The Last Train to Scarborough (30 page)

'Which
ones?' I enquired.

'The
Night Mail "Down".'

I
was impressed, for the Night Mail 'Down', with carriages supplied by the Great
Northern and staff by the General Post Office, was
the
TPO.

'You
must have lived in London at that time,' I said, 'since you'd have worked out
of Euston?'

'Born
in London, Jim,' said Vaughan, and I wondered whether that alone accounted for
his appearing to be of a slightly superior class. I tried to picture him
walking every morning through the great arch in front of Euston station.

'Did
three years on that,' he said, 'clerking in the sorting carriages
and
...
well, I saw the quantity of cards being sent.'

'As
a misprint in
The Times
once had it, Mr Stringer,' Fielding put in, 'the down
postal leaves London every evening with two unsorted letters and five thousand
engines.'

I
grinned at him.

'Did
you quit?' I enquired, turning back to Vaughan.

'Chucked
it up, yes. Didn't care for the motion of the train, Jim; gave me a sort of sea
sickness.'

'Mai de mer,'
said Fielding, and everything
stopped, as though we were all listening for the sound of the sea coming from
just yards beyond the wall of the kitchen. Everything stopped, that is, save
for Adam Rickerby, who had been put to chopping parsley with a very small
knife, and was evidently making a poor fist of it. Mrs Dawson was eyeing him. I
knew she was going to step in, and I wondered whether he'd really fly into rage
this time - and with knife in hand. But there was something very kindly about
the way she took the knife from the lad, saying, 'Let's do the job properly.
You're worse than me, love.'

With
Mrs Dawson looking on, and the parsley chopped, Adam Rickerby then lowered the
haddock into a big pot, poured in some milk, and set it on the range. At
length, the room began to be filled with a sort of fishy fog. Theo Vaughan had
finished his wine, and was now helping himself from the beer barrel on the
table, saying 'You sticking with the wine, Jim?'

In-between
doing bits of cooking in consultation with Mrs Dawson, Adam Rickerby was trying
to make things orderly in the kitchen. He was forever shifting the knife
polisher about on the table, and presently took it away to the sideboard.
Amanda Rickerby, disregarding her pen and paper, was now sipping wine at a
great rate and saying things such as, 'I do like it when we're all in, and it's
raining outside.' She then turned to me, enquiring, 'Tell us all about trains,
Mr Stringer. Have you ever eaten a meal on one?'

Adam
Rickerby eyed me as I revolved the question. As a copper, I'd quite often taken
dinner or luncheon in a restaurant car, usually with the Chief and at his
expense. Would an ordinary fireman do it? Had I ever done it when I'd
been
an ordinary fireman, leaving aside sandwiches and bottled
tea on the footplate? No.

'Do
you count light refreshments in a tea car?' I said.

'Yes!'
Amanda Rickerby said, very excited. 'Is there one running into Scarborough?'

'In
summer there is,' I said.

'And
might they do a little more than a tea? Not a joint but a chop or a steak?'

'I
think so.'

'And
a nice glass of wine? When does the first one run?'

'May
sort of time,' I said, and she shut her eyes for a space, contemplating the
idea.

'Cedar-wood
box after luncheon, Mr Stringer?' Fielding called over to me.

I
nodded back. 'Obliged to you,' I said.

Miss
Rickerby was standing, leaning forward to pour me more wine, and she threatened
to over-topple onto me, which I wished she
would
do.

'Care
for another glass?' she enquired, sitting back down.

Vaughan
gave a mighty sniff, and said, 'You ought to have asked that
before
you filled it, Miss
R ...
strictly
speaking.'

But
she ignored him in favour of eyeing me.

'Well,
it goes down a treat,' I said.

'Just
so!' said Fielding, and Aijianda Rickerby turned sharply about and looked at
him.

'Are
you married, Mr Stringer?' she said, facing me again - and I knew I'd failed to
keep the look of panic from my face.

'Well...'
I said again.

'Three
wells make a river and you in the river make it bigger,' said Mrs Dawson from
the pantry, where she was making a list. It was an old Yorkshire saying, but
what did it mean, and what did
she
mean by it?

'You
either are or you aren't,' said Amanda Rickerby. 'I mean, it ought not to
require thought.'

I
was fairly burning up with embarrassment. But Mrs Dawson had hardly looked up
from her pencil and note pad while making her remark; Fielding was taking the
corkscrew to another bottle; Adam Rickerby was stirring a pot; Theo Vaughan was
biting his long thumbnail while reading, and the one little pointer on the gas
meter that moved around fast was moving around just as fast as ever.

'No,'
I said, 'I'm not,' and the cork came out as Fielding said, 'Oh dear.'

'What's
up?' said Vaughan, looking up.

'It's
corked,' said Fielding.

'It
was,'
said Vaughan, 'but now you've taken the cork
out.'

'No,
I mean the cork has crumbled,' said Fielding.

'What's
the harm?' said Vaughan, turning the page of the paper. 'You weren't thinking
of putting it back
in,
were you?'

'You
don't seem to understand,' said Fielding.

I
had betrayed Lydia my wife: our eleven years together, our children ... I told
myself I'd done it in order to keep in with Miss Amanda Rickerby. I had done it
for the sake of the investigation, and no other reason. She was on the marry
and it was important for me to keep her interest in me alive in order to
acquire more data. Amanda Rickerby was grinning at me, and I believed she knew.
Yes,
she
knew all right.

I
drained my glass, sat back and said, 'You say that Blackburn jumped into the
sea, but would that really have killed him? Just to jump in off the harbour
wall?'

