A Summer in the Twenties

by Peter Dickinson

  ‘How too sordid,’ said Dick.

  ‘She likes to play the field, little Judy,’ explained Woffles. ‘Good thing, I say, before she settles down.’

  It was interesting, Tom thought, that Bertie had refrained from dropping any hint about what had happened at Hendaye—you’d have expected him to derive a vaguely malicious amusement from the rivalry of two of his friends. Instead, without seeming to make any special move of dismissal, he somehow signalled that the meeting was over. All four got to their feet, Woffles stretching hugely, like a waking hound.

  ‘Right, chaps,’ said Bertie. ‘I’m going north this evening. I’ll drop you a line. Dick, you’d better be in touch with your pater, sounding him out. Careful what you say, specially in writing. Which way are you going, Tom?’

  ‘Back to College.’

  ‘I’ve left my bus in Holywell, so I’ll come with you. Hang on, will you, while I settle up?’

  It was almost ten, so the Broad was as usual full of men on their way to lecture rooms, their short gowns flapping in the late April gusts. Tom would have been among them, going to hear whether old Atherton had anything new to say about the pre-Socratics this year, but contact with his few remaining fourth-year friends had seemed more worth while and he had not wished to rub Dick Standish up the wrong way by arriving with a gown over his arm, symbol of hard work and high hopes.

  ‘It’s a pity about the trains, Tom,’ said Bertie. ‘I see your father’s point, but . . .’

  ‘Do you think this notion of Woffles’ is really a runner?’

  ‘Between you and me, no. That’s to say I’m not taking it seriously, not in the way Woffles thinks I am. As far as I’m concerned it’s a way of getting him and a few chaps like him into an organisation. You can’t expect them to make much of the serious side of politics, but give them something that’s a bit of a lark and they’re on. Then, when the organisation is in existence, I can start moving it in the direction I want. That’s why I particularly want you in, Tom. I came to Oxford for you. I know I talked more to Dick, because he likes attention, but it was you I was after.’

  ‘There’s plenty of other men . . .’

  ‘Of course there are, but I’ve got to get them. And with most chaps it’s going to depend on who I’ve got already. If I can tell them So-and-so’s joined, and so has Thingummajig, and they’re well known to be solid fellows, that’ll do more than any amount of argument to rope in the rest.’

  ‘You’ve got Dick and Woffles.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call Dick solid, would you? And Woffles . . .’

  He managed to make the name hang in the air in such a way that they both laughed together at the solidity of Woffles.

  ‘But you’re just the ticket,’ Bertie went on. ‘First class brain, famous name, Blue for boxing and all that. People know about you, even if they don’t know you personally. You see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow . . .’

  (Gerald, for instance. A better brain, Mr. Goodhart had said. Keeper of School Field, Captain of the Boats; heir to Sillerby and the title after Cyril’s death; the same apparent advantages as Tom, and more.)

  ‘Of course not,’ said Bertie a little impatiently. ‘It isn’t what you are that matters—it’s what people think you are. My mistake, I see now, has been letting people think I’m either a bit of an ass or a bit of a cad, or both. Now I’m going to show them they’re wrong . . . Great Scott! Who’s the darkie? I thought you didn’t let them into Trinity—I thought that was Balliol.’

  Prince Anakitakola of Goodra, late as ever, came scurrying out of the college gateway, clutching the pile of books that he would not actually need at any lecture but always took along to boost his own picture of himself as a potentially learned scholar. He simpered at Tom as he passed. Two books fell but he did not stop for them. A moment later Dudu, the Prince’s ever-silent white-robed servant, who had a special dispensation from the Dean to sleep across the door of his master’s room, strode out into the Broad. He already had one book under his arm, and he moved along the pavement picking up the others as he came to them, like a tracker following a blazed trail.

  ‘Friend of mine,’ said Tom, more stiffly than he wished. ‘His name’s too long to remember. We all call him Annie. His father owns most of India. He’s a good egg, all the same.’

