The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Fourteen

Beginning shortly after dinnertime, I spent a lonely three hours in the shed fettling up 044 tank engine No. 7 (not one of Aspinall's but one of Mr Barton Wright's) for an evening cruise to Blackpool. It would be the first Blackpool Special from Halifax Joint since the occasion of the stone on the line.

As I bundled the paraffin rags into the firehole and afterwards the baulks of timber, the same thoughts revolved endlessly. The stone could only have been thrown by Paul. He'd followed me home on the night after we'd first spoken, so he knew where I lived. He wanted to make news over the stone on the line, whether he'd put it there or not, and the stone through the window was another push to get the whole matter in the papers. Then again, the poster advertising 'a meeting to discuss questions' was still in place on the wall of the old warehouse. That was pretty brass-necked of them, if they really had turned terrorists. You either fought or you held meetings. You didn't go in for both.

Why didn't I tell the papers? Then the Socialist Mission might leave me alone. And why didn't I tell the coppers, which would come to the same thing? But what was there to tell?

As I lit the fire, my mind moved on to the bigger matter, the question of wrecking.

The odds were that any engine man would meet no more than one attempt at wrecking in his life. But what good were the odds? One out of thirty million had been killed on the railways in the previous year, 1904, but what good was that to you if, like Margaret Dyson, you happened to be the one?

I thought of her again. It was crazy to go through your life without seeing the sea: seeing it only in photographs. Margaret Dyson was not down-to-date. She had not caught up with the railway world. But then it had caught up with her.

Question after question came as I lit the fire, and one of the big ones was this: Where had Clive disappeared to beyond the Valley Bridge at Scarborough?

That gentry swung his snap-bag, followed by himself, up onto the footplate at 3 p.m. He just grinned at me, and began checking the oil pots as I fettled the fire.

We came rolling out of the shed in the bitter blackness of our own smoke, which broke and cleared as we came into the light like blackbirds appearing one after another out of nowhere and rising off our chimney top. I looked up into the little valley town of Sowerby Bridge, at the blue shining sign: van houten's cocoa. It should have been a sign for seltzer or dandelion and burdock; better still, ice. Some fellows were skylarking in the open-air water tank on top of the coal stage as we took on coal. It was strange to be in an engine underneath men swimming. They were getting cleaner by the second, and we were getting filthier as the coal smashed into the bunker. The coal would always come in like an accident; I could never get over the din.

As we rolled on, readying to go off shed and make for the Joint, I knew why Clive had been swimming in Scarborough. He'd done it to get clean.

Just then, I looked back and saw John Ellerton coming towards us from the shed, waving his hands. He wanted to see us in his office, so Clive braked the engine and we climbed down.

John Ellerton's office was full of light and full of paper. It was built onto the front of the middle of the shed, like a sort of toll booth. The engines went in and out on the roads either side, and the office was three-quarters glass, so John could see all the comings and goings. He stood behind his desk and passed papers to Clive and me. It was the draft report into the smash by Major Harrison, sub-inspector of the Board of Trade. It started: 'I have pleasure to report…' Then the facts of what had happened were set down. Next came the write- ups of the interviews with Reuben Booth, Clive and me, and finally the conclusion, which I jumped straight to. Skimming it over, I read: 'It is found that no want of caution was shown in the operation of the engine. The fireman is a young man of twenty-two, only recently put up to the job, but the driver is experienced, and appears to me deserving of commendation for preventing a far worse disaster.' And this was the last word of Major Harrison: 'It is not possible to say how the obstruction came to be placed on the line.'

'Well I don't reckon much to that,' I said.

'I think it's first rate' said Clive, grinning all about his head.

I said nothing, but the report was wrong even as regards the known facts. Clive oughtn't to've had to use the reverser. It was throwing on the reverser that had done for Margaret Dyson. That, and me not knowing what to do in emergencies.

'There's one other matter' John Ellerton was saying.

I said: 'I know what it is,' but nobody paid any attention.

'I've just had the Halifax Courier on the telephone regarding a telegram they've received' said Ellerton. 'Now I'll read it out.' He picked up a paper and read: '"Hind's Mill Blackpool Excursion checked by Socialist Mission. Similar to follow. End wage slavery.'" Ellerton then gave a pleasant, embarrassed sort of smile, adding: 'How it ends wage slavery to stop a train I do not know. And why did they not say they'd done it straight after instead of waiting 'til now?'

'Is the Courier going to print that?' I asked.

'Course not,' said Ellerton.

