The Blackpool Highflyer js-2

by Andrew Martin

  'What's he doing out here, though?' I said.

  'There's a bit where he leaves the dolls to it,' said the first barman. 'They're all waiting there at the hopticians -' (he said the word very carefully, and put an 'h' in front of it) '- and they start up with these coughing goes. First one, then the whole lot.'

  'How do they cough if he's not there?'

  'The movements are all worked from off by the fellow does the props. Rubber tubes and air valves and all that carry on. And property's mate, junior properties – he does the coughing.'

  'While Monsieur Maurice drops in here for his little brain duster,' put in another of the barmen.

  'And it won't be the last of the night,' added the first.

  'Monsieur who?' I said.

  'Maurice,' said the first barman, and it came out like 'more ice'. 'Very Frenchified, he is.'

  'But not really, though,' added another of the barmen.

  'I've seen his name before,' I said; 'it was being put up outside a little hall in Blackpool.'

  'Very likely,' said my barman.

  I looked at my glass of water and enquired about the price of a pint. On hearing the answer, I told my barman I'd nip back to the Evening Star for my last of the night, if that was quite all right with him. He grinned, and all the barmen watched me walk through the main doors and out into the hot night.

  There might have been thirty people in the Star by now, and every man jack avoiding the billiard table. The Ramsden's was off, so I put away a pint of something else that I didn't much care for, and it didn't knock the stone on the line from my mind, so I took another, and that seemed about the right dose.

  I came out of the Evening Star for a second time, and a tram went racing past like a comet with advertisements, or the fast drawing-back of a curtain. Looking far to my left, I saw the Joint and Hind's Mill, a black modern castle at the top of Beacon Hill. To the right, at the top of Horton Street, was another beacon of sorts, the Palace Theatre, but the show was done long since and, as I watched, the lights began to go out. I made towards this disappearing target anyway, and turned off before reaching it to enter the side streets.

  The wife would have been home an hour since, or more, so I was late. I didn't like to be late back for the wife, and I didn't like to be bothered about being late back.

  There was a quarter moon, lying on its back, lazy and not giving out much light; there were flies around all the gas lamps, and too much life in the streets, though none of it to be seen: just far-off shouts and cries, and all doubled by the echo of the houses. The shouts always seemed to be shadows of sound, around the corner, or in the alleyways behind the houses.

  I turned down a snicket that cut a terrace in half, then pushed along a particular back alley because I liked the racket my boots made on the cobbles, but the clanging of the segs on my heels was presently doubled, so that the sound was more the clip clop of a horse. I turned, and there seemed to be a fast-travelling shadow, but no sound. I carried on walking, and was back to hearing the sound of my own boots. I turned into another snicket, and then I was in Back Hill Street.

  The gas was up in the occasional house. I came to ours, which gave out no light, and saw a man or a shadow of a man beyond, in Hill Street. Something about him made me look behind me, and there came a shout from that direction that seemed to jump, so that it was two shouts, and then the noise of something happening in Hill Street, and then nothing.

  I unlocked the door, walked into the house and sat down on the sofa, not breathing. It came as a relief, a few moments later, to hear the steady chimes of midnight coming up from the parish church. I stared at the closed door, and thought about how a good cold snap would put an end to all this nonsense in the streets. When the chimes ended, I stood up to put on a brew, and as I did so the letter box flipped open. I flew at the door and looked up and down Back Hill Street, but that's all I saw: the street and the quarter moon, looking like a painting.

  Chapter Seven

  Bright sunlight and the clanging of hooves woke me up early the next morning, the Saturday, and, as I climbed out of bed, I thought: did I go and see a ventriloquist last night, or did he come and see me? I ought not to have been standing next to the fellow in the bar like that. It was against all the rules. Then there was Paul of the Socialist Mission. I knew I'd said too much to someone. Or had it all been just kids in the streets and bad beer?

