The Blackpool Highflyer js-2

by Andrew Martin

  'I'm obliged to you for the cigars!' I called to George, and he raised his hand in a backwards wave.

  His going off like that quite took the fun away from having bought the 'A's. Maybe he was just tired after his day's work. He did look jiggered, and seemed to be dragging his large shadow across the wide, dusty yard.

  I'd meant to take him along to the Evening Star for a pint, and I decided to head in that direction anyway. On reaching Horton Street, I looked on the old warehouse wall for the Socialist Mission poster advertising the 'meeting to discuss questions'.

  It was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  'Scarborough', I read in the Courier the following midday, is 'delightfully sunny. The town is to be seen in its best summer garb, the variegated blossoms making it a veritable garden city.'

  Well, I would be seeing for myself in three hours' time, train wreckers permitting. For I could no longer think of a train line stretching away clear, especially not for the length of time involved in a life of firing and driving. That was a forty-year touch, and nobody's luck holds out that long. I was beginning to wonder whether I had the pluck for the job.

  But today I was on show, so I ought to look the part at least.

  The engine was number 1008, the very first of Mr Aspinall's radial tank engines, which ought to make a talking point for the Robinson boy. It was lately in from Bradford, and now waited alongside the reserve platform at the Joint, having just come over from York with six carriages. I would talk over a few points about the engine with the boy, and then it would be time for Scarborough. Clive was about, but kept coming and going, 'seeing to bits of business'. He had on brand new boots, laced up at the side, which he couldn't walk without looking at.

  Departure time for Scarborough was 10.32, and Robinson and his young son came walking down the spare platform towards 1008 at 9.45, as arranged by the wife over the telephone from the Mill.

  Peter Robinson was younger than I'd expected – might not have been more than about fifty. He wore round glasses and had a schoolboy look. The other Robinson had the schoolboy look in spades, for he was a schoolboy, although on a day off. He was small and also wore glasses, and a loose green suit made from what I took to be the famous light cloth. He looked very free in the get up, and ready to lift off, like a greenfly. It was queer that Robinson should have kitted out his boy in the stuff that had caused his own downfall. His own suit was of the common run: black and heavy.

  'Good morning… Mr Stringer, is it?' Robinson called up.

  He was a little la-di-da. Not an out-and-out toff, though. I gave the lad a hand up onto the footplate; his father introduced him to me as Lance.

  'Now what do we have here?' said young Lance Robinson, which rather knocked me. He was a very confident lad, as different from Arnold Dyson as could be.

  'It's one, zero, zero, eight,' I said, 'a tank engine with the two-four-two wheel formation, built by Mr Aspinall – who I'm sure you've heard of – at the company's works at Horwich. You might like a trip to Horwich one day. It's beautifully laid out, with a little narrow-gauge railway running alongside the full-sized ones, to fetch and carry all the parts.'

  I was yammering on, being a little nervous with the boy's father on hand.

  'You're not the driver, are you?' said the boy.

  I shook my head. 'Fireman,' I said.

  'But I suppose you know all the controls just as well as the driver?'

  'It would be a poor show if I didn't,' I said.

  The boy looked down on the spare platform at the Joint, where he'd just been standing. His father grinned up at him. The boy turned to me. 'Would you say that "alighting" was getting on a thing or getting off?' he asked.

  'Lance,' his father called up, 'you know very well which it is.' Then Robinson called to me, saying, 'I'm much obliged to you for doing this, Mr Stringer. Can I leave you at the boy's mercy for ten minutes?'

  'That'll be quite all right, sir,' I said, and Peter Robinson walked away towards the station buildings.

  Watching him go, the boy seemed worried. Not about himself, but about his father. 'He'll be all right,' he said. 'I expect he'll have a seltzer on the station and read his paper. Father takes the Manchester Guardian, you know. It's best for business. The Times is hardly circulated where we live in St Anne's. What paper do you read?'

  'The Halifax Courier,' I said.

  'My father was in business here in Halifax,' said the boy. 'He was a partner.'

  This wasn't lad's talk. 'Yes,' I said, 'but we must get on if we're to learn all about the engine -'

  'He had the notion that people would want light suiting -'

  'Now this handle', I said, 'controls the cylinder cocks.'

