The Necropolis Railway

by Andrew Martin

  'Put another charge of coal at the front of the box,' he said, and by now his loathing was such he could not even meet my eye.

  'I can't seem to pitch it to the front.'

  "Then you should not be firing,' he said, in a voice so strange and quiet that my legs got soft under me. 'No,' I said, 'I shouldn't be. I'm a bloody cleaner.' 'But you're dead set on the footplate,' he said, in the same weird way. 'You hold it to be a grand life of freedom or something . . . Now for the last time of asking, have we got the road?'

  Thirty-One was threatening to shake the tears out of me, but I leant out my side and looked at the gantry again, which seemed to have sprouted a few more signals since the last time.

  ‘I don't know,' I said. 'I've told you.'

  We were chuffing under the gantry now.

  'Did we have the road?' I asked him.

  'Did we?' he said, in his quiet, dangerous way. 'Did we? That's one for the hall of fame, that is.' He pulled on the regulator, and I reckoned we were up to fifty miles to the hour, which was marvellous, except that all my railway dreams were coming to nothing.

  'Why have you got your knife into me?' I said. 'You think I've been brought on for some reason, but I don't know what it is. You think I'm a company man, but I don't know why I'm here, and I'll tell you something: I bloody wish I wasn't.' I wanted to say a lot more but I couldn't hold back the tears any longer. 'You're a bloody rotter,' I said.

  He wasn't listening. He'd started driving and firing the engine himself, which was like seeing a man riding two horses at once. He rode the two horses through Clapham Junction, where there were hundreds of people on the platforms - every one of them alone, nicely out of the rain but right in the middle of the smoke. We rattled down through the Southern Division: hundreds of houses on either side with horses and waggons trapped between them, looking for a way out of the maze. I had never felt more dismal, and after Wimbledon I just sat on the sandbox and looked at my boots.

  It must have been half an hour before we came into a new, wide, blank station - Brookwood - and began some clattering operations over points on the down side of it. A man came running out of a signal box in front of us and climbed up to the cab. Hunt was putting a bit on as he came up; I was still leaning against the coal bunker with my arms folded, thinking: well, this is the end of all, and it will be a life of butchering for me. I had been of the mind to stick things out at Nine Elms no matter what, to crack the mystery and make the most of my God-given chance to be an engine man. But now my mind was changed. I was going home.

  'What's up with this fellow?' said the signalman.

  I just turned away from Arthur Hunt and climbed down off the footplate. As I went I could hear him muttering something, after which I caught the guard saying, 'Twenty-one inches of vacuum in his head,' and he started having a bit of a chuckle about that. I had no clue where I was going, and nor did I care.

  Hunt uncoupled the engine and then, maybe with the help of the fellow from the signal box, he ran around the coaches on a passing loop so that he was ready to pull the set into the Cemetery itself. I followed the black train in, walking on the track. Anybody watching me plodding behind the carriages might have thought I was part of the procession, except that I had my hands in my pockets and I was wearing my grimy suit with no collar to my shirt. It was easy to keep up, on account of the constant 'five miles an hour' signs.

  The cemetery was like the Yorkshire Moors squashed flat: heather, bracken, boggy black soil, with the graves at all angles as if there'd lately been a great explosion of stone. The place was sunk in some long, gloomy dream. Thirty-One, the black carriages and myself were rolling down a single track, raised on a low grass embankment. The cemetery was coming and going between massive trees, three times bigger than the common run of trees and so big they made Thirty-One look like a toy locomotive. The bottoms of their trunks were like giant lizard claws, and the tops of some had been blown off - by lightning, I reckoned. Presently I fell to wondering what the mourners on the train were making of the place: probably thinking they were getting their money's worth because it was all a bit different, just as poor dead Mike had said.

  Ahead of me, Hunt had Thirty-One in good order. There was no trace of smoke; he was just pumping out little ghosts of steam every now and again. The nothingness of the steam met the nothingness of the white sky, and it was all certainly very beautiful and strange, but this five-miles-an-hour business, well it was no job for a man, and that was probably where all his evil nature came from.

