Lost baggage porter

Chapter Four

I walked over the footbridge, heading for the bike stand at the front of the station. My way took me near to the Police Office and sure enough it was shut for the night. A notice on the door asked any passenger in distress to contact the night station manager. I'd been in the Police Office once before, very briefly, on the day I was sworn.

At the bicycle stand, the Humber was waiting. I took the lamp out of the saddle bag. There was water in the top all right but I was rather low on carbide. I pulled the little handle that set the water dripping on to the powder, opened the front of the lamp, lighted a match and put it in. The rain in front of the lamp now fell through white light. I fixed the lamp to the front fork and set off for home.

I cycled up Railway Street with a trace of acetylene smell coming to me from the lamp. It had been a twenty-third birthday present from the wife, and at five bob was worth more than the bicycle. I was glad of it, of course, but while beforehand I'd thought of every subject going during my cycle rides, I now thought of only one: the bloody lamp. It would keep going out, and it would keep falling off the bracket.

Along Thorpe-on-Ouse Road new, white-brick houses were going up. In the ones already occupied, light burned brightly, as if for swank: look at us, nicely settled with electric light, running water upstairs and all modern conveniences laid on. I thought of the Camerons, and then I thought of Edwin Lund. He had a down on the pickpockets of York station… But why were they any concern of his?

Beyond the building line, I was flying past the racecourse when the gas gave out in the lamp, and so I went on just as fast, but with a little nervousness. I came along by St Andrew's Church. The field in front was like the night stretched out and laid flat on the ground. One minute later I was skirting the gates of the Archbishop's Palace and skidding into Thorpe-on-Ouse Main Street, which was really the only street, separating the two rows of trim cottages set in nearly straight lines. Johnson, the bootmaker, faced Scholes, family butcher; Lazenby's post office faced Daffy, newsagents; the Grey Mare public house faced the Fortune of War public house, and if one shop or business should close down, it was like a tooth knocked out of a mouth. And so it had long been.

No man in Thorpe-on-Ouse supped in both the Grey Mare and the Fortune of War. It would be like bigamy. The Mare had its lot and the Fortune its own. I was for the Fortune of War, but I couldn't have said why. I looked across to the front bar. No noise from there and no movement behind the lace curtains. I could hear a horse shifting in the stables behind, but that didn't mean it wasn't asleep and dreaming. I stood under the street's one gas lamp, listening to the River Ouse rolling on out of sight past the eastern edge of the village. You could hear the river at any time in Thorpe, but you needed to work at it. It came to you if you paid attention. I looked up at the sky, trying to make out the planet Mercury – the Twinkling Wanderer, the Yorkshire Evening Press had called him. There were a few stars staring straight back. Nothing twinkling. Over the road and along, I saw an Evening Press placard propped outside Daffy's newsagent and seeming to glow somewhat. I could not make out the words, but I knew they would be 'York Brothers Slain', the news blaring out though the shop was long since shut. Would the placard be there the next day? For John and Duncan Cameron would still be dead then.

I opened our garden gate. The cottage we'd taken at five bob a week was just over from the Fortune of War, cut away from the road with a long garden in front and another behind. It was number 16A, as though squeezed in at the last minute between numbers 16 and 17. The people who'd had it before had risen to pig keeping, and there were makeshift sties to front and back. It was only as I approached the front door that it struck me I was without the portmanteau and its magazines. 'Buggeration!' I said out loud. Where had I left the bag: on Platform Fourteen or at the bike stand?

I opened the door, which gave directly on to the parlour, and there was the wife, sitting at the strong table by the fire, and going at her typewriter as usual – fairly racing at it. Whereas some women took in dress-making, the wife took in typewriting from an agency in York, and that by the armful.

'How do?' I said, kissing her.

'Did you get your magazines then, our Jim,' she said, not stopping typewriting.

'I got 'em, but then I lost 'em again' I said.

'You 'aporth,' said the wife, clouting the lever that slid the typewriter carriage. We had the machine on hire; it was a Standard, and the wife said it was worn to pieces but it seemed to serve pretty well.

