The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin

  When I came half stumbling through the door of 21 Back Hill Street, the wife was in the process of walking across the parlour, and my coat was lying on the sofa looking as though it was taking a rest in my place. I put it onto the floor and lay down.

  'Are you all right?' she said, but she did not kiss me and continued on her way to the scullery. 'A man of your description was seen flying through Hebden Bridge,' she called out, while moving pots within the scullery, 'then leaping on a train to Manchester . . . Without a ticket, the booking clerk said.'

  'If you knew I was going towards Manchester,' I called back from the sofa, 'why didn't you tell the police? Then they could have had men waiting.'

  The movement from the kitchen stopped for a second at this, but soon started up again. The Erasmic Soap and the good towel were laid out for me next to the tub, and the tub was near the open window, which was the summer equivalent of in front of the fire. The first gas lamp of Hill Street gave a glow on the bath when set just there, and it was my favourite place for reading. But I was so tired that it seemed a long way from sofa to tub. There was a letter for George Ogden on the mantelshelf.

  'So I knew where you'd gone,' the wife continued, walking back into the parlour, 'but I didn't know how you'd get back without your pocket book.' The wife picked the coat up from the floor and put it on the hook behind the door. Her face was very brown from the sun; her eyes darker, hair lighter.

  The wife said cocoa was waiting in the stove cup - the tin cup - and that it 'ought to be just about right', which meant I was to fetch it from the stove because it would be too hot for her hands. When I walked into the kitchen there was food set on the table: a boiled egg, a pork pie, a parkin, a bowl of peach halves in syrup. The wife sat down opposite, watching me start on the egg, which meant she had something to say. Water was steaming in the boiler.

  'Do you want to know what happened?' I said, crossly.

  'A man suffered an injury at the Crags,' she said, 'and you chased another man to Manchester.'

  'The fellow that died,' I said, 'was Martin Lowther, a ticket inspector who was on the excursion when we hit the stone. And I didn't chase "a man", I chased the wrecker.' But I was starting to doubt it once again.

  'Well,' the wife said presently, 'did you catch the man?'

  'You've asked at last,' I said.

  She sighed. 'Are you not going to eat your peach halves?' she said.

  'No,' I said. 'No, I did not catch him, and, no, I do not mean to eat my peach halves. I do not care for them. When you've been hard at it, trying to catch a murderer, you don't want fruit.'

  'What do you want?'

  'A bottle of beer.'

  She stood up and took the peach halves away to the sink. She was still wearing the holiday dress, but the holiday was over. She turned around and looked at me for a little while longer.

  'I daresay,' I said, 'from your look, that you think when a fellow sees murder done, he should just let the killer stroll off.'

  'I do not say that,' said the wife, and she continued to look at me.

  I was thinking of railway tickets, and I was thinking of our lodger. 'Where's George?' I asked the wife.

  'He was in earlier, then he went out.'

  'What time?' 'Just as I got back.'

  'Did you tell him what had happened?'

  'That you'd gone haring off to Manchester without any money? No I did not.'

  'What's that letter for him on the mantel?'

  'How should I know?' said the wife, but after a short pause she added, 'It's from the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge ... It is to be hoped they put him straight on questions to do with the payment of rent.'

  'Oh go on then,' I said. 'You mean to say something, so let's have it.'

  'Well,' she said, moving to the table to clear up the rest of the pots, 'it's just this: he's not dead.'

  'Who's not?' I said. 'The man who was killed? Lowther?'

  'There was a doctor dancing up at the tea rooms, and he went down to him and said it was two broken legs ...'

  'But he wasn't moving,' I said.

  'Nor would you be if you'd two smashed legs. The ambulance was sent for,' said the wife, 'and while it was coming the doctor talked to the man.'

  'To Lowther?' I said.

  'Whatever his name is ... And he said he'd fallen.'

