A Summer in the Twenties

by Peter Dickinson

  (There were ten between Selby and Hull, but some were at stations where they would have to stop anyway.)

  At last the crates of hens were loaded and the stationmaster—a grey-haired and strained-looking railway employee who had not joined the strike—gave Dampier the signal. Dampier produced a long blast on his whistle, waved his flag and scampered for the van. Tom pushed the regulator.

  He was answered by a prodigious belch of smoke and a wild rush of useless power from the cylinders. It was Leeds all over again, but worse. Even with the lowest possible steam the wheels spun and the connecting-rods threshed round. The train itself barely moved. Tom leaned from the cab till he could see the near rail, It gleamed with something duller than the polish of use.

  ‘What’s up?’ shouted Horace.

  ‘Some blighter’s greased the rails, I think.’

  ‘Better than chucking coal.’

  ‘I’ll try the sand-boxes.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘These levers here. You do your side. Shove it right up. Fine. They dribble sand onto the track in front of the drive wheels. Don’t let me forget to close them once we’re going.’

  Harry Hackby had told Tom a famous railway chestnut about a driver who had brought the London express up with his sand-boxes open all the way, and arrived at York with his wheels so worn that they had flanges on both sides. Really any fool could drive a train when all went well, but it was in the nature of railways that all did not go well, and immeasurable layers of skill and experience might still not be enough. Determined at least to show that he was not any fool, Tom tried again. The wheels spun, half-bit, spun again, held, and they were moving.

  ‘Well done,’ yelled Horace. ‘Don’t look so peeved. This is fun!’

  ‘It was those men throwing coal,’ Tom shouted back,

  ‘I don’t know. I was thinking—next time there’s a strike I might have a go at that. I bet it was a real lark for them!’

  Clearly Horace was only teasing, but Tom didn’t answer. There was a sharp curve out of Selby after the clanging Ouse bridge, which needed all his attention, and then two junctions close together. The points on the second one had yesterday seemed to him unnervingly rough. After that the track ran almost due east, straight as a Roman road along the meadow-levels of the Ouse. He increased speed, producing a rush and clatter which made discussion impossible. Horace was right, in a sense, he thought. The idea of greasing the rails (a well-known engine-shed prank, according to Harry) had certainly been a lark; and no doubt the men on the Cross Gate embankment had enjoyed their shying, as if at a glorified fun-fair, the prize being the crash of glass. But the episode had changed Tom’s attitude to what he was doing. Yesterday he had been driving this train because it was what Father wanted him to do, because it was the sort of thing that was expected of him. Today he was driving it in order to defeat an enemy, an enemy symbolised by the devils of destruction silhouetted at the top of that embankment wall against an English sky. Victory, for the moment, consisted in getting the train through to Hull Paragon.

  But there was almost a sense of deflation as the victory began to near. On this stretch the only conceivable difficulties were the tedious stops and starts of the level-crossings. Perhaps on the outskirts of Hull itself there might be further trouble. Meanwhile Cliffe Halt, Wressle and Howden North came and went, with a few passengers boarding and alighting at each as though all were perfectly normal except that the train was running some forty minutes late.

  ‘You’d better keep your eyes skinned in case your bookie friend welshes before we’re there,’ called Tom as he fed the steam to let them chunter smoothly out of Howden.

  ‘Righty-ho. Aren’t you going to push her along a bit? We’re beastly late.’

  ‘Junction coming up. After that . . . Hello! What’s this?’

  In the distance, almost a mile out of Howden, a bridge crossed the line, and on its parapet pranced an extraordinary figure, semaphoring wildly. Horace craned from the cab, peering forward. Tom began to close the regulator.

  ‘Red flag,’ said Horace, drawing back into the cab.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  Tom let the engine slow and got ready to brake.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ he shouted.

  ‘Coming down the bank, I think,’ said Horace.

  ‘Only one of him?’

  ‘Far as I can make out. But get ready to move, eh?’

