The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin

  We climbed to Todmorden without noticing it was a climb at all. I could not see the church clock that was lit at night, nor (for we were going at such a lick) any of the churches that might have held it. This engine, I thought, makes churches disappear. I looked for the school with the huge cot in the window, the house with the birds circling above, but these tilings lived in a slower world and were not to be seen today.

  Clive was at the gear again. He wanted 1418 faster, and all the signals did too, for every one of them was down as we galloped on over the Pennine Hills.

  Crossing from Yorkshire to Lancashire was no more than jumping a ditch, and Blackburn might have been a village, for it was coming up and then it was gone, with not much in between save for a smudge of smoke.

  This time there was no cause to stop at Preston, so those on board had all of thirty seconds to view the handsome new paintwork of that station. We were coming to the danger point now, Salwick and Kirkham, and Clive seemed in a hurry to get there, for he notched up once, twice, within the shadow of County Hall. Was he bent on suicide? No, the man was in the prime of life and making love in secret with the stationmaster's wife.

  To put this from my mind I was throwing on coal, but Clive checked me with a funny look and shouted at me to get on the injector and put in more water. It went ill with me to move from coal to water. I wanted to stick at one thing, and wait. If all was well after Salwick and Kirkham, that would be the start of a whole new world. I would take a drink and have a beano with the wife in Blackpool, for I was to book off on arrival.

  The signal box at Lea Green came and went. Harry Walker, the fellow in there, would be moving slowly between his levers, drinking tea. Maybe he'd given a wave. It didn't matter.

  Salwick came up, more of a garden than a station, more of a graveyard than a station, and Clive was eyeing me. The engine was going at seventy, and neither one of us could properly stand.

  I asked myself again how he could be so sure we were not to meet another wrecking attempt.

  I laid my shovel against the firebox, forced my head out into the battering air and looked back. I saw the 8.36 from Halifax, the regular Blackpool express, a tiny train miles behind, crawling onto the fields of the Fylde.

  I would not tell Clive to slow down, not even with the wife on board and her expecting. I was done with showing fear. I turned to the firehole, looked inside: the fire was shaking, every white-hot coal had been set jumping by the speed. I stood upright again, and my shovel fell and began clanking over the footplate towards me like a thing gone live. Clive was standing back from the regulator, bowed down before it and pulling at the flaps of two of his pockets, the flaps of the poacher's pockets. He moved his hands slowly up towards his hair and put his head down and ran his hands through his hair, faster and faster. His hair was all there, but it might not be, so he had to make sure over and over again. He was looking at his boots as he did it, seeing how they were faring new-on, for really they should have been spared the black dust of the footplate. The best thing you can do with a pair of boots is not wear them. The best you can do with a railway engine is not drive it.

  I looked through the spectacle glass and it was clean. I could see for miles along the line. Blackpool Tower, the tallest building in the country, and there it was: a tiny thing, ten miles off, jumping about in the corner of the glass, trying to come loose and move to the centre. Why had Clive got his medal? Well, it came in pretty handy, made it harder for Knowles to stand him down. There again, if Clive had copped on with Emma Knowles, the stationmaster might be expected to do a lot more than sack him. A lot more.

  My eye went back to the spectacle glass, and I kept on staring hard at the clear track unrolling before us; I was challenging the track, and keeping with it for mile after mile. A sunbeam flew very far along it in a short time, and I almost gave a laugh at that. I turned away and looked again.

  'Brakes!' I screamed, and Clive slashed at the vacuum handle as though killing something, which he was - killing the vacuum - and we began at once to slow ... but slowly.

  You can shout for brakes once if you're a fireman - once if there's no reason, I mean. With the engine finally at rest, and time moving once again, Clive turned to me and said: 'What was it?'

  I had no answer.

  I looked up at the spectacle glass and Clive looked there too. It was clean but for a single fleck of soot, dead centre.

  'It might have been that,' I said, and I started to say I was sorry, but Clive checked me, saying: 'You were right to call out.'

  I knew then he was one of the grandest fellows I'd ever met. It's rum. You know people for a while and you have them down for one thing, then they suddenly seem to grow.

  I jumped down and looked along the train. Heads were coming out of the windows, but nobody was climbing down this time. We'd not had to use the reverser, so the train had stopped with a steadier motion. Yet a man in a cap called: 'That were a bit of a jar.' It was a lonely voice, floating over the fields.

  'Anybody hurt?' I called.

  ‘I’ll consult!' he shouted, but he was already laughing. He ducked back into his compartment, then stuck his head back out. 'One here in desperate need ...' he bawled.

  I began walking fast along the trackside towards him, fretting over having burnt the medical book. 'In desperate need of what?'

  'A nice glass of stout!' the excursionist called back. 'Nay, I'm only -' He ducked back in again. 'We're all in fine fettle here,' he said, coming out once more, 'but can tha get on? It's nigh on opening time, tha knows!'

  I walked on fast; there were different flowers in the meadow from the time before: tall, purple ones. The wife was in the third carriage back from the engine. As I walked, the carriages were high above my head. It was like going along those old country lanes where the road has sunk and the hedges have gradually been lifted up: a feeling of being too small and kept in your place.

