The Blackpool Highflyer (6 page)

were at the dancing platforms, the grotto railways and hot-
pea saloons.

When he spoke, he sounded like the excursionists, but
more used to being listened to.

'I see we've nearly come a very nasty cropper.'

'Nearly, sir,' said Clive. 'It was seen in good time though.'

Hind nodded. You couldn't tell if he was angry or not. 'My
father, who is ninety-nine, was pitched from one side of the
compartment to another,' he said.

'And is he quite all right?' asked Clive.

'He suffers with his heart, but has a very strong constitu­tion .
.
. which the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway has
today tested to the full.'

Even that might have been a good thing from the way he
said it.

'You'll find it hard to credit,' Hind said, 'but this is Father's
first time on a train. He cannot be doing with them, but he'd
decided to try the experience once.'

I thought: Christ, we're for it now. But Hind didn't seem
too
put out.

'I'm sure there's been no irregularity,' he went on, 'but I'll
have both your names if you don't mind.'

'Clive Carter,' said Clive.

'Jim Stringer,' I said.

'Might we get this stone shifted?' said Hind, 'And then
get on? My work-people are to be served with early teas by
the Tower Company. And I have most important business
to conduct on the seafront at Blackpool in exactly two hours'
time.'

As he turned and walked back towards the engine, Clive
said, 'Who does he think he is? King bloody Canute?'

Reuben Booth, who was still at his book, began reading
again: '"When a train is stopped by accident or obstruction,
the guard, if there be only one, or the rear guard, if there be
more
than one
...
"'

Hind looked at Reuben for a while, then turned and
walked back towards 1418. As he did so, I looked at the
crocked engine. A derailment: it had happened to me. It
would be in the papers. The Board of Trade would send
down an inspector. I felt like the tightrope walker who has
fallen off the tightrope.

'Reuben,' I said, 'we must get the detonators down.'

'That's it,' he said, but went straight away back to reading
his manual: '"Detonators shall be placed as follows: one det­onator a quarter of a mile from the train -"'

'Is it a job for guard or fireman, Reuben?' I asked. 'What do
you reckon?'

'It says here,' said Reuben Booth: '"The detonators should
be placed by the guard or any competent person.'"

Clive looked over at me:
'You'd
better do it then Jim,' he
said in an under-breath, and it
was
hard not to laugh.

'It's all in hand,' said Reuben, 'leave it up to me.'

We watched as Reuben plodded back to his guard's van,
climbed up, stayed up there for quite a while, climbed down
with the detonators over his shoulder. They looked like belts
with boot-polish tins attached. Reuben dropped one, slowly
bent down and picked it up, and set off along the track back
in the direction of Salwick.

'What's that bit of kit he's got hold of?' asked a fellow from
the crowd of excursionists that was by now standing about
us.

'Detonators,' I said.

'Explosives, like?' said the first excursionist.

I nodded.

The excursionist thought about this for a while. 'He wants
one of them up his arse,' he said.

Clive was puffing at his cheroots.

'He'll lay the detonators on the track,' I said, 'so that any
train coming up behind us will set them off.'

'What? And get blown to bloody Kingdom Come?' said the
excursionist. 'Can we not just somehow warn it instead?'

It was hard to believe how Hind's Mill turned out any cloth

at all if this was the class of fellow they had working in it, and
Clive was grinning so that his little cigar was at a crazy angle.

They only give out a bang,' I said. 'But there's no need of
them really because the signalman back at Salwick won't let
another train in this section until the fellow at Kirkham gives
him the bell to say we're clear of it.'

'So your pal's wasting his time?' said another excursionist,
and we all watched Reuben in the distance, walking like a
clockwork soldier because he
would
stick to the track and the
sleepers, instead of going along the field, which would have
doubled his rate of progress.

'I do hope he is,' I said, and then I asked Clive: 'Do you
reckon we can shift the stone?'

'We'll have a go,' he said.

