The Blackpool Highflyer (17 page)

'Natty dresser, your mate!' roared Billington.

I was trying not to look along the line, for I had no control
over what might be placed there.

'Shabbiness', I shouted back at Billington, 'is a false econ­omy.'

'Is it buggery,' said Billington. He had views on everything.

We were now running up to Kirkham Abbey station, and
we would have been touching seventy when I spied the dis­tant signal through the scratchy spectacle glass. It was off.

'Did you spot that?' shouted Billington.

'Aye,' I said, and he seemed put out. I wished he would
slow down. A distant signal, even when off, meant proceed
with caution.

'Now the "home" is the hardest spot on the whole bloody
line,' Billington was saying. 'Half hidden in the bloody

woods
...
It controls the level crossing that's just around the
bend here.'

'All the more reason to slow down, then,' I muttered, shov­elling coal. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if the distant
was off then the home would be off too, and there'd be no
trouble, but a cart stuck at that level crossing would put the
kibosh on all right.

We were really galloping now, and the damned wood
seemed more of a forest, unwinding endlessly around the
bend on the 'down' side, with no sign of the home signal. You
could see very well how a branch might have fallen. There
were so many of the buggers, after all.

I was glad to see Clive put down the book and stand up.

'I'll take her back now if it's quite all right,' he said to
Billington.

'What for?'

'Well it's just that we've only got three ton of coal and the
way you're going -'

'It wants some knowing, this signal does,' Billington was
saying, and the words seemed to be shaken out of him by the
motion of the engine. He was refusing to give up the regulator.

On the 'up' side was the ruined abbey. I caught a glimpse
of white stone and white dresses against the bright green
fields, a parked motorcar and some toffs standing within the
broken walls, as if they were downhearted at having got there
before it all collapsed.

We were being shaken to buggery, running far too fast for
this stretch. Billington should not have been at the regulator.
I fancied that he was racing because he wanted me to miss
seeing the signal. Then he could point it out and get the glory.
We should have told him about the stone on the track the
week before because it might have checked him, made him
think us jinxed.

I looked across at Clive, who was sitting on the sandbox.
He would be going through hell at what Billington was doing
to the engine, but he was back at the
Pearson's Book of Fun.

Billington was shouting to me: 'Signal's coming up your
side. Got your eye out?'

Clive looked up, and I thought he was going to say, 'She
wants a brush on the brakes!' Instead he began to read aloud
from the book: '"Why"', he shouted over the rattling of the
engine, '"is a football round?'"

'What?' I called out, because I couldn't credit this.

Then three things happened: Billington yelled: 'Any sec­ond now!' Then he gave a cry of
'Bang
off!' and there was the
home signal for Kirkham Abbey, half hidden as promised. It
was
off so we were fine, but Clive was back at the regulator,
Billington was tottering away towards my side, and we were
slowing down. Clive hadn't exactly crowned him. There
could have been nothing more than a shove, but it might have
been the devil of violence, for I had never seen Clive riled
before, or even move fast, come to that. Why, he must have
risked crimping his trews, and
Pearson's Book of Fun
was left
lying before the fire door. I put my shovel down, picked it up
and brushed the coal dust off. I was going to return this to the
kid, and I meant to return it clean.

The book was mainly riddles and the solutions were at the
back. I was so light-headed that I searched out a poser from
the first pages. 'Why
is
a football round?' I said, as we went
through Kirkham Abbey station at a speed moderate enough
to let me see a puzzled look coming onto the face of the porter.

At first Clive didn't answer, and I asked again, this time
nodding to Billington - who was sulking like a camel behind
me - to let him know that he might have a hazard too, but of
course he wasn't game after what had gone on.

'Because if it were square,' Clive shouted back, 'the players
would be kicking too many corners!' He turned to me and
grinned.

When, not long after, we came up to the great signal gantry
at Scarborough, which must have had fifty boards mounted
on it, Billington spoke up for the first time since Kirkham
Abbey: 'Work it out your bloody self,' he said.

The tracks going under the gantry were a mass of X's, and
I wished we could look up the answer at the back of
Pearson's
Book of Fun,
but we picked our way by degrees to the right
excursion platform, and Billington bolted as soon as we got
in.

