mere matter of book learning. Engine men, I could not deny, looked different from me, and they looked different because they had been through just such a thing as this. This was the life of London and the life of men, where threats and fears came, and they had to be stood down. 'I'd rather stick at the job' I said.

  'All right' said the Governor. 'For now you can, but watch out.' He smoked, watching me for a while with a shrewd look. 'Can I go up with Rose and Vincent today?'

  I thought there would be long odds against this, but the Governor just shrugged: 'Don't see what harm you can come to on a jaunt like that – the entire board of the Necropolis is going along from what I've heard. You'll need a ribbon, though.' He meant a black one. 1 can tear up some rag,' I said.

  'I nearly forgot to ask' he called to me with smoke tumbling from his mouth as I set off for the rag store, 'have you got any notions about all this business?'

  'No,' I called back, because it seemed the best answer at the time. 'I can't think who did for Taylor, Mike and Smith, and,' I added, 'I don't know who murdered Sir John Rickerby of the Necropolis Company either.'

  Now it was the Governor's turn for a shock, and I fancied there was greyness mingled in with the redness of his face. 'Oh Christ, let's leave him out of it,' he said.

  I walked off to the rag store revolving two thoughts: that Rowland Smith had given me a shot at the footplate, and that I now knew for certain that he had also put me in a very dangerous spot and used me as a spy. I did not give much time to mourning that gentleman.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday 17 December continued

  I came back from the rag room with a blackish ribbon – or rag, if you were going to be particular – on my arm. The Governor took me up onto the footplate of Twenty-Nine, and there was no trouble as we picked up just two from the funeral set: a passenger carriage and a hearse. As we came into the Necropolis, Rose was half driving, half reading the paper, and every so often exclaiming, 'Oh, my eye,' at some new sporting sensation. Vincent was swanking at his regulator and fire, keeping the pressure at dead on 180 per square inch, which was the right mark for Twenty-Nine. I was staring at them both without minding if they knew it.

  We backed into the Necropolis station, where a small crowd waited on the platform, all in fine black coats and toppers. They were all men and looked like a lot of ravens, but one of the ravens had the lined and worried head of Erskine Long, the Necropolis chairman. I watched the coffin come along after the last of the mourners had climbed up. Smith's coffin was as exquisite as his coats. It had panelling, fancy handles and a mass of hothouse flowers on top, and I could tell the Necropolis bearers – not Saturday Night Mack's gang, but a smarter-looking lot – were struggling with the weight of it, even though I guessed there would be little of the man himself left inside. The door marked 'first' was opened to receive the casket.

  When I went back onto the footplate, Vincent was at his fire again, and Rose was putting something back in the box under his seat. I had seen him do that before.

  Vincent put coal on as I hosed down the cab. After being given the off, Rose settled down to smoking his pipe and driving, both of which he did very badly, knocking ash everywhere and repeatedly relighting his pipe, and jabbing on the vacuum brake instead of brushing it on in the approved way. So we made jerky progress as we passed through the signals and speed limits of the Southern Division.

  As we came to the edge of the city, I ran out of jobs to do on the footplate and looked at the passing scenery while a million questions raced through my head. It was a queer business, travelling south of London. The countryside, when it came, was of a very pretty sort, although more comfortable than I was used to, with bright green fields, churches covered in ivy and winding, dusty lanes with tempting inns dotted along the way. But there was no end of building taking place, and you'd get whole streets going up in the middle of fields. You could never quite say that London had finished, and it was vexing because you thought it ought to.

  Towards Brookwood, I thought London had really given up the ghost, but then we suddenly rose out of a cutting and I looked down into a wood and saw men with axes and machines steaming away. London, according to the Necropolis idea, could not hold all of its dead, but it could not hold all of its living either, so it had to be ever restless, ever growing.

  After a lot of fussing about from Rose, we were into the Necropolis running, bunker-end first, along the single track between the lines of mighty trees. We passed by North Station, which seemed closed up and forgotten like a cricket pavilion in winter. As we approached South Station, however, there was a parson in strange togs waiting on a bench with a pipe in his mouth. Smith must have been church.

  The parson stood up as we came closer but did not knock out his pipe until after Rose had struck the buffer bars with his usual bang. I stepped off the footplate and saw the four bearers put the wondrous casket onto their shoulders. They aimed themselves towards the little church that went along with South Station. A moment later the procession was off, with the parson in the lead and the Necropolis board in a semi-march – all save the man at the back, the youngest of the lot, who swished at the tops of the grass with his stick. As they went on, though, they did begin to fall in step in a ramshackle sort of a way, like loose-coupled waggons, and presently they disappeared from view.

  It now struck me that I was alone with Barney Rose and Vincent, and at their mercy if they decided to try something. And no sooner had this thought come to me than I heard a crack, like a gunshot, in the bushes, and turned about to see a bony fox racing through the graves. I called up to the pair on the footplate: 'Did you see that?' Looking up, I saw Rose with a bottle of some spirit at his lips. I looked away so as to give this horrible vision a chance to disappea
r, and when I looked back the bottle had gone.

  Vincent was working next to him, putting a bit of oil on the fire-door runners, and for the first time I felt sorry for the fifty-face kid, having to do his best to learn from a semi-drunk. 'He only takes a nip,' he said, looking at me, then added, 'You'd better not split.' I just stood there dumbfounded.

  'Smith's gone,' said Vincent, 'But there's still a lot you can blab to if you're daft enough to try.'

  Rose leant forwards and threw the bottle, and cork after it, into the fire, slamming the door immediately after. 'Cat's out of the bag,' Barney Rose said, pushing past Vincent and coming down onto the platform of South Station. As he stood next to me there was a wrong smell about him, and I now realised it had always been there, that it was the reason he'd been looking away from me after the death of Mike.

  'You're risking it a bit, aren't you,' Vincent called down to Rose, 'with top brass riding on the train?'

  'That's the whole reason for it,' said Rose. 'We've got a carriage-load of swells with us today… fellow's got to get his screw somehow.' He turned to me and smiled his usual smile – which now looked different. 'We nearly had White-Chester up,' he went on, 'but he's sent his excuses, or so I've heard. I would've needed a whole other bottle if that gent had shown his face.'

  'You'd have been stood down straight away if he'd seen you, though,' I said. 'Leave off,' said Vincent. 'I don't know,' said Rose. 'The Necropolis lot are one thing, but White-Chester likes a drop himself, or so I believe.' 'But he's not driving a train,' I said.