The Last Train to Scarborough (32 page)

The
overall picture was now composing, but the light of day was also fading, and
Fielding's room was half enclosed in darkness as I replaced the cards - for
there'd been half a dozen in the envelope, all of the same sort - and walked
smartly out of his room and into the corridor. Here, I listened again before I
approached the opened door of Miss Rickerby's bedroom.

It
was not exactly blue but lavender - her colour. The paraffin heater roared
faintly as before. In combination with the low burning fire, this made the room
too hot, also as before. I made first for the dressing table and opening the
top-most drawer I did not care for the look of my face in the triple mirror
(which seemed to give all the angles of the photographs in a criminal record
card). The drawer held a great mix-up of buttons, buckles, beads, chains,
lockets. I pricked my finger on the pin of a butterfly brooch. The stones on
the brooch and on the chains and pendants were not precious as far as I could
judge, and it made me feel sorry for the owner.

There
was some silver there however - just pitched in anyhow with everything else. I
saw a decorated paper fan. I caught it up, and opened it out, bringing to life
a sea-side scene: a long promenade with happy bicyclists, and strollers with
parasols and sun hats. I could not make out the words at the top, so I held it
towards the seething blue flame of the paraffin heater and read: 'Eastbourne,
Sussex'. She liked Eastbourne. I knew that already.

I
tried the second drawer. It held some mysterious bundles of cotton and muslin
that I knew I ought not to look at, two folded corsets; also a pair of small
binoculars, another jumble of jewellery and some documents pinned together. I
removed the pin. The first paper was a clipping from a magazine: 'Are You
Troubled by Poor Eyesight?' An optician's advertisement - and I felt a surge of
love for Miss Rickerby. The next paper was a handwritten letter, and I could
hardly read a word of it; there were a couple more in the same shocking hand. I
stared at the final page of the final one, and swung it in the direction of the
blue light. At length, I made out 'a compass - only a trinket but it works'.
The document that came after was type-written, perfectly clear . .. and all the
breath stopped on my lips as I read the heading that had been underlined at the
top:
Re: Your
Claim
Against The North Eastern Railway Company.
The letter began:

Dear Mr Rickerby, please find
enclosed a letter we received on the 5th inst. from Parker and Wilkinson of
York, the solicitors acting for the North Eastern Railway Company in this matter.

The letter offers compensation in
the sum of one hundred and twenty pounds and payment of your costs in full and
final settlement of your claim. We believe this offer to be reasonable in view
of the danger of a finding of contributory negligence against you should the
case be pursued and taken into court.

As
you
will see from the letter, this offer stands for the next sixty
days
...

I
returned to the top of the letter. The address was that of Messrs Robinson,
Farmery and Farmery of Middlesbrough, and carried the date 11 March, 1910.1
supposed they would have known that Adam Rickerby was unable to read, and that
the business would be dealt with on his behalf by his sister. She, at any rate,
had been the one who'd kept the letter, and it proved that Adam Rickerby had
not been made strange by the collapse of a pit prop. He'd tangled with a train,
and it was odds-on that the money paid over as a consequence - and paid through
the agency of the firm that I would shortly be working for - had bought the
Paradise guest house.

I
could make nothing of the other papers. I replaced the pin, and my eye fell on
the one box in the drawer. It was about three inches square, the lid decorated
with sea shells. I lifted the lid, and saw a small silver compass set into a
miniature replica of a ship's wheel. But it was the object lying alongside it
that I picked up. In the half light I saw the crest of the City of York, the
Leeds crest, the sheep, the ears of corn. Here was the badge of the North
Eastern Railway, and I was quite certain that it had once belonged to Ray
Blackburn.

I
stepped out of Amanda Rickerby's room and walked along the dark corridor to the
top of the staircase, where I heard the sound of rainfall. The front door was
open, but it closed as I looked down. Fielding appeared at the foot of the
stairs. His gramophone club business evidently concluded, he was putting on his
coat in the hall, under the gas chandelier. I had not seen his coat before. It
had a velvet collar.

'You
look tired,' I called down, for he did, and I wanted to appear mannerly, not
like a burglar. He looked up the stairs and nodded his head a few times.

'I
believe we all are,' he said.

I
called down, 'A lot of drinking goes on in this house,' and he tipped his head
to see if I was joking, looking for a clue as to how to take this.

He
gave a half smile, and said, 'What else can you do on a day like today in
Scarborough?' and he put on a wide- brimmed hat.

'Where
are you going?' I enquired, and he might easily have told me to mind my own
business, but he said: 'Take the air. A saunter... Can one saunter in a storm?'

'Where's
Miss Rickerby?' I called down.

This
was forward of me again, but he said, 'She left a moment ago to do the same, I
think. The boy went with her... There's some of the wine left chilling in the
larder, Mr

Stringer,'
he added with great weariness as he opened the door and contemplated the wind
and the rain. Then he stepped through it and was gone.

I
cannot say for certain why, but in the next moment I dashed down the stairs and
entered the dining room, kitchen and scullery in turn. Only in the scullery,
where the walls were of white-glazed brick, did a gas light burn. The rough
wooden door beside the mangle must be the entry to Adam Rickerby's room. I
knocked - no answer. I lifted the latch, pushed the door, and the light from
the scullery fell on another scullery, or so it appeared, but this with a
truckle bed in it. A good-sized barrel stood in the room, an old washing dolly,
a quantity of carefully folded sacks, and a bicycle with the front wheel smaller
than the back so as to make way for a great basket. There was no carpet on the
stone floor, and no fireplace but many thick blankets on the bed, which was
neatly made up with hardly a crease in the pillow. A trunk stood by the side of
the bed. I lifted the lid, and saw rough clothes, neatly folded. Many objects
hung from nails on the wall: a bike tyre, an oilcloth, a sou'wester, an apron,
and a cork lifejacket. Well, Adam Rickerby lived by the sea, so it was not
surprising that he owned a boat. Most who owned boats owned lifejackets. None
of this was out of the common, except that I couldn't quite imagine him in
charge of a boat, at large on the seas without his sister to encourage him and
set him right when he went wrong.

