The Last Train to Scarborough (10 page)

'Never,'
said Tommy. 'He would smoke the odd small cigar, and that was it.'

When
the two had met for a second time, after a shooting match in Hartlepool, it had
been the same story over again. Blackburn had shot well, Tommy not so well, but
still Blackburn had bought the round, expecting nothing in return. This
combination of superb shooting and not requiring a drink had quite floored
Tommy - 'I mean, talk about gentlemanly' - and I had a suspicion that it was
on this account,

rather
than because of any deep acquaintance, that he'd come to Scarborough.

'If
Ray Blackburn's been done in,' said Tommy, 'then I want to know who's done him,
and I want to be up and at 'em.'

'Did
the Chief ask you to come on this job, or did
you
ask the
Chief?'

'I
wanted to know if I could help at all,' said Tommy, drawing back the
regulator.

'It
does you credit to risk your neck for a stranger,' I said, and Tommy coloured
up at that.

'I
en't risking me neck,' he said, but whether because he doubted his own words or
because he was embarrassed at being praised we went on in near silence for the
next little while, with Tommy just occasionally adjusting his position on the
sandbox, as though his bad leg was giving him jip.

'Of
course, he was religious,' I put in, as we flew through the little station of
Huttons Ambo. (It was too dark to see, but I knew the long platform signs there
from memory: 'Huttons Ambo: serves also High and Low Hutton'.)

'That's
right is that,' said Tommy. 'Catholic. I can't remember how I know that but he
was the sort of bloke ... you just couldn't
help
but know. Not
that he was pi. It just came off him.'

'Radiated,'
I said.

Tommy
nodded.

'
. .. Sort of thing. 'Course, with that particular lot, there's no bar on drinking,
quite the opposite in fact. So there
again
he was just
that bit different. Mind you, that lass of his ...'

'His
fiancée?'

'I
only saw her once - easy on the eye but a bit of a tart, if you ask me. Led him
a right bloody dance.'

'What
did he look like?'

'Nice
looking fellow. Dark, biggish - very dark eyes.'

As
we closed on the market town of Malton, Tommy gave up on Ray Blackburn for a
while, yawned and limped over a couple of paces to glance at my fire. 'Dead
spot back centre,' he said. 'Big coal makes a dead spot,' he added, going back
to his perch. 'You want it about the size of your fist.'

It
wasn't a criticism, I told myself, so much as just a passing remark. He hadn't
meant to take back his earlier praise. As I put on coal, I was half aware of
Tommy opening the locker door. A little later, as I continued shovelling, he
was pulling a night-shirt and under-drawers from one of his kit bags, and when
I looked over at him again, he was pointing a fucking rifle at me.

It
was a short rifle - barely three feet long - and Tommy stood there grinning
with it in his hand, and rocking slightly on the footplate.

'I'll
be taking this in, if it's all right with you,' he said.

He
reached again into his kit bag, and took out a smaller bag made of cloth. From
this he took a cartridge, which he put between his front teeth.

'Hold
on a minute,' I said.

'I've
another in the kit bag, and
you
can have that
one,' said Tommy, still with the cartridge between his teeth. He pulled a lever
behind the trigger; the gun broke, and he put in the cartridge. He snapped the
gun shut once again.

'See
how it's done?' he said.

He
then pulled the lever again and the cartridge flew spinning upwards before
landing on the footplate. Tommy caught it up, and frowned. 'Dented, that is,'
he said, and he pitched it through the fire-hole door into the rolling white
flames.

'Shut
the door, man,' I said. 'There's liable to be a bloody explosion.'

But
as I spoke there came only a soft, single pop from within the fire. I stared
at Tommy, as we rattled into Malton.

'You're
a bit of a dark horse, en't you?' I said.

'It's
only little,' he said, running his hand along the stock. 'Carbine, point
two-two calibre. Handy if you're on horseback or if you're a lad - or both.
Yours'll be just the same, but you can have a feel of both, and take whichever
one suits.'

'Stow
it, Tommy,' I said. 'Police don't go armed in this country ... Does the Chief
know you've brought all this ironmongery?'

'Why
else would he send me?'

That
might
be right.

And
as we rattled on through the night, I saw that in Tommy's eyes this gun - or
these
guns
- made up for his crocked leg; gave him a value in this
world that he didn't seem to get from driving an engine. The guns were the
reason he'd come, and it was just like the Chief to have packed me off with
someone like Tommy; part of his game of keeping me always on the jump. I was
his favourite all right, but I paid the bloody price for it.

'Look,
this is a fishing trip, Tommy,' I said. 'Do you know what that means? We go in
and keep our eyes skinned. I come back and write a report saying whether
further questioning is required. There ought to be no bother. We ought to be
perfectly all right.'

'Ought
to be?' he said. 'With these beauties, it's a surety. You know the firing
positions, I suppose? There's standing ...'

And
he shouldered the weapon, with the dark streets of Malton rolling behind.

'Kneeling...'

At
that, he did kneel down and aimed the gun in all the black dust of the
footplate. I ought to stop him. Apart from anything else, the Chief had shown
me the firing positions more than once, in hopes of getting me to take up
shooting as a benefit to myself, the railway company I worked for, and the
country I lived in.

'...
And prone.'

Tommy
baulked at that one, but I could tell he'd been contemplating lying flat to
show me the third firing position. He was now stowing the rifle in the kit bag
again. It appeared that he kept them wrapped in his clothes, towel,
night-shirt; fairly buried they were by the time he'd finished. He then shut
the locker door smartly, for Malton was coming up.

