The Blackpool Highflyer (29 page)

The last of the weavers were trailing away down Beacon Hill.

Walking further along the mill wall, I came to the boiler room. The door was half open and things were still in full swing inside. I could make out two boilers, with fireholes set below. There was one man to each, and now that the fires were finished, the two were scraping out clinkers with long irons. The sound they made was a desperate kind of clatter­ing, for they wouldn't get home until the job was done.

There was a tug on my coat and the wife was standing next to me. We began walking down the hill to the town. Far below us, trams and horse buses were cutting through Hali­fax at a great rate, and folk were filing down all the streets that led to the Joint, which was full of engines coming and going. Freedom for the wage slaves: that's what we were looking at, for the Friday buzzers were going off all over.

'Do they talk much in the mill about the lass that died?' I said.

'Some do,' said the wife. 'She was popular - a bonny girl.'

'Do they ever say she might have been saved?'

But the wife didn't seem to hear that.

'Cicely is a good soul,' she was saying, while looking at flowers by the roadside, 'but she has an awful time of it. Hind treats her like a slavey - just like one of the work people, even though she's been in the office for donkey's years.'

'Where is Hind?'

'He has a yacht,' said the wife, 'and he's on it. Has been for a week.'

'Where?' I said. 'Cruising off Llandudno. You can send letters to it by posting to somewhere in Llandudno. He can send them back as well, worst luck. All week, the correspondence has been letters from Mr Robinson's solicitors saying that the price offered for his share in the mill is not acceptable; Hind saying that no more is to be offered because the light suiting of Robinson's has brought the mill almost to bankruptcy; and letters to wine retailers asking for Champagne to be sent out to Hind's yacht. If I put the wrong letter in the wrong envelope there'd be fun.'

'You mean if you sent the Champagne to the solicitors?'

'No, you nut. If the solicitors for Robinson found out how much Hind was spending on himself.'

'What about Hind Senior, the founder. What does he make of all this?'

'That fossil! Who knows if he thinks at
all.
Hind's the only one who talks to him. It was in King William's day when he founded this mill, you know, and it was powered by water.'

'Do you think he's on the yacht right now with Hind?'

'Is he heckers, like,' said the wife. 'The fossil hardly ever leaves Halifax, and he's due at the mill right now.' Then she pointed to a roadside flower: 'Foxglove,' she said quite fiercely.

'But they did lose money over the light suiting, and it
was
this fellow Robinson's fault, wasn't it?'

'It had been his idea, but young Hind had agreed to adven­ture it. I'd help Mr Robinson if I could ... He has a little boy, you know, Lance, rather grown-up for his years, and he wrote a letter to Cicely to pass on to Hind. It was asking for his dad to be given his job back. Quite heart-breaking it was, according to Cicely. Well, that boy's mad on engines. Peter Robinson's often over here with all this solicitor business, and I thought you might show the boy about the station.'

'I'd say you were sweet on this Robinson’ I said.

'Well, he had his points, you know.'

'Like what?'

'He gave me my start, for one thing. He was always gentle­manly to the workers, even if he was flogging them to death.'

'Where is he now?’ 'At home.' 'In Halifax?'

The wife shook her head. 'He lives in Lancashire, at St Anne's.'

'Oh, you'd like it there,' I said. 'It's just before Blackpool; it's like Blackpool with everything taken out. Peaceful, like.'

'What I
would
fancy,' said the wife, very slowly, 'is a trip to Hebden Bridge.'

This was a turn up. The wife was not a great one for taking trips. 'Hebden would be a start,' I said. 'It's the prettiest spot within ten miles of here.'

'In fact I
am
going - tomorrow afternoon, with Cicely. She did want cheering up, you know. Would you come along?'

'I book off at one o'clock tomorrow,' I said, 'so I could do. Shall I ask George?'

The wife shook her head. 'I don't care for that one . . . I've read there are lots of wild flowers in the hills above Hebden.'

