The Blackpool Highflyer (11 page)

We passed Thomas Cook's excursion office in Horton
Street. It was still open for business. The people of Halifax
could not do without their outings. I couldn't imagine for a
minute how they'd got on before the railways and the excur­sions started.

'I could make a stew at the start of the week,' the wife was
saying, 'and it would
keep.
Do you like stews?'

'Yes,' I said firmly.

'What kind? What do you like in them?'

'I'm not faddy. Anything at all. You should buy the meat
on Saturday night.'

'Oh’ she said suspiciously. 'Why?'

'It's cheaper then.'

She said she'd think it over.

The wife was smiling. She had taken off her hat, and as we
came to the tram halt, I thought: she looks still more fetching
without it, and will look more fetching again when she puts it
back on, and so on for ever. She was wrong over trams, how­ever, which were forever either racing or jerking to a dead
halt. They seemed to go on by jumps, and I found myself - for
the first time ever - a little anxious riding one.

We got off at the Joint, and as usual the wife paid no atten­tion. She did not like railway lines, partly because her house
in London had been underneath one. When I first took up
lodgings there (for she was my landlady before she was my
wife) I used to say: 'What do you expect, living in Waterloo?'

We took the little stone tunnel that went under the plat­forms of the Joint, and under the canal basin, and under the
Halifax Flour Society mill, and a good deal else beside. We
came out and began climbing the Beacon, going by the one
zigzag lane - half country, half town, with rocks lit by their
own gas lamps, and sometimes black thin houses like knives
along the way. There was one mill above us all the time as we
walked, and this was our goal.

Just then a bicyclist came crashing along. 'Evening!' he
called, which was gentlemanly of him because by the looks of
things he had all on staying alive. I thought his lamps were
going to shake right off his machine, and he did look worried,
but he wanted to keep up the speed. All my work started and finished down in that groove he
was racing towards. There was too much life down there, and
too much death too, because that's what the smoke was, and
the black smuts floating along: that was your death certificate
coming towards you. One in thirty million passengers might
be killed on the railways, but your chances of coming a crop­per if you
worked
on the railways, or anything that moved,
were a good deal higher, and you could not avert what was
coming.

The black mill was right above us now, made up of three
buildings chasing each other in a circle, like a castle in a
child's story book. A fellow in a gig was waiting outside in
the darkness. As we looked on, a small door within the main
door opened; light came out like something falling forwards
and just stayed there for a while.

Presently, an old man emerged from the door, walking
with two sticks. Well, he was practically a spider, or a little
rickety machine. The man in the gig climbed down, and he
didn't help the old man, but walked alongside, looking on
very closely. He did give him a hand up into the gig, though.
The old man was wearing a heavy black coat in spite of the
heat, a high white collar that shone like moonlight, and a
black necker. He looked all ready for death. His face was
small and crumpled, almost a baby's again; he had one lock of
no-colour hair going across the top of his head and, as he took
his seat in the gig, this fell forwards like the chinstrap of a
helmet or the handle of a bucket.

'What's the name of this show?' I asked the wife.

'Did I not tell you?' she said. 'It's Hind's Mill.'

I looked at the wife, but decided to hold my tongue for the
time being.

'That must be Mr Hind Senior,' said the wife. 'He's the
chairman and founder.'

As we watched, the manservant leant across to put the old
man's hair straight, like somebody training a vine. Then the
mill door closed and the light went. A moment later, the trap
rattled off into the hot night.

The rest of the week I spent dreaming back and forth on the
Rishworth branch, and trying to read a book by a fellow
called Rider Haggard, for I was out with the
Railway Maga­zine,
having developed a strange fear of coming across an
item about obstacles placed on the tracks.

Most of the time, the stone on the line was on my mind, and
I had made my little speech to the wife after explaining that
she had been taken on by the mill that had suffered the
smash: 'You go and work at Hind's Mill if you like, but you
are not to go on their summer excursion.' 'Why ever not?' the
wife had said, and my words had seemed completely daft in
an instant. But I had not taken them back.

