The Last Train to Scarborough (6 page)

But
I couldn't think what.

Suddenly
a flying, flimsy brake wagon signified the end of the train, and Wright and I
stood in silence, the empty tracks before us.

'Let's
go into the office and put a brew on,' I said, but Wright shook his head. I
tried to pull him back from the platform edge in case he had it in mind to wait
for another train, and pitch himself in front of it. I thought: This is more
like the kind of drama that happens when you've
missed
the last
tram, and I pictured Jane Wright: a sensible woman with a lot of grey hair. She
smoked cigarettes and had a smile that was fetching on account of teeth that
went
in.
I'd never been able to make out what she saw in Wright, who
didn't have a nice smile, or any at all come to that. After forty years of
marriage, that might become rather wearing.

Wright
turned away from the platform, saying, 'Weatherill's told you what's going off
in Scarborough, has he?' and he was about back to normal, in that he was asking
questions instead of answering them.

'He
has that,' I said.

I
saw that the offer of whisky had just been a ruse on Wright's part to
achieve... well, something or other to do with his own difficulties.

'Walk
you home, shall I?' I said, and he gave a half nod.

'When
are you off, then?' he said, as I collected my bike.

'To
Scarborough,' I said. 'Sunday.'

'You
going on your tod?'

'No,
the Chief's fixed me up with a mate. A driver. We're going there as a footplate
crew. Don't tell anyone, mind you,' I added, grinning at him.

'Weatherill's
putting a train driver to police work?' said Wright. 'That's rum.'

So
he hadn't heard
that
part.

'The
Chief has it all planned out,' I said.

We'd
come out of the station, and turned down Leeman Road. I was pushing my bike,
and Wright was occasionally colliding with it as he walked. We came to the
beginning of Railway Walk, which was a kind of dark alleyway running along by
the main line. Only you couldn't see the railway for the hoardings that were
all down that side. From the railway they were bright, cheerful things
advertising Heinz Beans, Oxo and whatnot, but on Railway Walk you just saw the
shadowy backs of them, and the tall sooty timbers holding them up. Wright lived
along one of the terraced streets that ran off the Walk on the other side.

Why
had he been glooming at the coal train? Perhaps he was a regular on the main
'down' at eleven o'clock? That train came through every evening at about that
time. It wouldn't stop in under half a mile and so presented a nightly
opportunity for anyone wanting to make away with themselves.

'This
is you, I think,' I said to Wrighty as we contemplated Railway Walk. But he
made no move.

'Has
the Chief let on?' he said '.. . He's dead certain that Leeds bloke was
done-in.'

'Well...'
I said.

'And
that it was somebody in the lodging house that did him.'

'I'll
get in there,' I said, 'and I'll run the bugger to earth!'

I
eyed Wright, giving him the chance to say, 'Good luck with it,' but he moved
off without a word, zig-zagging somewhat.

I
climbed onto my bike, and set off for Thorpe. As I rode, it came to me that I
ought to have asked Wright whether I might mention his trouble to Lydia, who
was quite pally with Jane. I was assuming she'd stick up for marriage in
general. But maybe she in turn would leave me for Robert Henderson. She
wouldn't have to coach
him
up to being a big earner. He was
that already.

'They're
all aft, skipper.'

The
words revolved in my mind, a problem waiting to be solved. I first thought:
That grey man talks just as though he's a sailor; wears a sailor's coat too. I
did not
want
him to be a sailor, for sailors were in the habit of
travelling further afield than it was normally convenient for me to go. But I
took heart from the way that he was lighting a small cigar. Any sort of man
anywhere might light a cigar.

'I
feel ill,' I said, or anyhow I
thought
the words,
and there was some sort of a connection between my thoughts and my lips, for
some sound came out and it must have served well enough because the man
replied:

'Just
wait until we get some sea,' although it was really more like 'Just wade undil
we get shum sea.'

'You'd
best look out either way,' I said. 'I'm going to be sick no end.'

I
tried to rise from my coal bed, and the two men, one above, one below, watched
me do it. I found my feet after a couple of goes but it took an effort to stay
up; I wanted to go back to sleep on the coal. I slowly looked down at my boots,
feeling myself to be thinner than I was before ... and there was stuff all down
my suit-coat. I contemplated it while trying to steady myself on coal. I raised
my hand to the stuff, and I did not know my own hands. They were red, and I
could not shake the notion that they had been stained by beetroot juice. When
had I been near beetroot? I looked hard at them in the night sea light, which
was partly moonlight, and partly something ghostly made by the waves. It was
not beetroot. The redness was under the skin. Poison. I wiped my hand again over
my suit-coat. The stuff was vomit... and my North Eastern company badge was
missing.

'Where's
my top-coat got to?' I said, and then: 'I've a hell of a thirst.' The top man,
the skipper, seemed ready for this because he held a bottle of water. He
dropped it down to the man below, who passed it to me. I held it with my
stained left hand as I drank, and stood with head spinning as the water took
effect. It made me feel better in some ways, worse in others. The grey man
held out a tin of cigars.

'Do
shmoke?' he seemed to say.

I
could not read the words on the tin; there seemed to be a picture of a blue
church but it was covered in coal dust. I took a cigar.

'What's
happened?' I slowly enquired. 'Have I been pressed into the fucking navy?'

No
reply.

'Why
are my hands red?' I demanded, but there came no answer, only the flare of the
match rising up to my face. The cigar was lit, and the grey man threw the match
onto the coal. There was just enough light for me to see it go out.

