The Lost Luggage Porter (15 page)

Sampson was frowning at me again.

Hopkins, leaning forwards and grinning at me, said: 'So the more you drink, the more you read?'

'Well...
up to a point,' I said.

'Point is, Allan,' said Sampson, 'you put the fix on a bloke, you buy his silence at the very same time, and very little fur­ther action needs to be taken as regards that.'

'Except in the odd case,' said Hopkins, with a distant look.

We talked on, and I was half pleased, half worried that I seemed to be getting along well with Sampson in particular who, come nine o'clock, rose to his feet saying, 'Hadn't we better be off, mates?'

I half expected the wife to be still standing outside the door of the Blue Boar. She wasn't of course, and I didn't like to think of the moment at which she must have turned away to go home.

In Fossgate, Miles Hopkins hung slightly behind - watchful again - and I fell in with Sampson, who walked just as fast as before despite all the beer he'd taken, and looked just as spruce and kingly in his salt and pepper suit. The only thing that let him down was the sharp and sour smell coming off him, and an over-eager look to his walk. He was like a fine steamer that was shipping sea secretly, out of sight, far below the water line. He led us along Pavement, through Parliament Street, through Davygate, our boots clinking on the cobbles. It was cold, and the streets were mainly empty, except for the buried noise coming from pubs along the way. I could feel the
Police Gazette
in my coat pocket, burning away there, as it seemed to me. As we pushed on, the Minster bells struck nine, sounding soft and yet loud, filling the whole city, and when they'd finished, a new sound took their place: an echoing rat­tling and clanking. We were in Leeman Road; the passenger station was to our left, and the goods station stood directly before us with light blazing at all their windows.

The goods offices were at the front, and the goods station stretched out behind under a glass roof. From here, half a dozen lines reached out, soon multiplying to dozens and curving away to merge with the lines from the passenger sta­tion. An aeronaut flying over the whole mass of tracks might have understood it in a moment; anybody else would have taken years.

The booking office stood guard before the main building on its own island, under a great four-sided clock. Wagons approached the station from either side of it, and we came in behind a load of timber under a tarpaulin with our passes in our hands. Inside the main door was a wide, cold, white- tiled room. There was a long table and some blokes in long coats milling about it. Any one of them might be a goods yard guard; any one or none. Their main purpose seemed to be keeping warm. Valentine Sampson walked past them at a lick, holding out his pass, and Miles and myself fell in behind, our passes also held out in a grudging, take-it-or- leave-it sort of way.

In ten seconds we were through the offices and into the station, at the buffer end of the platforms. Valentine Samp­son stood before us, breathing it all in, nodding to himself and giving Miles and me not a glance. He was a different man on a job: sober-sided all of a sudden and the more frightening for it. I realised that he was scouting about for somebody or something, and I looked out into the station with him.

The place just seemed too small for all the clutter within. Lines of tall vans stood in each of the stalls, and the plat­forms, backed in by engines out of sight. The platforms were clarted with spilt paint and flour, half-cabbages, and the remnants of long-gone cargoes; all about the place stood goods lately taken down from the vans, goods about to go up, or goods just simply forgotten about: casks of grease, sacks of slag chippings, a children's merry-go-round in pieces, a big crate with the word 'Furniture' branded on the side, another stamped 'Clocks', half a dozen ladders stacked together and held by wire, a dozen new bicycles held upright by nothing but themselves. There was a weighing machine to each of the platforms, sometimes more than one, and a few of them crocked. On the platform before us were two high desks, one abandoned together with all the papers piled on top of it; at the second sat a clerk under a swinging gas bracket. With steam coming from his mouth, he was talk­ing to a workman, saying: 'You've no bloody forwarding
orders...'

Just then one rake of vans jerked into life, and began to be withdrawn from the station; they moved slowly, like a dozen convicts manacled together, and as they went, Valentine Sampson took a step forward. A fellow in a bowler and a paper collar - a clerk of some description -was coming along the platform as the train departed; he was a small man with a small moustache. He and Sampson closed, Sampson say­ing, 'All set?'

The man nodded, turned about, and we set off along the platform after him. Above each of the platforms were metal signs hanging from chains, and I spied 'Peterborough', 'Birm- ingham Curzon Street', 'Glasgow General Terminus', 'Liver­pool Great Howard Street'. These were other goods stations, and this was the shadow railway, the ones that your average Joe Soap, taking his railways to work or holidays knew noth­ing of. But I knew it from my days on the North Eastern and my time on the Lanky, and as we walked forwards, it was as though I was walking back into my own past.

We walked through the goods station, and out into the tracks beyond, where the business of loading and unloading continued without benefit of a roof. On the longest, straight- est road were more wagons covered right over with tarpau­lins, like beds with the top covers pulled right up - beds with a body lying in them. A fellow walked alongside it, a hand lamp swinging in his hand. As he approached, I whispered to Miles Hopkins: 'Is he one of our lot?' Miles shook his head, and the man with a lantern seemed a hero as he passed by with nothing more than a nod. He had not been 'fixed' in the parlance of Sampson and Hopkins; he would not have to go down in my report. He was a railwayman of the right sort. He had the greyhound looks of a driver, and I had a bet with myself that he was in the running department.

I looked again at the ink-spiller walking ahead of us, alongside Sampson. He was nattering away in an under- breath to our leader, but getting precious little back in return. I could not hear their speech because of the jangle and clang of the sidings, and the great boom of the passenger station away to our left. We had walked through into an area where it was not so much the goods that were being moved as entire wagons and trains - these were the marshalling yards. A line of hopper wagons kept pace with us to our left, winched forward by a capstan, hydraulic powered, attended by blokes in long coats, one of them working the treadle with his foot. Beyond it, a horse walked a line towing a single wagon full of broken wood and metal - a wagon full of
noth­ing.
There was a great crash to the other side, and a rake of vans, shoved by a pilot engine, moved on their own as though blown by the wind. The shunter trotting beside like a cowherd with his long braking stick in his hand was half in control of those vans, and half
not ...
for any marshalling yard was a wild and dangerous spot.

