The Blackpool Highflyer (33 page)

The wife gave me a good steady look that I liked. I was back up from the bottom of the sea.

'Will you unhook this dress?' she said. 'I've had enough of it.'

When that was done, and the business that followed was done (after which the wife did not go off to do any family- stopping business), and I was lying in the tub with my
Railway Magazine
reading of the new goods yards in Dover, with the pages fluttering in the breeze that had finally started to come in through the window, and drinking a bottle of Bass that the wife had produced from the pantry, I said, 'We are not really at all alike, are we? One difference is that you were not on the engine, you know.'

'We have some points in common’ said the wife.

'What?'

'We both want to get on.'

I finished the beer, and the wife took the bottle away from me. She didn't mind my having a bath in front of the smart sorts in Hill Street, but would rather they didn't catch a glimpse of me drinking beer.

'When you get married,' I said some time later, but still in the bath, 'you think that's more or less it as far as knowing the other person's concerned . .. But it isn't really, is it?'

But the wife, in her petticoats, was curled up asleep on the sofa. She was full of surprises.

Two evenings later, on the Monday, I walked towards the Crossley Porter School and Orphanage all kitted out with the
Pearson's Book of Fun
under my arm, and a Farthing Everlast­ing Strip in my pocket. This would be my first social call of the evening; the second would take me to Halifax Infirmary, where John Ellerton had told me Lowther was laid up.

That day we'd taken an excursion to Skipton and back. Postal workers. It had been market day in Skipton, and the people had all been in the inns, and the animals all in the streets. I'd told Clive all about my adventures in Hebden and Manchester, not giving him my thoughts in detail, but just saying, 'Here's a fellow nearly catches it when the stone's put on the line between Salwick and Kirkham, then he has another close call not three weeks later ... Rum, ain't it?'

Clive had been more concerned about keeping his boots clean, but in a Skipton pub he'd said, 'So you think it's the socialists again, do you?' and I'd answered, 'In a way it proves it can't have been that lot first time.'

'Why?' Clive had asked. 'Nobody's over-keen on ticket inspectors. When one of
them's
got at, you can't rule
anybody
out.'

I then told him what had become of old Hind, who'd been 'To-Day's Obituary' in that day's
Courier.
There wasn't much to it: 'The death occurred on Friday of Mr William Sinclair Hind, chairman of Hind's Mill. Mr Hind, who was ninety- nine, was being attended by doctors for his heart. In his earlier years, he was devoted to cricket.' That last part had been the only shock.

It was a hot, blue evening, and the orphanage looked like a castle in France, only black, of course, like everything in

Halifax. There was a garden to the front, and Savile Park in front of that. All the windows in the house were open, and, as I got close, I heard a voice saying: 'Give instances from the gospel of the times when our Lord . ..'

But gentle, like.

The garden was the kind that makes you feel riff-raff in working boots, even if you've been at the Erasmic Soap for the best part of half an hour, as I had. And even though it had likely been another fellow in working clothes - gaiters too, probably,
and
a clay pipe in his mouth - who'd made it all. Every. flower-bed was a different colour and a different world. You'd look at one and think, that's the prettiest, with those giant orange flowers; then you'd look at another and see blue flowers, small but more of them, and you'd think, no, that one tops it, and so on. What all the beds had in common was a big stone urn in the middle.

Feeling like I'd climbed from the audience onto the stage, I stood at the top of the wide stone steps leading to the front door and rang the bell, which was set in an iron circle as big as a dinner plate. They went big with everything, the Crossleys.

The door was opened by a most unexpected person: a tiny, untidy woman who seemed to be just passing by. 'Oh, come in then,' she said.

I told her my business. She looked down at the package in my hands and said, 'That's all right, come along with me.'

She began leading me along a corridor, past rows of por­traits. 'Our founders,' she said, putting out a small arm as she walked, and I marvelled at how founders are always bald men with beards no matter what it is they've founded.

'We've got plenty of nooks and crannies you know,' she said, after we'd turned a few corners.

But they were very
big
nooks and crannies.

As we walked, I could somehow tell the place was full of children, although I couldn't see any. It was a kind of trem­bling feeling, like when you have a mouse in your hand.