I
looked up. The man above, the skipper, had been away - must have been away, for
he now returned. He held a ladder, and he too now wore a tunic with brass
buttons. He lowered the ladder, and placed the top of it by a wooden beam that
helped support the roof of the great coal hole I was in. The grey man indicated
the ladder with a turn of his head. Was I supposed to be smoking the cigar, or
climbing the ladder? I contemplated the burning cigar, and dropped it. I was
not up to smoking just then, and it struck me that I had been far too long on
my feet. I wanted to sit down on the coal again, but at the same time it was
necessary to rise from it, and escape the black air of this underworld. I
climbed the ladder using not so much my feet as the memory of climbing ladders,
and when the rungs ran out I was for a moment in a cool breeze at the top of
the highest tree in my home village. The name came to me slowly:
Thorpe-on-Ouse. But I stepped from it onto iron, where I stood face to face
with the one set in authority over the grey man.

He
held a small revolver, and behind him was a whole ship with more than a breeze
blowing over it. I saw the expanse of the fore-hold running up to the great
bulk of the mid-ships, with high-mounted lifeboats either side, tall masts,
where derricks with steam winches were fitted, great white-washed ventilators
for sucking air into the iron worlds beneath, and the whole thing set upon the
roaring, crashing sea under the thousands of stars. I wanted to congratulate
the fellow on the effect, to shake his hand, ask him, 'Now how did you manage
all this? And how do you ride the thing with only the two of you on board?' For
there wasn't another soul to be seen.

Before,
in our old house, when I reached our front gate I knew I was home, but now the
gate was the start of a fairly long walk - across the dark meadow. One light
burned in the house, and Lydia was sitting up in bed. I knew my interview with
Parker would be uppermost in her mind, and as it turned out, she mentioned it
the instant I stepped into the bedroom.

'You've
done brilliantly, our Jim,' she said, and she stepped out of bed in her
night-gown, and handed me a little envelope. It was a telegram from Parker
himself. 'Much enjoyed our meeting of today. Very happy for you to start in April.
Particulars follow by post.'

'I'm
very proud of you,' she said.

We
kissed, and I said, 'You should be very proud of yourself. I mean, it was all
your doing.'

She
watched to see whether I smiled at this. I did, and the smile was meant. Parker
was obviously a decent sort, and I found that I didn't mind too much the idea
of being a solicitor, providing I didn't think too much about it.

'Wait
until we tell your father, Jim,' she said. 'He'll just die of pleasure.'

My
dad was a lovely old fellow, but an out and out snob.

'Actually,'
the wife ran on, frowning, 'I think that really is a danger in his case. You're
to break the news gently. At first, just tell him you're going into a law
office and work up from there.'

She
sat back on the bed, and picked up another letter.

'This
came as well,' she said. 'It's postmarked London.'

She
looked a little worried as I opened it, as if she thought it might contain
something that would stop me becoming a solicitor. It was from
Railway Titbits
magazine, from the editor himself. He was
delighted to inform me that I had won the competition in the January number: I
had successfully named all ten termini pictured and placed them correctly in
order according to date of construction. A one pound postal order would shortly
be despatched to me. I showed it to Lydia, who said:

'It
really is a red letter day.'

'There
must have been hundreds got the answer right,' I said. 'I expect I was just the
first name picked out of the
hat...
I probably
shouldn't have entered, being a railway employee.'

The
wife rolled her eyes.

'Send
the pound back, why don't you?'

'It's
the first competition I've ever won,' I said.

'How
many have you entered?' the wife asked.

'One.'

'Well
then,' she said.

'What
did you get up to today?' I asked, as I undressed, for it had not been one of
her days in the Co-operative Women's office. I knew that as long as Robert
Henderson's name didn't come up, then I'd be happy.

It
didn't. She'd worked about the house, dug some of the plot that was intended as
the kitchen garden, pulled up two more sycamore saplings that had taken root in
the wrong places, and gone for an evening walk into Thorpe with the children. I
turned down the lamp, and we tried to sleep.

'I
can't get off,' the wife said after a while. 'I'm so excited.' 'Let's read,
then,' I said, and I turned up the lamp, and picked up my
Railway Magazine,
while the wife reached across to the night
table, where she found a book that I knew to be called
The Practical Poultry Keeper
by T. Thornton.

'Now
let's see what's what,' she said, and opened the book at the beginning. It was
the umpteenth time she'd started it, and after five minutes she tossed it
across the counterpane.

'That
flipping
book
,' she said. 'But they're getting on with it now, you
know...'

'Who
are?'

'The
hens. Three eggs today.'

Was
that a good rate of production for fifteen hens? The answer to the mystery lay
in
The Practical Poultry Keeper,
but it was a stiffer read even than
An Introduction to Railway Law.

Half
an hour later, we were still not asleep.

'What
are you thinking about?' the wife asked.

It'd
been a while since we'd done any lovemaking, what with all our changes of life,
and I thought this might be the moment. But then I thought of old man Wright.

I
said, 'Did you know that the Wrights have separated?'

'Oh
yes, that's very sad. Well, it's sad for him.
She's
overjoyed
about it. She's gone off with Terry Dawson.'

'Who's
he when he's at home?'

'Honestly,
don't you pay any attention to Co-operative business?'

'No.'

'He's
assistant manager of the Co-operative butchers on South Bank. You go there
every week, Jim, just in case you've forgotten. But as from next month he'll be
managing the new store in Acomb.'