The Blackpool Highflyer js-2

by Andrew Martin

  I woke at four, and so did the wife. She was excited about the Hind's trip. I tried again to talk her out of going, saying, 'It's all just skylarking, you know. You wouldn't care for it.'

  'What do you take me for?' she said. Then we began to do something else, for stopping family increase could now go by the board.

  Love-making eases anxieties, but not for long, and I was back to my old state of mind when, at half-past five in the morning, I wrote my name in the book that lay on its own table in John Ellerton's office at Sowerby Bridge shed.

  It was not yet hot, and the weekly notices pinned to the wall were moving in the breeze from the open door. Every so often the breeze would increase, the door would bang, and a great surge of burning-coal smell and smoke would come in, for the engines were all being prepared outside, looking like a range of volcanoes. The usual timetables went to pot in Wakes. Half the normal trains in and out of Halifax didn't run, and the crews were put onto excursions instead.

  Ellerton himself was at his high desk, drawing lines with a ruler in his fast and jolly way. He seemed to be enjoying the way the ruler worked, the perfect straightness of it over and over. The telegraph needle was clicking, but it must have been something safe to ignore, for he was ignoring it.

  'You're in luck again over the Hind's,' he said, as he drew his lines.

  'How's that?' I said. But I knew.

  'Come along with me,' he said, and he stepped out from behind his desk, still holding his precious ruler. We walked out of the office and onto the barrow boards that crossed the tracks going into the shed.

  It was a blue-grey morning. Night was going, but the engines around the shed were putting out their own darkness. I saw the Highflyer before John pointed at it with his ruler. Number 1418 – the very same beast as before: black but bright, the long, high boiler stretching out over the seven-foot driving wheels. It looked like an arrow in a bow, waiting to be fired. A cleaner with a long-handled brush walked carefully along the boiler frame, like a man on a mountain precipice. One long thin bootlace of smoke was winding out of the chimney.

  'Where did that bastard come from?' I said.

  John Ellerton laughed. 'It was fixed up at Horwich Works. Distant Control sent it down to us.'

  'But why?'

  'Well,' he said, 'why do they do anything? Orders from Manchester.'

  'Who in Manchester?'

  'Traffic manager – Outdoor Locomotive Office. Who else would it be?'

  'What's his name?'

  'Hasn't got a name,' said John, who was playing with his ruler, looking a little agitated at this bombardment. He wanted to get back to drawing straight lines.

  'How's that?' I said.

  'When I say "Traffic Manager" I mean Traffic Manager's office, and there's dozens in there.'

  'The first time they sent us a Highflyer it was for Hind's Mill Whit excursion to Blackpool.'

  John Ellerton nodded. A rush of tinsel sparks came spinning up from the Flyer's chimney.

  'Now they send it for only the second time,' I went on, 'and it's Hind's Mill once again.'

  Ellerton gave a big grin at this. 'What do you reckon's going on then?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Well,' said John, 'nor do I. Unless nothing is.'

  'But what if someone's trying to get shot of that particular engine?'

  'You're getting cranky in your old age,' said Ellerton.

  'Has a grindstone gone missing from this yard lately?' I asked him.

  John Ellerton just pulled a face.

  We were at the front end of 1418 by now. Front bogey, guard plates… all good as new, as if nothing had happened. This was the virtue of blackness as a colour.

  'Look here,' said John Ellerton, 'I put in for an engine for an excursion, they send me one. Manchester doesn't know it's for Hind's – they just want to keep all the engines working all the time. The Highflyers mostly work express, Liverpool to Manchester, but if it happens that one comes over to this side of the Pennines, they don't send it back light. They send it back on a job.'

  I nodded, looking down. I knew for certain the wreckers would be back today, but I could say no more to Ellerton.

  'You can put up some bloody good running in that engine. There's fellows would kill to be on it,' he added, and it was as near as he'd come to giving me an earwigging.