But the queer thing was that so did my mate. No sooner
had Billington scarpered than Clive was jumping down from
the footplate, with the carpet bag in his hand, joining the
steeplechase of excursionists racing down the platform for
the ticket gates.

'Sign off for us, will you?' he called back.

I looked at the platform clock. It was nearly midday.

'Who's to put the engine in the shed?' I shouted at him.

'Thissen,' he said, with a big grin.

'Won't we take a pint?' I called, feeling quite dismayed.

'Sorry, Jim!' he called back. 'Got a bit of business in hand!'
And he was off along the platform, but he turned after a few
seconds, and with the excursionists flowing away on either
side of him he called back once again: 'Scarborough and
Whitby Brewery Company - South Shore.'

'Shall I see you there?'

He shook his head. 'The pale ale,' he said. 'It's the best
thing out!'

I opened the fire doors, put on a bit of blower, then I
stepped down with
Pearson's Book of Fun
in my hand. There
were about twenty excursion platforms in all at Scarborough.
Three-quarters were taken, and the rakes of silent carriages
were like empty streets, but streets standing under glass in a
milky light. Reuben Booth was coming towards me along the
empty platform, moving dockets from one hand to another,
like a conjurer trying a card trick he can't remember. It was all
luggage-in-advance business.

As soon as he saw me he stopped and looked at the book.
'Pearson's Book of Fun: Mirth and Mystery,
edited by Mr X,' he
said slowly. 'Clive gave it to you then, did he?'

'I mean to return it to the lad,' I said.

'Right you are’ said Reuben, and he nodded to himself for
quite a while. 'The boy's been left -'

Here he stopped to wheeze for a time, and I thought for one
crazy moment that he was about to say, 'He's been left a thou­sand pounds.' But no.

'- orphan.'

That word again; the fairy-like woman proved right again.
Why couldn't that old bitch take the kid in herself?

'So it's Crossley Porter House for him then?' I said to
Reuben.

The Crossley and Porter Orphan Home looked over Savile
Park in Halifax. It was a school with orphanage above. The
orphans were looked after by matrons or masters who were
all immense; the masters all had big beards, and the women
would've if they could. Or maybe it was just that the orphans
were so small. The orphans slept on the fifth floor; everybody
in Halifax knew that. If you were left without parents, or even
just fatherless, you would be climbing those stairs.

Reuben looked down at his dockets.

'And what's to happen to his dog?' I asked.

'The dog?' said Reuben. 'That's at my place.'

Reuben was a kindly, untidy fellow - just the sort to have
dogs. He lived in a house on the edge of Halifax which you
could see on the run down from the Joint to Sowerby Bridge.
It was on its own hill: tall and thin in the middle of tall and
thin trees, and looking liable to topple forwards into its own
garden.

'It won't be the first I've taken on,' he said.

'No’ I said.

'Folk put them in the van, label on the bloody collar: "Give
water at Bradford", "Put off at Hebden Bridge", and I'll tell
you what... half the time there's no bugger
at
Hebden Bridge
to collect.'

'Don't they give a name and address when they hand a dog
over?'

'I'll tell you summat else for nothing,' said Reuben sound­ing quite galvanised just for a moment, 'I've no notion of this
beast's name.'

'I'll ask the boy,' I said. 'I'll take him back the book, and I'll
ask him. I could take him a bit of sweet stuff too
.
..
Comfits,' I
said, remembering George Ogden, 'only they don't like the hot.'

'Farthing Everlasting Strip’ said Reuben, 'that's the thing
for a lad. Mind you, they en't really everlasting -' He stopped
here, and seemed to be thinking of something a million miles
away before continuing:'- but they really do cost a farthing.'
He was smiling, which I had never really seen Reuben do
before, and all over a bit of toffee.

I asked him if he'd have a drink with me, and he said he
would, so we fixed up to meet in the station booking office
after I'd disposed of the tank engine.

I uncoupled it and ran it round to the Scarborough shed,
where I signed my own name and Clive's. It was a sacking
matter if discovered and reported, but you'd do it for a pal.
Then again, you usually knew
why
you were doing it.