The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Twenty-seven

In Central you could hardly breathe from the greenhouse heat burning through the canopies, and the press of people, and the nosebag smell, for the cab horses were at their dinner as we came in at just after eleven. A porter was standing on a stepladder, trying to put the excursionists into the right channels by a lot of shouting and waving of arms.

This was the busiest station in Europe.

We uncoupled and ran the engine to the shed, where everyone was too busy to think anything much of even a Highflyer coming in. Clive went off for a pint, while I legged it the quarter mile back to Central, where the wife was patiently waiting at the ticket gates.

'Did you notice we weren't wrecked?' she called over the noise of the crowd as I approached her.

Behind her at the gates was the ticket collector I'd seen the last time I'd been at Central, the one who'd thrown up the beer bottle. He was working now, collecting tickets but not looking at anyone who gave him one. His uniform still did not fit.

I kissed the wife. 'But we did have the stop,' I said, 'and in the exact same spot as before. Did nobody say anything in the carriage?'

The wife shook her head. She wanted to talk about something else. And I was glad to do it.

'Well how do you like Blackpool?' I said.

'So far,' she said, 'I've only seen the railway station.'

I caught up her hand and we pushed our way out of the station and into the blinding light of day. And you had never seen a day so full: tribes of excursionists going both ways on the Prom (they should have had an 'up' and 'down' as on the railways) with the trams trying to nudge their way through, and thousands more folk sitting on the sand, where all places were taken, although there were gangways left for the ice-cream carts.

The sea was doing all in its power to entertain: glittering and sending in pretty big waves, which came as a bonus on a day with hardly any wind. But the teams of Pierrots and Harlequins and the wandering ventriloquists were in competition with it.

I looked to the left and the right. Which way to go? What to show the wife first? I saw a woman's face coming towards me in the crowd. It was a smiling face under a bonnet, a normal Blackpool face. But when the face saw mine, the smile was checked. It was Mary-Ann Roberts. I hated her bonnet, I hated the way she had kept some of her prettiness, for that seemed to give importance to the question of whether she was smiling or not.

I hated most particularly the way she never did anything unexpected, like walking up to me and saying: You were not to know about the treatment of concussion cases. You are an engine man after all, and not a doctor. As I looked at her, she looked away.

I had brought her to Blackpool so that she could kill my enjoyment of the day.

We were now bang under the Tower, with the wife controlling events. We both looked at the top of it for a while, where the glass and iron palace was balanced. It was a marvellous sight, but I could only think of the stone on the line. We looked down and around, at the Ferris wheel over near the Winter Gardens, which was like a giant rosette. Then it was back to staring at the crowds, which went on for ever, like the sea. These people had all aimed for the bull's-eye, and they had all hit the bull's-eye. There was no point in thinking about the future or the past, this was the moment, and it just had to be carried on.

'What do you reckon?' I asked the wife. She answered slowly: There's to be a free tea at the Tower in three hours' time, but first I want to take a turn on the flying machine.'

'Which one?' I said. 'I expect there's hundreds.'

'The Sir Hiram Maxim Flying Machines at the Pleasure Beach,' said the wife. 'I've read of them in the library. They're at Sand Hill.'

'That's south,' I said.

So we began going that way along the Prom. I kept looking over at the beach. I knew how things went with the Pierrot shows. Each one was like a little dream while it was happening, with perfect dainty people dancing to guitars. Then the Pierrots would come down from their little stands to start collecting the pennies, and the magic was gone. You'd be sorry for having watched, because it made you feel bad to pay them, and you felt a sight worse if you didn't. I looked beyond the crowds to the bathing machines wobbling down towards the water. There were teams of boys to control them and they were taking ten down at once, all in a line like a little landslide.

As we moved along the Prom we kept nearly colliding with people who wanted our money: the flowersellers, booksellers, quack doctors, all trying to stop you in your tracks by shouting at you.