Three
minutes later we were at a stand in the empty station. It was 6.35 p.m., but
you'd have thought it was midnight. Of train guard Leslie White there was no
sign. A couple of people had boarded, one had alighted, and we were waiting for
our starter signal and the whistle of the platform guard, who stood a little
way off with hands clasped and head bowed as though someone had lately died.

The
signal gave a jerk, the platform guard looked up, and we were off. Tommy didn't
wait for the whistle. For all that he seemed the most amiable of blokes, the
business with the gun had set me thinking he was a bit crackers.

With
one hand on the regulator, he was talking now about how he hadn't told Joan,
his intended, what he would be about in Scarborough; how he'd tell her after
the event, on Wednesday, when they were going to the Electric Theatre on
Fossgate; how they reserved seats for every Wednesday; how you could get
ninepenny seats for sixpence if you reserved but no seats there were very
comfortable, which was why for
preference
they'd
go to the City Picture Palace on Fishergate, only it wasn't possible to reserve
there so you had to take pot luck, which was no use because Joan always wanted
an aisle seat, not on her own account but so that he, Tommy, could stretch out
his leg - this even though he always said he didn't care where he sat. 'The leg
does not stretch out, and that's all about it,' he told me, before embarking on
a further speech about how he was looking for a house over Holgate way to move
into with Joan ... and presently we were approaching Scarborough.

Only
half the lamps were lit, and the wide, dark terminus stood nearly empty. A long
coal train was parked at the excursion overload platform, as though to send
out a message:
Forget
about coming here for pleasure this time of year.
Other coal
wagons were scattered about on the approach roads, and a little pilot engine
waited with a bloke leaning out of the cab. He'd no doubt be put to rounding up
the wagons; meantime, he was smoking and watching us come in.

Scarborough,
being a terminus, had a strange arrangement that made the working complicated.
We drew right up to the buffer beams on Platform One. We would then - as I
supposed - uncouple our coaches, and the pilot would pull them back, releasing
our engine. In the normal course of things we'd then work backwards to the
engine shed, which was about a mile off, take on water, turn on the turntable,
and head back to York. But our engine was not fit for the run back, or so we
would make out.

Tommy
Nugent was already on the platform, and making his lop-sided way towards a door
under a big lantern: the office of the night station master. He knocked, the
door was opened, and in he went to start lying.

I
looked back, and the last of our half dozen passengers were stepping down from
the carriages. They walked through the leaking steam and away towards the exit.
Leslie White, the guard, was coming up through the steam as well. He stopped,
and turned his specs in my direction.

'Where's
Tom?' he said, and I saw there was a wooden box and a folded board under his
arm. I read the label on the box:

The Empire Chess Set.

'In
there, mate,' I said, indicating the SM's closed door.

White's
spectacles tilted that way, then back to me.

'You're
running light back?'

'Reckon
not,' I said.

And
I indicated the steam whirling all around us.

He
gave the shortest of nods, turned on his heel, and went off. There was a crew
room somewhere about. He'd book off there. When he'd gone, I was left quite
alone on Platform One. I saw the pilot engine simmering away on the approach
road, but the driver of it made no move. The door of the night station master's
office opened, and Tommy stepped out.

'He's
telephoning through to the shed,' he said, and his voice echoed in the empty
station. 'They'll look at the engine overnight.'

The
bloke in the pilot engine had now stirred himself, and was buffering up to the
back of our coaches. Tommy was heading for the platform edge, prior to
climbing down and uncoupling. But to spare his leg, I said I'd do it. I jumped
down onto the filthy ballast, and began unscrewing the brake pipe. As I worked,
I saw Tommy's boots, and he was talking at a great rate once again, as though
to keep my spirits up.

It'd
only be the work of a moment, he said, to run up to the shed, make out the card
describing our engine's defects, and book off. We'd have a bit of a spruce-up,
but not too much because we did want to look like engine men after all, then
it'd be off to Paradise to sort out that bad lot, perhaps with a stop for a
pint on the way. He generally took a pint at the end of a turn did Tommy, if
not several, and he didn't see why he should do any different this time. But I
didn't know about that. Now that the journey was done I wanted to be off to the
house of mystery as soon as possible, get in and out, have the whole business
done with.

It
would be another half hour, though, before we untangled ourselves from the
railway lands of Scarborough ...

The
pilot pulled back our coaches and took them off to the darkness, making for the
tunnel that led to the main Scarborough sidings at Gallows Close, where
excursion carriages by the hundred were stored in winter much as a lad's train
set is stowed in a cupboard when school term begins. We then worked the J Class
back to the engine shed, where Tommy fell into a long, echoing conversation
with a very tall fitter, whose long brown dust-coat looked as though it might
be hiding the fact that he was really two men, one standing on the shoulders
of the other. The shed was dark, and smelt of the dying fires that had been
dropped into the pits below the engines. Tommy Nugent's voice came drifting through
the floating wisps of smoke.

'...
And that's how I know it's not
the clack valve, you see. Now the stuff's not coming out full bore, so it's not
completely shot, but of course the higher the pressure the faster the leak,
and what it could really do with is ...'

Why
did he have to go on so? The valve needed replacing, and that was all about it.
They'd be very unlikely to have the right one in the Scarborough shed so we'd
have all the excuse we needed to hang about in the town for ages if we wanted.
I wandered into the booking-on vestibule, where there was a little less
floating smoke, and a little more light, thanks to two gas lamps sticking out
over a wide, green North Eastern Railway notice board. I walked up for a look.
I was informed that two new dummy signals were in place on the Scarborough
approach, and a certain water tank had been discontinued.