  'It wasn't one of his better ideas,' said the boy.

  'The cylinder cocks', I went on, 'are most important because -'

  'I'm wearing the light suiting just now,' said the boy.

  'Well,' I said, 'it does look nice and light. Now if you look here -'

  'It's rational,' said the boy, simply.

  I nodded, saying: 'Perhaps we'd better start with the fire.'

  'But people don't want it.'

  'Well, I expect they will in time,' I said.

  'But it'll be too late for Dad -1 mean Father,' said the boy.

  'The cylinder cocks', I said firmly, 'allow the steam into and out of the cylinders, and you must always remember to open them before moving the engine.'

  'And what happens if you don't?'

  'Then the piston would push the condensed water, which would knock the end out of the cylinder bore.'

  The boy gave a little jump at this. 'I bet you'd catch it if you let that happen,' he said.

  'Yes,' I said, 'you certainly would.'

  'What would become of you if you let that happen?'

  'If you were an engine man? And you let that happen?'

  Lance Robinson nodded, eagerly asking, 'Would you be stood down?'

  The kid was stuck on the question of people being sacked.

  'It depends,' I said. 'It would depend what other daft things you'd done in the past. The shed superintendent would be down on you like a ton of coal though, no question of that. Now we come to the regulator,' I went on. 'There's a real art to controlling it, and the motto is -'

  'What can a driver work his way up to?' said the boy.

  'Well, most just stay driving,' I said. 'They like it, you see. But others go on to different things: traffic management in the company offices, engineering. There's lots you can put in for.'

  'If a driver came to our house, would he come in at the tradesman's entrance?'

  'Why would an engine driver go to your house?'

  'Oh I don't know. Dad's train mad as well, you see. He's got hundreds of Bradshaws' all lined up in the dining room.'

  I pictured again the grindstone on the line. I turned to the boy. 'Has an engine driver ever been to your house?'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said the boy. 'I shouldn't think so. What's that?'

  He was pointing at the pressure gauge.

  'That tells you the steam pressure,' I said, 'how much pushing force you've got.'

  I had a case against Robinson in my head, of course, but until now it had looked rather sick. There'd been a pretty solid row at Hind's that had ended with him being stood down from the company – all just before the stone was put on the line. According to the wife, Peter Robinson owned a car, and a car had been racing along beside us that day. If it wasn't just hooligan's work, then the stone had been put on the line by someone who knew Hind's Mill, or someone who knew the railways, or better still both. And here was Robinson, coming up strongly on both counts.

  The boy, Lance, was looking up at me.

  'A working head of steam,' I said, 'on a fair-sized engine would generally be about two hundred pounds to the square inch. Now you need a very hot fire to get it up to that.' 'How hot?' asked the boy.

  I told him to stand back, and I opened the fire door. The boy stepped further back when he fel
t the fire.

  'Hotter than that' I said, and I closed the fire door.

  'Can I take another squint in there?' he said.

  I liked the kid. He didn't look it, but he was game. I opened the door once again, and we watched the rolling, orange flames.

  'It's just a different world,' said the kid, and whether he meant inside the fire or the engine-driving life I couldn't say.

  'I wear spectacles as you can see,' said the boy. 'Would that stop me driving engines?'

  'No,' I said. The true answer was 'yes', but it hardly mattered. The kid was far too posh ever to be on the footplate.

  'Is it dangerous to work on engines?' he asked.

  'Very,' I said, and I could not help trying a little fishing. 'There's wreckers,' I said, 'for one thing.'

  'There was something put on a line at Whit,' said the boy. 'You had to clap the brake on and a lady was killed.'

  'How do you know?' I asked, fast, but then I realised he might very well know.

  'Because it was the mill where Father was a director – it was their Whit excursion to Blackpool.'

  I now abandoned the engine-driving lesson. Careful questions were wanted, and I decided I would fare better with the kid if I did not let on that I'd been firing the engine on that occasion.

  'Would you mind telling me what else you know about it?'

  'It was reported in the Blackpool paper, which we see at St Anne's, being just a little way along the road, and Father cut out the article.'