As we walked, some amusements won out as the ones you really noticed, whether from numbers of sandwich men or quantities of posters, or through just being noticeable: the Royal Rumanian Band was on the North Pier all summer. You couldn't avoid knowing of that. And Beecham's Pills were to be had everywhere.

Presently, the machine came into view, high above the heads of the crowd: a wide-turning wheel, with the flying boats hanging from wires. As we watched, the wheel increased its speed and the flying boats flew further out and – which was the great thing – higher too. Every now and then there was a little snort of smoke from the centre of the wheel, but the thing was really almost silent, and turned like a weather vane or a windmill, all natural; and there was something of sailing about it too. Silent speed.

'It's beautiful,' I said to the wife, 'but aren't ladies in the family way supposed to avoid violent amusements?'

'Nothing violent about it,' said the wife, without looking at me.

So we joined the back of the queue. It was all sandy and dusty round about, like America. You were hard put to say where the beach ended. There was a carousel nearby bigger than the common run. It went anti-clockwise, which was the American way. I'd read of that somewhere. There were plenty of Yankees in Blackpool. Well, it was open house to all sorts.

There were several other rides on the go: a bicycle railway, a switchback, and over in the distance a waterfall coming down from a man-made mountain. A sign stood high up above the crowd: 'the water caves of the world', and hard by it was a giant banner: 'read the daily despatch'.

Maxim's Flying Machine was looked after by big fellows in sailor suits, and when we were towards the front of the queue one of them stepped up and asked if we'd ridden on it before. 'You must not on any account try to stand up in the flying boat,' said the fellow. 'And you are to take off your hats.'

There was a notice about how this was all in aid of Sir Hiram Maxim and his attempt to fly a measured mile by powered flight, in a heaver-than-air craft, not a steerable balloon. There was a photograph of a real flying machine, and a photograph of a mile – well, a biggish field at any rate.

It was sixpence for the two of us. We climbed aboard our boat and the wheel started to turn. There was hurdy-gurdy music coming from somewhere, and I thought it was for the flying machine, but then another tune started up, far louder, and this was the one. It was a melody I'd heard before somewhere, but completely changed.

'This fellow Maxim must be out of his senses!' I shouted to the wife as we started to climb.

'Isn't it just wonderful!' she shouted back, and it was.

I liked it best when we were right out over the sea, when an extra bit of breeze would push you that bit higher and you felt you could float on for ever.

The boats gradually tipped, and at the highest point we were quite sideways – and silent, for there was nothing at all to be said.

When we climbed off, the wife, setting her hat back on her head, said: 'I feel just like I don't know what.'

We walked away from the machine hand in hand, and the wife said: 'That's set me up just nicely, that has, but I've done Blackpool now.'

We bought some treacle toffee, and it ought to have been the perfect day. Instead, I was suddenly furious that I could not bring before my mind's eye the face of the wrecker. Damn you, I thought, whoever you are.

'Why don't we go along to St Anne's,' I said, 'the next place along?'

'Where Mr Robinson lives?'

'That's it,' I said. I wanted to see that fellow again, though it would be hard to bring about. 'It's a nice run out there,' I said. 'I think they have a gas tram that takes you.'

But the gas tram I'd heard about was gone, long since removed from service. The ticket clerk at the Blackpool Southern Terminus, which was just a step from the Pleasure Beach, said passengers riding on it had found themselves not able to breathe on windless days. The tram to Lytham – which was the one that stopped at St Anne's – was electric now, like all the other Blackpool ones.

The ticket clerk shouted this to me, and he must have spent his whole life shouting, because that's how things went on around the Blackpool trams in the season. There was a fearful scramble to get on them, and the bells as they came up might have been the bells of a boxing match. It was not quite so much of a scramble for the Lytham tram, though. Lytham and St Anne's were quieter resorts, and quieter types went out to them. We climbed onto the top deck when the tram came in. The steps were very high; they went up in a corkscrew, and 'hovis' was written very big on every one. The electric wires hung from what looked like ordinary lamp-posts that had grown arms.