  'Fallen?' I glanced down at the pea soup stain on my shirt; I thought of the chit given to me in the police station - they had never stopped thinking me a loony, and had meant to get me out of their city in double-quick time. The wife thought I was a crackerjack, too. If she could've handed me a one-way ticket to somewhere just then, I'm sure she would have done it.

  I thought of myself as seen in the carriage glass: a little man.

  A fellow who lived in Hebden Bridge, who happened to have been on a train that somebody had tried to stop, had suffered a fall at the place he lived. And I brought to mind once more that I had seen Lowther at the Joint station on Whit Sunday, at the very moment that he had decided to board our excursion, after waiting for the Leeds train and giving it up. Nobody could have banked on him making that decision; nobody could have known he'd be on our train. But with old Hind it was different: everyone knew he was aboard. It was his first train ride ever: a red letter day.

  I was wrong over Lowther, just as I'd been wrong over the correct treatment of concussion cases. I ought to stick to firing engines, but I was filled with anxiety every time I did that.

  I felt like somebody lying at the bottom of the sea.

  'He tumbled off a rock that he'd been sitting on,' the wife continued.

  'Why would Lowther be sitting on a rock?' I said, staring at the table edge.

  'That spot is England's Alps, you said, and in the Alps, they climb.'

  'But he's a bloody ticket inspector.'

  'There's no need to start cursing just because you've been a juggings. Anyway, what's his job got to do with it?'

  'Ticket inspectors', I said, 'don't generally go about climbing mountains. They make things hot for them as haven't got railway tickets.'

  'The doctor said he'd been drinking wine too.'

  'Now that I can credit,' I said.

  The kitchen was too hot and too small. I pushed the chair back.

  'You're all in,' said the wife. 'You should get in the tub and go to bed.'

  'I'm off to go to the pub,' I said.

  'Are you?' said the wife. 'Well, I would change that shirt.'

  'They're not particular in the Evening Star,' I said.

  She was on the edge of laughing, now.

  'It is a definite fact,' I said, 'that...'

  Something was a definite fact, but I was too tired to remember what.'It is a definite fact,' I went on, 'that the man I chased was moving like greased lightning.' 'Well’ said the wife. 'Some people are close to an accident, and they don't like to be pestered to death over what they've seen. Or they think they might catch the blame if they hang about.'

  'What rot,' I said.

  'For all you know,' said the wife, 'he might have been running to catch his train.'

  'Well, that beats all,' I said, and I was laughing now.

  'Why does it?' said the wife, who was taking down her hair, letting the door-knocker fall.

  'I expect there's a train every half hour going between Hebden Bridge and Manchester. Instead of half killing himself on the hottest day in memory, don't you think he'd stroll to the station for the next one?'

  'I really don't know’ said the wife.

  'No’1 said, 'and nor do I.'

  'But it is a fact that he never touched the man found with broken legs.'

  I suddenly thought of the Socialist Mission. Anybody could say anything. 'It is a fact,' I said, 'that Lowther said the fellow never touched him.'

  The wife gave me a good steady look that I liked. I was back up from the bottom of the sea.

  'Will you unhook this dress?' she said. 'I've had enough of it.'

  When that was done, and the busine
ss that followed was done (after which the wife did not go off to do any family- stopping business), and I was lying in the tub with my Railway Magazine reading of the new goods yards in Dover, with the pages fluttering in the breeze that had finally started to come in through the window, and drinking a bottle of Bass that the wife had produced from the pantry, I said, 'We are not really at all alike, are we? One difference is that you were not on the engine, you know.'

  'We have some points in common’ said the wife.

  'What?'

  'We both want to get on.'

  I finished the beer, and the wife took the bottle away from me. She didn't mind my having a bath in front of the smart sorts in Hill Street, but would rather they didn't catch a glimpse of me drinking beer.

  'When you get married,' I said some time later, but still in the bath, 'you think that's more or less it as far as knowing the other person's concerned . .. But it isn't really, is it?'