I
stepped out of the room, closed the door behind me, and returned to the gloomy
kitchen, where something drew me over towards the knife polisher. It looked
like a round wooden wheel, the rim of which had been repeatedly stabbed by
knives, although in fact they rested in slots. One of the holes accommodated
several long, thin items: three skewers of some sort, and a nine inch needle
with an eye, which was perhaps for trussing up meat prior to roasting. In the
centre of the polisher was a handle connected to a circular brush: you wound
it and the blades inside were cleaned.

I
climbed the steps, which were all in darkness; had a piss in the gloomy
bathroom on the half decorated floor and wandered along towards the door of
the apartment-in-the-making. I turned the handle, and stepped through to see
amid the shadows the rags of half stripped paper hanging from the walls, the
bare boards and the parade of paint tins. The window stood open as before, and
I watched for a while the waves hitting the harbour wall a quarter of a mile
off. I knew what I was doing: I was putting off looking through the hole in the
wall. I watched the sea make three attempts to send spray to the top of the
lighthouse, and then I approached the hole, which was about man-sized.

The
shreds of faded green-stripe wallpaper made a kind of curtain over it. I pushed
them aside, stepped through, and my boots came down silently -1 was on carpet,
which was a turnup. I could
feel
the carpet
but not see it, for this second room was darker than the first. But this room
too had a window over-looking the front, and objects began to appear by the
phosphorous light of the sea beyond: a small sofa, an armchair, a clock on the
wall, a high bed with mattress and covers still on and neatly made. There had
been some attempt to clear the room: the dwarf bookcase held only one volume,
and there were no ornaments to be seen, save for a clock that rested on a
tasselled cloth spread over the mantel-shelf. A sheet of paper rested on the
counterpane of the bed. I meant to read it, but as I took a step forwards, the
flute note came from the fireplace, and I nearly bolted from the room as the
paper jumped off the bed, and floated, swinging gently, to the ground. It was
the wind coming through the chimney. I walked over, and was relieved to read
only the words 'Trips by Steamer' and a list of timings. My hand was shaking as
I held it though; I'd had a bad turn, and did not care to stay in the room. I
stepped back through the hole, and in a moment I was climbing the topmost
staircase under the eyes of old man Rickerby who gave me the evil eye from each
of the three photographs in turn.

In
the half landing outside my own quarters I fumbled for some matches, pushed
open the door, and lit the oil lamp in my little room. It glowed red and the
redness made the little room seem the most welcoming of all, and it made me
immediately sleepy into the bargain. But I would not sleep. I sat at the end
of the bed and removed the piece of paste-board that kept the small window from
rattling. I lifted the sash and leant forward, looking down at the Prom below,
letting the sea wind move my hair about and breathing deep, cold breaths. I
then filled my water glass from the jug by the wash stand and took a drink. I
lay down on the bed, and pulled aside the tab rug that lay half underneath the
bedstead. The little copper stubs marking the tops of the gas pipes remained
tightly sealed. I put the rug back, and listened to the little window shaking.
Every small gust caused a fearful din, and the bigger ones seemed set fair to
break the glass. I leant forward and lowered the window. It rattled less when
closed. I ought really to put back the pasteboard, but I could hardly be
bothered. I lay still, listened to the waves, and revolved a hundred bad
thoughts: Amanda Rickerby had lied about her brother's accident because it
might be seen to have given him a grievance against railway men; Fielding was
not queer - or he was a strange sort of queer if he went to bed with pictures
of naked ladies. I called to mind the pictures. Lucky horse! But I hadn't the
energy to make use of the memory - I was tired out, having hardly slept for
three nights. I thought of the wife, and how she'd say, 'You're overstrung,
Stringer', and brush my hair right back, for she thought it should go that way
rather than the parting at the side, and I was sure that it therefore
would
do in time.

...
But how I liked it when she brushed it back. You'd have thought she'd have
better things to do, just because she generally had so much on, what with the
Co-operative ladies and the women's cause and the new house and all the rest of
it.

I
closed my eyes, and I don't believe that I slept, but when I opened them again
I saw that there was an intruder in the room, in the shape of a twist of black
smoke rising up from the red lamp. As I looked on the redness flared, causing
everything in the room to lean away from the window, and then it died away to
nothing. The oil had run out. I had the manual for the lamp but no more oil,
and I must have light, so I dragged myself to my feet, found my matches in my
pocket, and walked out onto the little landing. Reaching up to the gas bracket
I turned the tap, breathed the hot coal breath, and lit it, whereupon I was
instantly joined on the landing by my own shadow. I had not had sixpence about
me, but Miss Rickerby, or her brother, must have fed the meter before going
out.

I
moved back into the little room, kicked the door shut, and fell onto the bed,
where I turned on my side and contemplated the line of white light under the
door. The bad thoughts came back:
Robert Henderson's
hair was brushed directly back. In order to have a fraction of his money I must
work all the hours God gave at a job I didn't want to do. Five years of
articled clerkship, and for what? So that I might offer a kid a hundred and
twenty pounds in exchange for half his brain. My thoughts flew to Tommy Nugent,
and I hoped he was back in York, courting his girl from the Overcoat Depot on
Parliament Street. I pictured the wife again, wearing my third best suit- coat
as she showed her friend Lillian Backhouse about the new garden. That was all
right: Lillian Backhouse was another feminist, and the suit-coat looked better
on Lydia than on me, in spite of it being twice her size.