A long drag southwest, across the top of Poole harbour to where the Wareham turn branched left from the road to Durnovaria. Jesse coaxed the waggons round it. He gave the Margaret her head, clocking twenty miles an hour on the open road. Then into Wareham, the awkward bend by the railway crossing; past the Black Bear with its monstrous carved sign and over the Frome where it ran into the sea, limning the northern boundary of Purbeck Island. After that the heaths again; Stoborough, Slepe, Middlebere, Norden, empty and vast, full of droning wind. Finally a twinkle of light showed ahead, high off the road and to the right; the Margaret thundered into Corvesgeat, the ancient pass through the Purbeck hills. Foursquare in the cutting and commanding the road, the great castle of Corfe squatted atop its mound, windows blazing light like eyes. My Lord of Purbeck must be in residence then, receiving his guests for Christmas.
The steamer circled the high flanks of the motte, climbed to the village beyond. She crossed the square, wheels and engine reflecting a hollow clamour from the front of the Greyhound Inn, climbed again through the long main street to where the heath was waiting once more, flat and desolate, haunted by wind and stars.
The Swanage road. Jesse, doped by the cold, fought the idea that the Margaret had been running through this void fuming her breath away into blackness like some spirit cursed and bound in a frozen hell. He would have welcomed any sign of life, even of the routiers; but there was nothing. Just the endless bitterness of the wind, the darkness stretching out each side of the road. He swung his mittened hands, stamping on the footplate, turning to see the tall shoulders of the load swaying against the night, way back the faint reflection of the tail lamps. He’d long since given up cursing himself for an idiot. He should have laid up at Poole, moved out again with the dawn; he knew that well enough. But tonight he felt obscurely that he was not driving but being driven.
He valved water through the preheater, stoked, valved again. One day they’d swap these solid-burners for oil-fueled machines. The units had been available for years now; but oil firing was still a theory in limbo, awaiting the Papal verdict. Might be a decision next year, or the year after, or maybe not at all. The ways of Mother Church were devious, not to be questioned by the herd.
Old Eli would have fitted oil burners and damned the priests black to their faces, but his drivers and steersmen would have balked at the excommunication that would certainly have followed. Strange and Sons had bowed the knee there, not for the first time and not for the last. Jesse found himself thinking about his father again while the Margaret slogged upwards, back into the hills. It was odd; but now he felt he could talk to the old man. Now he could explain his hopes, his fears.… Only now was too late; because Eli was dead and gone, six foot of Dorset muck on his chest. Was that the way of the world? Did people always feel they could talk, and talk, when it was just that bit too late?
The big mason’s yard outside Long Tun Matravers. The piles of stone thrust up, dimly visible in the light of the steamer’s lamps, breaking at last the deadly emptiness of the heath. Jesse hooted a warning; the voice of the Burrell rushed across the housetops, mournful and huge. The place was deserted, like a town of the dead. On the right the King’s Head showed dim lights; its sign creaked uneasily, rocking in the wind. The Margaret’s wheels hit cobbles, slewed; Jesse spun the brakes on, snapping back the reversing lever to cut the power from the pistons. The frost had gathered thickly here, in places the road was like glass. At the crest of the hill into Swanage he twisted the control that locked his differentials. The loco steadied and edged down, groping for her haven. The wind skirled, lifting a spray of snow crystals across her headlights.
The roofs of the little town seemed to cluster under their mantel of frost. Jesse hooted again, the sound enormous between the houses. A gang of kids appeared from somewhere, ran yelling alongside the train. Ahead was a crossroads, and the yellow lamps on the front of the George Hotel. Jesse aimed the loco for the yard entrance, edged forward. The smokestack brushed the passageway overhead. Here was where he needed a mate; the steam from the Burrell, blowing back in the confined space, obscured his vision. The children had vanished; he gentled the reversing lever, easing in. The exhaust beats thrashed back from the walls, then the Margaret was clear, rumbling across the yard. The place had been enlarged years back to take the road trains; Jesse pulled across between a Garrett and a six-horse Clayton and Shuttleworth, neutralized the reversing lever and closed the regulator. The pounding stopped at last.