  I followed the train to a station that was a sort of perfect white wooden house with tubs of flowers all around. It was called North Station, and did not look real. There was no fence around it and no road, so you just walked towards it over grass and graves, or came to it on the train. Climbing onto the platform caused no more trouble than stepping onto a box. I walked up and watched from one end of the platform or another - I could not say which, for 'up' and 'down' had no meaning in a place like this. Some of the mourners, and two of the coffins, came off. I noticed a gang of hearty vicars I'd not spotted before, and Thirty-One sat there simmering, with Arthur Hunt inside no doubt doing exactly the same.

  One of the coffins, with the mourners tagging along behind, was being taken along a winding track in the grass. I thought at first they were going to march off and put the thing straight into the ground, but then I saw that the coffin men were winding towards a pretty building in the trees that was half house and half chapel. Why that one went there and the other two bodies stayed in the train I did not know.

  The doors all along the train were left open, and I stepped up into the rear carriage. There were empty wooden racks here -nothing much more. It reminded me of the stable carriages that came through Grosmont. I opened a door and stepped through into another section of the carriage, and here were more wooden racks, two with coffins on them, flowers wedged into steel brackets, and Saturday Night Mack staring at a page of a magazine. Over his round shoulder I read:

  'PRIZE OF AN EIGHT-ROOMED HOUSE: ANYONE CAN WIN IT AND THEN LIVE RENT-FREE FOR LIFE'.

  'Bloody hell, where did you come from?' he said, putting down his paper on one of the coffins. It was Hoity-Toity Bits.

  'The other part,' I said. "There's nobody in there.'

  'Third Class, that is,' said Saturday Night Mack.

  I looked down at the pages of Hoity-Toity Bits, and read

  'QUEER TREASURES OWNED BY KING EDWARD' and 'CURIOUS EFFECTS OF A CRUST OF BREAD'.

  'What's this part?' 'Second.'

  'What's the difference between third and second?' 'Nothing,' said Mack, and he went back to reading his paper.

  'Where's first?' I asked, and he jerked his thumb at a door opposite the one I'd just walked through. 'Anything different about that?'

  'Not as I've noticed,' said Mack. He put the paper down again. 'Some differences in the fittings for them as want to look closely, but it's all really just a matter of the number on the door,' he said, and folded his arms.

  I sighed - I was still pretty shaken up - and said, 'It's all snob business, really, isn't it?'

  "That's bang on, that is,' said Mack, and he looked at me as if I'd just told him something he could never have thought of for himself. I looked down at the new page of his magazine, and read the words 'REMARKABLE FACTS ABOUT BOGUS WINDFALLS'.

  We heard a couple of doors bang in other carriages; we were both rocked on our feet slightly, then we were away. 'Where to now, then?' I asked him.

  'Church of England part - South Station,' he said, as the cemetery rolled backwards on either side of us. 'So that last one was chapel?'

  'Chapel, plus Jewish and Papist - those folks all go together.' 'But the Jews need their own churches of a special sort.'

  'Well, it's hard lines, in't it? They can't run to one of those here.'

  'I'll bet not many of them come here, then.'

  'That's just where you're wrong, mate. A lot of that sort do come here on account of liking to be buried. Well, they don't l
ike it, but they prefer it to burning. Who's driving this engine?' he went on, 'Arthur?'

  I nodded. 'How did you know?'

  'By the smoothness of the running.'

  1 was supposed to be on with him - his mate was taken sick -'

  'Probably on the pop last night,' said Mack.

  'He's chucked me off the footplate.' My questions could have no meaning any more, but I could not stop asking. 'Why exactly is Mr Hunt on the half-link, Mack? And why won't they pass Vincent?' I had heard of a speaking machine they had over at Blackpool, and I imagined I sounded the same,, asking questions in a hollow voice, with no hope of answer.

  'Don't ask me,' said Mack, 'it's all shed business.'

  I looked around the coffin carriage.