The tram bowled along fast and high along the edge of the road, wobbling slightly, like a hoop being bowled, and in two minutes Blackpool was left behind. There were fields to our left, and dry grasses, sand dunes and the sea to our right. Sand had been blown onto the wide, white road. A long steamer was going by in the opposite direction.

'It's like Africa out here' said the wife.

'Now I don't know about that,' I said.

Then the big gardens started coming up, and hotels all covered in ivy. We got off next to a miniature golf course. There was a low wall all around it made of dazzling white stones. As the wife and I stepped down from the tram, some smart sorts looked up from their game and stared at us.

'Do you think we passed muster?' asked the wife as we turned away from them in order to cross the road and reach the sea.

The beach was a startler. There were no fortune tellers or funfairs, but pretty banners stuck in the sand advertising shows by the Happy Valley Pierrots and the Jolly Tars, and there were three donkeys sleepwalking over the sand with children in sailor suits on their backs.

So this was Robinson's home. He'd done pretty well to get here, but now he'd lost all of his money because of the light suiting and the way he'd been treated by Hind, father and son.

We sat on the wall that divided the beach from the road.

'I bet they're all snobs round here' said the wife.

'Aye' I said.

'But I would like to live here.'

I looked at her.

'Well, I don't see why the snobs should have it all to themselves,' she said. 'And I've just had a vision of our little boy or girl skipping along the front.'

'Did you have a vision of our bank account at that time?' I asked her.

'I would come here,' she said, 'and I would get up a socialist club.'

'Oh they'd like that,' I said.

The three children were getting down from the donkeys. There were no more takers, and the donkey driver was getting out his pipe.

'I don't like that building on the pier though,' said the wife.

The pavilion on the pier was rather weird.

'I expect you'll be able to get it knocked down when you come here,' I said.

'You see how all the benches around it face away,' she said. 'That's so you don't have to look at it.'

I thought it more likely that this was so you could look out to sea. I then wondered again at how the train had not crashed this time, and how the wrecker or wreckers had left us alone. I felt grateful to them, which was the wrong feeling, I knew.

'Did you get a look at Clive,' I asked the wife, 'the driver of the engine?'

'I did, yes.'

'He's a handsome devil, wouldn't you say?'

'Yes,' she said, and then she laughed. 'Your face!' she said.

'Do you think we might pay a call on Robinson?' I said. 'He's rather keen on you, you know.' The wife didn't seem to hear this; or she thought it a notion too daft to bother with. She was brushing sand off her skirt. 'Bustle up!' she called, and she was off across the wide, bright common that seemed to take up half of St Anne's-on-Sea, aiming for a pile of stones that were built up at its centre. She was a hundred yards ahead in no time and seemed too lonely, so I began running to catch her, when I saw beyond her a small boy seeming to spin backwards from behind the pile of stones. He was playing some secret backward-jumping game, and wearing a green suit. It was Lance Robinson.

He didn't know the wife, of course, but he knew me – and from a fair distance too, even though he was not wearing his spectacles.

'Oh hello,' he said as I came up close (the wife was looking at the stones in the background). 'The green's my home-from- home now that the paddock's gone. Have you come up from Blackpool?'

'I have that,' I said, and I called the wife over and introduced her to the boy.

It came out that the wife was working at Hind's, and the boy said: 'Cicely told me she had a new person working with her. I like Cicely. She's a brick, although Dad always used to say she wasn't a great hand at correspondence.'

The boy turned to me, and said: 'Cicely's awfully pretty, don't you think?'

'Well…' I said.

The wife, leaning against the stone, was making funny faces at me as if to say, Now what do we have here?

'Did you come along on the tram?' said the boy.

I nodded.

'It's smarter here, isn't it?' said the boy. 'It's nothing like Blackpool really, even though we're sort of tacked on to it. Our house is one of the first ones in St Anne's, and when we bought it, the Post Office had it down as Blackpool. Dad tries not to be snobby but he played merry hell over that, and he got it changed.'

