The Last Train to Scarborough (31 page)

In
the ship room the gas had not been lit, and the fire was low. Fielding, who
entered in advance of me, was stirring it as I walked up to the left hand window
and watched the storm. The wine and the earlier beer had made my head bad, and
I had a half a mind to lift the sash and let in the wind and flying rain. I was
in no mood for smoking a dry cigar but it would be a way of getting at
Fielding. Or did
he
want to get at me?

He
set down the poker and brought the cedar-wood box over. There were just two
short cigars rolling about inside. The Spanish sherry, I noticed, was waiting
on the small bamboo table. He poured two glasses, and we both drank. I saw for the
first time that he wore a signet ring on his right little finger.

'Quite
a panorama,' he said, indicating the window, 'as the post card people say.'

Has
he brought me up to show me the view? I didn't want the sherry, but I drank the
stuff anyway, as if doing so would bring the truth closer. But Fielding was
only smiling politely. He seemed to have no topic for conversation in his mind.

'What
ships do you see from here?' I asked, presently.

'Only
this morning,' he said, 'one of Mr Churchill's destroyers.'

A
noise came from the doorway, and Vaughan stood there in his Inverness cape,
grinning with eyes half closed. He was thoroughly drunk by now and breathing
noisily through his drooping moustache. He had not been invited, and I fancied
that Fielding did not look too pleased to see him, although of course he kept
up a show of politeness.

Vaughan
closed on me with a post card held out. It might have been the woman earlier
shown on the trapeze, only she now lounged under a tree, wearing no clothes as
usual but holding a parasol, which would not have made her decent even if she'd
chosen to use it for the purpose of
keeping
decent,
which she had not done. Vaughan showed it only to me. There was evidently no
question either of showing it to Fielding or of hiding it from him, but he
could see it from where he stood, anyhow.

'Class
A,' breathed Vaughan. 'Quite a naturalist, this one.'

'Naturist
,' said Fielding, 'and be so good
as to take her away'

Vaughan
grinned, turned on his heel, and quit the room. Where was he going? Off to
waste more of his allowance?

'I'm
used to Vaughan's bohemian ways,' said Fielding, now pouring us out another
glass each of the sherry. 'But it does you credit, Mr Stringer, the way that
you take him in your stride.'

He
sat down in his favourite chair, and I took the couch.

'I
suppose they're only the Old Masters brought up to date,' I said, thinking of
Vaughan's witness statement.

'It's
not the
highest
sort of indecency,' said Fielding.

'The
railway cards I liked though,' I said. 'It's not often you see a crossed signal
or an out-of-gauge load on a card.'

'Something
that might have appealed to a footplate man such as yourself, said Fielding,
'was our series of pictures of double headed trains.'

He
was going round the houses; this surely was not meant to be the subject of our
talk, but I said:

'You
know there are
triple-
headed trains working in some places ... Up the bank to
Ravenscar.'

'I
shouldn't wonder,' said Fielding. 'What is it there? Six hundred feet above sea
level?'

'Getting
on for,' I said. 'They're very
short
trains too.'

'So
you've a train with almost as many engines as carriages?' said Fielding,
blowing smoke, and tipping his head to one side. He was full of little cracks like
that. He moved his little glass from one hand to another, as though practising
receiving a glass daintily with both hands. I wondered whether he'd worn that
ring of his in York gaol. He'd have been asking for trouble if he had done. I
was bursting to ask him whether he really had been lagged, because I could
scarcely believe it.

'Vaughan's
money came today, of course,' I said, after an interval of silence.

'Yes,'
said Fielding. 'It's just enough to keep him idle. Some people might say that a
modest allowance has promoted lethargy in my case as well, but I think I'm a
little
more industrious than friend Vaughan.'

'You've
carried on various businesses,' I said.

'Yes,'
said Fielding, exhaling smoke, 'but who was it said that the key to success is
consistency to purpose?'

And
he tipped his head, as though really expecting me to supply the answer.

'I
don't know,' I said.

'Disraeli?'
he said, and he smiled, adding, 'I should have stuck at my original plan.'

'Oh.
What was that?'

'In
my youth, I trained as a lawyer.'

'A
solicitor?

He
nodded again.

'I
have it in mind to take articles myself,' I said, and he tipped his head. He
did not believe me for a minute, or did not credit that it was possible.

'It's
a hard road,' he said, and he left too long a silence before adding,'... but
the work ought to be well within the capacities of a man like yourself.'

Fielding
set out to be mannerly at all times, but occasionally he did not come up to
the mark. I glanced over to see Amanda Rickerby in the doorway. She stood swaying
somewhat, and said, 'There's a person to see you downstairs, Mr Fielding.'

He
rose, half bowed at her, and went off through the open door of the ship room.

'Who
was it?' I enquired of the landlady. But she walked to one of the two windows without
replying.

'What
a day,' she said, after a space. And then, remembering my question, 'It was
someone from the gramophone society.'

She
continued to stare out at the German Sea. Here was another of her silent goes; there'd
been one during breakfast, and one in the kitchen not half an hour since. Was
it the same thought every time that kept her silent? A ship putting out black
smoke was stationary on the horizon. It might as well have been a factory at
sea. Miss Rickerby turned and saw the decanter of Spanish sherry.

'Do
you want a glass?' she said, moving fast towards it. 'Not that it's mine to
offer.'

'Better
not,' I said. 'I've just had two.'