  ‘Sure he is,’ said Bertie placatingly. ‘It was just the way he shot out that startled me. Can I tell people you’re in, Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . You see, Bertie, I’ve rather made friends with some of the railwaymen . . .’

  ‘Of course you have. Most of the people in this country are absolutely sound. All I want to do is take a few rotten apples out of the basket.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Don’t take too long—I’m in a hurry . . . Tom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Judy Tarrant. Nice child.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘You may need a bit of a hand there, you know. Helen Tarrant—well, she’s not a dragon, exactly, but she’s pretty formidable, and Woffles is quite right about the understanding between her and Lady Belford. It’ll take a lot to make her change her mind.’

  ‘One can but hope.’

  ‘One can do a bit more than that, old boy. It happens that Helen and I get along surprisingly well, and what’s more this scheme of mine is just the sort of thing she’d approve of. First thing when I get home I’m going to get her to put a bit of money into it—not because I need the cash but because I want to spread the backing around as much as I can. Now, I promise you, Helen Tarrant will look a lot more favourably on a chap who comes in with me than on one who doesn’t.’

  Although Tom felt, suddenly, very angry indeed, he did not find it difficult to smile. The rules he had agreed with Judy in the tea-room at Market Weighton were by now part of his habits of thought, and had already proved their use that morning when Woffles had made his revelation about his own plans for matrimony.

  ‘I thought you were going to show people they were wrong, Bertie.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About thinking you might be a bit of a cad.’

  5

  Leeds, Selby, Hull, 5th May, 1926

  GINGERLY TOM EASED the regulator over. The start from Leeds Central, though not actually a disaster, had been almost farcically inept, with a mess of sparks and black smoke roaring up into the girderwork and the big drive-wheels spinning uselessly on the track while a line of picketing railwaymen jeered inaudibly from beyond the railings. Determined not to have that happen again, Tom had edged away from Marsh Lane so slowly that the sturdy old 4-4-0 might have been hauling twenty coaches instead of four. Even so he had managed better than yesterday.

  Now, with increasing confidence, he let his arm feel rather than his mind judge the relationship between the steam in the cylinders, the mass of his load and the friction of the track. The pistons sighed, shoved, blew with a deep note of satisfaction. The platform began to edge backwards. He felt a hint of slither at the end of the fourth piston-stroke, but caught it before the wheels began to spin. Now they were travelling at a walking-pace, and the gaps that seemed to separate the pulses of power at low speeds were joining, ready to build up into the familiar juddering rush. He peered forward along the cutting. The signal arms were down, but his instructions were to ignore all signals and only pay attention to red flags waving from windows. This was his third journey along this line, and only his second in this direction, but already he regarded the moment of leaving Cross Gates as the point at which the preliminaries were over and the run began in earnest. It was not simply that till now he had had to ease his train round the tight curves and over a whole series of racketing points as the line wound out of Leeds. It was the almost magical moment of change that lay just ahead.

  Cross Gates Station stood at the mouth of a cutting. On either side a complex of slate roofs sloped down, then rose to further ridges, crowned with yet more houses and here an
d there a church spire blackened all down one side by soot blown on the prevailing wind. Then, as the train moved forward from the platforms the cutting closed around, shutting out the view. A branch line snaked away north. Just beyond the junction a bridge spanned both lines. Beyond the bridge the cutting would continue for a couple of hundred yards and then they would surge out into the open and Leeds would be gone, vanished, and all around would lie open fields, a wood or two to the north, one large house and a wandering line of trees that showed the course of a stream. Yesterday it had been a total surprise, a transformation scene from the alien and menacing gloom of urban industry to the England Tom felt at home in. Today was another pearly May morning and he was anxious not to miss the moment.

  ‘How’s the fire, Horace?’ he shouted.