Some of the excursionists offered to give a hand, but there
was only room for two to grip it. We had to graft but we got
it off the rails. It wouldn't have been so hard to get it
on,
though, for small embankments rose up from the track just at
this point. The stone could have been rolled down onto the
line.

We'd no sooner shifted the stone than the bloody motorist
from before -1 was sure it was the same fellow - came skim­ming along through the field next to us, trailing a great cloud
of dust and sand. It looked as if he was driving clean through
the pasture alongside the track, but there
was
a road,
although a pretty rough sort going by how much the motorist
was chucking up behind him. I looked down at the stone.

'It was brought here along that road,' I said.

Clive said nothing. He was again booting the rail, looking
gormless.

A train was coming towards us on the other line, the
'down'; it was shimmering in the heat, so that the train itself
looked like steam. When it came close, the driver leant out
and gave us a wave, then shouted something that was
drowned by his engine and gave us a couple of screams on
his whistle. It was one engine pulling seven empty tenders -
a water special, coming back from filling the water columns
at Central.

An excursionist called to me: 'What's he carrying?'

'His train's empty,' I said.

The excursionist thought about this for a while. 'What
was
he carrying?' he called back.

I didn't want to talk about this. All of a sudden, I had no
appetite for railway subjects. 'Water,' I said.

'Where to?'

'Blackpool.'

'Don't they have enough?' said the excursionist.

'No.'

'You'd think they would,' he said. 'I mean, they've the sea
for starters.'

'The engines need fresh,' I said, 'and country round here
dries fast in this weather.'

Clive came up to me and we started walking back to the
Highflyer, which was leaking steam and looking embar­rassed at being half off the rails, and walked about by excur­sionists.

Clive was saying, 'I like these mill girls in their summer toi­lettes.'

About half of Hind's Mill were down on the pasture by
now, and they'd taken their boxes, blankets and bottles down
with them. The sun was high; it was about dinner time, and
the excursionists were picnicking; either that or they were
stretched out reading their penny papers, drinking ginger
beer.

I liked mill girls in their summer toilettes, when you could
see a bit more of their hair, spilling out from under their
bonnets (in the mills it was kept up all the time). The weavers
among them could earn the big penny, even the half-timers,
and they always had a lot 'off'. They would dash about Halifax,
looking always on the edge of opportunity, while the men
would sort of mooch along behind.

We came up to Martin Lowther, who was still sitting by the
track, sweltering in his gold coat. He would not take it off, for
then he'd be somebody else. 'It goes down as "exceptional
causes",' he said, in his morngy voice, looking out at the field
and not in our direction. 'A train can only be stopped by
engine, by signals, or by exceptional causes.'

'Did you find anyone in want of a ticket?' I asked him.

'Not so far.'

'It probably wouldn't do to carry on looking,' said Clive.

Lowther sighed. He'd struck a loser with us. He'd have
been better off on that Leeds train he'd been after boarding.

We were back at 1418 by now, watching all the skylarking
excursionists. A game of cricket had been got up in the
shadow of the half-wrecked engine; somebody was playing a
mouth organ. I asked a gang of them who were just lying
about: 'Why do you all have these rosettes?'

'It's the white rose of Yorkshire,' said an excursionist. 'It
shows we're from Hind's Mill in Halifax, and that we're to be
served a free tea and a parkin at the Tower when we get to
Blackpool.'

'If...'
said one of the excursionists, very slowly.

'Your governor wasn't wearing one,' said Clive.

'Well,' said the same excursionist, 'don't think that means
he won't be getting a free tea and a parkin at the Tower.'

'Rum,' said Clive, as we walked on.

'I wouldn't work in a mill for fortunes,' I said, and then I
felt quite lost because for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure
that I wanted to work on the railways.

In the distance ahead I could see Reuben making his slow
way back to the train, this time by the side of the track. He'd
learnt his lesson about walking on sleepers. You could always
bank on Reuben to get there in the end. My guess was that
he'd be carrying the chit from the signalman that would let us
move on. As I watched, he picked up one of the detonators
he'd laid a few minutes before, so I swung myself back up
onto the engine.