  I saw Clive walking over the barrow boards towards us, carrying his snap tin and oil can, and looking down from time to time at his feet.

  'Smart boots, he's got,' said Ellerton.

  'They're new on,' I said, miserably. 'I believe he's bought them on the strength of his medal.'

  Or was it on the strength of Emma Rnowles?

  With Clive still making his way across the front of the shed towards the engine, I climbed up onto the footplate just as the cleaner who'd lit the fire climbed down the other side. He, or somebody, had left an old Courier on the sandbox. There'd been a Courier left in exactly the same spot before our last run on 1418.1 looked down at it: 'donegal election, this day's telegrams'. I opened the fire door and pitched it into the flames, where it whirled in a fiery circle, then disappeared. I turned to the locker and took out the ambulance box. There was the book again: What to Do in an Emergency by Dr N. Kenrick, F.R.S.E. This too I shied into the flames.

  When Clive came up, I said, 'Rather queer, this business, en't it?'

  'What's queer?'

  'The two of us getting this engine again?'

  Clive just shrugged. 'Luck of the draw,' he said, and began searching in his pocket for his leather book, where the time of departure from the Joint was written down. He wasn't bothered about where engines came from, only where he was taking them to.

  'What's time of departure?' I asked him.

  'Eight-nineteen,' he said. 'Ring a bell does it?'

  It had been eight-nineteen last time.

  We worked on for a while. Clive walked to the front of the engine to inspect the repair. Every so often there'd be a great bark of steam, like a gun going off, then more gunshot sounds and another engine would be out alongside us. Nothing would be left in the shed today, the first day of Wakes. Presently Clive walked off into the shed and came back with a kid who started putting the lozenge pattern on the buffer plates.

  'She looks in fine fettle,' he said when the kid had finished and was walking away with Clive's tanner in his pocket.

  'Will you be taking her a bit more steadily this time?' I asked as we both stood on the rails looking up at 1418.

  'You're not in a funk are you?' 'I'll give you steam for whatever running you want'1 said, 'but if the wreckers were out to get someone from Hind's Mill, or everyone from Hind's Mill, then this'll be the day they'll try again.'

  'If it comes to that, maybe they're out to get you,' he said, 'in which case you'll never rest easy.'

  Or you, I thought.

  I saw John Ellerton walking over to us again and he looked different. It was the first time I'd seen him not smiling or not ready to smile. He called up to us: 'You blokes,' he said. 'It's a bugger, is this, but I've just been speaking on the telephone to the fellow from the Courier – the reporter -'

  'I bloody knew it,' I said. 'They've heard from the Socialist Mission again?'

  Ellerton nodded, and even he looked pretty cut up. 'Now, he says the cops have not been able to dig up anything about this lot, and they're still of opinion it's a bluff.'

  'But what did the message say?' I asked Ellerton.

  Clive was looking down at his new boots.

  'Bit of blather,' said Ellerton, 'but really just this: no excursions to run in Halifax Wakes.'

  'But they will run, won't they?' I said.

  'Of course they bloody will,' said Ellerton, and he turned on his heel.

  Clive looked at me and grinned: 'That'll teach you to talk to strange blokes in pubs,' he said.

  I shouted after Ellerton, 'Did they mention a fellow called Billington, an engine man killed at York?'

  But I don't think he heard.
/>   Chapter Twenty-six

  At the Joint, originality was at a premium: everyone was doing the same as before. I wanted to shout out distracting things, to check the heavy programme of entraining and luggage loading.

  We'd been put into platform three once more, where Knowles's blackboard again stood, reading: 'special train, sunday 9th july, hind's mill, wakes week excursion to Blackpool', with masses of underlining beneath. Station- master Knowles was watching from the far end of the platform, the back end of the train.