'You bet your boots,' I said.

'Jim . . .' she said. She did not often use my name, so I was certain she was going to say she was expecting. Instead, she said: 'I mean to take more of an interest in nature.'

'It's all the rage now,' I said.

'I mean to plant something in the garden.'

It was the first I'd heard it called that. 'You mean in that tub we have in the yard?'

'Tub in the yard! You're no loss to house agency, are you?'

'What are you going to plant?'

'Mint,' she said.

We'd drifted halfway down Beacon Hill Road. Two coal trains were crossing under the North Bridge, both going slow - lazy in the evening heat, and sending an echo all around the town. The wife had stopped again; she was looking down at some heather by the road.

'When did Robinson leave the mill?' I asked her.

'Friday 26 May he got the letter. It was the day after he'd interviewed me for the job.'

'A fortnight before Whit, then?'

'Aye’ said the wife.

I said: 'I do think the coppers might ask that gent a few questions about what happened, you know.'

The wife was still looking down at the tiny flowers. One of the coal trains had come to a halt between the Joint and the North Bridge goods station; the other had disappeared.

'Why would he want to stop the excursion?' said the wife. 'It was his flipping idea in the first place. There's any number of hundreds who
might
have had reason to do it, mind you. I spend half my days writing letters to people saying we can't take them on at the mill. Bobbin-setters, reelers, duffers. They might not want to see the ones that
have
jobs gallivanting off to the seaside. If it comes to
that...'

'What?'

'No, I shan't mention it. You'll only go flying off.'

'No’ I said. 'You must.'

'If it comes to it’ said the wife, 'when they stopped making the light suiting they laid off two hundred weavers. But half of them were taken on a week later at that show.'

She was pointing at the letters spelling 'Dean Clough' standing up on the roof of the building just beyond the North Bridge. Each letter was taller than three men, and although the North Bridge was high enough to fit the goods station underneath, those letters towered above it. The Dean Clough Mill seemed to have been built by men who'd never seen another mill, and so had no notion of the correct size, but what they did have was an endless supply of bricks. You could fit twenty mills of the common run inside it. It was built by the Crossleys, who'd also - along with a certain Porter - put up the brass for the orphanage where young Arnold Dyson now lived.

As we watched, the buzzer at Dean Clough went off, and it was loud even to the two of us, half a mile across town and halfway up a hill. After a minute, the workers came out, like oil spilling from an engine casing. As they poured forwards, crossing through the shadow of the great chimney, the wife said: 'Eight thousand carpet designs possible . . . Four thou­sand colours possible . . . Six thousand two hundred folk employed.'

'Wage slavery,' I said, thoughtful, like.

A motorcar was coming up the hill towards us. We stood back on either side of the road to let it pass, and the wife looked after it in a dreamy way. When it had gone she said, 'That's a bobby dazzler!' Then she laughed at me from across the road, because this was one of her new Yorkshire sayings.

We walked on a little way, and there was a trap stopped in the road, with a man standing up in it. There was something else in the trap: it was a small scrumpled-up something, and, as we got closer, we saw that it was a person, and that it was dead, with the little eyes in the little head closed and quite sealed up for ever.

I got in before the wife. 'Hind Senior,' I said.

Hind Senior didn't look as though he'd ever been a great talker, and nor did his gentleman's gentleman, but this fellow had to call out, for otherwise he would have been in league with the dead body at his side.

'Hi!' he yelled. 'Are you two down from Hind's?'

'I work there,' called the wife. 'Drive up there, and ask for Cicely. She'll let you telephone from the office.'

'What happened?' I called out.

'He was ninety-nine, Jim,' the wife whispered.

'Motorcar,' the man in the trap was saying, 'it was the bloody motorcar finished him off.'

Cicely Braithwaite was waiting for us outside the front of the Joint, with all the cab drivers eyeing her. She kissed the wife, saying: 'It was you sent him up to the mill, wasn't it dear?'