Gaslight came and went as we marched on; braziers and blokes came and went. These gangs of fellows would look up to us, and we would walk on, and I'd think; good for you, mates, you're off the hook.

Ahead of us, there was a conference under a gas lamp between the ink-spiller and Sampson. As a result of this exchange we now struck out to our right, crossing tracks by barrow boards, proceeding away from the direction of the passenger station. We came to a tall row of vans, each with the same slogan on the side: 'This Van Contains 500,000 Tins of Rowntree's King Chocolate'. It was a private siding for Rowntree's factory, and the thought crossed my mind: we're never going to have sweetmeats away, are we?

Hard by the line of chocolate vans was a shunter's cabin made of old sleepers but half gone west. The clerk and Sampson walked up to it, and the clerk ducked inside, emerging presently with a long iron bar - a crowbar, I saw, as he came closer - and a hand lantern.

'These'll see you right,' he was saying.

We now moved on, same direction as before. There were just two shorter sidings beyond the chocolate road, before the limit of the railway territory was marked by a high brick wall. One of the sidings was a van kip - half a dozen reserve brake vans on a slope; the other was a rake of vans on which the names of different companies were painted:

'I have a copy of the manifest here,' the clerk was saying to

Sampson. 'It's the fourth from the right, you want.'

I made out the names of the three vans directly before us: 'Finsbury Distillery Company', 'Morrison and Co., Sail Mak­ers & Co., Rotherhithe', 'Nairn Bros, Spirit Merchants, Strand'. To either side, the train stretched away into darkness.

Sampson was nodding: 'All for London, right?'

'No, no,' said the clerk, 'all
from
London. This is a "down" road, you see. "Down" is away from London, while your "up" lines . . . they take you
to
it.'

Sampson fixed a glare on the little man. There was a pause; the wind made a winding sound, as if working up to something. Sampson spat:

'Where they all off to?' he said, nodding again towards the vans.

'All different places. See, they're about to be cut. The Mor­rison and Co. - that's for South Shields. The Spirit van - that's ...'

'Leave off for Christ's sake,' said Sampson, seizing the crowbar and lamp from the clerk. 'How long are they going to
remain?'

'I have it set down just here,' said the clerk, turning the pages of the manifest; but he couldn't make it out in the darkness, and Sampson was already striding off over the cin­der road towards a fourth van. As he closed on it, the white- painted name seemed to flare up: 'Acetylene Illuminating Company, Queen's Road, South Lambeth, London, S.W.'

Well, I'd seen those words before: in the Occurrence file handed me by Weatherill.

Sampson set down the lantern by the track and, gaining a foothold on the bogey, began scaling the van like a moun­taineer on a rock face.

'New thing for me, this is,' said the clerk, looking on.

No answer from Miles Hopkins, who was watching his partner with a worried look. Sampson was trying to jemmy open the door on the van, which was locked with a padlock, and sealed with wire and a ball of wax.

'Come away, you bastard!' roared Sampson, who was spread out against the van.

'. . . Been writing abstracts all morning,' continued the clerk.

No reply again from Hopkins.

'I spent the best part of the afternoon consigning pota­toes . . .'

Hopkins looked around, and down, at the little fellow.

'Best thing to do with 'em,' he said.

As Sampson grafted away with the crowbar, I heard the beat of an engine away to our right, towards the front of the rake of vans. This'll put a crimp in, I
thought ...
If they're going to pull the vans
away ...
Sampson continued to labour with the jemmy, and curse at the lock, while the talkative lit­tle clerk tried his luck with me:

'We had a new lad on this week,' he said. 'Silly bugger was charging for the weight of the sacks as well as the spuds.'

He looked up at me.

'You don't do that.'

'I know,' I said, and watched Miles Hopkins as I did so, but his eyes were stuck on Sampson. I wanted to say to the goods clerk: I'm on your side, pal, but then I thought: I'm not on his side. My job is to see him put away. I thought of asking his name - for the report - but he wouldn't have given it, and I would hardly have been able to bear hearing it if he had.

I looked again at the van. Acetylene was used to give light, but it could also be used in place of coal gas for burning through metal and
was
so used in any up-to-date engine shed. I looked down at the clerk: 'How long you been with the company?' I asked him.

'Nigh on forty year, and no bloody pay increase in ten. Four nippers I have, it just won't
do ...
A fellow must keep his soul in his body. How long you been working for Mr Duncannon?'

He was nodding towards Sampson; this was evidently the name he knew him by.

'About an hour,' I said.

Sampson had climbed down from the van, the door still fast. But no: as he raised his lamp, I could see that the lock was busted, that the thin wire of the seal was floating in the wind as Sampson drew back the great sliding door like a mesmerist revealing something miraculous. I could make out only blackness inside, though.

'Bingo!' said the clerk. 'Nobbut six penn'orth o' steel, those padlocks!'

As Sampson strode back towards us, there came a jangle from the right hand end of the rake. He wheeled about at the noise, and the vans jumped . . . then they settled again.

'They'll not move till midnight, I swear,' said the clerk.

Sampson had the crowbar raised as he closed on the clerk.

'I'll bloody coffin you,' he was saying.

'I en't lying,' said the clerk. I'd taken his constant nattering as a sign of nerves, but he was turning out to have a lot of neck.

'How much money have you had off us?' said Sampson, still with the crowbar raised.