  There did not seem to be anywhere, except the parapet of the bridge itself, for an ambush to hide, and from a distance the man with the flag appeared to be wearing the standard strike-breaker’s uniform of plus-fours, cap and scarf. Even so Tom took the train clear through the bridge before bringing it to a halt. No attack came. He waited for the signaller to come panting along the track.

  Close to, the man—little more than a boy, really—was just as odd as he had appeared when first seen. He was so pink-faced with his run that he looked as though somebody had put his head in a bucket and scrubbed him. He wore a tweed cap, too large for him, and a strip of pink cloth which might once have been a college scarf but seemed to have been used more recently for cleaning purposes. He wore a waistcoat but no jacket. His striped shirt was buttoned at the sleeves, and his dark flannel trousers were tucked into thick grey socks and then tugged down in imitation of plus-fours. His boots were heavy and workmanlike.

  ‘They’ve took up the track!’ he shouted. ‘They’ve took up the track!’

  ‘It was all right yesterday,’ called Tom.

  ‘In the night. See there!’

  He pointed along the line. Tom stared ahead. The rails ran straight as a ruler, diminishing into a single gleaming line somewhere beyond Eastrington village, but their monotony was interrupted first by the points of a junction where a branch line curved away north, and then a quarter of a mile beyond that where a gang of about five men were working. Even at this distance it was possible to make out a gap in the right-hand rail.

  ‘You mun take the old H and B,’ said the man. ‘Buggers never thought on that! We’ve set the points.’

  His eyes, blue and candid, flashed with excitement as he gestured towards the tracks that branched away north-eastwards at the junction.

  ‘But I’m supposed to be going to Hull!’ said Tom. ‘How long will it take them to mend the track?’

  ‘Five hours, maybe. They’re not that skilled in it. But see there, the H and B goes to Hull, long way round, coming in through the Wolds.’

  ‘I’ve got passengers for Brough and Ferriby and places.’

  ‘Then you mun take them into Paragon and there’ll be a push-and-pull running out back to Eastrington.’

  ‘I see. Do you know what this track’s like? Are you sure it’s clear?’

  ‘Clear all the way through.’

  ‘What are the gradients like?’

  ‘One-fifty up from Newport through Drewton Tunnel. Sharper nor that down to Springbank. But nowt worse than a hundred. You’ll pull it easy, only four coaches.’

  Tom withdrew into the cab.

  ‘What do you think, Horace?’

  ‘Rummy little bounder . . . and why’s he dressed like that, and talking like that?’

  ‘That’s just Yorkshire. But he seems to know a lot about railways.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. What’s a push-and-pull?’

  ‘No idea. Hang on a tick.’

  Tom leaned from the cab again.

  ‘Do you work on the railways?’ he called.

  ‘Nay. Me Dad does, and he’s agin the strike, but he dursn’t black-leg. Heard the blokes saying as they were taking up the track, so he sent a message through to Paragon and they sent a gang out. I come up to stop the trains, see there. My Mum dressed me up this gate to look the same like one on you.’

  He grinned all over his face at the joke of it. Once more Tom and Horace withdrew into the privacy of the quietly hissing cab.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Horace.

  ‘It sounds possible. I think
they told me about this line yesterday, but there was so much to take in. I seem to remember they said it went to Hull too. Look. I want to get this train through.’

  ‘Oh, so do I. I’ve got two bob on it.’

  ‘Well, we aren’t going to make it down the main line. If this chap’s having us on, we shan’t make it this way either; but if he’s telling the truth we’ll get through.’

  ‘Done!’

  ‘All right. I’ll take the rap if it doesn’t work out. You’ll have to do a bit more firing than we bargained for—one-fifty gradients take a lot of steam.’

  ‘Righty-ho.’

  Once more Tom pushed the regulator across, but kept the speed right down until the train had clunked through the points and taken the branch line. Horace slung coal into the firebox with eager vigour. Tom opened the regulator further and stared anxiously along the strange track, glancing from time to time southwards to where the Hull main line, a dark streak across green, ran towards the houses of Eastrington. The tracks diverged but were still close enough for Tom to see that the workmen were actually levering a length of rail up onto the sleepers. The men stood up and waved, then bent to their work again. Slightly relieved he returned to peering along the line, which now ran level and steady towards the green rampart of the Wolds. Horace tapped his shoulder.

