The Necropolis Railway

Chapter Twenty-Three

Thursday 24 December

The day after the mutual improvement class that never was, I lay low in my room, reading the notes in my Lett's diary and waiting, revolving in my mind the Christmas plan I had made in the Governor's room after Smith's funeral. My engine brake handle was at all times on the mantelshelf. I didn't fancy even walking in Lower Marsh, mainly because it had suddenly come to me that there was nothing keeping the half-link in Nine Elms. I had no doubt that they had meant to put the kybosh on me and would do so again at the first chance they got. Down there, among the wild, big-booted fellows, they could twist me in broad daylight.

On Christmas Eve, my landlady unexpectedly appeared with a small cake, which I thought proved she was my girl, although it was a shame for her to have chosen such a milksop. We ate the cake in the kitchen before a straggly fire, with the washing – which she said she was anxious to get out of the way – boiling merrily behind her. There was some holly resting on the tins on the mantelpiece. She told me she had been distributing notices about her spare room all around Waterloo, and that the terms were now being advertised as 'extremely moderate', and it was down to half a minute from the station. We finished the cake and I opened a bottle of beer. She stood up and walked over to the chimney piece. There was an envelope alongside the tins and holly; she stared at it for a while, then caught it up and gave it to me. On the front it said: 'Mr Stringer'. 'Is it for me?' I said, and she rolled her eyes to heaven.

It was a Christmas card showing a signal man in his signal box. He was being brought a hot punch or some like drink by a little girl, and there was snow all around. Inside, the card said 'With fond wishes for a merry Christmas', underneath which my landlady had written, 'Merry Christmas, Mr Stringer', and signed it with her name, which was Lydia. I was quite struck dumb for a moment; I began to say that I would keep this for ever, and to apologise for not having got her a card, but she would not let me speak, and instead asked me what the biggest difference was between London and Bay.

I said no stars in the sky in London, and she liked that, I could tell. She asked – I fancied a little anxiously – whether I would like to go back to Yorkshire, and in doing so she hit on the very thing I'd been thinking of as the only thing to do if my last plan failed. 'I would go,' I said, 'if you would come with me.'

When the words were out I could not believe I had said them.

My landlady stood up and said, 'Oh', and I made to stand up too, and all was confusion for a second. Presently, though, we were both back sitting down, and she said, in a curious tone, 'So you're half on a half-link?'

I said that that was it exactly, and explained as best I could about links, of which there were many, and half links, of which there was only one. I added that I might soon be leaving it.

'Maybe your half-link can join up with another half link and become a whole link?' she said. She didn't know very much about railways, but she looked very good, and there ought to have been some way of doing something about it, especially since this was Christmas. But after only a moment or two of spooning, she went off to her father's place, from where she would be going on to church.

Afterwards, I could not return to my room; those moments with my landlady had galvanised me into acting in a more manly way. I had a pound in my pocket book and some coppers besides. I would brave the street, with a pint at the Citadel as my prize.

It was a cold but clear night and I actually spied two or three stars in the sky, which was a lot for London. I thought: I can see them because it's Christmas. And there were no low types in the street, and I thought that in this case the reverse was true: they had been removed from my sight because it was Christmas.

The Citadel was full of orange light, galloping piano music – 'Hold Your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy' – and advertisements for beef, plum pudding and special beers. Everybody was already having a jolly time of it, and I thought: if everybody is saturated now, what will they be like by the end of the evening? But it was amazing how some people in London could keep it up. There weren't any Christmas decorations as such that I could see, but with the fancy white electric lights, the big rippling fire and red-faced people, there might have been a thousand.

I walked with my beer towards the Comfortable Corner, but there was a man already there with a small glass. He was very large and sad, and was talking to himself in an under-breath. It was Stanley, the man who gave the address at the Necropolis in favour of extra manure, or whatever it was. As a barmaid came up to take the glass, he looked up, and his golden eyes flooded with sadness. The cause was lost, by the looks of him. Then he stood to hunt in his pockets for money and I went off to hunt for a seat in another part of the pub, but, not finding one, drunk two pints standing up.

I walked out of the Citadel at nine o'clock. Three little girls were hopping and twirling next to a barrel organ playing a Christmas tune. There was a goods train going over the viaduct, and the driver had slowed down to a sauntering pace as though he too was watching the dance.