'It was,' said the wife.

'Of course, you know what did for the old man?' she said to us both. 'His heart.'

'Go on,' I said.

'Well,' said Cicely, 'it stopped.'

'And it was on account of a motorcar, wasn't it?' I asked her.

Cicely nodded. 'Frightened the life out of the old man,' she said, and then she coloured up. 'You know, it's the first time I've said that when it's actually been true.'

'Did the motorcar do anything?' I asked.

Cicely shook her head. 'Barley, that's the old man's
man ...
He said it just came too close as it passed by . . . and it was going at a fair rate of course, as they all do.'

I could hear Knowles, the stationmaster, shouting at a porter: something about an out-of-date auction poster and how it wanted taking down sharpish. I looked at the clock over the station. 'If I nip up fast for our tickets,' I said, 'we should be in time for the one thirty-two - stopping train for Blackpool. Hebden's first stop.'

'Does he have
Bradshaw
off by heart?' Cicely said to the wife, as I climbed the steps to the ticket office.

As I waited at the ticket window, I thought about motor­cars. The one that had run alongside us before the smash had looked like a giant baby-carriage, and so had the one on Beacon Hill. And so did they all, except for a certain other kind that looked like boats. I'd asked the wife, and she'd said that her Mr Robinson owned a motorcar.

The
Courier
was always going on about how they were the terrors of the countryside, I knew that much, and it was said they should be taxed. I didn't believe the Socialist Mission could run to one, even though old Hind might have been in their sights as an operator of wage slavery.

Dick served me at the ticket window. I could see Bob in the office behind him. I tried to remember the difference between them. Dick was the one who could write with two hands; Bob was the one that couldn't.

'George about?' I asked.

He was not; day off.

'I can't understand
Bradshaw's
,' Cicely was saying, as I returned. 'Whenever I find the train I need, I look down the page and there's a note saying "Only on Weekdays", and it never
is
a weekday that I want to take a train.'

'There's worse than that,' said the wife. 'Only go on Thurs­day afternoons, half of them.'

The train came in on time, pulled by one of Mr Aspinall's 060s, but that was lost on the ladies. We found an empty com­partment in Third. I sat next to the wife on one side, Cicely sat on the other. As the whistle was blown, Cicely said, 'I sup­pose Mr Hind will have to break off his sailing holiday. He'll be awfully cut up to hear the news.'

'Rubbish,' said the wife, and Cicely frowned as the engine started away.

'Well, it's a shame that the poor old -'

'Fossil,' put in the wife.

'The poor old
gentleman',
said Cicely, 'did not get to a hun­dred, because then you receive a telegram from the . . . Oh, now that reminds me.' And Cicely began telling a story about Hind's Mill. 'Before he went off sailing, Mr Hind asked me to take a letter, which always gets me in a tiz. He's so fast, it's very hard to take him down verbatim, although I'm sure
you
can do it, love.' She touched the wife on her knee.

'He usually writes out the letters he wants me to send,' said the wife. 'I've only taken one from him verbatim.'

'How did you get on?'

'I asked him to talk more slowly.'

Cicely went wide-eyed and forgot all about her story for the moment, looking the spit of Young Leonard, the doll of Henry Clarke. 'Well he must be dead keen on you then,' she said, 'or you'd have been stood down in a moment.'

The wife was smiling, looking out of the window and kick­ing her foot, smiling at the flashing sunshine and the smoke­less Saturday-afternoon mills going by. I pulled down the window strap and lit one of the last of the 'B's that I'd bought with George Ogden. A man went past in the corridor, and I thought: now by rights he'll be envious seeing me sitting here with two beauties. Though I'd lain awake most of the night as usual, trying to make a connection between the death of old Hind and all else, I was now feeling a little better about things: I would just go on searching until I knew the name of the person who'd put the stone on the line. Meanwhile I was dead set on having a pleasant afternoon.