The Last Train to Scarborough (15 page)

'I
saw it from my room,' I said.'... the room on the top floor.'

'Yes,'
he said. 'It is the only one presently available.'

The
man Fielding was trim, probably in the late fifties or early sixties, with
carefully brushed grey hair, a high waistcoat, spotted tie very neatly arranged
with a silver pin through it, and a decent, if rather worn, black suit under
the smoking jacket. He seemed very proper and mannerly, although he had not yet
introduced me to the man lying on the couch, who had not yet troubled to rise.
I gave a bolder glance in his direction. He had a droopy moustache, and, as I
thought, a lazy eye.

'Are
you coming aboard tonight?' Fielding enquired.

'Coming
aboard?' I said, shaking his hand. 'Well, I don't see why not!'

It
was an idiotic answer, but the man smiled kindly.

'This
is the ship room, after all,' he said, and he tilted his head again, as though
I should really have known that already.

'That's
because you over-look ships, I suppose,' I said with a nod towards the harbour.

'And
are over-looked by one,' said Fielding, and with a neat little gesture, he
indicated the wall behind me where hung a painting of a ship - two ships in
fact, not sailing ships but steam vessels moving with great purpose through
moonlit black and blue waters, the one behind looking as though it was trying
to catch the one in front. What did you say about a painting if you wanted to
come over as intelligent and educated? That it was charming? That it was in
the school of . . . something or other?

'But
we are diverted tonight by the one below,' said Fielding, and he faced the
window again, spinning on his heel. He wore little boots, with elasticated
sides - good leather by the looks of it, but perhaps with the cracks covered
over by a good deal of polish, like boots in a museum. They made him look
nimble, anyhow.

'But
is there a wreck?' I said, for I was determined to crack the mystery of the
maroon.

'I
should hope not,' said the man on the couch.

He
lay completely flat, like a man waiting to be operated on. He looked to my mind
... naive. It was a word of the wife's. I was naive too apparently, but surely
not as naive as this bloke. His drooping moustache and long hair looked like a
sort of experiment. He'd have a different moustache in a month's time, I
somehow knew. He wore a greenish suit and a yellow and brown waistcoat, and
that was naive too. It was meant to make him look like a swell, but he just
looked as though he'd been at the fancy dress basket.

'Rehearsal,'
he said, nodding down towards the beach.

'It
is a lifeboat
practice]
Fielding corrected him, in a tone not completely
unfriendly, but which suggested he'd held off from introducing the horizontal
fellow because he hadn't really thought it worth doing.

'I
don't like the look of that sea,' said the man on the couch, who had rolled to
face the windows. 'It's sort of coming in sideways.'

He
was perhaps five years older than me - middle thirties. Thin, with a high,
light voice and long nails, not over-clean, I noticed, as at last he stood up,
crossed the room, and put out his hand. He did not exactly have a lazy eye, but
a droopy moustache, which pulled his whole face down, as though trying to make
a serious person of him. We shook hands, and I saw that there was a black mark
where his head had been on the couch.

'Stringer,'
I said.

'Vaughan,'
he replied.

He
then gave a friendly smile that clashed with the downturn of his moustache,
nodded towards the man at the window, and said, 'I believe it ought to be
first name terms in this house, even if Howard here won't have it.'

'Then
it's James,' I said.

'Now
is it Jim or is it James?' he said, and he pitched himself back onto the couch
in a somehow unconvincing way. I had him down for a clerk and the other,
Fielding, for a
head
clerk, in which case I would outrank them both if and when I
became a solicitor. But they both talked to me in the way people do when they
want to make themselves pleasant to the lower classes.

'I'm
Jim to my friends,' I said, feeling like a prize dope.

'I'm
Theodore, which is a bit of bad luck,' said Vaughan. 'You can call me Theo if
you like, Jim.'

'Theo,
meaning God,' said Fielding from
his post near the window, 'and
doron,
meaning
gift. You are a gift from God, Vaughan. What do you say, Miss Rickerby?'

And
he tilted his head at the beautiful landlady who was watching us from the
somewhat crooked doorway, leaning against the door frame with folded arms,
which I did not believe I'd ever seen a respectable woman do before. She said
nothing to Fielding but just eyed him, weighing him up.

A
gift from God?' Mr Fielding said again. 'What do you say to that, Miss R?'

'His
rent
is,' she said, and smiled, but only at me, causing me to
blurt out 'But...' without the slightest notion of what I was objecting to. I
turned to the window, and found a way out of my difficulty in the scene on the
beach.

'But...
who's the one at the head?' I
said, looking down at the men dragging the boat on the beach.

'That's
the captain of it,' said Vaughan.

'The
coxswain
,' said Fielding.

'Cold
tea tonight is it, Miss R?' enquired Vaughan, who was still lying down, but now
propping his head on his right arm.

'In
honour of the new arrival,' she replied, smiling at me, 'we are to have a
hot
tea.'

'Oh,'
I said, 'what time?'

'About
nine,' she said, smiling and backing away from the door.

'Of
course Mr Stringer is not likely to be keen on that word,' said Fielding, who
was still looking through the window, now with a rather dreamy expression.

'Supper?'
I said. 'I should say I
am
keen on it.'

'"About",'
said Fielding, still gazing down at the sea. 'You're a railwayman. No train
leaves at
about
nine o'clock.'

'Well,'
I said, 'you'd be surprised.'

'Perhaps,'
he said, smiling and turning towards me, 'but I do have some experience of
railways.'

Nice,
I thought. I've an expert to contend with.

