The Last Train to Scarborough (8 page)

As
the Super looked on, smoking a little cigar, I signed my name.

'What
shall I put under "Duty"?' I asked

'Well,'
said the Super, inspecting the end of his cigar, 'you're working the last York
train of the day to Scarborough, then running back light engine ... Only you're
not, are you?'

And
he practically winked at me.

'I've
no notion what I'm doing,' I said. 'All I know is I'm stopping in Scarborough.'

'Your
engine'll break down there, lad,' said another voice, and it was the Chief, who
had now entered the booth, and was lighting his own cigar from the Shed
Super's. 'That way you'll have a good excuse for staying.'

'What's
going to be
up
with the engine?' I said.

'Injector
steam valve's shot,' said the Chief.

'Leaking
pretty badly,' said another voice, and there was a fourth man in the tiny
booking-on place. 'Just come and have a look!' he said.

In
the confusion of us all getting out of there, and walking into the shed proper,
the new man was introduced to me by the Chief, and he was Tom, or Tommy,
Nugent. He didn't look like an engine man - too small and curly-haired, and too
talkative by half - but he would drive the locomotive to Scarborough. He'd
then come on with me to the boarding house called Paradise and obligingly make
himself available as a second mark for any murderers that might be living
there. He would also be a kind of guard for me, and it did bother me that the
Chief thought this should be necessary, especially since he hadn't seemed
over-protective of me in the past.

We
entered the great shed, and the galvanising coal smell hit me. I thought: How
can blokes keep away from a place like this? But there were not many in there
and not many engines. Half of the berths, which were arranged like the spokes
of a wheel, stood empty. Tommy Nugent led the way, talking thirteen to the
dozen. I couldn't quite catch his words, which were directed to the Shed Super
and the Chief, but I saw that he walked lame, and I liked the combination of
his excited patter and his crocked right leg. He was half crippled but didn't
appear to gloom over it.

The
air in the shed was grey, and every noise echoed. A shunting engine was being
cleaned by a lad I'd often seen about the station, and as he went at the boiler
with Brasso, an older bloke, who sat on the boiler top near the chimney, was
saying, 'It's a half day and double time, so what are you moaning about?'

They
both nodded at Nugent, who seemed a general favourite in the shed. We then
passed one of the Class Zs; a bloke lounging by the boiler frame nodded as we
went by.

'Aye
aye,' he said, and gave a grin, as if to say, 'Look what I've got to lean on.'
('An engine of exceptional grace and power', the
Railway
Magazine
had called the Z Class.)

But
now our party had come to a stop before a little tuppenny ha'penny J Class. It
was in steam, and too much of the stuff was trailing away from the injector
overflow pipe beneath the footplate on the right hand side.

'And
the fire door's jiggered into
the bargain,' Nugent was saying. 'It jams on the runners and it's a right
bugger to shift it.'

'Seems
a bit hard on the passengers,' I said. 'I mean, we are going to
take
passengers, aren't we?'

'You're
the 5.52 express,' said the Chief. 'I'll say you're taking bloody passengers!'

'She's
been in this state for ages,' said Tommy Nugent. 'She'd get us back home
tonight with no bother, but we don't
want
to come back,
do we?'

'We
want to come back eventually,' I said.

'Paradise,'
he said, climbing onto the footplate with some difficulty. 'They've got a nerve
calling it that, when they're killing off the fucking guests. Here, what shall
I call you when we get there? Not Detective Sergeant Stringer, I suppose?'

The
Chief looked at me, and gave a grin. He seemed more easy-going today, perhaps
pleased that his plans on my behalf were running smoothly.

'No
flies on Tommy,' he said.

'Just
call me Jim,' I called up to Tommy.

'But
that's your real name.'

'I
don't see any harm in using it,' I said.

I
didn't see the need of all this palaver either. The aim was to kid any spies
the Paradise guest house might have in Scarborough station or engine shed, but
it seemed highly unlikely there'd be any.

'Either
there's something going on in that house,' I said, 'in which case the offenders
will be brought to book, or there isn't, in which case we have a pleasant
Sunday night in Scarborough.'

'Or
they kill you,' said the Chief, blowing smoke.

The
Chief knew I was inclined to nerves, and so would rib me in this way, and I
preferred this open style of joshing to the strange smiles he'd given in the
Beeswing Hotel.

'Just
let 'em try,' said Tommy Nugent. 'I hope they bloody
do!’

Having
collected an oil can from the footplate, he was now touring the lubrication
points of the engine. He carried on talking as he did it, but sometimes he'd go
out of sight and in one of those moments I said to the Chief:

'Seems
a pleasant enough bloke, but he talks a lot... might be a bit of a handful in
the house.'

'He's
plucky though.'

'How'd
he come by the leg?'

'Shot
wound. Tom was in the York Territorials ... wandered onto the target range at
Strensall barracks.'

No
wonder he was in with the Chief then. The Chief was not in the Territorials
himself, but as an old soldier he had many connections with them. And he liked
any man who shot. He was forever trying to get me at it - and he'd described
the missing man, Blackburn, as a good shot.

Nugent's
voice had gone muffled as he oiled underneath the engine, but it came clear
again as he climbed up out of the inspection pit:

'The
good thing is, Jim, that I really am a driver, and you really were a fireman or
so I've heard.'

'I
was a passed cleaner, but I did plenty of firing. Then I turned copper ... and
now I'm very likely off to be a solicitor.'

'Blimey,'
said Tommy Nugent. 'Restless sort, en't you?'