  ‘Bit of trouble back there,’ he shouted, gesturing with his thumb.

  Tom leaned from the cab and looked back down the line of coaches. Its regularity of paintwork and windows and brass door-handles was interrupted by a number of heads, and even some half-torsos, leaning out. Mouths yelled, arms signalled. Tom tried to make reassuring signals in return, then withdrew into the cab.

  ‘I’ll stop at the next station,’ he shouted. ‘You can run back and tell them what’s up.’

  ‘Righty-ho.’

  The place was called Sandholme. There was, not surprisingly, no staff at all at the station. A canal—it must be the one from Market Weighton—ran north through flat fields, but it too seemed strike-stilled. Indeed the whole landscape, apart from the hissing engine and Horace surrounded by a scrum of passengers twenty yards down the platform, seemed to have obeyed the call to inertia. The hills were unchanging, and no breeze stirred any leaf or flecked the glassy stillness of the canal. All lay gripped by peace.

  Tom felt he could do with a bit of peace. Neither of his tutors had been at all enthusiastic about his volunteering, and had only supported his request for leave of absence under heavy pressure from the Dean, who had been a most ferocious recruiter. Tom had had to promise to get through a full stint of reading every day, come what might, and to return with one full-length essay on the use of the arts to support or attack the concept of the imperium in the post-Augustan era, and another on the ontological argument in the light of the Hegelian categories. He had the Pharsalia in his pocket today. Late though they were running, the turn-round at Hull would still take a good three hours, which should be enough to skim through it.

  The group round Horace broke up. Two old women with parcels stayed on the platform but the rest of the passengers climbed back into the train. A farmer in gaiters hauled a sack out of the guards-van and joined the women. Horace trotted back up the train, closing two doors as he passed them. Dampier walked more slowly back to the van.

  ‘Those three are walking home across the fields,’ said Horace. ‘The farmer’ll send a pony for the sack. I say, Tom, Dampier thinks that fellow at the junction was having us on.’

  ‘He may have been,’ said Tom. ‘But we’ve got nothing to lose—it’s a secular version of Pascal’s bet, I suppose.’

  Horace grinned, bright-eyed. Presumably he had no idea what Tom was talking about, but his manner was perfectly designed to conceal the fact. A whistle shrilled. Leaning from the cab Tom observed that Dampier was contriving to wave his green flag in a manner that signalled total foreboding.

  The line curved gently, twice, until it was running almost due east. A gradient notice glimmered, became readable and was gone. One-fifty. The landscape still ran almost level towards the Wold escarpment, with straight dykes slicing it into rectangles, but already the line was rising onto a long embankment. The note of the cylinders deepened from easy puffs to soughs of effort, despite more steam. He slowed for a station—the signboard said it was North Cave—but there was no point in stopping; no one was waiting on the platform, nor was there any sign of staff. The embankment became a cutting, but still the line climbed.

  As they swung out of the cutting along the contour of a rounded hill Tom realised that he was enjoying the adventure, the sense of exploration through unknown lands. Moreover—unlike the clanging levels of the Ouse meadows—the country was beautiful, a clean chalk upland, quartered by abruptly plunging valleys. The line must have been crazily expensive to build through such gradients, but the result was splendidly dramatic. They steamed, climbing all the while, into another cutting, steep-sided and rimmed with woodland to the north. A bridge spanned the cleft and beyond it the mouth of the first tunnel loomed. Tom signalled to Horace to open the fire-box door. The tunnel was quite short so that as they approached its blackened brickwork he could see the inner arch of whiteness at the further end, but even so he instinctively slowed to meet the darkness, like a man groping along an unlit corridor and ducking from imagined door-sills. They churned into the reeking and clanging dark, with the cab lit by the hot glow from the firebox, then out into a brief patch of day and into dark again. Horace hunched, choking, against the cab wall. Tom grabbed for his handkerchief and held it across his face—Harry Hackby always carried a few bits of wet sacking for tunnels—but he too was starting to cough when there was a second or two of the golden fog turning silver and they were in sunlight, churning up the gradient at about twenty miles an hour. Tom gulped the lovely air that streamed in at the broken window. He peered through his goggles for the next tunnel.