  To make things different, to give the kaleidoscope a shake, I jumped down from the footplate and took a turn along the platform, just as the first excursionists were climbing up. On my stroll, I struck other novelties. There were seven rattlers as before, but this time all third class. The Hinds, father and son, would not be coming along. And there was no Martin Lowther patrolling the train with a face like yesterday, ticket nippers at the ready. At the end of the train, I nodded to Knowles, who half nodded back then turned on his heel and walked off.

  I looked back along to the engine. Clive was standing by it, in his special place, where he could be looked at and admired; glancing down sometimes at his new boots, then up at the waves of happy excursionists, keeping his eye out for the pretty ones as they came running over the footbridge, tumbling down the steps and searching out their compartments along the platform, all sporting their white rosettes. Another tea at the Tower was evidently in store.

  There was a banging of doors, laughing and shouting. Two of the trippers were at the cream-biscuit machine once again, rattling the little metal drawers that should have opened and never did.

  Some new posters of Blackpool had appeared along the platform: half a dozen all the same, with the beach looking like a mustard plaster, the Tower brighter, friendlier and not so frightening as when you were up close, and the slogan running along underneath: 'Blackpool holds perennial delights'.

  The luggage went into the place next to the guard's part, and here was another difference. Far more goods were for the van than before, this being a whole week away. Reuben Booth was in charge of the loading, or maybe he was just getting in the way of it. He had all on to check the boxes the porters were pitching in.

  I walked back to 1418, and to Clive. Reuben was coming up, too.

  'Five hundred and one souls… two hundred and twenty tons,' he said. The tonnage was the same as before, the extra Third in place of the First making no difference. The numbers were a little down. Well, not everybody could get away for a whole week. And then of course Margaret Dyson was dead, her boy in the orphanage.

  Now Clive was giving me his special happy nod, meaning look at the doxies, and there was the wife, walking hand in hand along the platform with Cicely Braithwaite.

  'It's the wife,' I said. 'I think I told you she'd got a start in the office at Hind's.'

  'Which one's she?' Clive asked, double-quick.

  'The beautiful one,' I said, 'what do you expect?'

  'Well now,' he said, 'they're both rather handsome.'

  'The one on the right,' I said, as the wife and Cicely stopped about three carriages down. They both wore the white rosettes.

  The wife and Cicely spotted me, and gave a wave as they climbed up into their compartment.

  'Will they not come and take a look at the engine?' asked Clive.'No point asking the wife'1 said. 'She thinks all engines are mucky, smelly things.'

  Clive frowned. There had been no takers at all so far for his fancily polished buffers. 'I hope you've explained to her that they're cleaned from top to bottom for about six hours at the start of every working day?'

  'Oh yes'1 said; 'more than you can say for our house, that is.'

  As the Hind's excursionists continued to climb aboard, I opened the firehole door and put on more coal. The wife was on the train now and, short of main force, there was nothing I could do about it. I knew it was not worth trying to persuade her to stay in Halifax. The Socialist Mission had not threatened this excursion in particular, and we were one of hundreds that would be leaving the Joint over the coming week. That was the argument she would employ.

  I looked at the high-set, gleaming injector handles, the beautiful wide black numbers against the clear white background of the steam-pressure gauge, all so prettily set off by the bright red danger mark. To a fellow of the right sort, there could be no handsomer sight in the kingdom. There again the fire was a little thin to left and right, so I picked up my shovel, turned towards the tender and set to.

  At eight-eighteen Clive was up next to me, moving the gear to full forward. I leant out to watch the starter signal, and… nothing happened. Perhaps they've thought better of sending us out after all. I looked away from the signal, looked back, and then it fell. Clive pulled the regulator (I got a whiff of the Bancroft's as he did so), and the engine gave its first mighty bark, like something being roused that doesn't want to be roused.

  We started to roll, though.

  We moved into the sight of the sun, and I turned once more to the tender and the coal. As the beats came faster they began to drown out the cheering of the excursionists, and that was all right by me, for I meant to trust my luck to the brightness of the day, and lose myself in the work.