I walked to the music hall on Westminster Bridge Road, and paid 3d to go into the stalls and see some Christmas joys, or something of the kind. Inside the theatre, all the gas lights were seething and shaking, and there was ivy on most of them. The roof was pink and blue – it seemed to sag like the roof of a tent – and there were posters everywhere announcing 'A Bioscope: The Latest Events from All Around the World'. I knew the bioscope would come on at the end; it was what I really wanted to see because it was up-to-date, and I would be able to tell my landlady all about it.

Meanwhile, an old man in a long coat was standing on the stage, with a painting of a Christmassy street behind him, looking at the audience. There were not a lot in, but the man clapped his hands anyway, as though delighted with the crowd he saw. A puff of white powder flew up from his gloves, and the old man watched it rise with big round eyes. Then the lights changed and the Christmassy street was instantly gone – which was the best bit of all – and a ventriloquist was sitting on stage with his doll and a kind of desert behind the two of them. They both looked exhausted. The ventriloquist started talking – shouting, really – about beating the Boers, and the doll would not take its eyes off me. After a little while this started to get me down, so I turned my head away, at which moment I spotted, no more than half a dozen seats along, Saturday Night Mack, watching the doll and the ventriloquist with very close attention, with his feet on the seat in front, and a bottle of beer in his hand.

'You're not supposed to move your lips!' he shouted at the ventriloquist, after a while. The ventriloquist was telling the doll about 'the boys of the old militia', and Mack carried on drinking and watching. Then came the end of the turn, when the dummy asked us all to 'kindly rise and give a toast to his Majesty the King', at which Mack didn't stand but shouted, 'Kindly leave off, will you?'

I moved along the row of seats towards him. By the time I got to him they were changing the scenery on the stage, and he was having a fight with the chucker-out.

Five minutes later, Mack was telling me how he'd given the other fellow quite a pasting, but he was outside the music hall all the same, and so was I, with no hopes of seeing the bioscope. Mack's black suit had got pretty dusty in his set-to with the chucker-out, and his hat was no longer with him. Over the road was a butcher's shop. The outside gas mantels were all burning, but a line of white turkeys hanging above the window was gradually disappearing as men in aprons walked out of the shop and took them back in. It was almost ten; my dad's place would have been closed long before.

'What I'm looking out for just now,' said Mack as we watched the men work, 'is some nice fresh greens.'

Next to the butcher's was a pub – just a hot little room, really, that was more crowded than it should have been because of a piano and a big wobbling Christmas tree with tapers all lit. It was called the Kingdom of Italy. As Mack walked in ahead of me, the piano started playing on its own. He stood us both what he called 'brain dusters', and all I could say is that they came in very small glasses, which was just as well. There were some pretty women in there, which brought Mack back to talking of fresh greens, green gowns and so on, by which he meant the ladies of the night-houses and the kinds of business that could be conducted with them, and all this made me feel quite hot. After Mack had got us both a couple more brain dusters, I said I was drowning in mysteries. He said 'Give me one, mate.'

Mack was not like anybody I'd met before. He was a man of the world – a man of the London world, I mean – and I was always surprised that he would hear me out. Anyway, I told him that on my first day in London, the clock on King's Cross had been ahead of the one on St Pancras, that it had said five after three, and the clock on St Pancras had said five to, and Mack said, 'I spotted that myself when I was in that neck of the woods the other day.' I said, 'It's a bad business, ain't it?'

Mack didn't seem too vexed over it, but said, 'I expect the Midland had it right… Them's the jockeys for me.'

I couldn't tell whether he was talking here of the Midland Railway or the two pretty monkeys in the corner that he was giving the over-eye. They were a pair of spankers, I had to admit, and I helped myself to another look at them. 'Anyway' said Mack, 'how do you know the King's Cross clock was the one that was ahead?' 'What do you mean?' 'How do you know it wasn't behind?' 'Because it said five after.' 'I know that.' 'And the other said five to.'

'Yes, but how do you know that King's Cross wasn't so far ahead that it was catching the other up?' Mack saw off his brain duster, and called for two more. I said, 'Catching the other up from behind, sort of thing?'

'Course. You can't catch something up from in front, now, can you?'

'You might have put your finger on it' I said. 'Listen: how long do you think it would take a clock that was losing, let's suppose, a minute every hour to get so far behind another clock keeping good time that it would start getting ahead of it?'

