The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin

  As the remover drove off, George bent over and picked up a boot that the man had dropped, saying: 'Did you smell the ale on his breath? And to think I could have hired the van and done the job myself for half the price.'

  'Where did you get him from?' I said.

  'From the small ads of the Courier,' said George, 'the very small ads. Should have known not to take a chance on a fellow who can't run to a line of bold type.'

  'He did seem a bit surly,' I said.

  'Devilish surly,' said George Ogden, 'and a butterfingers to boot.'

  He then lowered himself down to pick up a book that had also been dropped.

  This, I saw, was Letters of Descartes again - in Everyman like the last.

  'You've two copies of that, you know,' I said. 'I saw one earlier.'

  'Well,' said George, 'I take six a month from the catalogue, and sometimes I pick one I've had before.'

  'Why?'

  'Oh, you know, I do it by accident . . . I'm nuts on literature,' he went on. 'I've got twenty-four Everyman's now, and when I get up to thirty, I'm going to start reading them.'

  We had stepped inside the house by now, and the kettle was screaming. I walked into the scullery and called to George: 'Cup of tea?'

  'Don't mind if I do.' I made a pot, and as it was mashing took George upstairs to show him to his room; I pointed out the door at the back that gave on to the iron staircase leading down into the yard. 'You'll probably want to use these mostly, so you can come and go under your own steam,' I said. 'The outside privy is yours; there's use of the scullery, and if you want a sit down in the parlour from time to time, that'll be quite all right I'm sure.'

  The stuff had just been put into the room in any old way, with most of the plants off their tables and sitting at crazy angles on the truckle bed. And there were heaps of packets of biscuits on the floor. George Ogden trooped through all this rubble towards the door leading to the outside stair, and the thin window alongside looking out to Hill Street and beyond. Well, the window may have been thin but as much as possible was trying to come through it. You could see across the mill tops to Beacon Hill, with its own few mills, including Hind's, from which this bright morning smoke was dreaming away to the right; and then, more directly below us on the hillside, were all the things the factories had made: the Drill Hall, the courts, the hotels, the Palace Theatre, and all the little houses in between, cluttering the place up like the pawns on a chess board. I threw open the window for George and the room was filled with the blaring of a barge on the canal wharf, and the faint cry, rising up from the Joint, of 'Halifax!', which a certain old porter set up whenever a train came in.

  The wife was at the door of the room; George was looking at her, and it was strange to think that another man was seeing her morning self, with a sleepy delay in her eyes, and her hair tangled. 'Good morning, Mrs Stringer,' said George, and he bowed. There was no other word for it.

  'Halifax!' came the cry from the station once again, and it was as though we were all just waking from a dream, and needed to be reminded where we were.

  'I hope you will be quite comfortable here, Mr Ogden,' she said. 'Of course you will always use the stairs at the back.' She had a paper in her hand, which she gave to him.

  'They're good quarters,' he said, 'just what I need to be going on with.'

  'Please remember’ said the wife, 'there's use of the scullery, but do please knock before entering if the door should be closed. You must keep to the outside privy. You may use the paraffin stove for heating water up here if you like but you are to ask first if that's quite all right. I have taken the liberty of typing out our agreement.'

  I liked hearing the pride in her voice as she said that. I knew that she had stayed behind at Hind's on her second day and put in over an hour on this job.

  'I will give this my attention very shortly,' said George Ogden, who took the paper, folded it and placed it inside the leaves of Letters of Descartes, which was a very bad sign from the point of view of his ever getting around to glancing at it. He then turned to the window again, and we all looked out.

  A lot of pride had been put into the building of Halifax, and the builders had a powerful liking for columns and domes, so that to my mind every other building looked like a giant mausoleum, something built in memory of someone or something very grand that had gone before and must never be forgotten. I would always think of Halifax as a town that was down by one person, and that on account of me. But it looked grand this Saturday morning.

  George Ogden turned to us and said: 'God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world.'

  'It's ten shillings down’ said the wife.

  George Ogden took out his pocket book and handed over the money much as the Shah of Persia might if that gent were ever called on to pay ten bob for a lodge. 'Brand new address,' he said, 'and a brand new start.'

  And this remark of his bothered me.

  Chapter Eight

  I saw that we were down for a Scarborough excursion when I read the weekly notices the following Monday. It was booked for the Wednesday - 21 June.

  As we were rolling away from the shed mouth on that day, and heading for the coaling stage with a tank engine clanking under us, I saw that John Ellerton, shed superintendent, was walking alongside. It had been misty when I'd booked on at seven but that had cleared, leaving the smoke to battle it out with sunshine. The mills and the houses of Sowerby Bridge climbed the hills in zigzags, and there were golden flashes of sunlight coming off certain windows like messages being sent over the rooftops, across the patches of rocks and grass, over the horses' heads. There was nothing much to Sowerby Bridge - it was mostly Town Hall Street - but it looked fine in the sun, just like its mightier neighbour, Halifax.

  It was the tenth day after the stopping of the Highflyer, and this was our first excursion since then. The trip was booked by a show called White's, another Halifax mill.