  Horace Smith, crouched double as he shovelled coal into the firebox, probably didn’t even hear through the gathering racket, but his attitude somehow combined contentment with eagerness. Tom could feel against his right calf the orange-gold glow from the firebox door, and could see that the plume of smoke from the stack was a good clean white, so he guessed that Horace had learnt yesterday’s lesson and was not overdoing the firing. He eased the regulator back as they approached the junction-points—with the signal-boxes largely unmanned there was always the uncomfortable possibility of their being set for the other line—but with a judder and clack they were over. The bridge loomed. He fed more steam to the cylinders and craned for his transformation scene.

  Momentarily the bridge closed their own smoke round them, and before it cleared the methodical bang and clank of engine and wheels were punctuated by a new loud noise, a wrong note, only partly metallic. He looked rapidly round the cab for some shattered component, but suddenly his eye was caught by a movement further off, a man, silhouetted against blueness at the top of the cutting wall, his whole body poised statue-like to aim and hurl. The statue moved.

  ‘Down!’ yelled Tom, ducking into the shelter of the cab-side. With a crash the thick glass of the forward window shattered in a shower of splinters and coal fragments. Tom reached forward, grabbed Horace by the scruff of his jacket and pulled him against the cab wall, booting the fire-door shut as he did so. Either that movement or some unregistered impulse caused him to shove the regulator, and the good old engine responded with a loud wuffle and an immediate change in wheel-rhythm.

  ‘What’s up?’ yelled Horace.

  ‘Throwing coal at us,’ Tom shouted back. ‘Fire do?’

  ‘Think so.’

  Now, above the engine noises Tom could hear the taunting shouts of men’s voices, a smashing of more glass, the scream of a woman. Looking back under the arch of the cab roof he could see a line of men ranged along the embankment wall, all stooping to pick up coal or in the act of hurling it at the coaches. They were black against blue, their faces undistinguishable, not individuals at all, but embodiments of rage and destruction, a frieze of devils. More coal thudded against the cab, but now Tom hardly cared about what happened to his section of the train. Violence against the locomotive and the men driving it seemed almost legitimate compared to the senseless attack on his passengers. He rose from his crouch, pulled his goggles down over his eyes and peered into the rush of air that came through his shattered window. The end of the cutting widened in a wedge of brightness. There was no obstruction on the line—thank God they had not gone that far, forcing him by their bombardment to duck out of sight and then letting him run full steam into an obstacle. Behind him his coaches continued to run the gauntlet, while on either side the sunlit fields of England opened around him, ruined.

  ‘Je-hoshophat!’ shouted Horace. ‘All over? Can I get back to my fire?’

  ‘Think so. Little and often, Horace. Just burning through. Banked into the corners.’

  ‘Righty-ho.’

  Tom stared ahead, desperately trying to remember details of the line that yesterday had not seemed to affect him. There was a cutting in about a mile, just before Garforth Station. No level crossings for a while. Bridges might be dangerous—but there were innumerable methods of stopping a train, for anybody bent on more than symbolic malice. At least bridges and crossings meant roads, and that might mean police . . .

  The cutting neared, dead straight, a notch in the forward horizon. It seemed unguarded. He dared not rush through, or he would overshoot the station beyond. Anxiously he eased the regulator back and began to apply the brakes. No trouble at all.

  There were several passengers waiting at Garforth, and at once they were joined on the platform by knots of others from the train. Several began to argue and gesticulate, or crane around for official reassurance. A young man in the most extravagant plus-fours Tom had ever seen was standing aloof, with two signal flags under his arm. When passengers approached him he shook his head and grinned.

  ‘Nip back down the coaches,’ said Tom. ‘Tell everyone I’ll give a series of short blasts on the whistle if I see trouble coming. They’d better stand on the seats then—get above the flying glass.’

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Horace, climbing eagerly down.

  ‘Don’t forget to tell Dampier,’ shouted Tom.

