The Last Train to Scarborough (29 page)

He
knew his man had crowned me. I shook my head.

'Food?'

'Later,'
I said, and the Captain flashed a look at the Mate that I didn't much care for.

'Do
you want to go to the heads?' enquired the Captain.

'Come
again?' I said.

'For
a piss,' the Mate put in,'... or the other.'

He
wouldn't say the word. They were quite gentlemanly, this pair, after their own
fashion. I thought about the Captain's question: going by the state of my
trousers I must have pissed myself at some earlier stage in the proceedings,
but I was not going to boast about the fact if the stink coming off me hadn't
made it evident. As for the other business - that had all somehow gone by the
board. I shook my head.

'Then
carry on with your story,' said the Captain.

'I'll
start it if you tell me what happened to the kid.'

No
answer.

'I
reckon he was scared half to death,' I ran on.'... Now have we unloaded the
coal? No, don't reckon so, because we're still sitting low in the water, and the
ship'd be even filthier if we had done. When's the turnaround?'

'For
you,' said the Captain, 'it could be quicker than you think.'

We
eyed each other for a good while.

'Well,'
I said,'... where was I?'

'Paradise
guest house,' said the Captain.

'I
know, but where had I got up to?'

It
was the Mate who answered.

'Your
engine was all fixed, but you did not take it home with you.'

He
made me sound like a schoolboy with a broken toy. Still, it was no fault of his
own that he was bloody foreign.

'You
should have taken it, you know,' said the Captain, suddenly leaning forwards
over his sea chart. 'You
should
have done it.'

Adam
Rickerby let me into Paradise without a word. It was midday. I could hear
laughter from the kitchen, but made directly for my own room at the top of the
house. Climbing the stairs, I realised that Rickerby was following me, and when
we came to the floor being decorated I turned and said, 'I'm staying another
night.'

'I
know,' he said, in his blank-faced way.

I
turned and climbed the final staircase, and he climbed it two steps behind. On
the attic landing, I turned again and he suddenly seemed enormous, the roof
being lower there. I asked his habitual question back at him:

'Can
I help you?'

'Aye,'
he said, and he was lighting the gas on the little landing.

When
the jet was roaring, he turned and held out his hand, saying, 'Two shilling.'

'Don't
worry,' I said, 'I'm not going to make off.'

'Who
said you were?'

Again,
the flash of intelligence.

I
paid the money over, and once again he dropped it in his apron pocket. I took
my great-coat off, walked into the little room, and put it on the bed. Rickerby
looked on from the doorway.

'You've
ter put that in t'closet,' he said.

I
turned and eyed him. I was minded to tell him to clear off.

'Why?
I said.

'It's
damp.'

'What
of it?'

'Wants
airing ... You might take a chill.'

'That's
my look-out, isn't it? Why are you so interested in trains, Adam?'

'Why
are
you
'
he said, and he stepped into the room. He was bigger than he
ought to've been. Something had gone wrong in the making of him. He took
another step towards me. I said, 'Go steady now,' but he still came on, and I
damn near told him I was a copper, and that he'd better quit the room. But he
went right by me, picked up my coat and put it into the closet, threatening to
have the whole thing over and setting all the hangers jangling.

'Why
do you like train
smashes,
Adam?' I called after him, as he left the room.

'Because
I don't care for
trains
,' he replied, and I'd broken through at
last...

'How
do you mean, you'd broken through?' enquired the Captain, as the rattling of
the swinging coat hangers was replaced by the sound of the Mate running his
hand over his grey beard, the coldness of the chart room, and the gas smell put
out day and night by the Gas, Light and Coke Company.

The
Captain had brought me up short. I'd barely started again with my
recollections. I'd been pleased to have them returning so clear and complete,
and I was forgetting that I might have to answer for them; forgetting about the
gun that lay on the table, which was not two feet away from me, but it was only
six
inches
from the Captain's right hand. It was a tiny piece, but it
would do the job. What was it that Tommy Nugent had said? 'How big a hole do
you want to make in their heads, Jim?'

'I
don't know,' I said to the Captain.

The
Mate smoked a cigar from the tin with the picture of the church on it. He also
had before him a plain glass bottle containing a brown spirit of some sort -
whisky or rum, not Spanish sherry - and a small glass, which he filled from the
bottle pretty regularly. It seemed to be his reward for the ship having reached
its destination. But the Captain did not take a drink.

'It
was the first obvious connection,' I said. 'The two follow on, do you not see?
Why
and then
because.
It proved
he wasn't such a blockhead as all that.'

'You
thought that he had been making a show?' the Dutchman put in, but it was the
Captain who came up with the right word:

'Shamming?'
he said.

'I'm
not sure.'

'What
happened next?'

'I
went to down to the kitchen.'

'And?'

In
the kitchen, Amanda Rickerby had her hair down (which made her a different kind
of beauty) and was brushing it while she sat at the kitchen table, which was
crowded with new- bought groceries. Instead of 'hello', she said, 'Mr Fielding
is very chivalrously peeling the potatoes,' and he
was
most unexpectedly working at the sink with his suit-coat off
and shirt sleeves very carefully rolled.

'It
is extremely unhygienic of me to brush my hair in the kitchen,' Miss Rickerby
added, and I saw there was pen and paper in front of her.

'Don't
worry on my account,' I said.

'I'm
most awfully sorry. I'll stop just as soon as I've finished.'

Vaughan
was not present. Adam Rickerby stood by the range, and paid me no mind. He was
gazing at his boots, as he was being quizzed by a round, jolly looking woman -
evidently Mrs Dawson the daily help.