I was at last shown into a small wooden room marked
'visitors - boys' side
', which, if I'd been running the place, I would have shifted nearer the front door. In the office was a matron - a big woman with a happy face and pink cheeks that didn't go with her black dress, just as the garden did not go with the house. She fished my letter out of a drawer and her face fell into a frown as she read it, which set me wondering about the spelling, until I remembered that the wife had typed it.

'What day was your train smash?' she asked, putting the letter down.

I felt like saying: It wasn't
my
smash. Instead, I said, 'Whit Sunday.'

'Pentecost,' said the woman. I was quite certain she was about to say, Well you shouldn't be driving engines on such a day, but she looked at me, smiled, put the letter away.

'Good of you to bring the book,' said a voice from the door­way.

Turning around, I saw a big, brown, strong man who looked ready for anything. 'Matthew Ferry,' he said, shaking my hand.

'I thought I might read the boy a couple of riddles,' I said.

Matthew Ferry laughed. 'You've a hope.'

'He'll be having his supper,' said matron, 'so we won't bring him out quite yet. Would you like to come through for a cup of tea?'

Mr Ferry was now holding the door open for me, and we walked for another half minute before turning into a sort of parlour, with a scullery connected. There were a few attempts to make the parlour homely - green tab rugs on the floor, a red cloth on the table - but the empty fireplace was too big, and the ceiling was too high. On the walls were thin wooden crucifixes, with dried flowers tucked behind them, and I thought again of Whit Sunday: the Lord's day, and an extra special one at that. Maybe you
were
asking for all you got by running trains on that day. Come to that, wakes weeks had started out as religious in some way.

Mr Ferry began cleaning a pair of boots as the matron went through into the scullery. Very shortly after, she was calling over the sound of a singing kettle: 'Never smiles, that one you've come for.' She returned with a filled pot on a tray, and cups.

'Sarcastic disposition,' said the man, smiling and pausing in his boot-cleaning.

'Well, I believe he's precious careful not to be
seen
doing it,' the matron continued.

'A lot of them are like that at first. They don't think it's fit to be seen happy in a place like this. They sort of think they're in church all the time.'

'Or at a funeral,' said Mr Ferry, 'a funeral going on for years and years.' He seemed quite happy as he said this. 'Do you know what the boy wanted when he came here?' he asked.

'I don't,' I said.

'Fires lighting. Everywhere he went.'

'But it's been so hot,' I said.

'A fire reminded the boy of home,' said Matthew Ferry. He was going forty to the dozen at his boot, smiling down all the while at the glace kid on the Nuggett's polish tin, who smiled back up at him. 'I had a long go at him a few days after he came in,' he continued, 'give him a chance to say whatever he might want to. I asked him about his mother but it was no go, and I had just one thing out of the boy.' He had stopped pol­ishing. 'His mother', he told me, 'could make her eyes go crossed.'

'Well...' I said, and things went a bit quiet for a while.

They were not orphan's boots that he was cleaning. They were too big. And orphan boots would have come in bundles. No, these were Matthew Ferry's boots, and it struck me that a man would not be cleaning his own boots in front of a woman unless she was his wife - wife or sister, for they had the same high colour.

'Little bit of advice for you,' said Mr Ferry, who'd finished cleaning his boots and was putting the lid on the tin. 'When you

see the lad, don't say: "I was sorry about your mother", because then you're going to have to say, "I was sorry about your father", "Sorry about your dog", "Sorry about you not getting your day in Blackpool", and so on till the cows come home.'

He had all the boy's misfortunes off by heart. No detail lacked.

'What did the boy's father die of?' I asked Mr Ferry.

'Heart gave out,' he said, quite brightly.

I realised I already knew that from Mary-Ann Roberts's letter. I picked up the cup of tea that Mrs Ferry had poured for me and took a sip, but it was too hot.

'He was in a similar line to yourself,' said Mr Ferry, folding his big arms, for the boots were now done.

'Engine man?' I said.

Mr Ferry picked up his teacup, poured some onto the saucer and blew - six shimmers, with the tea not allowed to come to rest in between each one.