'I don't know' said Mack, who began telling me of a little spot in Waterloo where there were 'some girls who take a real pride in their work. There's a low lot round about, mind you, and you must take care or you'll be ripped, but the place itself is fine.'

As he took out his pocket book to buy us two more brain dusters – Mack was certainly in funds this Christmas – he said I should give this place a go; that he would be along there himself, only he had his eye on the one in the corner who was kissing her cigarette as she smoked it and looking at Mack very slyly all the time. I have better looks than Mack, I thought, but he has more of something else. More of London.

I said I would be kept from going to a place like that by thoughts of my best girl, meaning my landlady, and Mack said, 'You have your meat and veg, and your greens are on the side.'

'Mack' I said, as he bought a third lot of drinks for us, 'do you ever wonder about what happened to Henry Taylor, Mike and Rowland Smith?'

Mack might have been out of his nut but he managed to give me a pretty straight look. 'Accidents,' he said. 'It's a dangerous business being on the railways.' 'But Smith was in his flat.'

'It's a dangerous business being at home in this modern world. Now off you go to your cunny house.' And he dragged himself off towards the doxy with the cigarette.

You have your meat and your veg and the greens are on the side. Saturday Night Mack had a way of making everything seem simple. Of course, standing against what he said was the Christmas card from my landlady. The place was bang up against a viaduct at the bottom right hand of a stubby, blank street in Waterloo called Signal Street. I was all of a jump as I looked at this spot for I knew it held trouble in some way. Might Mack have sent me into the arms of the half-link? I tried to tell myself to turn back, but those brain dusters and my exploits with my landlady had stoked a fire that would not be put out, so I walked towards the viaduct. Nearly the whole of the bottom of Signal Street was blocked off by it, as if someone had thought: I want to put an end to this now. Well, not quite, because the arch of the viaduct started on the left side of the street so there was a gap in that corner.

I walked past two brown doors with no name and no number. The third door looked no different, but when I knocked, a broken voice shouted, 'Come in.' Feeling half excited, half doomed, I opened the door.

It was a big room, almost destroyed, with a fire that was too small. An old lady sitting at a table said, 'Merry Christmas, sir'; she sounded like the ventriloquist's doll. 'Yes,' I said, fairly shaking from nerves. 'You want to see a young lady?' I nodded. 'You can be manualised at five shilling,' she said.

'Very well' I said, and then I thought again, and said, 'By whom?' because I did not want to be touched by this mutton dressed as ewe.

'Jacqueline is presently available – she is our top indoor girl.'

It was when I took out my pocket book that I became sober. I broke into my pound to give the woman five shillings but that wasn't the end of it – there were certain extras for the old lady that came out at another shilling. We went up the stairs, and a train came up so noisily I thought it would burst through the wall, but of course it was only heading for the viaduct. A door was opened for me, and this time the room was too small and the fire was too big. There was a girl inside in a blue skirt but nothing on top. She had short hair and shiny eyes of the sort I like, and was half sitting, half lying on her bed. She reminded me of a mermaid, except for the short hair and the plain fact that she was sweating with a bad cold. 'Have you paid your money?' she said, as I walked in.

'I gave it to the old woman downstairs' I said. 'She's the one who takes the money, isn't she?'

'You've got her in one' said Jacqueline. 'What have you paid for?' 'Manualising' I said.

'At what price?' She picked up a little towel from the stool by the bed.

'Five shillings.' There seemed to be something wrong with the system, for I could have said anything. 'How are you?' I said, to put things off.

'Oh, fairly blue' she replied, and she walked up and started undoing my trousers. 'Are you a railway man?' she asked.

'Yes' I said, and I thought guiltily of the driver Hughes of the Great Western Railway, at home with his wife and many children, at home in The Railway Magazine.

'Several of my gentlemen are on the railways' she said, 'and one is very high up on the South Western.'

'What is his name?' We were on the bed by now, and my trousers were over the stool. 'Now, I'm not going to tell you that, am I?'

I was always more comfortable asking questions though. 'Is it a fellow called White-Chester?'

There was a very, very long pause while she started with her manualising. 'No,' she said eventually.