  'How is it that you're riding in here with the bodies?' I asked him.

  'Guard duty,' said Mack. 'A lot of these stiffs are covered in jewels, and there are people in this world with a mind to have such goods away.'

  'But they'd have to open the coffins first.'

  'Ever heard of a screwdriver?' said Mack, and he gave me a smile that started off little and grew.

  Now we were at the second cemetery station, the South Station. It looked exactly like the first, except turned around and put on the other side of the track; and here too there was a little building half-hidden in trees near by.

  Mack opened his door and let in a gang of his mates from the Necropolis Company. They took the two coffins away, with Mack lending a hand and the mourners following. I was left alone on the platform. I watched Hunt climb down from Thirty-One, wiping his hands on the cloth. He strode towards the South Station building and through the door marked 'South Bar', then I hopped off the platform and walked over the track behind the train and out into the cemetery.

  I pushed on through the grass and heather. My boots and trousers were soon sopping, and that was fine. I would go back to Grosmont and work in the shop with Dad. I thought of the farmers driving their beasts across the headland to the top of Bay, coming up in the morning with the sun. They brought them into the yard behind the shop for poleaxing by Dad, but they would just as soon bring them to me or whoever was paying out. I would take over the deliveries - running the trap out to Whitby on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and down the steep street to the centre of Bay every morning. But who would be on hand to carry the mallet to stick behind the trap wheels if it should roll back coming up? That's what I had done for Dad, the one bit of work in the butchering line I had regularly performed. Perhaps I would have my own son to do it for me.

  I had struck a line of small stone angels: one held a stone star, another a sword, a third an anchor. Behind them was a new-dug grave with black soil and flowers on top, all crushed by the rain, but brightened by it at the same time. Looking up from this I saw a man on a horse; he was pulling a rope that was also held by three men on foot behind. It was a very long rope, and the men were all silently taking it towards a part of the cemetery where the graves gave out.

  I could've carried on stumbling all day: one direction is just as good as another when everybody about you is dead. I heard a horse and trap going along the cemetery lanes somewhere, and dripping rain marking time. After the best part of half an hour's wandering I headed back to the South Station, where Thirty-One was still waiting, and for the first time I thought of that engine, which had been the scene of such a disaster for me, as the Red Bastard.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tuesday 8 December continued

  I climbed back up onto the platform, and through the door labelled 'South Bar' into a light, white, wooden room. The only bit of brick was the fireplace, and there was a good blaze going. There were a few wooden tables with white cloths. Being in that room made you feel it was sunny outside, but when you looked at the windows there was the dripping rain making sad patterns. A barmaid was handing over a jug of something and four glasses to Saturday Night Mack and some of his mates. Mack was leaning with his back to the bar, looking out into the room as if he owned it.

  'You're back,' he said. 'Lads,' he went on, turning to his mates, 'here we have Mr Jim Stringer.'

  He got another glass, and poured me out a drink from the jug. 'Red Lion,' he said, when we'd both had a good belt of it. 'We bring it up on the train for them. That was our idea, me and the boys. We're off duty as from now so we can take a pint.'

  'We can,' said a little gingery fellow, 'and we do.'

  When I started talking to Mack, most of the Necropolis boys turned away and went into their own bits of chat, all except for this gingery one, who was called Terry and might have been trying to grow a moustache, and might have been the fellow I'd seen Mack shouting across to in the Citadel.

  'Hunt was in here, wasn't he?'

  Mack nodded. 'Been and gone,' he said.

  'Did he say anything about me?'

  'You know Arthur,' said Mack. 'Never says much about anything.'

  That was a good get-out on his part; quite the diplomat, was Mack. He didn't want to get you all het up in the way Vincent did.

  'What's he doing now?' I asked.

  'Oiling up, and other bits of business.'

  Yes, I thought, whereas Barney Rose would have been sitting on the sandbox reading his sporting papers.

  'Have you done any words of comfort today, Mack?' I asked.