'The coppers should go to the Drill Hall in Trinity Street,' I said. 'This lot have a meeting booked there. They're anti- excursion. There's posters for it all over.'

John Ellerton nodded. 'I know,' he said. 'A constable was sent along. The meeting was booked, and the money taken, but no address was given. And summat else… it was up to the hall to sell the tickets, and there've been no takers at all.'

I looked over at Clive, and he was gazing out of the window – at one of the radial tanks being led out of the shed by the two horses that were kept at Sowerby Bridge. When he turned back around, his grin had gone, but not completely. 'Well they either did it,' he said, 'or they read of it in the paper, and thought they'd like to've done it.'

'That's what I first thought,' said Ellerton, 'but it was apparently not mentioned in the Courier that it was Hind's Mill on the excursion.'

'They knew of it,' I said, 'because I told them.'

So it came out about my chat with Paul, and this character Alan Cowan somewhere in the background. And I was the chump all over again. I would certainly not make matters worse by mentioning the stone that had come through the bedroom window.

'Unless,' I said, 'I was only telling him in that pub about something he knew of because he really had been the cause of it.'

At that, Clive drifted over to the window again with a sort of sigh, and John Ellerton had a good laugh. Irish eyes, I thought: they might be a good thing on balance, but they can get you down sometimes.

'At any rate, I think we should have extra gangers walking the routes to the coast,' I said.

'He's like a monkey on a stick, this kid,' said Ellerton to Clive, who was still at the window. 'The cops have been informed, and I'm advising the pair of you now to go steady today over the stretch where you came to grief last time. And that's about all I can do.'

As we walked back to tank engine No. 7, I asked Clive: 'Who is it we're taking to Blackpool?' It hadn't been clear from the notice I'd read.

'Don't know exactly, but I reckon they're toffs,' he said.

Not wage slaves, then.

'How do you make that out?' I asked.

'It's an evening cruise,' he said. 'Think about it.'

'I am doing,' I said.

'Evening,' he said. 'What do you do of an evening?'

'Sit at home with the wife, generally.'

'All right, but what would you like to do of an evening?'

'Just that,' I said.

He gave me a long, steady look – something new for him. 'Very well,' he continued, 'but most working fellows are in the pub come seven, and they have no great hankering to take a train cruise.'

All was explained when we got to the Joint, for as we backed onto our carriages on platform two we came to rest alongside the stationmaster, Knowles, and one of his artistic blackboards. He muttered something as we stopped – could have been speaking to himself – and moved away, leaving us to read the word 'special' done in the usual fancy way. Underneath was written: 'halifax Sunday observance society – evening theatre cruise to blackpool.'

'Rum,' said Clive, when he saw it.

We collected our guard. He was a Bradford lad, so I'd never seen him before. As I gave him my good evening, a new thought came to me: if it were not the socialists who were the wreckers, but some fellows who were after old Reuben Booth, our usual guard, then we would have no trouble on this trip. But who would want to put Reuben's lights out? Anyone wanting him dead had only to wait, and not for very long.

Twenty minutes later we were well on our way to Blackpool, and climbing towards the little school just before Todmorden. The children were in the yard, doing exercises, making letter Ts. They jumped, and the Ts became Ys; another jump, then Xs. It was too late in the day for them to be doing that. Why were they not at home? The giant cot was there in the high window behind them, and I imagined them all put into it every night, imprisoned by the sheets and blankets. I thought of Arnold Dyson, and Pearson's Book of Fun, and the wife's letter to the Crossley Porter Orphanage.It was a beautiful evening, and all the chimneys of Accring- ton, Blackburn and Preston could not put a stop to that. On every section the signals were favourable, as if to say: hurry on, we want to see what happens to you next. But Clive was back to his steam-saving, smooth-running ways, and there was not that wildness to the shaking of this engine that we'd had with the Highflyer, or with the Scarborough engine when that blockhead Billington had been aboard.

When we saw the first windmill of the Fylde I became a little anxious, even so. But this anxiety was checked by a friendly wave from the fellow in the signal box at Lea Road, and my mind was put onto a different channel completely when Clive, who'd just finished putting the reverser back to its full for our launch across the fields, said: 'I'm to have a medal, you know.'

'Like Ramsden's bottled beer,' I heard myself saying. (Advertisements were forever telling you of the prizes won by that class of ale.)

Clive gave a grin on hearing this, which proved the whiteness of the man, because by rights I ought to have been shaking his hand. 'It's for saving the train when the stone was on the line… Extraordinary vigilance and presence of mind in the conduct of duty, that sort of thing.'