'He
has a restless
wife,'
said the Chief, 'which comes to the same thing', and so
saying he shook both our hands and went off. I watched him hunch up as he
retreated between two engines. He was lighting a new cigar. What did it say on
the firework tins? Light the blue touch paper and retire. The question biting
me was this: did he know more about the situation in Paradise than he was
letting on?

The
Shed Super had gone off too, and I was left alone with Tommy Nugent and the
busted engine. Tommy took his watch from his waistcoat pocket.

'All
set?' he said.

'Aye,'
I said,

'Be
a lark, this, won't it?' he said.

'Aye,'
I said. 'Hope so.'

'I
want this rolling to stop,' I said.

It
helped not to look at things - to keep my eyes closed. But there was no help
for
it; I had to look. On the table beside the chart was the
coffee pot, a tin of Abernethy biscuits, a box of wax matches (the label showed
a cat with glowing eyes and the words 'See in the Dark') and the Captain's
pocket revolver. It had a beautiful walnut stock, worn from use by the looks of
it. The chart itself I had given up on. It showed only sea: there was a fold
where there might have been the beginnings of land. A north point was drawn at
the top of it: a sort of glorious exploding star with a capital N riding above,
and I felt we must be moving in that direction for the chart room was growing
colder by the second. If I had thought on, I might have come to a different conclusion
about our direction of travel, but all I knew was that the sun was rising
somewhere and making the sky violet, which was more or less the colour, I also
knew, of one of the last rooms on land that I had been in.

As
the light rose, the rain had eased a little and the figure on the bridge stood
a little more clearly revealed as a man in a great-coat and a woollen hat. He
hardly touched the wheel, but just stood by it with arms folded, looking always
forward (I had not seen his face) where the prow of the ship plunged and rose
with great determination. I could see it all through the windows of the chart
room: the fore-deck rising one second, half under swirling waves the next.

Until
I'd fallen to staring at the objects on the table I had been talking, but I
could not now quite remember what I had been saying or for how long. I could
not lay hands on my pocket watch, and I could not see any clock in the chart
room. I'd started by demanding - in-between the head racking electric pains -
to know how I had come to be aboard, and where we were going. I'd told them
that I was a copper, and the Captain had said, 'I am the authority on this
ship.'

I'd
wanted to know whether my face was as red as my hands, whether or how the
Captain and the Mate were connected to the Paradise guest house, and how long I
had spent on the coal heap. But I'd given up with the questions after a while:
the two would not answer, and the Captain barely spoke at all. I'd always known
it would be like this on a ship: the man in charge would be the man who said
least. It was a little that way on the railways.

Instead,
and in return for a borrowed shirt, guernsey and oilskin, and coffee in a metal
cup (they had offered me bread but I was not up to food), I had begun to tell
them what had happened. I resolved to lay it all out, in hopes that the more I
spoke the more I would know. There was much more to it than I said, but I began
to give the Captain and the Dutchman the main points of the tale. I did not
know what to leave out, so I left out nothing that seemed material and I was
encouraged in my speech by the way the pair of them listened closely, and by
the way they were not put off even when my own tales began to include the
stories of others, as a ship carries lifeboats.

But
the Captain was now looking at his pocket watch. I had not got to the meat of
the story; I had not got to Paradise, but the Captain was nodding to the Mate,
who turned to me and said, 'We are going, my friend.'

He
motioned me to stand.

'Where?'
I asked.

'For'ard,'
said the Captain.

I
rose with difficulty to my feet, and contemplated, through the windows of the
chart room, the waves washing over the bows.

'You're
too deep laden,' I told the Captain.

He
nearly smiled, but it was the Dutchman who replied. 'We have a sea running,' he
said, as if it was something the two of them had arranged between them.

The
Captain remained in the chart room, but gave his revolver to the Mate, who
followed me down the steps we'd come up, and back alongside the fore-hold. It
was now full morning, although not much of one: grey light and wild, grey
waves, and the white moon still hanging in the sky, waiting to see if it was
really day, but its turn of duty done. The grimy fore-sail shook, like
something troubled - it wanted to take wing and fly.

'You
don't let any man come for'ard,' I said to the Mate. 'You keep the whole ship's
company aft.'

All
save the man at the wheel. But I left him out of it.

'You
save your breath, I think.'

'For
what?' I said.

'Sleeping,'
he replied, and I heard myself asking, 'Was there something in the coffee? The
second pot? Something for sleep?'

Or
was it the return of the thing that had done for me the first time?

At
any rate, the foc'sle took an eternity to arrive. With the movement of the
ship, our way was all up and down and not enough
along,
and the
sight of the sea exhausted me. It stretched away on all sides, with no vestige
of land to be seen. At the end of our walk the Mate held open an iron door
which gave on to a short ladder, and this I was meant to climb down. 'I'm
all-in,' I said, more or less to myself, and I would have slept at the bottom,
in the metal corridor, the companion way as I believed it was called. But
another door was held open for me, and I stepped into an iron room about the
size of an ordinary scullery.

'What's
this?' I asked.

'Let
us say... sick bay,' said the Mate.

The
Captain would not have tried a crack like that, I thought, but the Mate was a
livelier sort, for all the greyness of his face. He closed the door with a
clang and seemed to have trouble locking it, for the grating noise carried on
for minutes on end, but it hardly mattered since there was no handle on the
inside. On the floor, I could just make out a tarpaulin and a great, roughly
piled chain with links about a foot long; one end of the thing rose up and
disappeared through a hole in the roof, and that was about it as far as
entertainment in the iron room went. So I put the tarpaulin about me, lay down
in the space between the chain and the wall, and fell instantly to sleep.