  Leaving the wife to sleep, I stepped out, and saw a pantechnicon drawing up. The remover was in the driving seat but there was no sign of our lodger.

  The remover leapt down, and said: 'Upstairs, is it?' He opened the doors at the back, took out a chair, and darted into the house with it. I watched as the remover took in various articles and, as he did not see any need to say anything, it was like watching a burglary in reverse. Just then a young fellow in a black suit came wandering into the court, and he looked a George Ogden somehow: biggish and rather round. He was wearing a high collar even though it was a Saturday, and he was all waistcoat, the garment in question being shiny black with many little secret slits and vents and special pockets for small things. Laced into it through special holes was a watch chain, which hung across this fellow's belly like a golden banner. I knew that I had marvelled at this waistcoat before – and that I must have done so down at the Joint.

  He was about of an age with me. He stuck out his hand: 'What's your label?' he said, and he not only shook my hand but clapped me on the back.

  'Jim Stringer,' I said.

  'Which makes you the master of the house.'

  'I am the man of the house'1 said, carefully.

  George Ogden gave me a look – curious, like, but friendly. He had a round face, and a lot of curly hair which looked like smoke that had tumbled upwards from a chimney and stopped.

  The remover was toiling away in the background, now carrying a bundle of George Ogden's books. I caught sight of the title of one: Letters of Descartes. They were all from the Everyman Library.

  'I've come along to see that this man takes proper care of my things' said George Ogden loudly, and just then he turned to the remover: 'Good morning to you.'

  The remover made no reply, but carried on removing.

  'Very independent unit, that chap' said George Ogden.

  'The wife tells me you work at the Joint,' I said. I didn't like to say: You're a clerk, because to my ears that sounded unkind. 'I wondered if that's where you saw the advertisement?'

  He nodded. 'Presently in the booking office,' he said, 'but I like to think I have the steam in me to go a good deal further. What line are you in?'

  'Engine man,' I said, and for the first time since beginning on the footplate I said it without boastfulness.

  'What… driver?'

  'Hope to be in time,' I said automatically. 'But just at the moment firing.'

  'I like to think I'm a ticket clerk only on the outside,' said our lodger, at which I took a good look at him, thinking: well, there's a lot of your outside.

  'Are you on goods or passengers?' he asked. 'Don't say you're on the express runs?'

  I fancied he half wanted me to be on the expresses, and half not.

  'I'm on the excursions,' I said.

  'Oh yes… Do you think one of us should hold that horse?' he said, nodding towards the removal man's nag.

  'It's standing perfectly still' I said.

  'I know' said George Ogden, and then he seemed quite lost again for a second. 'But there are some valuable items in that van, I don't mind telling you.'

  Wondering about what sort of goods we were getting here, with this funny fellow, I inched my way around to the back of the van so I could get a clue to his character from his possessions, saying as I did so: 'I suppose you spend half your time selling tickets for our show – the excursion runs, I mean, especially the Blackpool trips. There was a stone put on the line to Blackpool last week. Did you hear of that? My mate and me were the ones who found it in our way.'

  'Yes,' said George, 'I did hear of that.'
/>   'A lass was killed when we clapped on the brakes,' I said.

  Thoroughly bad show,' said George. 'Not quite cricket, if you see what I mean.'

  'We'll find out who put it there,' I said. 'You can bet your boots.'

  'You've a lot of plants,' I said, for I had now inched my way around the back of the van, where there was a whole forest of ferns and rubber plants.

  'They're all new,' said George Ogden proudly. 'I'm a lover of nature, Mr Stringer.'

  'Well I'd say they needed a drink.'

  'Reckon so?'

  'The leaves of that fern – they're sort of crinkly, and look

  A book had been pitched in among the leaves of the fern: a book of plays by George Bernard Shaw. I picked it out.

  'They're going brown at all the edges' I said.

  'What? The books?' said George. 'Better get 'em read, in that case.'

  'The plants' I said.

