The Last Train to Scarborough (11 page)

Company
employees were to refrain from removing the newspapers from the engine men's
mess, otherwise newspapers would no longer be provided. A small quantity of
gunpowder had been found under a seat on a train running between Scarborough
and Filey and a general warning was accordingly issued to all employees of the
railway. A fellow from the shed had won a barometer at cycle racing.

In
one corner of the board was a space for notices of a more general nature. A
seven-roomed house was for sale in Scarborough: 'In splendid condition - large
garden.' My eye ran on to the notice directly beneath: 'PREPARE FOR A RAINY
DAY!' I didn't read that, but moved directly to the one below.

Paradise Guest House. All rooms
excellent and nicely furnished. Baths, hot and cold water. Sea views. Five
minute walk from station. Railway men always welcome, cheap rates for short or
long stay. Apply Miss Rickerby at Paradise Guest House, 3 Bright's Cliff,
Scarborough.

Miss
Rickerby - she sounded a respectable enough party. A picture composed in my
mind of a thin, jittery woman who almost outdid her white dress for paleness,
but I realised I'd called to mind a Mrs
Riccall,
who
worked in the pharmacy on Nunnery Lane, York, and was known to the wife. Just
then Tommy Nugent came limping into the vestibule.

'Well,
I'm finally shot of it,' he said, meaning the J Class. 'I've told 'em we'll
come back in the morning about ten to see what's what.'

'We'll
try to,' I said. 'It all depends on events.' Tommy stood still under the gas
with his cap in his hand, and he made his eyes go wide, and blew upwards, which

caused
his curly hair to move.

'Quick
wash and brush-up, then Paradise it is!' he said.

I
didn't show him the notice posted by or on behalf of Miss Rickerby because I'd
finally worked out what was making him talk at such a rate: Tommy Nugent was
spoiling for a scrap, and I didn't doubt he'd prove a brave man if it came to
it. But that didn't mean he didn't have the wind up.

I
might have been sleeping in my metal quarters as I heard the sound of a bell
amid the sea roar and the creaking iron. It might have been the bell that woke me.
There came another, and I counted five strokes in all. Were we within earshot
of a coastal church?

No,
the bells were floating along with us; we had made away with them, carried them
off. They rang them for the watches, and five strokes did not mean five
o'clock. I thought again of the run to Scarborough, and how I ought to have
known not to head for the sea. I figured a boat approaching the Scarborough
harbour, lurching on the waves like a. drunkard; I called to mind the clock
tower above Scarborough railway station, white against the Scarborough night, a
foreign look to it somehow. I thought of the porter who was keen to lock the
station gate, as though he had secret and illegal business to conduct there; I
saw a heap of razors, safetys and cut-throats, and a hot bluish room. I saw
again the gigantic needle hanging in the air. I began to count, and the needle
faded.

The
station clock tower came up once more, and I knew I had a brain injury of some
sort - a concussion perhaps - because I could not see why a station would have
a clock, leave alone a clock
tower
? It was
asking for trouble, because the clock would only prove the trains wrong. I
adjusted my position against the chain. No. It was
churches
that had clocks in the main, but why did churches have
clocks? They did not operate trains. They were not in the business of time,
quite the opposite really. But they did have them, and that was fact. It
seemed to me that my brain was befuddled as before, but I was no longer subject
to the flashes of electricity, and the sea was perhaps a little calmer. The
violent rocking had been replaced with a calmer up and down, like a great
breathing.

More
visions came. I saw in my mind's eye an oil lamp burning red, a gas bracket
giving a shaking white light.

I
saw a knife polisher on a kitchen table, a packet containing rat poison and
again the lamp burning red, as though by thinking of light, I might
create
light.

The
chain room was darker than when I had been put into it. A tiny amount of moonlight
came down through the hole that the chain went through, and this only
illuminated the remainder of the chain. There was no mystery about where the
thing went. It was not the Indian rope trick. This was the anchor chain - it
ran up to the windlass on the fore-deck - and I had a suspicion that the
anchoring of the boat, the end of the voyage, would be the end of me as well,
because there would be
policemen
where we ended, and law and
order generally - and the Captain meant to avoid that. Yes, it would be very
dangerous even to sight land, because it would remind the Captain and the Mate
that they would have to account to someone for holding me prisoner and I did
not think they were over-keen to do that.

I
was too bloody cold.

I
sat against the chain and pulled the tarpaulin around me. I was supposed to be
becoming a solicitor, a notion that seemed more than ever mysterious. I tried
to recall having done some lawyering but could not. I had stood up many times
in the police court but only as a policeman-witness. I had meant to be going
into a quiet office over-looking the sleeping wagons of the old station, but
there had evidently been a change of plan, and I would be going to the North
Pole instead.

Running
my hand over the tarpaulin, it came to me that it was not smooth as a tarpaulin
ought to be, and it did not have the tar smell that generally came off a tarp.
The smell in the chain locker was paint and oil, and I wondered whether it
might serve as a
sail
locker as well. I swept my hand again over the canvas - for
that's what it was - and found the thing I was after before I knew I was
looking for it: a stretch of rope. I could not find the end of it and for all I
knew it was longer than the anchor chain, but a length of it between my hands
made a weapon. I sat back holding the rope and feeling there would be no half
measures from now on. When the grey Dutchman came back, I would be on him; I
would be on him quicker than thinking.

But
after a while I set down the rope. It was too cold to hold. A short interval of
time later, I pulled the oilskin more tightly around me, and made also to wrap
myself in the great sheet, which might have been a sailor might have been
something else again, but as I counted the faint ringing of a further six
bells, it didn't seem to matter one way or another, and the only thing to do
was to give in to the darkness, the rise and fall and the deep cold, and to
sleep.