As she carried on with her work, I thought of my father and felt bad. Then I thought of my landlady and felt much worse. My thoughts were anywhere but where they should have been and now, strange to say, they settled on White-Chester himself, and I wondered about his name. What did it mean? It brought to mind a man – very like a circus strongman -who was in the habit of showing off his chest, which would have been very muscular but also, and more to the point, very white. 'I can't bring anything about,' said Jacqueline after a while. 'Do you want to try a suck?' 'All right,' I said. 'It'll be another sixpence.'

With a heavy heart I counted out the coppers for this. She blew her nose very hard, and then rolled around on the bed so that I was looking down on her hair. Better than her mouth was the feel of her breasts, which was almost like nothing at all. Still nothing happened, and, the effects of the drink having completely worn off, I said thank you, but could she stop, which she immediately did, saying, 'You're slow as a wet week.'

I walked downstairs, past the woman with the voice, which I didn't hear this time, and out through the front door of the night-house. Church bells were ringing for the midnight services, and cabs were racing across the mouth of the street on their way to happy places far beyond my reach. The night-girl had been feeling blue, and her blues were catching. Looking again towards the mouth of Signal Street, I saw a Christmas crowd walking across it – church-goers, I was certain. The youngest and oldest were at the rear: a man so bent over that I marvelled at the way his stove-pipe hat remained on his head, and beside him a beautiful woman. Well, it was my landlady, of course.

Her father looked a very infirm gentleman indeed but she seemed happy, talking with wide gestures, loud exclamations and laughter. Whether the old man was laughing back I could not have said, for he was shaking all the time in any case. I could not let her see me, and I was glad of the darkness around the night-house. My dad wasn't church and he wasn't chapel, but as my landlady and her father gradually disappeared from view, I wished he had been one or the other because then I might not have been where I was presently standing, pressed into that black corner between the night-house and the sleeping viaduct, feeling cold, powerfully ashamed and six shillings and sixpence to the worse.

As I began to walk out of Signal Street, a fellow walked into it along the same pavement. He was small and wide and had a beard; he looked quite well set-up, but I knew there was something wrong. I wanted the brake handle about me. Seeing that we were on a collision course, I moved to my left, but on seeing me do this he moved to his right, so that we were still destined to meet in a smash, but I did not care. I tried moving the other way at the last, but so did he. Finally he walked into me, and I swung a punch at him directly. All the built-up fury of the past weeks went into that swing, but he stepped away from it easily, saying in a put-upon voice, 'Let a fellow by, would you.'

He continued on his way, and I watched after him as he gradually started to run, streaking finally through the one exit from the top of Signal Street, that one bit of viaduct arch.

I had Signal Street to myself once again, but the man had done his work, because when I checked over my jacket my pocket book had gone, and with it the ten shilling note I'd had left over. It was fair payment for what I had done, I thought, which left me about square with my landlady and my conscience.

When I returned to my lodge half an hour later, through frosty streets full of racing cabs and the broken-down human remnants of Christmas Eve, there was a package from Dad containing a letter from him and a Christmas card that had been sent to the two of us from Captain Fairclough. There was no note inside the card, just the letter 'F', and, using this 'F', my father had leapt to all sorts of conclusions: that we were much in Captain Fairclough's thoughts, that Captain Fairclough wished me success in my railway work, that the trade of butchery was not to be so looked down on after all. In his letter, Dad also said he had found Christmas very hard on his own. He now had thoughts of retirement, and asked whether I would like to have the shop. He was sure I would say no, such was my keenness on my present employment, but could not help thinking it was a shame that, once established in business, a family should go back to the common run of wage slaving. I thought of my landlady: she would never come with me to Bay for it would mean leaving behind her father.

I was all done up. I climbed into my truckle bed and slept soundly for a while, but woke at around four, when something made me walk over to the back window and look out into the yard. It was full of steam, swirling and somersaulting, coming in from the soap works, pouring silently over the wall on either side of the lamp and mixing with falling snow. I walked over to the mantelshelf and looked at the Lett's diary, at the facts as I understood them.

I stared again at the gas lamp, the only thing steady against the steam and the snow, and then in my mind's eye there came a picture of a locomotive revolving on one of the turntables at Nine Elms; I thought of Hunt telling me that 'an engine man is an Adonis in mind and body', and saw the Governor reaching for those tall books of his, and close upon this, in the silence of that night with no trains, there came to me again the idea that my notion was a pretty good one. Certainly it was my last and best hope of saving my job, my hopes of making my landlady my girl, perhaps even saving my life, such as it was. And Christmas Day was the time to try it.