* * *
The haulier rubbed his face and stretched. The shoulders of his coat were beaded with ice; he brushed at it and got down stiffly, shoved the scotches under the engine’s wheels, valved off her lamps. The hotel yard was deserted, the wind booming in the surrounding roofs; the boiler of the loco seethed gently. Jesse blew her excess steam, banked his fire and shut the dampers, stood on the front axle to set a bucket upside down atop the chimney. The Margaret would lie the night now safely. He stood back and looked at the bulk of her still radiating warmth, the faint glint of light from round the ash pan. He took his haversack from the cab and walked to the George to check in.
They showed him his room and left him. He used the loo, washed his face and hands, and left the hotel. A few yards down the street the windows of a pub glowed crimson, light seeping through the drawn curtains. Its sign proclaimed it the Mermaid Inn. He trudged down the alley that ran alongside the bars. The back room was full of talk, the air thick with the fumes of tobacco. The Mermaid was a hauliers’ pub; Jesse saw half a score of men he knew, Tom Skinner from Powerstock, Jeff Holroyd from Wey Mouth, two of old Serjeantson’s boys. On the road, news travels fast; they crowded round him, talking against each other. He grunted answers, pushing his way to the bar. Yes, his father had had a sudden hemorrhage; no, he hadn’t lived long after it. Five of the clock the next afternoon.… He pulled his coat open to reach his wallet, gave his order, took the pint and the double Scotch. A poker, thrust glowing into the tankard, mulled the ale; creamy froth spilled down the sides of the pot. The spirit burned Jesse’s throat, made his eyes sting. He was fresh off the road; the others made room for him as he crouched knees apart in front of the fire. He swigged at the pint feeling heat invade his crotch, move into his stomach. Somehow his mind could still hear the pounding of the Burrell, the vibration of her wheel was still in his fingers. Time later for talk and questioning; first the warmth. A man had to be warm.
She managed somehow to cross and stand behind him, spoke before he knew she was there. He stopped chafing his hands and straightened awkwardly, conscious now of his height and bulk.
“Hello, Jesse…”
Did she know? The thought always came. All those years back when he’d named the Burrell; she’d been a gawky stripling then, all legs and eyes, but she was the Lady he’d meant. She’d been the ghost that haunted him those hot, adolescent nights, trailing her scent among the scents of the garden flowers. He’d been on the steamer when Eli took that monstrous bet, sat and cried like a fool because when the Burrell breasted the last slope she wasn’t winning fifty golden guineas for his father, she was panting out the glory of Margaret. But Margaret wasn’t a stripling now, not any more; the lamps put bright highlights on her brown hair, her eyes flickered at him, the mouth quirked …
He grunted at her. “Evenin’, Margaret…”
She brought him his meal, set a corner table, sat with him awhile as he ate. That made his breath tighten in his throat; he had to force himself to remember it meant nothing. After all you don’t have a father die every week of your life. She wore a chunky costume ring with a bright blue stone; she had a habit of turning it restlessly between her fingers as she talked. The fingers were thin with flat, polished nails, the hands wide across the knuckles like the hands of a boy. He watched her hands now touching her hair, drumming at the table, stroking the ash of a cigarette sideways into a saucer. He could imagine them sweeping, dusting, cleaning, as well as doing the other things, the secret things women must do to themselves.
She asked him what he’d brought down. She always asked that. He said “Lady” briefly, using the jargon of the hauliers. Wondering again if she ever watched the Burrell, if she knew she was the Lady Margaret; and whether it would matter to her if she did. Then she brought him another drink and said it was on the house, told him she must go back to the bar now and that she’d see him again.
He watched her through the smoke, laughing with the men. She had an odd laugh, a kind of flat chortle that drew back the top lip and showed the teeth while the eyes watched and mocked. She was a good barmaid, was Margaret; her father was an old haulier, he’d run the house this twenty years. His wife had died a couple of seasons back, the other daughters had married and moved out but Margaret had stayed. She knew a soft touch when she saw one; leastways that was the talk among the hauliers. But that was crazy, running a pub wasn’t an easy life. The long hours seven days a week, the polishing and scrubbing, mending and sewing and cooking … though they did have a woman in the mornings for the rough work. Jesse knew that like he knew most other things about his Margaret. He knew her shoe size, and that her birthday was in May; he knew she was twenty-four inches round the waist and that she liked Chanel and had a dog called Joe. And he knew she’d sworn never to marry; she’d said running the Mermaid had taught her as much about men as she wanted to learn, five thousand down on the counter would buy her services but nothing else. She’d never met anybody that could raise the half of that, the ban was impossible. But maybe she hadn’t said it at all; the village air swam with gossip, and amongst themselves the hauliers yacked like washerwomen.
