Lost baggage porter

Chapter Fourteen

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 amp; 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. 'Five quid,' said the clerk, 'and the rest promised, but it ought to've been ten quid down, that was the agreement as you know very well. We shook on that – thee and me.' The clerkly language was going to pot now. '… And that chap was looking on…' He pointed to Miles Hopkins. 'Ten quid down, and ten to follow, you said, if I could show you to the acetylene van. Well there it bloody is!'

'It's not going to be there for long though, is it?' Hopkins said quietly.

Squinting through the bogies of the vans before us, I saw a pair of boots on the far side. They paused, turned, walked. That would be the goods guard or shunter, signalling to the engine driver.

'I've never worked out why you don't order the stuff direct from the bloody company in London,' said the clerk.

Sampson shook his head as he swung the iron.

At the same moment Hopkins called 'Sam!' which might've been enough warning for the clerk, who any rate stepped back from a blow that would have done for him, had it struck him.

'Five quid,' continued the clerk, looking only a bit surprised at having missed death by an eighth of an inch, 'and I know I've not a cat's chance in hell of seeing the rest.'

Sampson was looking at nobody and nothing. The rake of vans seemed to fidget once more. What was going off on the footplate of that shunting engine, I could only guess.

'I'll settle this,' I said, and Valentine Sampson looked at me:

'You'll fucking what?' he said, with dead eyes.

'I'll settle it,' I said again, rather shakily.

He nodded and, speaking softly for the first time since we'd entered the goods yard, said: 'I know you will, little Allan. I know it.'

I walked up to the train, which was still shifting, restless. It was going to be shifted at any moment… and I didn't step between those wagons for the clerk's sake. It was for my own, for I'd look such a clot if he was brained on my watch. The high side of the acetylene van was on one side, the spirit merchant's van on the other, and as I bent down to the coupling, I thought: I am in the valley of the shadow of death. Going under a train without the knowledge of the driver was not so much against regulations as plain suicide. I pulled up my sleeves. The wagons were loose-coupled, thank Christ – anything else would have been irregular for freight – and there was no vacuum pipe to wrestle with. I lifted the great, greased hook, and just then the train rolled, throwing me down on the sleepers, but there was suddenly freedom and space to one side of me. I stood up to see the back of the spirit van being pulled into darkness. I stood up at the side of the track, and thought I could make out the guard's van in the opposite direction; I was still standing. The engine had taken roughly three quarters of what it wanted. On the footplate, they should have been able to tell by the beat, and the guard would stir himself before long, but we had a couple of minutes while perplexity set in.

Valentine Sampson was walking towards me, the iron bar still in his hand. He flung it down and embraced me, fairly squeezing the life out of me for… Well I counted the time in my head: one, two, three, four, five clear seconds.

'Tell you what,' he said to Miles Hopkins when he'd finally left off, 'we've struck lucky with this one.'

Then he was up in the van, monkey-like again, and Miles Hopkins with him. All the rest happened at a lick: the two in the van grafted away and after a few seconds I saw what looked like a cannon sticking through the door of the van – the thing weighed about as much too, as I found out being the one expected to steady the brute as it was lowered down. It was a white, steel, gas cylinder, evidently full, with a big brass nut on the top, and warnings of fire, explosion and other scrawlings in chalk on the side. Sampson and Hopkins leapt down after it, and the three of us were just about able to manage it as we made our escape towards the wall of the goods yard. This time the clerk led the way, gabbling away as before:

'Ten tons of spuds I've to get away before sparrer-fart, and more besides. I'm going to have the bloody Ai Biscuit Company down on me like a ton of I don't know what, bloody biscuits, I suppose, and all the kid's bloomers to set right. Sacks he charged for, which he shouldn't have; porterage which he should've, he bloody did not…'

We'd come to rest by the goods yard wall – at what turned out to be a gate in the wall, which happened to be open – and the clerk was pointing the way, as though seeing us out of his parlour. There was a sign next to the gate:

'North Eastern Railway: Public Warning. Persons are warned not to Trespass on this Railway or on any of the Lines, Stations, Works or Premises connected therewith. Any person so Trespassing is liable to a Penalty of Fifty Shillings. Signed, C. N. Wilkin, Secretary.'

The three of us heaved up the cylinder again, and carted it through the gate into a black, windy, dog-barking wilderness, where Mike, the Blocker, stood waiting with a pony and cart.