  We rolled, faster than I would have thought right, along the side of the branch canal, then under the branch canal, which brought on a short night-time, then into Milner Royd Tunnel, which made for a longer one.

  Coming out of the tunnel Clive was at the reverser, notching up the great engine with his hair falling forward over his eyes. With the higher gear engaged, the rocking began, like the start of a dance, and it was the start of a dance, for our feet fell into the old way of counterbalancing. I thought of Mr Aspinall, sitting in his office in Manchester, and wondered whether he knew what he had let loose with this great mechanical greyhound.

  Clive gave his two screams on the whistle as we passed the shed at Sowerby Bridge, and I swear that a horse pulling a dog cart up Town Hall Street was stopped by the shock of it. Clive was not known as a scorcher but maybe the habit was growing on him, for we went through Hebden Bridge clear twice as fast as we should've.

  We climbed to Todmorden without noticing it was a climb at all. I could not see the church clock that was lit at night, nor (for we were going at such a lick) any of the churches that might have held it. This engine, I thought, makes churches disappear. I looked for the school with the huge cot in the window, the house with the birds circling above, but these tilings lived in a slower world and were not to be seen today.

  Clive was at the gear again. He wanted 1418 faster, and all the signals did too, for every one of them was down as we galloped on over the Pennine Hills.

  Crossing from Yorkshire to Lancashire was no more than jumping a ditch, and Blackburn might have been a village, for it was coming up and then it was gone, with not much in between save for a smudge of smoke.

  This time there was no cause to stop at Preston, so those on board had all of thirty seconds to view the handsome new paintwork of that station. We were coming to the danger point now, Salwick and Kirkham, and Clive seemed in a hurry to get there, for he notched up once, twice, within the shadow of County Hall. Was he bent on suicide? No, the man was in the prime of life and making love in secret with the stationmaster's wife.

  To put this from my mind I was throwing on coal, but Clive checked me with a funny look and shouted at me to get on the injector and put in more water. It went ill with me to move from coal to water. I wanted to stick at one thing, and wait. If all was well after Salwick and Kirkham, that would be the start of a whole new world. I would take a drink and have a beano with the wife in Blackpool, for I was to book off on arrival.

  The signal box at Lea Green came and went. Harry Walker, the fellow in there, would be moving slowly between his levers, drinking tea. Maybe he'd given a wave. It didn't matter.

  Salwick came up, more of a garden than a station, more of a graveyard than a station, and Clive was eyeing me. The engine was going at
seventy, and neither one of us could properly stand.

  I asked myself again how he could be so sure we were not to meet another wrecking attempt.

  I laid my shovel against the firebox, forced my head out into the battering air and looked back. I saw the 8.36 from Halifax, the regular Blackpool express, a tiny train miles behind, crawling onto the fields of the Fylde.

  I would not tell Clive to slow down, not even with the wife on board and her expecting. I was done with showing fear. I turned to the firehole, looked inside: the fire was shaking, every white-hot coal had been set jumping by the speed. I stood upright again, and my shovel fell and began clanking over the footplate towards me like a thing gone live. Clive was standing back from the regulator, bowed down before it and pulling at the flaps of two of his pockets, the flaps of the poacher's pockets. He moved his hands slowly up towards his hair and put his head down and ran his hands through his hair, faster and faster. His hair was all there, but it might not be, so he had to make sure over and over again. He was looking at his boots as he did it, seeing how they were faring new-on, for really they should have been spared the black dust of the footplate. The best thing you can do with a pair of boots is not wear them. The best you can do with a railway engine is not drive it.

  I looked through the spectacle glass and it was clean. I could see for miles along the line. Blackpool Tower, the tallest building in the country, and there it was: a tiny thing, ten miles off, jumping about in the corner of the glass, trying to come loose and move to the centre. Why had Clive got his medal? Well, it came in pretty handy, made it harder for Knowles to stand him down. There again, if Clive had copped on with Emma Knowles, the stationmaster might be expected to do a lot more than sack him. A lot more.