  Horace waved and trotted away. He was a very puppyish young man, not an undergraduate but a trainee clerk in a Reading insurance office, who had been positively instructed by his employer to join the volunteers. Horace had shown considerable initiative in travelling to Oxford to do so, on the grounds that it would be “more fun to be with the ’varsity fellows,” and had been rewarded, apparently beyond dreams, by being driven north in a Rolls-Royce otherwise crammed with Magdalen men and with a crate of champagne in the dickie, and now was helping take a train through romantic perils with the Honourable Thomas Hankey beside him in the cab. If Tom had been told a week before that it was possible to like and respect a man who took blatant delight in matters like these, and who moreover said ‘Righty-ho’ almost every other sentence, he would have laughed in a slightly embarrassed way—and would, he now saw, have been mistaken.

  The passengers gathered round Horace, clearing the way for the young man in plus-fours to stroll forward without risking contact with them.

  ‘You look as if you’d been strafed a bit,’ he said.

  ‘This end of Cross Gate cutting,’ said Tom. ‘Line of men chucking coal. Get on the blower, will you, and see if the police can’t stop them?’

  ‘Right you are. Nice to have something to do. I was beginning to think I was wasting my time. You’re my first train through. If things don’t jolly up a bit I’m not coming back tomorrow.’

  ‘You can’t . . .’

  ‘Oh yes I can. Yesterday there were a gang of chaps out mending track up at Horsforth. We’re all sleeping in the same school, you know. One of them showed me his hands, all covered with blisters, said it was the most boring day he’d spent in his whole life. They’re none of them going back tomorrow—they’re going down to the tram depot, see if anyone will let them drive a few trams.’

  ‘If the junctions aren’t manned the trains can’t go through,’ said Tom. ‘It won’t be safe.’

  ‘Doesn’t look all that safe as it is. Ready to go?’

  ‘Just waiting for my fireman. Here he is.’

  Horace came trotting up the platform, grinning as he ran.

  ‘All right?’ said Tom.

  ‘Fine. One or two old pussies wanted to get off, but I bundled them back on. We’ve lost about a dozen windows—quite a lot of compartments weren’t touched at all, they must have been rotten shots. I say, there’s a bookie in the second coach taking bets on how far we’re going to get. I put a couple of bob on us making it the whole way. D’you think I’m safe?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Tom.

  After that they steamed the twelve miles to Selby without incident. Most of it, once they were down out of the hills, was straight track, without gradients or even cuttings and embankments. Several level-crossings might have stopped them, but most were only farm-tracks and stood open. Only the last one cro
ssed a proper road, forcing Tom to stop, start and stop while Horace and Dampier (a serious middle-aged businessman, quite unlike most of the volunteers, who was acting as guard) worked the gate-routine they had evolved yesterday. Waiting for Horace to come running up the track while Dampier closed the gates, Tom thought about him again. He was really rather bright; he had immeasurably improved his firing technique since yesterday, and was not constantly fiddling with the injectors or peering at the gauges as he had done then, but had worked out what was necessary and was doing that without fuss. Perhaps even the episode with the Rolls and the champagne had not been pure luck—Horace was the type not simply to take his chances but also to make them. One day, if all went well for him, he might be a very rich man. Indeed, mutatis mutandis, the founding Hankey could have been a chap rather like Horace. Suppose all went other than well for Tom himself, and Sillerby had to be sold, why, Horace—Sir Horace by then—might buy it and found a new line . . .

  ‘It looks as if you’re going to get your two bob back,’ said Tom.

  They were waiting for the flag at Selby. Horace straightened from stoking for the move-off.

  ‘Hope so,’ he said. ‘Mr. Thwaites gave me a fiver for expenses, but . . .’

  He sounded genuinely bothered at the thought of losing his florin. Once again Tom felt the mild shock that comes from a change of perspective about something taken for granted. His own poverty, or rather the family poverty, had always been measured in pounds or even fivers, in the fact that Stevens ought to have retired on a pension three years ago, and that Pennycuick mowed the lawns as well as driving Father and caring for the cars.

  ‘Oughtn’t to be any problem,’ said Tom. ‘Only those beastly crossings.’