Jesse pushed his plate away. Abruptly he felt the rising of a black self-contempt. Margaret was the reason for nearly everything; she was why he’d detoured miles out of his way, pulled his train to Swanage for a couple of boxes of iced fish that wouldn’t repay the hauling back. Well, he’d wanted to see her and he’d seen her. She’d talked to him, sat by him; she wouldn’t come to him again. Now he could go. He remembered again the raw sides of a grave, the spattering of earth on Eli’s coffin. That was what waited for him, for all God’s so-called children; only he’d wait for his death alone. He wanted to drink now, wash out the image in a warm brown haze of alcohol. But not here, not here.… He headed for the door.
He collided with the stranger, growled an apology, walked on. He felt his arm caught; he turned back, stared into liquid brown eyes set in a straight-nosed, rakishly handsome face. “No.” said the newcomer. “No, I don’t believe it. By all tha’s unholy, Jesse Strange…”
For a moment the other’s jaunty fringe of a beard baffled him; then Jesse started to grin in spite of himself. “Colin,” he said slowly. “Col de la Haye…”
Col brought his other arm round to grip Jesse’s biceps. “Well, hell,” he said. “Jesse, you’re lookin’ well. This calls f’r a drink, ol’ boy. What you bin doin’ with yourself? Hell, you’re lookin’ well…”
They leaned in a corner of the bar, full pints in front of them. “God damn, Jesse, that’s lousy luck. Los’ your ol’ man, eh? Tha’s rotten.…” He lifted his tankard. “To you, ol’ Jesse. Happier days…”
At college in Sherborne Jesse and Col had been fast friends. It had been the attraction of opposites; Jesse slow-talking, studious, and quiet, de la Haye the rake, the man-about-town. Col was the son of a west country businessman, a feminist and rogue at large; his tutors had always sworn that like the Fielding character he’d been born to be hanged. After college Jesse had lost touch with him. He’d heard vaguely Col had given up the family business; importing and warehousing just hadn’t been fast enough for him. He’d apparently spent a time as a strolling jongleur, working on a book of ballads that had never got written, had six months on the boards in Londinium before being invalided home the victim of a brawl in a brothel. “A’d show you the scar,” said Col, grinning hideously, “but it’s a bit bloody awkward in mixed comp’ny, ol’ boy.…” He’d later become, of all things, a haulier for a firm in Isca. That hadn’t lasted long; halfway through his first week he’d howled into Bristol with an eight-horse Clayton and Shuttleworth, unreeled his hose and drained the corporation horse trough in the town center before the peelers ran him in. The Clayton hadn’t quite exploded but it had been a near go. He’d tried again, up in Aquae Sulis where he wasn’t so well known; that time he lasted six months before a broken gauge glass stripped most of the skin from his ankles. De la Haye had moved on, seeking as he put it “less lethal employment.” Jesse chuckled and shook his head. “So what be ’ee doin’ now?”
The insolent eyes laughed back at him. “A’ trade,” said Col breezily. “A’ take what comes; a li’l there.… Times are hard, we must all live how we can. Drink up, ol’ Jesse, the next one’s mine.…”
They chewed over old times while Margaret served up pints and took the money, raising her eyebrows at Col. The night de la Haye, pot-valiant, had sworn to strip his professor’s cherished walnut tree.… “A’ remember that like it was yes’day,” said Col happily. “Lovely ol’ moon there was, bright as day.…” Jesse had held the ladder while Col climbed; but before he reached the branches the tree was shaken as if by a hurricane. “Nuts comin’ down like bloody hailstones,” chortled Col. “Y’ remember, Jesse, y’must remember.… An’ there was that … that bloody ol’ rogue of a peeler Toby Warrilow sittin’ up there with his big ol’ boots stuck out, shakin’ the hell out of that bloody tree.…” For weeks after that, even de la Haye had been able to do nothing wrong in the eyes of the law; and a whole dormitory had gorged themselves on walnuts for nearly a month.