  'Not so far. It's a pity, because I do like to keep my hand in.' He filled his glass from the jug, and gave me a refill. 'I'll probably do one or two later on,' he said, settling against the bar again.

  'People do get a bit down when they come back from the burials,' said Terry, 'especially if the bar's closed.'

  Mack was looking down at my trouser bottoms. 'You're sodden, man. Where've you been?'

  'Walking about among the graves.'

  'Very nice,' he said.

  Then Terry said, 'You need to watch yourself doing that.' 'Why's that?' I said.

  'Our chairman was in the habit of taking a quiet saunter among the headstones, and one day it was the end of him.'

  Mack looked into the jug, said, 'Oh, me, dear,' and smiled at the barmaid - which was enough to get us another jug of Red Lion.

  'What happened to him?' I asked Terry, but it was Mack who answered.

  'Came up on the train one afternoon, drifted off for a stroll just like you, tripped and went flying - banged his head on a stone.'

  I had that falling feeling inside me: was the monster down here too? 'What was his name?' I said.

  'Sir John Rickerby,' said Terry, and it came back to me: he was the only one photographed and not painted on the walls of the Necropolis library.

  'So this fellow actually died in the cemetery, did he?'

  Mack nodded. 'Quite convenient when you think of it’ he said.

  'Do you know what it said on the stone he fell on?' said Terry.

  'Now how should I know that?' 'Thy Will Be Done.'

  "Thy Will Be Done’ said Mack, and he made his eyes go big.

  This was all too fast for me. 'How do they know he hit his head?' I asked, and even though I was bound for home, and all was at an end between myself and Nine Elms, I wanted my Lett's diary with me to write down the answers to the questions that would keep coming. 'How do they know someone didn't whack it for him? Did they have detectives up here?'

  'I'll say,' said Terry. 'No end of the buggers, because they did have their doubts.'

  'What is the world coming to’ said Mack, 'when the Yard is sent in every time some old gent takes a tumble?'

  'What sort of a gent was he?' I asked, and I could hear the voice of little Vincent in my head telling me to pipe down.

  'He was all right,' said Terry, 'and he loved this place.'

  'It's a pretty spot, isn't it?' I said. 'In a queer sort of way.'

  Terry nodded. 'In the Smoke, you might go at things a bit harder if you know you've got a bunk-up like this waiting for you.'

  'A happy ending guaranteed’1 said.

  'That sort of thing. Yes, Rickerby was a nice old bird, but w
e struck a bigger pill with the next one, a fellow by the name of Erskine Long, who's green as duckweed, if you ask me. Smith's talking him into selling up the whole show - two thousand acres we had here, but it's getting smaller by the minute.'

  'I've seen that gent in person’1 said, remembering the little fret kidney I'd spotted talking to Rowland Smith on my first trip to the Necropolis station; he hadn't seemed such a pushover to me.

  'Know all the top brass, don't you?' said Mack.

  'Was Rickerby in favour of selling up?'

  'Dead against’ said Terry, 'which is why he never wanted Smith about the place. But really, he was put in the show by the bloody South Western.'

  'Why did the South Western Railway want him in?' (I imagined Vincent coining at me again: 'Very curious, this boy.')

  'Cor, mate’ said little Terry. 'We've told you that fifty times.' He said 'we', but Mack was now chatting to the barmaid. 'To sell up’ said Terry. 'By contract they're supplying the trains and men, and getting nothing in return on account of business being so bad.'

  'Who'd want to buy all this land?'

  'Who bloody wouldn't?' muttered Mack, turning back around.

  'A good line to be in, hereabouts’ said Terry, 'is building villas for the clerks who've got two quid a week and are bursting to prove it by getting their hands on a bit of garden.'

  'Rickerby died just this year, didn't he?'

  Mack nodded.

  'August sort of time’ he said, before drifting off altogether and striking up bits of chat with his other mates, leaving me with little Terry.

  'Mack's a great fellow’ he said, 'and he's a great fellow even with a head full of beer, which is more than you can say for some. But he's always pretty nervy at any talk of the police.'