  But the wife, in her petticoats, was curled up asleep on the sofa. She was full of surprises.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two evenings later, on the Monday, I walked towards the Crossley Porter School and Orphanage all kitted out with the Pearson's Book of Fun under my arm, and a Farthing Everlasting Strip in my pocket. This would be my first social call of the evening; the second would take me to Halifax Infirmary, where John Ellerton had told me Lowther was laid up.

  That day we'd taken an excursion to Skipton and back. Postal workers. It had been market day in Skipton, and the people had all been in the inns, and the animals all in the streets. I'd told Clive all about my adventures in Hebden and Manchester, not giving him my thoughts in detail, but just saying, 'Here's a fellow nearly catches it when the stone's put on the line between Salwick and Kirkham, then he has another close call not three weeks later ... Rum, ain't it?'

  Clive had been more concerned about keeping his boots clean, but in a Skipton pub he'd said, 'So you think it's the socialists again, do you?' and I'd answered, 'In a way it proves it can't have been that lot first time.'

  'Why?' Clive had asked. 'Nobody's over-keen on ticket inspectors. When one of them's got at, you can't rule anybody out.'

  I then told him what had become of old Hind, who'd been 'To-Day's Obituary' in that day's Courier. There wasn't much to it: 'The death occurred on Friday of Mr William Sinclair Hind, chairman of Hind's Mill. Mr Hind, who was ninety- nine, was being attended by doctors for his heart. In his earlier years, he was devoted to cricket.' That last part had been the only shock.

  It was a hot, blue evening, and the orphanage looked like a castle in France, only black, of course, like everything in

  Halifax. There was a garden to the front, and Savile Park in front of that. All the windows in the house were open, and, as I got close, I heard a voice saying: 'Give instances from the gospel of the times when our Lord . ..'

  But gentle, like.

  The garden was the kind that makes you feel riff-raff in working boots, even if you've been at the Erasmic Soap for the best part of half an hour, as I had. And even though it had likely been another fellow in working clothes - gaiters too, probably, and a clay pipe in his mouth - who'd made it all. Every. flower-bed was a different colour and a different world. You'd look at one and think, that's the prettiest, with those giant orange flowers; then you'd look at another and see blue flowers, small but more of them, and you'd think, no, that one tops it, and so on. What all the beds had in common was a big stone urn in the middle.

  Feeling like I'd climbed from the audience onto the stage, I stood at the top of the wide stone steps leading to the front door and rang the bell, which was set in an iron circle as big as a dinner plate. They went big with everything, the Crossleys.

  The door was opened by a most unexpected person: a tiny, untidy woman who seemed to be just passing by. 'Oh, come in then,' she said.

  I told her my business. She looked down at the package in my hands and said, 'That's all right, come along with me.'

  She began leading me along a corridor, past rows of portraits. 'Our founders,' she said, putting out a small arm as she walked, and I marvelled at how founders are always bald men with beards no matter what it is they've founded.

  'We've got plenty of nooks and crannies you know,' she said, after we'd turned a few corners.

  But they were very big nooks and crannies.

  As we walked, I could somehow tell the place was full of children, although I couldn't see any. It was a kind of trembling feeling, like when you have a mouse in your hand.

  I was at last shown into a small wooden room marked 'VISITORS - BOYS' SIDE', which, if I'd been running the place, I would have shifted nearer the front door. In the office was a matron - a big woman with a happy face and pink cheeks that didn't go with her black dress, just as the garden did not go with the house. She fished my letter out of a drawer and her face fell into a frown as she read it, which set me wondering about the spelling, until I remembered that the wife had typed it.

  'What day was your train smash?' she asked, putting the letter down.

  I felt like saying: It wasn't my smash. Instead, I said, 'Whit Sunday.'

  'Pentecost,' said the woman. I was quite certain she was about to say, Well you shouldn't be driving engines on such a day, but she looked at me, smiled, put the letter away.

  'Good of you to bring the book,' said a voice from the doorway.

  Turning around, I saw a big, brown, strong man who looked ready for anything. 'Matthew Ferry,' he said, shaking my hand.