  'Did he point it out to you himself?'

  'No, Agnes saw him reading it – saw him cutting it out too.'

  'Agnes?'

  'Our maid. We used to have two, but she's the only one left. We had a washerwoman on Mondays, and she's had to go too; and we had a gardener, and he's gone because the garden's gone. Well, we're selling the paddock at any rate. My pocket money's been cut down from half a crown a week to sixpence, but Father says there'll be a dividend for good schoolwork.'

  I was thinking on. Robinson had certainly been hit hard by losing his place at Hind's.

  'I'm fourteenth in Latin,' the boy was saying, and I didn't know whether that was supposed to be good or bad, but I nodded at him and smiled.

  'He can do better than fourteenth at Latin,' came his father's voice from the platform. 'But how is he at engines?'

  'He's not scared of the fire, sir,' I called down, 'so he's off to a very good start.'

  'Call me Peter,' said Robinson, which as we both knew meant that from now on I would call him nothing at all.

  The boy climbed down to his father, and I altered my plan. I would just get to it. 'I'd like to thank you for taking on my wife at Hind's,' I said.

  'Anyone would have,' he said. 'It was one of the last things I did there, and one of the best. Lydia is a very fine young woman. There's a lot of steam in her, you know.'

  'I know,' I said. 'It's none of my business,' I continued, leaving a pause where there should have been a 'sir', 'but did you happen to know that I was firing on the excursion when the trip was halted?'

  Robinson moved the Manchester Guardian from being under his left arm to being under his right arm. 'No, I didn't,' he said, 'because I'd already started my paper war with the other two partners by then, and was cut off from all business. We were quite at loggerheads, Jim, with everything going through the lawyers, so you see I couldn't have gone off on a jolly with them.'

  'The Whit excursion was your idea, as I understand it, sir?' And the 'sir' came out of nerves because I knew I was going in strong.

  Robinson nodded. 'I can claim the credit for that, I think. There'd always been the Wakes Week trip of course, but I thought: it's fifty-five hours a week in the mill, fifty weeks a year. Why not have a respite at Whit as well, when the weather's warming up and the fun is just nicely getting going at Blackpool?' He smiled and moved the Manchester Guardian back to the arm it had been under before. 'Of course it had to be Blackpool,' he added.

  Lance Robinson was by now holding his father's hand, and for some reason staring directly up at the glass canopy of the station roof.

  'Do you have any ideas about the stone that was placed on the line, Jim?' said Robinson. 'I'm rather cut off out there at St Anne's. Nobody's been brought in for it, as I understand?'

  'I do have a few ideas' I said. 'Yes.'

  'He thinks it was wreckers' said the boy, still looking up.

  Mr Robinson looked at me, wanting more. He touched his glasses.

  'That's it,' I said.

  'It puts me in a rage to think of it,' he said. 'What's the penalty for blocking the track?'

  'They give it to you hot,' I said. 'It's penal servitude for life at the maximum.'

  Now where that came from, I couldn't have said, but I knew it was right. 'And that's only for placing the obstruction' I went on. 'If someone's killed it's a hanging matter, I suppose.'

  'I knew the one that was killed,' said Robinson. 'Well, very slightly.'

  'Margaret Dyson?'

  He nodded. 'That's it. She was a good sort.'

  He was not talking like a killer now, I had to admit. I found myself taking to the fellow, just as the wife had. Like his boy, he looked the milksop, but he had ideas and he put them into effect. He had become an enemy of the two Hinds, who'd pitched him out of the business, but not an enemy of the work people themselves. He seemed to be all for them.'Thank you again for giving the boy a tour of the engine' he said. 'Give my best regards to your wife, and I hope we meet again soon.'

  I told him that I hoped so too, and waved to him and the boy, with my head buzzing.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Ten minutes later Clive was walking towards 1008, and the damn carpet bag was in his hand again. He kept looking down at his boots as he got near. Before climbing up, he put his oil can on the footplate, and in my mind's eye it was the Bancroft's Hair Restorer that was being slammed down there.