'How
are we off for tinned rhubarb?' she was asking him.

'We've
none in,' said Rickerby.

'Prunes?'

'None
in.'

'Vanilla
essence.'

'Eh?'

'Never
mind. Rice?'

'We've
none
in
...
I reckon.'

'Ah
now, I detected a flicker of hope there, Mrs Dawson,' Howard Fielding said from
the sink, moving a quantity of peeled potatoes onto the draining board.

'There,'
said Amanda Rickerby, who'd finished brushing her hair, and was putting it up.
'What do you think, Mr Stringer?'

Being
so curly, it didn't look much different; but it did look beautiful.

'Good,'
I said, thinking: As you know very well.

'Good
,' she repeated. 'But I wish
there was a looking glass in here.'

'It's
not your boudoir, love,' said Mrs Dawson, who was now in the larder. 'And I
wish you wouldn't move everything about from one week to the next. I know it's
you and not Adam.
He's
perfectly neat-handed.'

'We
should put up a notice,' said Fielding from the sink. '"A place for
everything, and everything in its place.'"

He'd
turned around now, and was smiling at me, drying his hands on a tea towel and
giving me that questioning look of his.

'Yes,'
said Amanda Rickerby, 'but where would we put it?'

It
was then that I saw the glass of wine - white this time - at her elbow, and not
only the glass but the bottle. 'But where would we
put
it?' she repeated, in a dreamy sort of way. Looking at me,
she picked up her pen, and said, 'How about "excellent in quality"?'

But
it seemed that she was speaking to Fielding, even though she had her back to
him, for he replied,'
Superior
in quality,' and Amanda
Rickerby wrote that down. 'No tinned meat,' he added. 'You have that down?'

Miss
Rickerby nodded, more or less to herself. She then said, 'Tariff furnished on
application,' and she gave me a lovely, mysterious smile at that. She'd seen
that I'd noticed the bottle. It said 'Chablis' on the label, and I could not
have pronounced that word but I knew it signified good wine.

'Now
I need fresh cheese,' said Mrs Dawson.

'Can
you
have
fresh cheese?' asked Amanda Rickerby. 'Mr Fielding's special
reserve,' she said to me, indicating the bottle.

'Help
yourself to a glass of wine, Mr Stringer,' Fielding called out from the sink.
'It's a rare event to find the Burgundy whites in Scarborough.'

'And
he should know,' put in Miss Rickerby.

She
found a glass, and poured me some wine.

'It's
been standing in cold water since breakfast time,' she said, regaining her
seat, 'and what do you think? Mr Fielding sent Adam with a sovereign to buy
some lovely fish from the harbour.'

Vaughan
now entered in his cape, looking flushed and damp but in good spirits. I
wondered where he'd been since the women's pub. Seeing the fish lying in white
paper on the kitchen table, he said: 'Good-o, I like a bit of cod.'

'It's
haddock,' Fielding called out. He had now acquired his own glass of the
Chablis, and it appeared that a regular party was in the making.

'We're
going to have it with cheese sauce,' said Amanda Rickerby,'... and creamed
potatoes.'

But
of course she was not lifting a finger to help her brother, who was doing all
the work with some assistance from Mrs Dawson.

'Is
this normal?' I said. 'For a Monday in Paradise?'

'It
is not, Jim,' said Vaughan. 'Potted shrimps and stewed fruit would be near the
mark for normal. What are we having for pudding, Mrs Dawson? I fancy treacle
tart.'

'All
right, Mr Vaughan,' she said, 'I'll just immediately make that for you.'

'Hang
about,' he said, 'I'll give you a hand.'

And
he walked into the larder and came out with a tin of Golden Syrup, which he
passed to Mrs Dawson before sitting back down again and taking a copy of
Sporting Life
from the pocket of his cape. Mrs Dawson took the
lid off the tin, saying, 'That's no earthly use,' and passed it to Amanda
Rickerby, who peered in before handing it in turn back to Vaughan.

'It's
more like
olden
syrup,' she said, but the crack was for my benefit. She
seemed most anxious for my approval of all her remarks, and so I grinned back
at her - but were the smiles of a woman who was half cut worth the same as
those from a sober one? And whenever I see someone drinking heavily in the
daytime I wonder
why
they're about it, whereas evening drinking is only to be
expected and quite above board.

'Seems
all right to me,' said Vaughan, inspecting the treacle and receiving a glass of
wine from Fielding. He dipped his finger into the tin, and started licking the
stuff.

'It's
just because we're all always so blue on Monday,' said Amanda Rickerby, 'and
today we're going to be different, and you and I are going to have a lovely
long talk, Mr Stringer.'

I
thought: At this rate, we're going to have a fuck, and that's all there is to
it. All I had to do was let on I was married and that'd put an end to it, and I
knew I
should
do it because if you fucked one woman who wasn't your
wife, then where would it end? You might as well fuck hundreds, or at least
try, and your whole life would be taken up with it.

I
saw that Fielding was eyeing me from his post at the sink.

'Just
at present, Miss Rickerby is composing an advertisement for the
Yorkshire Evening Press!
he said.

'You
mean
you're
composing it,' Vaughan interrupted. 'Old Howard's a great
hand at writing adverts,' he added, turning to me. 'He advertised in the Leeds
paper for a promising young man interested in post cards, and I thought: That's
me on both counts! You see, I'd worked for a while on one of the travelling
post offices, Jim.'