'How many tons of coal do you have to lift in an ordinary day?' he asked.

'On a fifty mile run,' I said, 'it might come to . . . one.' I wanted to add: But there's more to the job than that.

The matron was talking to someone at the door, and it seemed that Arnold Dyson had been sent for. I put the book inside my coat, thinking to make a bit of a surprise out of giv­ing it back.

'One ton?' said Mr Ferry. 'Now what would you say to fir­ing the boiler in a mill?'

'Well, you know ... It wouldn't suit.'

'Why not?' said Mr Ferry, smiling.

'Because a mill doesn't move.'

'It does not,' said Mr Ferry, standing up, 'even if you put six ton on the fires every working day, which is what Arnold Dyson's father was doing.'

'He was a boilerman?''That's it, fettling the boiler, but mainly shovelling coal and one day he just pegged out.' 'What mill was it?'

'Hind's. It's where he copped on with the mother.'

'Matthew!' cried the matron, 'we'll have less!'

He'd been grinning and glowing before, but this remark turned him up to boiling point and he gave out a laugh. 'We're talking of mills,' he said, brown face still beaming, 'so I'll use mill talk.' He picked up his tea and finished it in one go. 'I hear that lot are off to Blackpool again soon,' he said.

'Yes,' I said.

'Will you be firing the engine once again?'

I nodded back, trying to smile: 'Very likely.'

'Well I should keep an eye out!'

'When did the lad's father die?'

'Five years back. The boy could have come here then because fatherless will do for us, but his mother wanted to keep him. He was at board school in the morning, fended for himself until his mother came home in the afternoons. He would have gone on at the mill as a half-timer himself next year.'

'How old is he?'

'Ten,' said Mr Ferry, and there was Arnold Dyson, stand­ing in the doorway.

His face said the same as before: railway accident. His hair said it, too - it was fighting against the Brilliantine that some­body had combed onto it. You could see a lot going on in his eyes, all of it bad. He wore a black suit with a big white collar, a rig-out meant for somebody who looked more like a child.

'You remember Mr Stringer,' said the matron to the boy.

I really thought she was about to add: The one who killed your mother.

Without waiting for an answer, which was just as well, for I do not think there would have been one, she was up and at him, brushing away crumbs from his coat. 'You muck-tub; you look a perfect fright,' she said, 'Bath bun ...
plain
bun ...
Somebody
ate a good tea.' Still brushing the boy's coat, the matron turned to me: 'Clarted with it, he is. Now you and Mr

Stringer here’ she said to the boy, 'are to take a turn about in the gardens.'

It was the first I'd heard of it.

Mr Ferry picked up his newspaper, saying, 'I think I'll come along’ which I was very glad of.

We walked back along the corridors, with Mr Ferry merrily asking about engines, and keeping the conversation going. The boy dragged behind. As we walked along a corridor, a door opened, and a great wave of children, all boys, all in their great black capes, swept towards us. There was no adult or master in sight, and as they swept by on either hand - all silent, but all
nearly
speaking - I half expected to see that they'd carried Arnold Dyson off with them. He was one of their own after all, and did not belong with us. But when I looked back he was still there.

Outside the front of the college, on the raised level that ran around the house, Mr Ferry leant against a stone urn full of flowers and began reading his newspaper.

I stood a few feet away with the boy, holding out
Pearson's Book of Fun.

'This is yours,' I said. 'You left it on the train.'

No answer. He was looking out at the gardens like a little lord of the manor. Mr Ferry was making a lot of noise with his newspaper.

'Would you like me to read out some riddles?' I said.

'Read 'em to yourself’ said the boy.

'Come on now.' I opened the book at 'Some Riddles', and began reading the first one I struck: "'Why is a football round?'"

'Leave
off’
said the boy.

'Leave off,
Mr Stringer’
called Mr Ferry from behind his newspaper. 'Remember your manners.' I could not see Mr Ferry's face but somehow knew he was smiling over this.

I closed the book. 'Well then ...' I said. I very much wanted the meeting to be over, being sure that at any moment the boy was going to accuse me of murdering his mother.