  'I thought I might read the boy a couple of riddles,' I said.

  Matthew Ferry laughed. 'You've a hope.'

  'He'll be having his supper,' said matron, 'so we won't bring him out quite yet. Would you like to come through for a cup of tea?'

  Mr Ferry was now holding the door open for me, and we walked for another half minute before turning into a sort of parlour, with a scullery connected. There were a few attempts to make the parlour homely - green tab rugs on the floor, a red cloth on the table - but the empty fireplace was too big, and the ceiling was too high. On the walls were thin wooden crucifixes, with dried flowers tucked behind them, and I thought again of Whit Sunday: the Lord's day, and an extra special one at that. Maybe you were asking for all you got by running trains on that day. Come to that, wakes weeks had started out as religious in some way.

  Mr Ferry began cleaning a pair of boots as the matron went through into the scullery. Very shortly after, she was calling over the sound of a singing kettle: 'Never smiles, that one you've come for.' She returned with a filled pot on a tray, and cups.

  'Sarcastic disposition,' said the man, smiling and pausing in his boot-cleaning.

  'Well, I believe he's precious careful not to be seen doing it,' the matron continued.

  'A lot of them are like that at first. They don't think it's fit to be seen happy in a place like this. They sort of think they're in church all the time.'

  'Or at a funeral,' said Mr Ferry, 'a funeral going on for years and years.' He seemed quite happy as he said this. 'Do you know what the boy wanted when he came here?' he asked.

  'I don't,' I said.

  'Fires lighting. Everywhere he went.'

  'But it's been so hot,' I said.

  'A fire reminded the boy of home,' said Matthew Ferry. He was going forty to the dozen at his boot, smiling down all the while at the glace kid on the Nuggett's polish tin, who smiled back up at him. 'I had a long go at him a few days after he came in,' he continued, 'give him a chance to say whatever he might want to. I asked him about his mother but it was no go, and I had just one thing out of the boy.' He had stopped polishing. 'His mother', he told me, 'could make her eyes go crossed.'

  'Well...' I said, and things went a bit quiet for a while.

  They were not orphan's boots that he was cleaning. They were too big. And orphan boots would have come in bundles. No, these were Matthew Ferry's boots, and it struck me that a man would not be cleaning his own boots in front of a woman unless she was his wife
- wife or sister, for they had the same high colour.

  'Little bit of advice for you,' said Mr Ferry, who'd finished cleaning his boots and was putting the lid on the tin. 'When you

  see the lad, don't say: "I was sorry about your mother", because then you're going to have to say, "I was sorry about your father", "Sorry about your dog", "Sorry about you not getting your day in Blackpool", and so on till the cows come home.'

  He had all the boy's misfortunes off by heart. No detail lacked.

  'What did the boy's father die of?' I asked Mr Ferry.

  'Heart gave out,' he said, quite brightly.

  I realised I already knew that from Mary-Ann Roberts's letter. I picked up the cup of tea that Mrs Ferry had poured for me and took a sip, but it was too hot.

  'He was in a similar line to yourself,' said Mr Ferry, folding his big arms, for the boots were now done.

  'Engine man?' I said.

  Mr Ferry picked up his teacup, poured some onto the saucer and blew - six shimmers, with the tea not allowed to come to rest in between each one.

  'How many tons of coal do you have to lift in an ordinary day?' he asked.

  'On a fifty mile run,' I said, 'it might come to . . . one.' I wanted to add: But there's more to the job than that.

  The matron was talking to someone at the door, and it seemed that Arnold Dyson had been sent for. I put the book inside my coat, thinking to make a bit of a surprise out of giving it back.

  'One ton?' said Mr Ferry. 'Now what would you say to firing the boiler in a mill?'

  'Well, you know ... It wouldn't suit.'

  'Why not?' said Mr Ferry, smiling.

  'Because a mill doesn't move.'

  'It does not,' said Mr Ferry, standing up, 'even if you put six ton on the fires every working day, which is what Arnold Dyson's father was doing.'