  George was looking up at such quantity of sky as could be seen between the two rows of houses in Back Hill Street, which was a small amount, but at that moment very blue.

  'Every Sunday,' he was saying, 'I mean to be on my bike, getting to know the beginnings of Derbyshire.'

  'What bike?' I said, for there was none in the van.

  'It's to be sent by the Nimrod Cycling Company,' said George.

  'Oh yes?' I said, scrambling down from the van.

  'When they've built it. You see, the kind I've put in for is in advance of any of the machines they have presently available.' He took a little bag of sweet stuff from one of his many pockets and held it out for me. 'So far,' he continued, 'their models are all just so much ironmongery. Comfit?' he said.

  'Thanks,' I said, and I put my hand into the bag, but all the comfits were stuck together in the heat so I gave it up after a second, but George Ogden continued to hold out the bag.

  'Carry on, old man,' he said, 'you haven't quite gained your object.'

  I shook my head and smiled, at which he took the bag in two hands, and began straining to break a lump of comfit off for me, going rather red in the process.

  The remover was back in the van again as the comfits cracked. George handed a lump of them to me, and we both stood there crunching away as the removal man worked.

  'Interesting what you say about those plants, old man,' said George, very thoughtfully, through a mouthful of comfits. 'I thought the leaves were supposed to go brown at a certain time?'

  I tried to give him a few points about plants, as the remover came and went, grumbling in an under-breath, sometimes dropping things and not always picking them up. The subject came back to railway tickets. George said that the ticketing at the Joint was all pills, and that with a brand new way of going on, which he had thought up the night before, the Lanky would be able to double its profits, but I was prevented from hearing about this plan by the removal man, who came up to George when the van was empty: 'That's you in,' he said, at which George Ogden reached into his waistcoat (I wondered if there were as many pockets inside as on the outside), and produced a pocket book. In this he found a ten-bob note, which he handed over to the remover. He was given some change in the form of one coin, which he looked at for quite a while, before giving it a home in his waistcoat and saying to the remover, 'I'm very much obliged to you, sir, you can be certain that I will be recommending you to all at the office.'

  As the remover drove off, George bent over and picked up a boot that the man had dropped, saying: 'Did you smell the ale on his breath? And to think I could have hired the van and done the job myself for half the price.'

  'Where did you get him from?' I said.

  'From the small ads of the Courier,' said George, 'the very small ads. Should have known not to take a chance on a fellow who can't run to a line of bold type.'

  'He did seem a bit surly,' I said.

  'Devilish surly,' said George Ogden, 'and a butterfingers to boot.'

  He then lowered himself down to pick up a book that had also been dropped.

  This, I saw, was Letters of Descartes again – in Everyman like the last.

  'You've two copies of that, you know,' I said. 'I saw one earlier.'

  'Well,' said George, 'I take six a month from the catalogue, and sometimes I pick one I've had before.'

  'Why?'

  'Oh, you know, I do it by accident… I'm nuts on literature,' he went on. 'I've got twenty-four Everyman's now, and when I get up to thirty, I'm going to start reading them.'

  We had stepped inside the house by now, and the kettle was screaming. I walked into the scullery and called to George: 'Cup of tea?'

  'Don't mind if I do.' I made a pot, and as it was mashing took George upstairs to show him to his room; I pointed out the door at the back that gave on to the iron staircase leading down into the yard. 'You'll probably want to use these mostly, so you can come and go under your own steam,' I said. 'The outside privy is yours; there's use of the scullery, and if you want a sit down in the parlour from time to time, that'll be quite all right I'm sure.'

