The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Twenty-four

On the Friday before Wakes, Halifax was beginning to empty out. There was only one other man drinking in the Evening Star. The three lonely billiard balls were set out, but the chance of any sport seemed further off than ever. The Courier was bursting with late advertisements for wood and cane trunks, portmanteaus and other holiday goods.

Circumstances dictated a couple of pints after a very hot rim that day – Southport and back. Southport was the second biggest holiday place after Blackpool. Taking a pull on my beer, I thought of Clive and Emma Knowles. What it totted up to was this: they had both been in Scarborough on the same day, and Scarborough held many people, especially now that all sunshine records were being broken.

Then I brought Blackpool into my mind's eye. Blackpool was waiting, and it was waiting for me.

I'd seen the notices for the coming Sunday and knew that the Hind's Mill Wakes excursion was to be taken there by Clive and myself. There'd been a fair chance it might be another crew, for almost all links were put onto excursions in Wakes, but in a way I was glad it had fallen to us. I wanted to see that line running clear across the Fylde with no obstructions placed, and the same folk as before riding behind.

I put the peg in after two, bought a bottle of Special Cola for the wife, and carried on up Horton Street, which was empty.

Towards the top of the street, I turned and doubled back towards the wall of the old warehouse. There was a new bill in place of the the Socialist Mission poster: 'All who suffer from the heat should add a few drops of Condy's Fluid to the Daily Bath.'

I thought of Emma Knowles in the bath as I passed by the open door of the Imperial. The fans were working away, spinning and rocking, but there were more waiters than toffs in there.

I walked fast to Back Hill Street so as to keep the Special Cola cool, and I was still moving fast as I stepped through the front door, so the shock of what I saw hit me with main force: a soot-clarted man on the floor wrestling with the continental stove. The wife was standing behind him with her arms hanging loose, and the strangest look on her face. There was a bottle of castor oil on the old mantelshelf, I noticed, as the sooty man on the floor said, 'How do.'

'You've caught on,' I said to the wife, 'you're pregnant?' I whispered because of the stove man, but with the word came the whole future, revealed all in a moment.

'Well, you needn't look like that,' said the wife.

'Like what? This is the way fellows always look when they get that kind of news.'

I took her through to the scullery, and, closing the door behind us, kissed her and handed over the bottle. 'It's going to have to be Extra Special Cola from now on,' I said.

'You feel all right about it then?' she said.

'Aye' I said.

'Aye?' she said back, slowly.

'Not that it isn't a shock,' I said. 'I mean, so much for How to Check Family Increase.'

'Well,' she said, 'they say their methods are not perfect.'

'Do they now? They're right about that, at any rate.'

She was quiet, looking sideways. The man in the other room sounded as if he was clattering at the stove with a hammer. It was not a scientific business, getting those articles out.

'And I'll tell you this again for nothing,' I said. 'You're not going on the Hind's Mill excursion to Blackpool.' She nodded very quietly, and I was just thinking that this was not like the wife at all, when she suddenly became her old self once more. 'I am going on the excursion to Blackpool,' she began, 'although only for one day. And why must I go to the Infirmary? I am not in the least infirm. Tomorrow I am to see a midwife recommended by the Guild. She's nearby and she has all the certificates. It will cost a shilling, and she will measure my pelvis.'

'Good,' I said. Why?'

'To make sure the baby will fit.'

'Well,' I said, 'it had better do. What happens if it won't? I mean it would be a rum go if it didn't, wouldn't you say?'

'At twenty-eight weeks,' said the wife, ignoring me, 'I will go up to the hospital and I will have regular checks after that to term. Meanwhile we must put away little bits of tea, sugar, and lay in little stores for the time. The Guild has lectures coming up on care of maternity, and I will go to those, and you might like to come along yourself.'

'I might.' I said.

'We will have a doctor at the birth, and as well as an ordinary fireplace instead of the stove, we must have another gas mantel put into the bedroom in case the baby comes at night and I tear, and need to be sown.'

'Bloody hell,' I said, and just then the stove man put his head around the door.

'It's out,' he said. 'Where do you want it?'

'Oh, in the yard,' said the wife.

He came back a moment later, lugging the stove, and we followed him into the yard. It was hotter out than in. The sky was ink and blue, with high streaks of black from the last chimneys working before Wakes. The wife was at the tub we'd got out there.

'The mint's starting to come up as well,' she said, bending over the tub.

'You shouldn't do that,' I said.

'What?'

'Bend over. And you're to keep your hands over your head whenever possible.'

'You barmpot,' said the wife. She was looking at the mint again. 'They say it takes over the whole garden eventually.'

Just then the stove man let the stove fall, and it crashed onto its side next to the mangle and the outside privy.

'I don't think you have to worry too much on that score at any rate,' I said.

I looked at the stove. Now we would have a proper fireplace, which was safer for children if properly guarded, and would make the house more of a home. I paid the stove man and he went off. He would be back after a few weeks to put in a fireplace under the old mantel.

'Now you must look to your diet,' I said to the wife when the fellow had gone, and we were back inside the house. 'You're to eat plenty of vegetables and a lot of bone food – bread, you know, for the calcium – and on no account must you take intoxicants, which you don't do anyway of course, which reminds me, I wouldn't half like a bottle of beer. And you are to sit down,' I said, as I myself sat down on the sofa in the parlour, for the tremendous shock of the news was only now beginning to take hold.