  When I came to what I thought must be the right spot, I called up. It was Cicely Braithwaite who pulled down the window strap and looked out. She was laughing too. There was laughing gas running through the pipes on this train, but when she saw me her laughter caught.

  'It's not the same going-on as before, is it?' she said.

  I shook my head. 'You all right up there?'

  The wife was at the window too, showing a face that had been laughing. 'Do get on,' she said.

  I looked along the line. The regular express was there behind in the distance, shaking in the heat, and so far off that at first I couldn't make out whether it was moving or not. But no. It was of course checked at the signal, and all my doing.

  I looked up at the wife and grinned. 'When we get to Central, I'll meet you at the ticket gates,' I said.

  She ducked back into the carriage as if I was just a spare part, standing down below the train where no person ought to be standing.

  I turned to walk back to the engine.

  'Ey!'

  It was the wife, calling from the compartment; I turned while walking and she blew me a kiss. The holiday mood was certainly on her. At this rate, she'd be after a whole week in Blackpool.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  In Central you could hardly breathe from the greenhouse heat burning through the canopies, and the press of people, and the nosebag smell, for the cab horses were at their dinner as we came in at just after eleven. A porter was standing on a stepladder, trying to put the excursionists into the right channels by a lot of shouting and waving of arms.

  This was the busiest station in Europe.

  We uncoupled and ran the engine to the shed, where everyone was too busy to think anything much of even a Highflyer coming in. Clive went off for a pint, while I legged it the quarter mile back to Central, where the wife was patiently waiting at the ticket gates.

  'Did you notice we weren't wrecked?' she called over the noise of the crowd as I approached her.

  Behind her at the gates was the ticket collector I'd seen the last time I'd been at Central, the one who'd thrown u
p the beer bottle. He was working now, collecting tickets but not looking at anyone who gave him one. His uniform still did not fit.

  I kissed the wife. 'But we did have the stop,' I said, 'and in the exact same spot as before. Did nobody say anything in the carriage?'

  The wife shook her head. She wanted to talk about something else. And I was glad to do it.

  'Well how do you like Blackpool?' I said.

  'So far,' she said, 'I've only seen the railway station.'

  I caught up her hand and we pushed our way out of the station and into the blinding light of day. And you had never seen a day so full: tribes of excursionists going both ways on the Prom (they should have had an 'up' and 'down' as on the railways) with the trams trying to nudge their way through, and thousands more folk sitting on the sand, where all places were taken, although there were gangways left for the ice-cream carts.

  The sea was doing all in its power to entertain: glittering and sending in pretty big waves, which came as a bonus on a day with hardly any wind. But the teams of Pierrots and Harlequins and the wandering ventriloquists were in competition with it.

  I looked to the left and the right. Which way to go? What to show the wife first? I saw a woman's face coming towards me in the crowd. It was a smiling face under a bonnet, a normal Blackpool face. But when the face saw mine, the smile was checked. It was Mary-Ann Roberts. I hated her bonnet, I hated the way she had kept some of her prettiness, for that seemed to give importance to the question of whether she was smiling or not.

  I hated most particularly the way she never did anything unexpected, like walking up to me and saying: You were not to know about the treatment of concussion cases. You are an engine man after all, and not a doctor. As I looked at her, she looked away.

  I had brought her to Blackpool so that she could kill my enjoyment of the day.

  We were now bang under the Tower, with the wife controlling events. We both looked at the top of it for a while, where the glass and iron palace was balanced. It was a marvellous sight, but I could only think of the stone on the line. We looked down and around, at the Ferris wheel over near the Winter Gardens, which was like a giant rosette. Then it was back to staring at the crowds, which went on for ever, like the sea. These people had all aimed for the bull's-eye, and they had all hit the bull's-eye. There was no point in thinking about the future or the past, this was the moment, and it just had to be carried on.

  'What do you reckon?' I asked the wife. She answered slowly: There's to be a free tea at the Tower in three hours' time, but first I want to take a turn on the flying machine.'

  'Which one?' I said. 'I expect there's hundreds.'

  'The Sir Hiram Maxim Flying Machines at the Pleasure Beach,' said the wife. 'I've read of them in the library. They're at Sand Hill.'

  'That's south,' I said.

  So we began going that way along the Prom. I kept looking over at the beach. I knew how things went with the Pierrot shows. Each one was like a little dream while it was happening, with perfect dainty people dancing to guitars. Then the Pierrots would come down from their little stands to start collecting the pennies, and the magic was gone. You'd be sorry for having watched, because it made you feel bad to pay them, and you felt a sight worse if you didn't. I looked beyond the crowds to the bathing machines wobbling down towards the water. There were teams of boys to control them and they were taking ten down at once, all in a line like a little landslide.

  As we moved along the Prom we kept nearly colliding with people who wanted our money: the flowersellers, booksellers, quack doctors, all trying to stop you in your tracks by shouting at you.