We
had a scrub-down in the engine shed wash room. Then we walked back to the
station along a cinder track, and climbed up onto Platform One. We exited the
station through the main gates that a porter stood ready to padlock. It was
only just gone seven, but he was shutting up shop. It was depressing, somehow,
that a fair-sized station like this should close so early.

I
said to the porter, 'Leslie White, our guard ... has he come by?'

'Ten
minutes since,' he replied.

With
the station behind us, we stood at the top of Valley Bridge Road. A few wagons
rolled through the streets but there were no trams to be seen, and precious few
people.

Turning
towards Tommy, I said, 'Paradise is on Bright's Cliff - it's on the south side,
off Newborough.'

'Not
far, is it?' he enquired, as we began to walk.

He
came to Scarborough a lot but evidently did not leave the station very much. I
mended my pace to his as we made our way along the dark canyon of the Valley
Road. Tall houses stood a little way off on either side, beyond the Valley
Gardens. They were beautifully tended, those gardens - and famous for it - but
now they were enclosed in darkness. Halfway along, the sea came into view below
us, with the white of the wave tops standing out clearly on the black water.

'It's
getting up,' said Tommy, when he drew level with me.

He'd
expected the sea to be quiet, like the town.

The
tide was coming in, and the waves were like an invasion sweeping right up to
the empty Promenade. The Grand Hotel was in view high on our left, the four
turrets making it look like a great castle - a fortress against the sea. Lights
shone at barely a quarter of the windows. The flags on the roof were all
stretched out to the utmost by the sea wind.

'Bright's
Cliff is on the other side of it,' I said. 'We've come a bit out of our way.'

'Oh,
wait a bit,' said Tommy. 'I'm missing a bloody bag.'

It
was true enough: he only carried one of his two.

'Reckon
I left it at the gate,' he said. 'I put it down when you asked the bloke about
Les White. Will you just hold on here?'

'Is
it the one with the guns in it?'

'One
of 'em,' he said, which I didn't quite understand.

'I'll
go,' I said, because I was twice as quick as him and I wanted to get on, but
Tommy wouldn't have it. He would fetch the bag himself.

'Look,'
I said, pointing to a lonely-looking bench under a lamp on the Promenade. 'I'll
wait for you there.'

'Right
you are, mate,' he said, and he turned to go.

'Leave
your other bag here at any rate!' I called after him, but he didn't seem to
hear that, and I stared after him until he was claimed by the darkness of the
Valley Gardens.

I
sat down on the bench, and watched the waves for a while. Then I looked to my
right, where the Prom curved around towards the Spa, which was like a little
mansion with a ballroom, restaurant and orchestra. But this Sunday evening the
Prom curved away into darkness, and the Spa might as well have been spirited
clean away.

Because
I was looking the wrong way, I didn't see the woman who approached out of the
darkness from the left and sat on the bench alongside me. She wore a blue
dress, which came out from underneath a grey-blue double-breasted coat, which
she hugged tight about her. Her hair was a mass of dark curls under a fetching
hat with a peaked brim and a feather in it. I thought: She looks like a hunter.
Who was the Greek female who was the hunter? I couldn't recall.

She
looked out to sea, and I watched her face from the side. It was squareish,
darkish, a little plump with wide green eyes. She was wrapping the coat tight
around herself, and I thought: If she's so cold, why is she sitting here and
not walking briskly? But then she left off with the coat, and gave a sort of
startled gasp, as though she'd just remembered something. I thought: She'll go
off now. But she crossed her legs right over left instead, and began waggling
her raised right boot. The wife would do that when she was restless, but this
woman was not restless; she was bored, more like - and idle with it. I liked
the look of her though, and I thought I'd better stop eyeing her in case it
became obvious.

I
craned my neck backwards to see whether I could catch sight of Tommy Nugent
coming out of the gloom of the Valley Gardens. But there was no sign of him, so
I looked forward again, and counted three wide waves as they came in, turning
themselves inside out and going from black to white in the process. I knew the
woman was eyeing me, so I tried to watch the sea as though I had some special
understanding of its moods and movements.

Another
night walker came up out of the darkness to the left: a man in a great-coat and
a high-crowned bowler. He walked a little white dog with the lead wrapped
around his wrist, and he was eating a fried fish from a bit of paper. He
stopped just in front of the bench, and leant against the railing, half looking
out at the wild sea, half at the woman on the bench. He might have nodded at
her and nudged his hat when he'd come up, or he might just have been setting it
right after a gust of wind.

The
fish didn't half smell good, and the dog thought so too, because it would sit
down, begging to be given a scrap, then shuffle about and sit down again, just
in case its master hadn't noticed the first time. The man ate the fish with a
superior look, as if conveying to the dog: 'Well yes, I suppose you would like
a piece, but then who wouldn't? It happens to be excellent grub, otherwise I
wouldn't be eating it.' After a few moments, the woman spoke up, and I was glad
- encouraged, somehow - to hear that her accent was mild.

'Will
you give your dog some of that fish, for heaven's
sake?'
she said.

'He
doesn't like fish,' said the man, and I couldn't tell whether the two knew each
other or not.

'You
could have fooled me,' said the woman.

'It's
cats that like fish,' said the man.

'Try
him,' said the woman.

'Oh
all right,' said the man, and he dropped a bit of fish that the dog caught and
ate in an instant.

'I
saw Jepson in town today,' said the woman.