  The stuff had just been put into the room in any old way, with most of the plants off their tables and sitting at crazy angles on the truckle bed. And there were heaps of packets of biscuits on the floor. George Ogden trooped through all this rubble towards the door leading to the outside stair, and the thin window alongside looking out to Hill Street and beyond. Well, the window may have been thin but as much as possible was trying to come through it. You could see across the mill tops to Beacon Hill, with its own few mills, including Hind's, from which this bright morning smoke was dreaming away to the right; and then, more directly below us on the hillside, were all the things the factories had made: the Drill Hall, the courts, the hotels, the Palace Theatre, and all the little houses in between, cluttering the place up like the pawns on a chess board. I threw open the window for George and the room was filled with the blaring of a barge on the canal wharf, and the faint cry, rising up from the Joint, of 'Halifax!', which a certain old porter set up whenever a train came in.

  The wife was at the door of the room; George was looking at her, and it was strange to think that another man was seeing her morning self, with a sleepy delay in her eyes, and her hair tangled. 'Good morning, Mrs Stringer,' said George, and he bowed. There was no other word for it.

  'Halifax!' came the cry from the station once again, and it was as though we were all just waking from a dream, and needed to be reminded where we were.

  'I hope you will be quite comfortable here, Mr Ogden,' she said. 'Of course you will always use the stairs at the back.' She had a paper in her hand, which she gave to him.

  'They're good quarters,' he said, 'just what I need to be going on with.'

  'Please remember' said the wife, 'there's use of the scullery, but do please knock before entering if the door should be closed. You must keep to the outside privy. You may use the paraffin stove for heating water up here if you like but you are to ask first if that's quite all right. I have taken the liberty of typing out our agreement.'

  I liked hearing the pride in her voice as she said that. I knew that she had stayed behind at Hind's on her second day and put in over an hour on this job.

  'I will give this my attention very shortly,' said George Ogden, who took the paper, folded it and placed it inside the leaves of Letters of Descartes, which was a very bad sign from the point of view of his ever getting around to glancing at it. He then turned to the window again, and we all looked out.

  A lot of pride had been put into the building of Halifax, and the builders had a powerful liking for columns and domes, so that to my mind every other building looked like a giant mausoleum, something built in memory of someone or something very grand that had gone before and must never be forgotten. I would always think of Halifax as a town that was down by one person, and that on account of me. But it looked grand this Saturday morning.

  George Ogden turned to us and said: 'God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world.'

  'It's ten shillings down' said the
wife.

  George Ogden took out his pocket book and handed over the money much as the Shah of Persia might if that gent were ever called on to pay ten bob for a lodge. 'Brand new address,' he said, 'and a brand new start.'

  And this remark of his bothered me.

  Chapter Eight

  I saw that we were down for a Scarborough excursion when I read the weekly notices the following Monday. It was booked for the Wednesday – 21 June.

  As we were rolling away from the shed mouth on that day, and heading for the coaling stage with a tank engine clanking under us, I saw that John Ellerton, shed superintendent, was walking alongside. It had been misty when I'd booked on at seven but that had cleared, leaving the smoke to battle it out with sunshine. The mills and the houses of Sowerby Bridge climbed the hills in zigzags, and there were golden flashes of sunlight coming off certain windows like messages being sent over the rooftops, across the patches of rocks and grass, over the horses' heads. There was nothing much to Sowerby Bridge – it was mostly Town Hall Street – but it looked fine in the sun, just like its mightier neighbour, Halifax.

  It was the tenth day after the stopping of the Highflyer, and this was our first excursion since then. The trip was booked by a show called White's, another Halifax mill.

  Of all my particular worries, I'd been thinking of that report in the Courier speaking easily of the 'lately fallen tree' that had lain on the line ahead of the North Eastern Railway excursion to Scarborough. We were about to run over those very metals.

  After leaving Halifax, we would make first for York, where the Lanky territories gave out. The rest of the trip being over foreign territory – that of the North Eastern Railway – we'd have to pick up somebody who knew the road.

  'I have the name here of your pilot,' John Ellerton yelled up; 'fellow called Billington!'

  We had the board for the Halifax line now, and Clive was opening up the regulator.

  Ellerton stopped trying to keep up, but looked at his watch, then yelled out: They've given us him before!' he called. 'And he's a right pill!'