'I collected it from Lost Luggage all right, but then I left it near the bike stand, what with all the palaver of…' It was unfair to blame the lamp, so I stopped there. I fettled up the fire a bit, saying: 'How's t' babby today?' and giving a grin. The wife didn't like these Yorkshire speaks. Between her and the typewriter was her belly under the maternity gown. She had all on to reach the keys. 'I'm too busy to be thinking about that,' she said, and I looked across at the page in the machine: 'Thank you for yours of 14th inst…' 'That kid's going to be born writing letters,' I said, walking through to the kitchen where I found a bottle of beer in the pantry. 'Oh I was forgetting. There's a telegram for you!' the wife called. I hurried back into the living room with the bottle unopened – news of a telegram could make you do that. The wife was pointing at the mantle shelf, at an envelope addressed: 'Detective Stringer, 16A, Main Street, Thorpe-on- Ouse, York'. It was a shock to see myself called a detective in print. The form read: 'REPORT TO POLICE OFFICE 6 A.M. TOMORROW'. My instructions had been to book on for my first day's duty at eight, so this was a turn-up. But it was the name at the bottom that really knocked me: Chief Inspector Saul Weatherill. It had to be concerning the Camerons. What police business in York could not be just at that time? The wife had stopped typewriting, and was looking at me. 'It's from the Chief Inspector,' I said to the wife. '… Top brass.' 'What's he say?' 'He wants me in at six.' 'In where?' 'The police station.' 'Where is that, exactly?' said the wife, going back to her typewriting, only more slowly. 'It's at the railway station.' The wife frowned over the keys, saying: 'So you're stationed at the station?' Was she the one person in the vicinity of York who knew nothing of the murder? Ought I to tell her? She'd pushed me towards police work, and she ought to see what it meant in practice… But she was not in the condition to receive shocks. 'There must be something on,' I said, dropping the telegram into the firewood basket. 'We had a letter as well,' said the wife. 'Your dad… He's coming here on Sunday.' No smile came with these words. My dad and the wife did not get on. Dad had turned out in all weathers to listen to the Conservative chap in the late election, and the wife… Well, the wife was a suffragist. 'If he's coming, he's coming,' I said, sitting down on the sofa. 'Yes,' said the wife, still typewriting. 'The train service between Bay town and York is unfortunately excellent.' 'On the day,' I said, 'you are to make a big tea.' The wife was like a cat on hot bricks whenever the subject turned to cooking. Cheese, bread, cocoa, yes: anything more, a fellow had to fight for it. 'I will make a tea,' she said carefully. We had many more hot dinners out than other couples similarly placed, and ate a sight more from tins than was probably good for us. Then again, the wife earned money typewriting, and a good deal of that went on the housekeeping. 'When he comes,' I said, standing up and walking over to the fire, 'will you try to avoid a set-to?' 'How am I to do that?' 'Just don't bring up the subject of votes for women as soon as he steps through the bloody door.' I crushed a speck of coal that had flown out on to the linoleum. I could not sit down when having these discussions with the wife. 'Is it my fault if your dad suffers from sex prejudice?' said the wife. 'He's sixty-five' I said. 'He didn't know what sex prejudice was until you showed up.' 'Well then' she said, 'I'm only too happy to have been of assistance to him.' I looked about the room. 'Where's the sewing machine?' I said. 'It's in a safe place, where it will not get in the way.' Or used, I thought. Dad had bought the wife a sewing machine, sent together with a note suggesting that she might make a layette for the baby. But the wife meant to buy a layette for the bairn, and that was all about it. He'd also taken to sending her "The Ladies' Column", snipped out from the Whitby Gazette. It was all recipes and household hints. The wife had read the first one only. 'I don't believe it's written by a woman at all' she'd said, before pitching it into the fire. 'We must put the sewing machine out again when Dad comes' I said. 'Very well' said the wife. 'He's trying to make you a wife more like his own' I said. 'She loved cooking, you know, my mother…' 'The poor soul' said the wife, typewriting away. But it was best not to dwell on this subject, for Dad's wife, my mother, had died in childbirth (with me the child in question). I sat down, thinking once again of the Camerons, but saying: '… Chased some pickpockets today at York station.'

'Arrested them, did you?'

I shook my head.

'They ran off.'

'What're you going to do about it, then?'

'Make out a report,' I said.

'That'll settle 'em,' said the wife, grinning.

She might tease me but the wife was pleased that I'd joined the police. It was one of the few things she had in common with my dad: they both wanted me to get on. Dad, of course, was an out-and-out snob with about as many aspirations as any comfortably retired butcher could run to, while the wife… Well, she was something of a snob too, for all her belief in the woman's cause and Co-operation.

I had suffered alone after being stood down from my job on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway To the wife, it was simply a great thing that the tin tub was not now needed every night. Then again, she came from money herself in a modest way. Her mysterious, lonely-looking father had owned several properties in and about the viaducts of Waterloo, and the wife had come into a bit when he'd died, with the result that she was plotting the purchase of a house to replace the one we'd lately sold in Halifax. This, she said, would be equipped with a thirty-shilling walnut bureau 'for our correspondence' and a five-pound pianoforte for 'musical evenings' which I had spent hours trying, and failing, to imagine. (Neither of us could play a note, to begin with.) These were the fixed aims of her domestic life, and housework could go hang in the meantime.

I had supper of boiled bacon, pickles and tea, and read a little more of my Police Manual, telling myself I would keep at it until the biggest log on the fire burnt away, but it didn't seem to burn, only to turn black. There was a lot of it left by the time I got up to 'Fraud' and quit the book.

I went up to bed with the wife at a little after ten. Before pulling the lace curtain of the bedroom to, I peered past the fern that stood on the window ledge. Nobody about in Thorpe. I thought for some reason of the Archbishop sleeping in his Palace, the river flowing slowly by; and it was impossible not to imagine him looking like one of those statues found on church tombs. The Palace would bring a few trippers to Thorpe in summer (I'd been told) but it was a sleepy spot, all right. After Halifax, it was like being left behind by the world. Yet, two weeks before we'd arrived there'd been a windrush through the village – not occurring anywhere else – and forty-nine objects, according to the vicar, had been overturned, including the oak next to the Old Church, which stood marooned by the river.

The wife came into the room carrying her raspberry tea, recommended for those in her condition. Her nightdress hung about one foot higher than usual, because of the baby bulge beneath, and her travel around the bed put me in mind of the orbit of the planet Mercury. Her due date was two months away. If the idea bothered her, it didn't stop her sleeping, and she was quickly off. I wanted a boy – tell him about engines. Except that I was done with them myself. I could hardly think about locomotives now, without going back in my mind's eye to Sowerby Bridge Shed, 12 November 1905. To think that at the start of that day, I'd still been able to see my way clear to a life on the footplate. What with memories of that calamity, and wondering whether I'd be put to chasing murderers come six o'clock in the morning I couldn't sleep, so walked down to the kitchen for a bottle of beer. But we were all out.