The Necropolis Railway

Chapter Four

Monday 16 November continued

I asked a fellow where I might find Flannagan, the charge cleaner, and he just pointed to a whole row of huts at the top of the shed and walked on. Then Vincent reappeared, coming around the corner of a long-boilered locomotive. 'All right, mate?' he said. 'You're still looking a bit lost.'

He seemed in high spirits once again; he was a very changeable sort.

'Come here, mate,' he said, and he showed me into one of the huts in the line. There was a thin stove, and a seat like a shelf going all around halfway up – and that was it, except for a lad who was pretty much all teeth.

'This is where the firemen who do the half-link turns mess,' said Vincent. These words came out all of a tangle, and I hadn't untangled them before he went on: 'It's quite a decent spot,' he said, chucking his cap on the bench, 'except for this one thing. Have a good look about, and tell me what's missing.'

'Well,' I said, 'any number of things are missing,' which made Vincent look put out, and the toothy kid go red and walk out of the door.

"The main thing lacking in here,' said Vincent, who hadn't said a word to the toothy kid, 'is a kettle, and there is no kettle because there is no place to boil a kettle, are you with me?' Vincent knelt at the stove and flipped open the door, which fell down on its hinge and came to rest sticking out. 'So we put our billies on here,' he said. 'They take at least ten minutes to boil, and we do one at a time.'

I couldn't see why he was telling me this, but tried to keep up an interested face. 'Now, if it ever happened that all the lads came in here at once' said Vincent, 'this is the order in which we would brew up: first billy on would be Clive Castle, who's a passed fireman who sometimes does firing turns on the half, depending on how busy they are with the Brookwood runs. He's sort of half on the half and half not. Next it would be Joe somebody – just can't quite remember his name – who also fires up at odd times. Then it would be the last fireman, the bloke who's just gone.' 'He's full-time on the half though?' I said. Vincent nodded. 'What's that fellow's name?'

Vincent gave me another of those long looks that he went in for. 'Mike,' he said after a while, and it caused him a lot of pain to say that word.

'Next billy on,' he continued, 'is mine because I was passed for firing on the half-link six weeks back, but I've been kept back on cleaning – though really I'm just kicking my heels – until everything's put straight in the office. Now if you should ever come up from cleaning to firing on the half you'd put your billy on the stove next, making you fifth in line and last.'

I told him that if I ever came up from cleaning to firing on the half-link I would probably bring my tea in a bottle, and he didn't like this one bit. Then I said, 'Look, what is this half-link business? Engine men work in links, and a link is a sort of bundle of duties. You can't have a half-link, and no one's told me I'm to be on it in any case.' 'You sure of that?' 'Honour bright.' But I could tell that he still didn't believe me.

'But you are on it,' he said slowly. 'I know that from the special cleaning duties you've been given. And why shouldn't there be a half-link: it just means a little link, that's all, and I'll tell you what: I'd rather be on half-link than bottom-link.' 'Bottom-link?' "The bottom-link's the one above the half-link. Slow-goods: cutting coal waggons in the dark, hour after hour.' 'Why in the dark?'

'You get in amongst moving coal waggons and it's bloody dark, I'll tell you.'

'But what does the half-link do, then?' I asked, for he still hadn't got to that.

"The half-link isn't like any other link. It does a dog's dinner of local turns, but most of its work is on that one particular special sort of run.' He stopped here and gave me a queer look. 'But you don't need telling about that, mate.'

I asked him how he made that out, and he said, 'You're being put to cleaning the engines for that run, and doing nothing else, by the sound of it, except getting more than your fair share of rides on them, which is probably so you can get up to firing before you're properly ready for the job. Where did you say you were from, mate?' 'Baytown.' 'Now I've never heard of that spot.' 'Gentry would call it Robin Hood's Bay.' 'Still never heard of it,' said Vincent. 'Does it have electric light?'

'Whitby has electric light,' I said, but he hadn't heard of Whitby either.

'What brings you down here?' Vincent asked, and I found that I was taking against the fellow in double-quick time. I thought: Rowland Smith brought me down here, with his letters that all of a sudden seemed so mysterious. It would have to come out in time, but I mumbled something about there being more chances for a lad south than north, adding: 'This special run you spoke of – it's all goods, is it?' Vincent thought about this for a while. 'It's mixed.' 'Mixed goods?'

'No, mixed goods and passengers. It's not what you might call.. He seemed to drift away for a minute here, but he came back galvanised: 'Of course, with the sort of running I'll be putting up, I'll be off the half-link and on to suburban runs in under six months, you bloody watch. After that the sky's the limit.' "The Bournemouth Belle!' I said.

'You've got it, brother. Eighty miles to the fucking hour, and the big penny in the pocket. Do you want to see where the half-link drivers have their twenty minutes?' "That would be fine,' I said.

The half-link mess turned out to be hanging in the blackness off the side wall of the engine shed. It had a wooden staircase leading up to it, and a metal pipe connecting the back of the shed with the floor, and I wondered: now, what is holding this thing up, the pipe or the staircase? because neither looked up to the job.