'I'll
tell you what it wouldn't have done, Jim,' said Vaughan, still looking over
Sporting Life.
'It wouldn't have warmed him up:

'Lucifer
matches, Mr Stringer,' said Amanda Rickerby. 'You can suck the ends and then
you'll die. Perhaps he did that.'

'While
he was bobbing about in the sea, you mean?' asked Vaughan. 'And you have to
suck every match in the box, you know.' 'My dad', said Miss Rickerby, 'did it
by drinking a bottle of spirits every day for forty years.'

'Yes,
and you think
on
about that, Amanda dear,' said Mrs Dawson. 'I don't like to
see wine on the table so early in the day.'

'It's
a special occasion, Mrs Dawson,' said Amanda Rickerby, and she rose to her
feet. With a special smile in my direction, she said, 'Won't be a minute,' and
quit the room.

Theo
Vaughan was still sticking his finger into the tin of Golden Syrup.

'I
like treacle,' he said.

'Evidently,'
Fielding put in.

'I
like it on porridge,' said Vaughan.

'That
would be sacrilege to the Scots,' said Fielding.

'If
you put it into porridge,' said Vaughan, 'it allows you to see
into
the porridge.'

'Very
useful I'm sure,' said Fielding.

'It
goes like the muslin dresses of the ladies on the beach when the sun is low. They're
sort of.'..'

'They
are
transparent,
Vaughan,' said Fielding.

'Noticed
it yourself, have you?'

'I
have
not!

'Mr
Vaughan, please remember there are ladies present,' said Mrs Dawson. But in
fact she herself was the only one in the room at that moment, and she was
putting on her coat and gloves, at which I saw my opportunity.

'I'll
show you to the door, Mrs Dawson,' I said. Once out in the hallway, I said,
'Very good house, this. It's a credit to you - and to the boy.'

'He's
a bit mental, the poor lamb,' Mrs Rickerby said, fixing her wrap, 'but he does
his best.' 'I'm thinking of trying to help him in some way. I know he has a
strong interest in railways ..

She
eyed me. The clock ticked. I couldn't keep her long, since she was evidently
over-heating in her coat and wrap.

'I
know he likes to read about them,' I said, 'or to be read
to
about them.'

'I've
read to him on occasion,' said
Mrs Dawson, 'when we've done our chores of a morning.'

'About
what exactly?'

She
kept silence for a moment, reaching for the latch of the door. I opened the
door for her.

'Youth
cut to death by express train,' she said. 'Collision in station, engine on
platform. Driver killed, fireman scalded. Car dashes onto level crossing as
train approaches... He knows his letters well enough to spot a railway item in
the newspaper, and then everything has to stop while you read it out.'

'Why?'

'Why?
It's just how he is. It's how his condition takes him. He's a very simple lad,
is Adam. He has this house, which he tries to keep up. He
did
have Peter...'

'Peter?'

'His
cat that died.'

The
rain made a cold wind as it fell onto Bright's Cliff.

'...
And he has his little boat,' Mrs
Dawson added.

'Oh?
Where's that?'

'Sometimes
in the stables over the road, sometimes on the beach, sometimes in the
harbour.'

'How
does he move it about?'

'On
a cart.'

'He
goes in for a bit of sailing, does he?'

'It's
a rowing boat.'

In
the kitchen I'd thought Mrs Dawson a kindly woman, which perhaps she was, but she
didn't seem to have taken to me and I wondered whether she was the first person
in Paradise to have guessed that I was a spy. Or was it just that - being
married herself and a woman experienced in the ways of men - she'd somehow
known I was lying about not having a wife?

As
Mrs Dawson stepped out into the rain, I heard a footfall on the dark stairs.
Amanda Rickerby was coming down, and I returned with her in silence to the
kitchen, which was a less homely place without Mrs Dawson. It was too hot and
everyone looked red. Vaughan was moving some pots and pans aside so that he
could get at the beer barrel again; Fielding remained with his back to the sink
with arms folded and head down, evidently lost in a dream, but he looked up as
we walked in, and Adam Rickerby approached his sister, carrying the fish in its
baking pan.

She
said, 'Oh dear, Adam love, it's over-cooked.'

She
drew towards her another dish.

'The
only thing for it,' she said, 'is to break it up, put it in this, and make a
pie.'

'A
pie?
'
he fairly gasped, and he looked all about in desperation. As he did so, it was
Fielding's turn to quit the room. In the interval of his absence, Amanda
Rickerby played with a salt cellar, completely self-absorbed, as it seemed to
me; Vaughan pulled at his 'tache and read his paper, and Adam Rickerby fell to
tidying the kitchen with a great clattering of crockery and ironmongery. When
Fielding returned a few minutes later, the lad was arranging the objects on the
table: he wanted the knife polisher in a line with the vegetable boiler, the
toast rack, the big tea pot, and so on.

'Adam,
love,' said his sister, 'don't take on. I'm just going to ask Mr Stringer about
summer trains, I'll see to the cooking in a moment.'

'It's
too late,' he said. 'It'll be tea time any minute.'

'Well,
stop moving things about, anyhow.'

'I
en't movin' things
about,'
said Adam Rickerby. 'I'm movin' 'em
back!

So
saying, he walked directly through the door that gave onto the scullery, and I
heard the opening and closing of a further door, indicating that he had gone
into his own quarters at the back of the house.

'If
luncheon is off then so am I,' said Vaughan, rising to his feet.

'Mr
Stringer,' Fielding enquired from his post at the sink, 'will you come upstairs
now for that cigar?'

And
I somehow couldn't refuse him.