I'd seen words like that written under the pictures of the engine men who got into the Railway Magazine. As a rule they were older than Clive, and wore beards.

'You must be chuffed,' I said.

'I'd rather have a day off any day,' said Clive.

'Is there to be a big do when it's presented to you?'

'Give over,' said Clive. 'It comes by post.'

'Well, I'll bet it comes first class at least,' I said, and I finally did step across the footplate to shake his hand, which left us feeling a pair of proper buffleheads.

'Are we to have a bit of a beano in Blackpool on the strength of it?' Clive asked me.

'I should come straight back,' I said, thinking of the wife alone in Back Hill Street.

'You can't' said Clive, sharpish. And he explained that since there were no direct trains coming back, it'd be a case of going via Preston (which I knew), and that by the time we'd got in to Blackpool, run round our carriages with the engine, and booked off at the central shed, I'd have missed the one Preston train that connected in good time with a Halifax service.

'Your earliest train back's at midnight,' he said. 'This lot -' and he nodded back at the train '- they're all going back first thing tomorrow.'

'That's no bloody good,' I said, thinking again of the stone sailing through our bedroom, graceful, like, but about the size and shape of a fist.

'What's up?' said Clive, with a little grin.

I was blowed if I would tell him the truth, so I just said: 'I've a wife to look after, you know.'

'I'll stand you half a dozen oysters' said Clive.

'What's that set against a marriage?' I said, and I was grinning myself now.

'All right, a dozen,' said Clive. 'A dozen and a couple of bottles of Bass.'

I hadn't bargained for having to make this decision, being so sure we were going to be tripped up by some obstacle on the line.

We were now rumbling past the Blackpool gasometers – bright rust in the evening sun – and Clive was shutting off steam. We coasted past the gaps in the houses, where the glittering sea would come and go. The biggest gap was where the line went over Rigby Road, which had the beach right at its end, and you would gasp as you went over, just as if you had at that moment been caught up and put into the sea.

We came swinging into Blackpool Central at dead on seven o'clock with two empty water specials streaming out on either side of us. We were put into excursion platform seven, where an assistant stationmaster told us to leave the engine. The next crew booked for it would take it off to the shed, and we could sign off in the SM's office.

Clive turned to me, saying, That's handy for you. If you sprint across directly to platform two, or three, in the main station -1 can't just remember – you'll be back in Halifax… ten-thirty, sort of touch.'

I thought of the wife in bed alone, and the stone, the indoor comet. 'Well, I'd best go,' I said, knocking off the vacuum ready for uncoupling, as Clive leant out of the footplate watching our passengers walk towards the ticket gates.

'Aye,' said Clive, 'you'd better had. I'll sink a couple of pints on my own.'

Some of the passengers thanked Clive as they went, but they were respectable sorts, not factory, and not the kind to give a cheer for the driver. One of these worthies shook Clive's hand, and handed up to him a letter, saying, 'Apologies for not sending these along earlier.'

At this I tapped Clive on the shoulder, and asked, 'What's that?' because I feared he might stick it straight in his pocket, making another chapter in the Scarborough mystery. But he obliged me straight away, taking out from the envelope two theatre tickets and a handbill, which last he passed directly to me.

'What is it?' he asked.

'A play called Man to Man,' I said. 'It's on at the Grand.'

'Not music hall, then?'

'It's a drama,' I said, reading the handbill.

'Oh yes?'

'It's in four acts.'

'Is it now?' said Clive.

'There's two intervals.'

'That's good,' said Clive. 'That's the first good thing I've heard about it.'

I began to read from the handbill: '"Mr Frank Liston is as manly and impressive as the Rev. Philip Ormonde. As George Gordon, Mr William Bourne submits an earnest and incisive…'"

'Will you give it here for a moment?' said Clive. I did so, and he put the paper directly into the fire.

'You didn't really fancy it then?' I said.

'Too improving,' said Clive, 'and I will not be improved. I cannot be as a matter of fact…'

From a distant part of the station came the sound of an engine moving in.

'Well, I reckon you've missed your early service,' said Clive.

'Bugger,' I said, and Clive shook his head, grinning at the same time, because he knew I'd done it deliberately. The stone chucker had done his worst. He wouldn't be back. Also, I felt in need of a bit of fun, and that was all about it.

We walked along the platform, shadows of clouds moving fast across the canopy glass. The station was half busy: a few trippers on the platforms waiting to go home, and so looking downhearted. Yet Clive and me had the town, and the evening, all before us.