'Me
too,' said the man on the couch.

But
somehow I didn't believe Vaughan.

'It's
not tolerated on the railway,' Fielding said, 'but in this house it is the
lynchpin: "about" ... "roughly" ... "there or
thereabouts". It's the Lady's way.'

I
couldn't tell whether he was cross about it, or just making fun.

'What
did you say was wrong with your engine, old man?' enquired Vaughan, who'd
evidently had the tale from Miss Rickerby.

'Leaking
injector steam valve,' I said.

'Doesn't
sound too bad. Couldn't you sort of wind a rag around the blinking thing?'

'There
were other things up with it as well,' I said.

'Like
what, Jim?' said Vaughan, as Fielding looked on smiling.

I thought:
Are these
two in league?

'Oh,'
I said, 'stiff fire hole door . . . some clanking in the motions.'

'You
know, I think
I've
had
that..
.' said Vaughan.

Fielding
shook his head at me, as if to say: 'Whatever are we to do with him?'

'You
worked on the railways, you say?' I asked Vaughan.

'After
a fashion. Tell you about it over a pint, if you like?'

This
was a bit sudden.

'Where?'
I said, feeling rather knocked.

'I
know a decent place in the Old Town.'

I
was thinking:
What is he? Alcoholic?
Because we'd barely met.

'I
generally take a pint before supper,' he said.

Howard Fielding had turned
towards the window and gone dreamy again. There seemed no question of him
coming along.

'Hold on then,' I said to
Vaughan. 'I'll just get my coat.'

'Meet you in the hallway in two
minutes,' he said, and it seemed he meant to remain in the room with Fielding
until then.

Besides fetching my coat I would
change my shirt and put on my tie in place of my necker. This way, I'd be able
to hold my own at supper, which was to
be
supper after all, and not 'tea'.

As soon as I stepped from the
sitting room, the door closed behind me.

Who had closed it?

Odds-on it had been Fielding,
except that he had been over by the windows, and furthest off.

I climbed the narrow stairs
between the faded green stripes. The stair gas made more noise than light - a
constant, rasping exhaling. Bronchitic. It troubled me somehow, and here came
the old man, glaring from under his curls. He ought to have been happy with
hair like that. I reached the attic storey, pushed open the door of my room,
and I was checked by a sharp bang.

By the low, red light of the oil
lamp I saw what had happened: the card had once again fallen from the window
frame, and a surge of sea wind had hurled itself at the glass. I sat down on
the bed, inched along towards the end of it, and jammed in the card once more.
Coming away from the window, I swung my legs in such a way that my boots
clattered against the first of the two scuttles on the hearth - the one that
held the kindling and paper - and knocked it over, spilling the papers.

There were many folded sheets
from the
Scarborough Post.
'Yesterday
the sea was black with bathers,' I read, under the heading 'Shortage of
Lifeguards Complained Of. The paper was dated Tuesday, 25 August. There were
also handwritten papers headed 'Menu'. The first offered a choice of celery
soup or shrimp paste and biscuits; then beef and macaroni stew could be had, or
cottage pie. No date was given, but just the word 'Wednesday'.

I looked down again, and saw
another piece of paper - this one printed - and it looked familiar. It was a
fragment torn from a booklet I'd often seen but never owned: the rule book for
North Eastern company engine men. I reached down slowly, and with shaking hand
caught it up: 'On Arriving at the Shed', I read. And then, beneath this
heading, 'On arriving at the shed, your engine requires to be thoroughly
examined.'

Was it Blackburn's? Had this been
his room? I thought of his black eyes reading it. Or had they had another
engine man in since? If it was Blackburn's property, how did it come to be in
the scuttle?

I began to put the papers back,
including the torn page from the rule book, but I was checked by a further
discovery: a thin item, small, brown and reduced almost to the condition of scrap
paper, but still recognisably a cigar stub. According to Tommy Nugent, the
limit of Blackburn's vices was the smoking of the odd cigar.

I sat still and heard only the
eternal sighing of the gas from the landing beyond; I looked at the wallpaper:
the ship in danger over and over again. I thought of Blackburn. Surely he was
at the bottom of the sea.

I sat breathing deeply on the
bed, telling myself that I could breathe whereas Blackburn could not. That was the
main difference between the two of us. I thought of the Chief, who had sent me
to this old, faded house and its queer inhabitants. Who, I wondered again, was
the man the Chief had been talking to in the station when I'd come down from
the tram?

I quickly changed my shirt and
fixed the smarter of my two neckers in place without aid of a mirror. I stepped
out of my room and was confronted by the cupboard door over-opposite. The man
Vaughan would be waiting in the hallway but...

I pulled at the little door. At
first, it wouldn't come. I tried again, and it flew open. The gas was saying
'Shuuuuush' as I looked down to see a crumpled paper sack: 'Soda 6d' read the
label. There was a bottle of ammonia, a beetle trap. Propped against the wall a
shrimp net with a long, uncommonly stout handle, two faded sunshades, two
folded wooden chairs. I closed the door feeling daft for having opened it. What
had I expected to find? The bleached bones of fireman Blackburn?

In the hallway, Miss Rickerby
waited instead of Vaughan. She looked very grave, standing sideways before the
front door, under the old glass of the fanlight, with arms folded. She turned
and saw me, and slowly and surely she began to smile. She seemed to find great
amusement and delight in the way we kept coinciding about the place, like two
holiday makers repeatedly clashing in a maze. Vaughan now appeared from the
side of the stairs, with coat over his arm, and hat in hand.