  Of all my particular worries, I'd been thinking of that report in the Courier speaking easily of the 'lately fallen tree' that had lain on the line ahead of the North Eastern Railway excursion to Scarborough. We were about to run over those very metals.

  After leaving Halifax, we would make first for York, where the Lanky territories gave out. The rest of the trip being over foreign territory - that of the North Eastern Railway - we'd have to pick up somebody who knew the road.

  'I have the name here of your pilot,' John Ellerton yelled up; 'fellow called Billington!'

  We had the board for the Halifax line now, and Clive was opening up the regulator.

  Ellerton stopped trying to keep up, but looked at his watch, then yelled out: They've given us him before!' he called. 'And he's a right pill!'

  'What's he on about?' said Clive as we began rumbling towards the Joint station.

  'He said the bloke we're to take on is a pill.'

  As we crawled along, I looked down at a patch of coal, cinders and bright weeds - green and black nothing. But there was a paraffin blow-lamp and grinding wheel there, with a spare grindstone about the size of the famous one from ten days ago. I had never noticed either of these items before, but I somehow knew they had always been there. The question was: had there been a second spare? I would ask John Ellerton, who was standing watching us go, with his bowler right back on his head, pleased at the sight of another engine going off to be at large in the world. Everybody liked John Ellerton: he had very honest blue eyes: Irish eyes, as I thought of them for some reason.

  'I believe I know him,' said Clive.

  'Who?'

  'The pill. They always give you the same bloke at York - he's like a sort of warning not to come back.'

  I was more than a little anxious over the run. Paul, the socialist missionary, and his governor, Alan Cowan, were down on excursions. Paul had denied having anything to do with the wrecking of 1418, but would be hardly likely to say so if he had been behind it. But no. If you were wrecking trains to make a point, you would own up to it, providing you knew you couldn't
be found.

  If the wreckers were after mills then here was another: White's. Then again, if they were after Hind's Mill only, we'd be all right.

  The wife had settled in there quite nicely, working for her Mr Robinson and not either of the Hinds. She'd told me they were trying to discover for themselves who'd placed the stone. I'd asked her if they knew she was married to me, the fireman of the engine, and she'd said, 'I don't know. I keep mum over that.'

  Could it be that the wreckers owed a grudge to Highflyers, or big engines in general?

  That was something that had come to me in the Evening Star, and if it was the case, we were in for a trouble-free day, for we had under us one of the standard radial tanks of Mr Aspinall. They were a little longer than your common run of tank, but were to be counted a close cousin of a kettle put up against a Highflyer.

  Clive, doing his checks, had found dust on the regulator, on the engine brake - all over the shop, really - but he'd smiled at it. I fancied that after a few long days on the Rishworth branch he was feeling light-hearted at the thought of Scarborough. It was a pretty spot, and something new in that we'd not worked an engine there before. Also, we were not booked to do a double trip, so the two of us would be able to try some of the pubs before 'coming back passenger'.

  Our carriages were waiting at platform six at the Joint beside the blackboard on which Knowles, the stationmaster, had written 'SPECIAL TRAIN, WHITE'S MILL', and so on, with all the fancy underlining, even for this little tank engine. He was just finishing off as we came in. He could have farmed out this job, but he had a better hand than anyone in the Joint, and he knew it. As we floated up alongside - Clive had got the cut-off just right, as usual - Knowles looked up fast, then away. I looked at Clive, but he was miles away, holding his leather book and staring at the pressure gauge, even though it was at the right sort of mark. It struck me there and then that I'd never seen Clive pass a single word with Stationmaster Knowles.

  Old Reuben Booth was our train guard once again, and he was now waiting below for the coupling up and the vacuum- brake test. Knowles was walking away along the platform. You'd think he'd stay to look over a vacuum test once in a

  while. It was more important than getting the blackboard right. There again, he would have to talk to us in the process. Maybe he was a shy sort really. Maybe he knew we were up to the job, and could be left to ourselves.

  Reuben told us the train weight, then said: 'A hundred and fifty souls,' and as he did so his colour fell and he gave a sigh. He looked all-in.

  'What exactly is this trip in aid of, Reuben?' I said.

  'Holiday,' he said, and then, breathing hard through just standing still, he looked along the line towards the Beacon Hill Tunnel, which we would be entering presently. After a while of doing that he took out a paper from his coat pocket, saying: 'I have it all set down here . . . Founder's birthday, White's Mill. . . Trip's out to Skegness .. . No, sorry, to Scarborough.'

  'Much obliged, Reuben,' said Clive, who turned and rolled his eyes at me. Then he looked back at Reuben, asking: 'Is the founder coming with us, sitting up in first class all on his tod, like that slave-driver Hind?'

  'Hind was with his old man,' I reminded Clive.

  'From what I've heard,' said Clive, 'that tots up to the same thing as being on his own.'

  'No, there's no First on,' said Reuben, 'and, no ... founder's not coming along today.'

  'Why not?' I said.

  'On account of... fellow's been dead this fifty year.'

  So he was one of those kind of founders.