The Board of Trade had come to Sowerby Bridge Shed.
Rather, Major Terence Harrison had come, late of the Royal
Engineers. Clive had said the Board always took its inspec­tors from that show if possible. The major had worn a very
good, very tight suit. He was not a full inspector, but a sub-
inspector, yet all the fellows in the shed gave him a very wide
berth, fearing he was trained to detect ale on a railman's
breath at fifty paces. He had talked to Clive in John Ellerton's
office, and Clive had come out laughing. Then it had been my
turn. Speaking to Major Harrison, I did not sound like myself.
I kept saying things like: 'I jumped down from the cab to see
whether I could render any assistance.'

He had not wanted to know about my medical attempts,
but was concerned only with the engine, the track, the stone
and other things not living. He told me he would write a draft
report, and that this would be properly finished off when the
police investigation was completed. I told him I thought the
culprit would most likely be someone owing a grievance to
the mill, and Major Harrison said he was sure they would
turn out to be from Blackpool. 'It's a damn strange town, you
know,' he said.

Well, I thought he was a blockhead, but he did pass on two
handy pieces of information after I'd got up the nerve to
question him a little. The train before ours over that two-line
stretch had been a Blackpool to Preston. It was an ordinary
train, not an excursion, and it had gone between Salwick and
Kirkham a full hour before we'd arrived there. Nothing out of
the way had been seen on the opposite line. So the stone had
been placed an hour or less before the smash.

As for the North Eastern train that had hit the branch on
the way to Scarborough, he said that to his knowledge no
investigation would be held, because the engine had not left
the tracks.

He asked me why I'd asked, and I said: 'Well, perhaps it
was put there on purpose.'

'You can't drag a great branch down off a tree, you know,'
he said, and it was as if he'd
tried.

No, you clot, I thought to myself, but you can shift one
that's already fallen.

-------

---

Come the Friday, knowing that the wife was off to a meeting
of the Women's Co-operative Guild, I fixed on the idea of
going up to the Palace directly after booking off, but I was all
in, and it seemed to take an eternity for me to walk up Horton
Street in the late hanging heat. Sugden was there, with his ice­-cream barrow and his little white pony.

'Weather suiting you, chief?' he called.

'Champion,' I said, and it was then that I saw a long-haired
man, halfway up the hill, handing out newspapers. He was not
one of the Horton Street regulars. He wore a cap on top of his
long black hair, so that his head was somehow very crowded. I
walked towards him, and he put one of the papers in my hand.

'Cop hold, guv,' he said.

The paper was called the
Socialist Mission,
and there were
no more than about four pages to it.

'Take it,' said the long-haired bloke. 'Gratis.'

I looked at the front page. At the top of one column were
the words: 'Speech by Alan Cowan at Hull Dock Gates'. The
rest of the page repeated all the questions that had been on
the poster - for it was the same show - but with words
beneath: the answers, I supposed. The answers according to
this Alan Cowan.

'Are you Alan Cowan?' I said to the long-haired fellow.
He took off his cap and brushed his black hair back with a
shaky long white hand. He seemed quite surprised to be
addressed.

'Me?' he said; 'no, though I keep in touch with him by tele­gram and letter. We're in the Mission together, the Socialist
Mission.'

I looked again at the paper, and the words: 'Blackpool: A
Health Resort?'

'Where is Alan Cowan just at present?' I said.

'Dunfermline,' the long-haired fellow said instantly. He
was thin and white, like a plant kept out of the light. All the
energy and life that might have gone into giving him a bit of
colour had instead been directed into the growing of his hair.
'He's at a speaking engagement.'

I nodded.

This fellow could have taken the bottom ends of his hair,
and put them in his mouth. But the hair was something for­gotten about, like his suit.

'Do you work for him?'

'Publicity Officer,' said the long-haired fellow. 'Mr Cowan
pays me fair wages.'

I knew I'd already missed Early Doors at the Palace The­atre, but I said: 'I've a couple of questions of my own, if that's
quite all right?'

The long-haired fellow said, 'Aye', though he looked a little
anxious.

'What's he, Alan Cowan, I mean
. . .
What's he got against
folk going to Blackpool?'