  He pulled himself up onto the footplate. New boots, poacher's pockets (with a copy of the Courier sticking out of one of them), kerchief crossed and held in place by… what? By nothing. Just like old Napoleon's. 'Don't look old,' said the slogan on the Bancroft's bottles, and Clive didn't, I had to agree.

  'Who was the kid in the green coat?' Clive asked, as he stuffed the carpet bag in the locker.

  I told him he was the son of a man who used to be a governor at Hind's Mill.

  'Oh yes? In fancy dress was he?'

  'That was light suiting,' I said, 'made by Hind's Mill. Well, it was for a while, until his old man was stood down over it.'

  'I'm not surprised.'

  'It's nice and cool to wear in the hot months.'

  'What's the point of that?'

  'Well, you know, coolness… in the hot months.'

  Clive had finished stowing away the bag. He turned to me and frowned. 'In summer,' he said, 'you get hot, and that's all about it. A light suit's no good. It won't hold its shape.' He reached into his pocket and took out his copy of the Courier. But it wasn't the Courier. It was the York paper, the Yorkshire Evening Press. 'It was left on this engine this morning,' Clive explained. He was pointing at a short article, saying: 'Here's a turn up… I don't think.'

  'Excursion Engine Driver Killed' I read, and all the breath stopped on my lips.

  Mr Arthur Billington, who for many years had been employed as an engine driver at York by the North Eastern Railway, died yesterday of a head injury sustained while riding to York station on his bicycle. It is not clear what really happened. Some witnesses state that Mr Billington's bicycle simply capsized, others that he struck a pedestrian who was nowhere to be found after the event. Mr Billington was on his way to the locomotive shed at York, where he was booked to take a train carrying excursionists to Scarborough.

  'It's the fucking wreckers again!' I said. 'They're out to get the Scarborough excursions as well as the Blackpool ones, and any bugger connected with them. There was the tree on the line before Malton, and now this…'

  Clive, of course was ha
ving none. 'If that bloke Billington rode a push rod in the same way as he drove an engine, he was a liability to himself and others.' He was looking in his leather pocketbook, checking the time of departure.

  I said: 'We're taking on a pilot from York, I suppose?'

  He shook his head. 'I've just had a wire sent to say we'll do without.'

  'But do you know the road?'

  I was sounding rather old womanish, I knew, but I kept picturing Paul, the socialist missionary, stepping in front of the bicycle of Arthur Billington.

  Everything, it seemed, was now put in my way to test my pluck, and to spoil what, in any other summer, could have been a happy prospect: a pleasant run to Scarborough, with no need to work the engine back, for we were to return 'on the cushions' once again.

  We were put into platform four, where Knowles's blackboard announcing the excursion waited. The stationmaster himself, I noticed, was on platform three, speaking to one of his deputies and pointing to a weed growing down by the line.

  'I would like to see lawnmower applied to that directly,' he was saying. 'And liberally, mind you. And anywhere else you see similar. You know where the bottle of the stuff's kept?'

  We coupled up to a rake of six rattlers. I found Reuben Booth in the last one, asleep in his guard's part, which in looks was well below third class. He was sitting in a chair that had one arm broken off – probably chucked into the stove in those far-off days of cold. Reuben's gold coat was hanging over the back of the chair. His face disappeared into the grey- ness of his beard when he slept, but as soon as he heard my boots scrape over the dust on the floor of the van, he stood up, barking out: 'One hundred and fifty souls.'

  The vacuum brake was tested, and we pulled away into the sun with half the hundred and fifty hanging out of the windows and Clive winding back the reverser, saying, 'There are some very well set-up lasses on this train,' for he'd had a good look up and down.

  The sunshine, when we came out into it, was all golden slowness like treacle. We rolled along into the Beacon Hill Tunnel, with the coolness and the happy screams, then swept back out into the brightness.

  After Bradford, Clive took an envelope from one of his poacher's pockets and passed it over. Inside was the medal. On one side of it was the company badge that was on the tenders of all the engines: the red rose of Lancashire and the white rose of Yorkshire, together with the shields of the Houses of Lancaster and York. On the reverse were the words 'Presented to C. Carter, engine driver, for extraordinary vigilance and promptitude in stopping his engine on June nth, Whit Sunday, 1905.'