Lance Robinson was doing his little backward dance on the grass. 'I'm not supposed to say that,' he said. 'Merry hell, I mean. I got it from our maid, the one that's gone. Would you like to come to tea?'

'Oh no,' said the wife immediately, and quite horrified.

'Yes,' I said. 'That's very kind of you.'

I wanted to see the Bradshaws that Robinson was supposed to keep lined up on his shelves. I wanted to see the fellow's motorcar, not that I could remember much of the one that had followed us to the Fylde, or the one that had frightened old Hind to death.

Lance Robinson turned and I began to follow him. The wife was fixed to the spot. But she followed along after a little while, and began chatting brightly enough to the boy: 'This is a lovely spot, isn't it? I don't think we can take tea, although it is awfully kind. Perhaps we'll just say a very quick hello to your father, who's a very pleasant gentleman… But we shan't come into the house.'

We were passing by an empty bandstand now, and stepping off the green. The boy wasn't used to walking with other people; he was going too fast, and his green coat was flying out behind him.

'It's the light suiting,' I whispered to the wife, as we followed the boy down a wide road of tall houses.

'I know,' said the wife. 'It's sad.'

I knew what she meant. At first I couldn't think of the word, but then it came to me. The boy had been put into clothes that made him a kind of experiment in motion – an experiment that had failed.

'Now listen,' the wife whispered, 'we are not to stay.'

'There was no stone on the line for Hind's today,' I said. 'Why not, do you suppose?'

'Oh give it an airing,' said the wife. 'I thought you'd finished with that.'

'I've got to work out why there was a stone before, and why there wasn't one this time. One difference from Whit was that the governors of the mill were not on the train: Hind and Hind Senior. Now think on: who would have wanted to see off the two Hinds? And who might already have done the job on the older one?'

The boy had come to a halt ahead of us. He stood at a turning leading into another wide white road of tall houses with exhibition gardens. He was putting on his glasses as we got near. 'I don't wear them outdoors,' he said, hooking them over his ears with his head down, 'but I'm supposed to.'

This meant we were drawing near.

'Father's not home,' said the boy, looking up.

The wife nodded, and I could see she was relieved.

'He's dreadfully worried,' said the boy.

There was a low fizzing in the street. All the gardens were full of bees.

'The police', said the boy, setting my heart thumping, 'have been here…'

Where? I thought. Which one is the house? They all looked like tall churches, and they were all joined together: a dark line of giants behind the gardens. You were really meant to see the gardens not the houses.

'How could you lose a mill?' asked the boy from behind his spectacles. 'Dad had one. He sold it, then went in with Hind's and now nothing's left and Mother won't pay calls because then people would have to come back, and they would see we only had one maid… If a mill came down to me,' the boy went on, 'I would sell it straight off and put the money in the Post Office.'

'You said about the police…' I reminded him.

'No, Jim,' said the wife, shaking her head.

"The Hind's Whit Excursion,' said Lance Robinson. 'They think Father tried to bring it off the line.'

I smartly took off my cap, because I was lost for any other way to react. I wondered whether the police had been working away all summer, like the bees, and whether I had not put them to it myself after what I'd said in the copper shop at Manchester during my funny turn. But it was no use trying to recall just what I had said then.

'Well, they're here again,' the boy said, and I knew the house. It was behind the boy, half a dozen along at the end of the road. A wagonette and horse stood outside. There was no motorcar in sight.

The colours in this place were all too high: the boy's green suit, the whiteness of the gateposts and road dust, the colours of the flowers in the gardens; and the pillar box in the middle of the road was red like none before. But the horse was black, and the wagonette was black.

'You must still come for tea,' said the boy.

When the strangeness started I could not say; the boy was walking on, and the wife was saying too loudly, 'Master Lance, Master Lance', as if just saying his name could change something. But the boy walked on and the front door of the house opened as he did so. He walked into it, and the wife turned on her heels and fled. A moment later, I turned and followed.