  As we walked, some amusements won out as the ones you really noticed, whether from numbers of sandwich men or quantities of posters, or through just being noticeable: the Royal Rumanian Band was on the North Pier all summer. You couldn't avoid knowing of that. And Beecham's Pills were to be had everywhere.

  Presently, the machine came into view, high above the heads of the crowd: a wide-turning wheel, with the flying boats hanging from wires. As we watched, the wheel increased its speed and the flying boats flew further out and - which was the great thing - higher too. Every now and then there was a little snort of smoke from the centre of the wheel, but the thing was really almost silent, and turned like a weather vane or a windmill, all natural; and there was something of sailing about it too. Silent speed.

  'It's beautiful,' I said to the wife, 'but aren't ladies in the family way supposed to avoid violent amusements?'

  'Nothing violent about it,' said the wife, without looking at me.

  So we joined the back of the queue. It was all sandy and dusty round about, like America. You were hard put to say where the beach ended. There was a carousel nearby bigger than the common run. It went anti-clockwise, which was the American way. I'd read of that somewhere. There were plenty of Yankees in Blackpool. Well, it was open house to all sorts.

  There were several other rides on the go: a bicycle railway, a switchback, and over in the distance a waterfall coming down from a man-made mountain. A sign stood high up above the crowd: 'THE WATER CAVES OF THE WORLD', and hard by it was a giant banner: 'READ THE DAILY DESPATCH'.

  Maxim's Flying Machine was looked after by big fellows in sailor suits, and when we were towards the front of the queue one of them stepped up and asked if we'd ridden on it before. 'You must not on any account try to stand up in the flying boat,' said the fellow. 'And you are to take off your hats.'

  There was a notice about how this was all in aid of Sir Hiram Maxim and his attempt to fly a measured mile by powered flight, in a heaver-than-air craft, not a steerable balloon. There was a photograph of a real flying machine, and a photograph of a mile - well, a biggish field at any rate.

  It was sixpence for the two of us. We climbed aboard our boat and the wheel started to turn. There was hurdy-gurdy music coming from somewhere, and I thought it was for the flying machine, but then another tune started up, far louder, and this was the one. It was a melody I'd heard before somewhere, but completely changed.

  'This fellow Maxim must be out of his senses!' I shouted to the wife as we started to climb.

  'Isn't it just wonderful!' she shouted back, and it was.

  I liked it best when we were right out over the sea, when an extra bit of breeze would push you that bit higher and you felt you could float on for ever.

  The boats gradually tipped, and at the highest point we were quite sideways - and silent, for there was nothing at all to be said.

  When we climbed off, the wife, setting her hat back on her head, said: 'I feel just like I don't know what.'

  We walked away from the machine hand in hand, and the wife said: 'That's set me up just nicely, that has, but I've done Blackpool now.'

  We bought some treacle toffee, and it ought to have been the perfect day. Instead, I was suddenly furious that I could not bring before my mind's eye the face of the wrecker. Damn you, I thought, whoever you are.

  'Why don't we go along to St Anne's,' I said, 'the next place along?'

  'Where Mr Robinson lives?'

  'That's it,' I said. I wanted to see that fellow again, though it would be hard to bring about. 'It's a nice run out there,' I said. 'I think they have a gas tram that takes you.'

  But the gas tram I'd heard about was gone, long since removed from service. The ticket clerk at the Blackpool Southern Terminus, which was just a step from the Pleasure Beach, said passengers riding on it had found themselves not able to breathe on windless days. The tram to Lytham - which was the one that stopped at St Anne's - was electric now, like all the other Blackpool ones.

  The ticket clerk shouted this to me, and he must have spent his whole life shouting, because that's how things went on around the Blackpool trams in the season. There was a fearful scramble to get on them, and the bells as they came up might have been the bells of a boxing match. It was not quite so much of a scramble for the Lytham tram, though. Lytham and St Anne's were quieter resorts, and quieter types went
out to them. We climbed onto the top deck when the tram came in. The steps were very high; they went up in a corkscrew, and 'HOVIS' was written very big on every one. The electric wires hung from what looked like ordinary lamp-posts that had grown arms.

  The tram bowled along fast and high along the edge of the road, wobbling slightly, like a hoop being bowled, and in two minutes Blackpool was left behind. There were fields to our left, and dry grasses, sand dunes and the sea to our right. Sand had been blown onto the wide, white road. A long steamer was going by in the opposite direction.

  'It's like Africa out here’ said the wife.

  'Now I don't know about that,' I said.

  Then the big gardens started coming up, and hotels all covered in ivy. We got off next to a miniature golf course. There was a low wall all around it made of dazzling white stones. As the wife and I stepped down from the tram, some smart sorts looked up from their game and stared at us.

  'Do you think we passed muster?' asked the wife as we turned away from them in order to cross the road and reach the sea.

  The beach was a startler. There were no fortune tellers or funfairs, but pretty banners stuck in the sand advertising shows by the Happy Valley Pierrots and the Jolly Tars, and there were three donkeys sleepwalking over the sand with children in sailor suits on their backs.