She
returned to the window with her glass, looking out to sea again. I stood by the
next window, so that we were about three feet apart. I did not know what would
happen, or what I would do. I was in fact paralysed by indecision, and so it
was strange to see, down on the Prom, a tall, thin man moving with great
purpose. He wore a Macintosh and a bowler, and was running at the top of his
speed through the rain. He skidded up to the beach steps, half stumbled down
them in his haste, and continued running over the black beach, going full pelt,
heading straight for the waves, where he came to a sudden halt. Amanda Rickerby
turned to me and smiled sadly.

'Well,
I thought he was going to do ...
something
,' she
said.

We
faced each other now, and she took a step towards me, with face downturned. She
was a head smaller than me, and I could see the top of her curls, and then,
when she tilted her face upwards, the powder on her cheekbones, the blueness
and greyness that made the overall greenness of her wide-set eyes.

'I
am quite drunk, Mr Stringer,' she said.

She
appeared to be looking at my North Eastern Railway badge again, really
concentrating on it. She took my right hand in hers. Her hand was dry, and she
moved it about over mine in a way that was somehow not restless but very
calming - the right thing. I could hear footsteps on the stairs.

'You
had better lock your room tonight,' she said, quickly.

'Why?'

'Probably
no reason,' she said, withdrawing her hand, and giving me a smile that was
natural, quick, charming, and just about the most mysterious thing I've ever
seen.

Adam
Rickerby stood in the doorway.

'Gas
'as run out,' he said. 'Meter wants feeding.'

Amanda
Rickerby smiled brightly and much more straightforwardly at me. 'Do you have
sixpence, Mr Stringer? I'll pay you back later.'

Amanda
Rickerby went downstairs in the company of her brother.

Events
were now rushing on faster than my thoughts and faster also than my morals.
What had she meant by advising me to lock my room? Did she mean that otherwise
she would come to visit me in the night, and that she needed to be saved from
herself? What was Vaughan up to? Mysterious and glooming in the seafront pub
... in better spirits during luncheon ... but now making off again. And for
what purpose had Fielding taken me up to the ship room? But as I stepped out of
that room, one thing was certain: I was alone on the first floor of the house,
and both Fielding's and Miss Rickerby's bedroom doors stood open.

I
walked into Fielding's first; I hardly cared if I was discovered. In fact
being discovered might save me from
myself.
It was a
big room, papered in plain green with a red border, better kept than the rest
of the house, and very calm and neat, and made more so by the sight of the
lashing rain and wild dark sea beyond the two windows. There were red rugs on
wide black boards of the kind seen in inns, bookshelves in alcoves. You had to
look hard to see the blisters in the wallpaper and the fraying in the carpet,
for the gas was not lit, nor was the fire. There were two closets, a tall chest
of drawers, a folded table and a smaller table by the bed head with a little
drawer set into it. Over the fancy ironwork of the fireplace was a painting of
a ship foundering. I fixed my eye on the chest of drawers, and I marched over
the carpet towards it, feeling sure they must have heard the drumming of my
boot heels on the floor below.

On
the top of the chest of drawers lay an ebony tray with hair brushes and a shoe
horn. I reached out with two hands, and pulled open the top drawer to its
fullest extent. A smell of coal tar soap came up. The drawer contained a
quantity of Howard Fielding's under-clothes neatly folded, and many little
boxes. With Fielding, it seemed that almost everything came in boxes. There
were several round collar boxes, and I quickly lifted the lids of two. They
contained collars. I then lifted the lid of a green velvet-lined one. The
inside of the lid was white silk, and the words 'Best Quality' were written
there. It held solitaires and cuff links. A tortoiseshell one held more cuff
links and Fielding's collection of stick pins and tie clips.

I
shut the drawer and opened the next one down: comforters, socks, under-shirts,
ties ... and more boxes. I opened the biggest box, made of wood. It held
candles and matches. Another wooden one held a tangle of alberts. Next to this
was a felt bag with a drawstring. I pulled at the string with two hands, and
looked down on half a dozen straight razors with pearl handles. The biggest box
was leather covered. I opened it and saw a vanity set, with scissors,
nail-shaper, toothbrush all held in place on red velvet - and two twenty pound
notes folded in half on top. I shut the drawer, and stood still, listening to
the house. Did I hear a door slam downstairs?

I
marched up to the sea picture: 'Wreck of a Brig off Whitby', it was called. It
showed a ship being rolled over in high seas; two men looked at the brig from
the beach, and they were evidently a gormless pair. Why didn't they do
something about it?

But
I felt the same. I had discovered nothing. Well, nothing except the money, and
what did that signify? It was a good amount, but a fellow was entitled to keep
forty pounds cash in his bedroom after all. I was still half drunk, and my head
was pounding as I inspected the rest of the room. I threw open the first of the
closets, releasing a smell of mothballs. Fielding hung
his
coats up all right - Adam Rickerby would have approved. The
two had neatness in common, although they'd hardly exchanged a word since I'd
been in the house. I moved over to the bookshelves. Novels, collected numbers
of
Notes and Queries,
a digest of
The Railway Magazine, Famous Sea
Tales, Marine Painters of Britain, A Catalogue for the Collectors of Post
Cards, The Literary Antiquary;
some volumes on book collecting,
some guides to Scarborough. I walked to the little bedside table, opened the
drawer set into it, and here was not a box but an envelope. On the front was
written: 'Railway Selection - Line-side Curiosities & C'. The flap of the
envelope was tucked into place but not sealed. I lifted it up, and there were
two post cards: the first showed a woman in a riding hat sitting side saddle on
a white horse; the second showed her sitting astride the horse. She was quite
naked in both.

I
froze, listened to the house; watched the door. There came faint voices from
below, nothing besides.