  They were in a long cutting, wooded to the north above its steep white bank, but curving to the right so that the far end was out of view. A lone signal-box stood at the crown of the curve. About a hundred yards this side of it the line was blocked by a fair-sized tree.

  ‘Hold tight!’ he shouted, hoicking the regulator shut and with his left hand loosing the vacuum that would close the brakes. With a roaring sigh they bit. The jar of deceleration flung him forward so that he had to clutch at the safety-bar to stop himself from being thrown against his controls.

  ‘Oi!’ yelled Horace. ‘Mind what you’re at! You damned near chucked me in the fire!’

  He had been bending to consider whether he needed to stoke again, and was quite naturally furious with fright.

  ‘Sorry—tree on the line!’ answered Tom.

  ‘How’d it fall that far?’

  Now that they were stopped the mild wind was blowing their smoke forward up the cutting. The tree, thanks to the gradient and their slow approach, was still some eighty yards away. A flaw in the grain of the wind suddenly whisked the smoke aside and for the first time Tom saw the obstacle clearly.

  ‘Hi!’ yelled Horace. ‘It’s been cut! the rotters!’

  There was a moment in which the stillness and secrecy of the long cutting seemed to overwhelm even the impatient hissings of the engine, a short dull time in which peace grew ominous. Tom started to spin the tiller-like wheel that would reverse the drive from the cylinders, leaning from the cab as he did so to look back along the line of the coaches. The last wisps of smoke were still streaming up from the tunnel mouth. Passengers were craning from windows, partly obscuring the track beyond. But something was happening there. Leafage, another tree, men. A harsh and excited cheer.

  Now men were running towards him alongside the track.

  ‘The rotters!’ said Horace again.

  All along the northern rim of the cutting men had emerged from the trees. Some had large lumps of chalk in their hands, half-poised for throwing. Others held club-like lengths of branch, and one or two had mattocks. They stood for a moment, and then without any
apparent signal came leaping down the bank.

  Horace snatched up his shovel and held it like an assegai, ready to repel boarders.

  ‘Mind that side!’ he shouted.

  On the southern side the men who had hauled the tree across the track were almost at the footplate step, and more of the attackers from the wood were surging round the front of the engine to join them. One or two were climbing the nearest coach. In a few seconds they would be up in the tender, with several tons of coal to use for missiles. Defence was hopeless.

  ‘We’ll have to go quietly, Horace,’ said Tom over his shouldcr.

  ‘Not on your life!’

  The rush of men stopped. There were not in fact all that many of them on Tom’s side, less than twenty, jostling in a half-circle a yard or two clear of the tracks, waiting for the threat from the tender to put an end to resistance. A man pushed through the front rank, very short, almost a dwarf, but with a disproportionately large head. He held his fists in a sparring position as if about to punch the engine itself and pranced from foot to foot, shouting ‘Come down and fight! Come down and fight, then!’ His shabby cap tipped off backwards as he glared up at Tom with very pale blue eyes and grinned with victorious rage. Looked at from this angle he seemed to have no body at all, to be just that furious egg-shaped head with a pair of prancing boots attached at the neck and big fists jiggling near the chin. The men round him laughed and cheered.

  ‘Give it him then, Billy!’ they called.

  So encouraged the little man jerked about like a puppet. He was obviously some kind of idiot, a gang mascot, cared for by his mates but laughed at more than with. His presence transformed a scene which Tom had hitherto found merely frightening into something that was also repellent. Anything to put an end to it. Without thought he swung his left leg forward as if about to descend. Instantly silence gripped the men beneath him.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight. Who are you putting up?’

  Murmurs swelled to a cheer. Heads twisted and craned. Somebody shouted ‘Where’s Tinker?’