There’d been the business of the two nuns stolen from Sherborne Convent; they’d tried to pin that on de la Haye and hadn’t quite managed it, but it had been an open secret who was responsible. Girls in Holy Orders had been removed odd times before, but only Col would have taken two at once. And the affair of the Poet and Peasant. The landlord of that inn, thanks to some personal quirk, kept a large ape chained in the stables; Col, evicted after a singularly rowdy night, had managed to slit the creature’s collar. The Godforsaken animal caused troubles and panics for a month; men went armed, women stayed indoors. The thing had finally been shot by a militiaman who caught it in his room drinking a bowl of soup.
“So what you goin’ to do now?” asked de la Haye, swigging back his sixth or seventh beer. “Is your firm now, no?”
“Aye.” Jesse brooded, hands clasped, chin touching his knuckles. “Goin’ to run it, I guess…”
Col draped an arm round his shoulders. “You be okay,” he said. “You be okay pal, why so sad? Hey, tell you what. You get a li’l girl now, you be all right then. Tha’s what you need, ol’ Jesse; a’ know the signs.” He punched his friend in the ribs and roared with laughter. “Keep you warm nights better’n a stack of extra blankets. An’ stop you getting fat, no?”
Jesse looked faintly startled. “Dunno ’bout that…”
“Ah, hell,” said de la Haye. “Tha’s the thing though. Ah, there’s nothin’ like it. Mmmmyowwhh.…” He wagged his hips, shut his eyes, drew shapes with his hands, contrived to look rapturous and lascivious at the same time. “Is no trouble now, ol’ Jesse,” he said, “You loaded now, you know that? Hell, man, you’re eligible.… They come runnin’ when they hear, you have to fight ’em off with a … a pushpole couplin’, no?” He dissolved again in merriment.
Eleven of the clock came round far too quickly. Jesse struggled into his coat, followed Col up the alley beside the pub. It was only when the cold air hit him he realized how stoned he was. He stumbled against de la Haye, then ran into the wall. They reeled along the street laughing, parted company finally at the George. Col, roaring out promises, vanished into the night.
Jesse leaned against the Margaret’s rear wheel, head laid back on its struts, and felt the beer fume in his brain. When he closed his eyes a slow movement began; the ground seemed to tilt forward and back under his feet. Man, but that last hour had been good. It had been college all over again; h
e chuckled helplessly, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. De la Haye was a no-good bastard all right but a nice guy, nice guy.… Jesse opened his eyes blearily, looked up at the road train. Then he moved carefully, hand over hand along the engine, to test her boiler temperature with his palm. He hauled himself to the footplate, opened the firebox doors, spread coal, checked the dampers and water gauge. Everything secure. He tacked across the yard, feeling the odd snow crystals sting his face.
He fiddled with his key in the lock, swung the door open. His room was black and icily cold. He lit the single lantern, left its glass ajar. The candle flame shivered in a draught. He dropped across the bed heavily, lay watching the one point of yellow light sway forward and back. Best get some sleep, make an early start tomorrow.… His haversack lay where he’d slung it on the chair but he lacked the strength of will to unpack it now. He shut his eyes.
Almost instantly the images began to swirl. Somewhere in his head the Burrell was pounding; he flexed his hands, feeling the wheel rim thrill between them. That was how the locos got you, after a while; throbbing and throbbing hour on hour till the noise became a part of you, got in the blood and brain so you couldn’t live without it. Up at dawn, out on the road, driving till you couldn’t stop; Londinium, Aquae Sulis, Isca; stone from the Purbeck quarries, coal from Kimmeridge, wool and grain and worsted, flour and wine, candlesticks, Madonnas, shovels, butter scoops, powder and shot, gold, lead, tin; out on contract to the Army, the Church.… Cylinder cocks, dampers, regulator, reversing lever; the high iron shaking of the footplate …
Modern Classics of Science Fiction Page 25