'We can't go in, of course,' said Vincent when we'd got to the top of the stairs, 'but we can look through the window.'

There were proper tables and chairs, though of a rough sort. Two men were sitting in the mess, both smoking pipes and reading newspapers, the nearest one's being all about sport – 'GOLFING NOTES', I read, and 'ROWING FROM THE UNIVERSITIES' – while the chap at the far end was behind a newspaper of a smarter sort: 'EAST LONDON WATER, PRESENCE OF DANGEROUS BICCILLI'.

The sportsman was side-on to me so I could see that he was a wide, pinkish bloke with curly yellow hair, and a face that seemed to have burst a long while ago. All I could see of the other was his paper, with pipe smoke rising above it, and two thin legs shooting out from underneath with shiny boots on the end of them.

'That's Barney Rose,' said Vincent, pointing to the sporting paper, 'and that there's Arthur Hunt,' he added, pointing to the second man, and I could tell from the way he spoke that this fellow Hunt was really the man for him. 'Are they the only two drivers on the link?' "The only two full time on it, yes.' 'And they've only got one fireman between them?' 'Apart from the relief blokes who come and go.'

In all my years of reading The Railway Magazine I had never heard anything to match it.

'And that one fireman is the fellow called Mike that we've just seen in the firemen's mess?'

On the subject of this toothy lad Vincent just nodded, and I could tell that it wasn't a matter of dislike but something more.

'Henry Taylor,' I said, 'the one who went missing… Was he firing on the half-link before he vanished?' Here I came in for another of his stares. Henry Taylor was the great unmentionable, but Vincent did bring himself to a shake of the head eventually. 'Cleaning,' he said. 'So I've been taken on in his place?' Another pause. "That's it,' said Vincent.

'Don't these fellows ever do any work?' I said, turning back to look at the two engine men.

"They're on their twenty minutes,' Vincent whispered. 'I told you that.'

We carried on watching them. They had both turned over pages, 'WRESTLING NOTES', I read on the sporting paper; on the other, 'TODAY'S SPEECHES'. Then TODAY'S SPEECHES collapsed and I saw the thin, wolfish face of the man behind the paper, like a dagger. He didn't glance at me but nodded quickly at Vincent before disappearing again behind the journal.

This nod was electrifying in the effect it had on Vincent, who blushed as if that man had been his best girl. Then the other one, the comfortable one, put down his paper and nodded, but this nod was for the two of us, and quite genial. He stood up and opened the door, while the other just carried on with his paper and his pipe.

'Well, lads,' said Barney Rose, 'Ranjitsinjih has hit thirty-four off one over for the second time in three weeks.' I tried to think of something to say.

1 just had to pass on the news to someone,' said Barney Rose. 'He's new,' said Vincent, pointing at me, and making no attempt to continue with the cricket talk. 'He's cleaning for the link.'

There was a short silence; Rose moved his hand to his face, then away again. 'What's your sport, young man?' he asked, finally looking at me. 'I'm not so hot at any game, sir. I concentrate on my work.' 'But even so,' said Rose, in a dreamy sort of way.

'I have most energetic aspirations,' I said, still hoping to bring the talk back to what it ought to have been, 'and my supreme goal is the footplate.'

'Oh, my eye!' said Rose, before adding more quietly, 'Another Henry Taylor! He was always pretty keen to come up.' He was sweating and smiling in a strained way. 'Taylor was quite an ardent lad like yourself… but that's all right.'

'I believe that any young railman aspires to the footplate,' I suddenly heard myself saying, 'and I see no mystery in that, because I hold the life to be a grand one of freedom, healthy effort, endless variety, and delightful good friendship.'

'Where on earth did you get all that?' asked Rose, and he really did seem astonished at my remarks. But I was watching the hard-looking fellow at the far end of the room who'd put the paper down once again and started staring at me. His shirt had no collar but it was clean and pressed. He looked like a grey wolf, and was obviously the right sort, but I did not like him, whereas I had always assumed that I would like men of the right sort.

Tt has been indicated to me,' I carried on, giving this fellow back as straight a look as I could, 'that I might be climbing onto the footplate of a slow-goods in six months from now, and that I could be wielding the shovel pretty freely from then onwards.'

Hunt took his pipe out of his mouth, and pretty well demanded, 'Who has given you all these promises?' For a working man, he talked like a swell, but with too much of London in his voice. 'Mr Rowland Smith,' I said.

From the look the man gave me – a look of nothingness -1 at first assumed he did not know the name, but that I could hardly credit.

'Mr Rowland Smith,' I said, 'is a director of the company that employs you, sir: the London and South Western Railway.'

'And you', he said, settling back on his bench in a way that made me realise that this wooden room was the kingdom over which he ruled, 'are his little friend?' 'It is not -' 'What wage has he started you at?' the wolf cut in.

'Fifteen shillings,' I said, at which he caught up his paper sharply, spitting at the same time, then muttering something I could not catch, save for a single word which I could not help but think was 'devil', however much I wanted it to be something else. The man was at his paper for only a second, then he was moving fast towards me, saying, 'There need be no further -'

There was more, but again I couldn't catch it for he had booted the door shut in my face.