  The mill hands were coming up to the carriages, trooping along in gangs of half a dozen at a time from the Lamb Inn on platform five, which always opened early for excursions.

  'What do they make at this place?' I called down to Reuben.

  'Blankets,' he said. 'White's blankets . . . Red they are, generally speaking.'

  The excursionists all gave a cheer when Reuben waved his green flag, which he did in a way all his own: like a man very carefully drawing a diagram in the air. They were all still

  leaning out when we got the starter from Halifax, but they dodged back in sharpish when we reached Beacon Hill Tunnel, into which fifty years' worth of engine smoke had rolled, and mostly stayed. It was cool inside, but you got the shaking, shrieking darkness into the bargain. For the first time I felt a little of my new nervousness in the tunnel dark. It was the stone on the line that had done it.

  In the tunnel, I took off my coat. Turning about, I felt for the locker. Although stone blind I worked the catch without difficulty, but when I tried to shove my coat in there it wouldn't go. I threw open the fire door, but the red shine came only up to my knees, and did not help me with the locker, so I leant out of the engine, watching the dot of light grow and resolving to be patient.

  We came out of the tunnel and the mystery was all up: a carpet bag was crammed into the locker, taking up all the space. Clive was looking across at me from the regulator. 'Not the common run of stores,' he said, 'I know.' He took a pace towards me and heaved at the bag so that it went further inside the locker. He then fished out a book that was in there alongside the bag. He handed it to me, saying: 'Reuben gave me this. It was left behind on the Hind's excursion.'

  It was Pearson's Book of Fun.

  'I've seen it before,' I said; 'it belonged to the kid whose mother died. We'd better get it back to him.'

  Clive nodded, in an odd, dreamy kind of way, and I guessed he must be thinking I was nuts: the kid had lost his mother, so he would not be in want of Pearson's Book of Fun. I had not told Clive how I had botched things in the compartment after our smash, so he could not see what was driving me on: guilt.

  'What's become of the lad?' I asked him, though I had a fair idea.

  Clive shrugged and said, 'I reckon Reuben can tell you.'

  I could have guessed he would say something of the sort. Clive coasted and glided; he put away all serious stuff.

  The pill was waiting for us at York all right. Full name: Arthur Billington.

  'Now then’ he said, climbing up.

  Then, before we could say anything back, the starter signal came off and he bellowed: 'Right then, you've got the road, so frameV

  He had a very loud voice.

  He was leaning over the side straightway, barging Clive out of the way and eyeing up the big signal gantry we were rolling up to. I happened to give a glance over in the direction of York Minster, which, I always fancied, was sitting on an island, and which seemed to rotate as we went past.

  Billington was shouting about signals. 'One, two, three, third from the right - that's the bugger you want. And he's come off! He's come off! You're right as rain for Haxby now.'

  Clive gave one of his gentle pulls on the regulator.

  'Open her up, lad,' said Billington.

  'Would you like a turn yourself?' said Clive.

  'Aye’ he said. 'Shift over, shift over,' and Clive came across to my side.

  Billington gave a great tug on the regulator, and straightway I knew his kind: all hell and no notion. Two weeks before I would have laughed at him. Now, I wanted Clive back at that regulator. He'd been going too fast over the Fylde, but he'd stopped the Highflyer in time, after all. Well, nearly.

  'There'll be a nice big hole in your fire now,' Clive told me, in low tones.

  I saw that he was right, so I took up my shovel. We ran crashing through the little station at Haxby, and as we did so that tranquil spot was filled with the voice of Billington, roaring: 'What have we got on?'

  'Excursion,' I said.

  'You two blokes work spare, do you?'

  We were rushing through the village of Strensall now, at

  such a rate that I caught sight of a porter on the platform pushing half a dozen people back from the edge.

  'We work excursions,' said Clive, as we shot out once more into countryside. 'We're the Sowerby Bridge excursion gang,' he added.

  I thought how much I used to like the sound of that.<
br />
  'At York,' said Billington, 'you'd be called the spare gang. Do you have a spare gang at Sowerby Bridge?'

  'No,' said Clive.

  'That's because you're it,' said Billington.

  Clive was giving me the eye, smiling but frowning at the same time.

  'What do you do when there's no excursion on?' Billington was shouting.

  'Relief,' I shouted.

  'Relief, spare ... Comes to the same thing!' yelled Billington.

  Clive showed me by hand signs that he wanted the footplate given a spray with the slasher pipe. I was glad of any distraction, and as I set to he hung out of the side with his blue jacket fluttering, looking along the line ahead. Very noble, he looked, with his grey hair lashed back. Was this the thing between him and Knowles the stationmaster? Clive was a handsome sort but just a little bald; Knowles was a well set up fellow, but not so fetching to the fillies (I guessed). They both dressed up to the knocker, so there it was: deadlock.

  I hosed down the footplate with the boiling water, calling out to Billington to mind himself, but he was too busy squinting through the spectacle glass and talking thirteen to the dozen about how we had Kirkham Abbey coming up, and how the signals all about there were a mare's nest.