The Necropolis Railway (13 page)

‘I
collected it from upstairs,' she went on, 'and put it together with the household load. Then I sorted the whites from the coloureds, and gave everything a good scrub with the brush on the washboards. I broke off to start the fire under the boiler, before boiling up the whites, giving them a good poke about all the time with the stick, and using plenty of soap, which I cut off the big block. After that I rinsed and blued to bring the whites up to white. Next the coloureds had to be done, and after that everything was rinsed and put through the mangle. Some went out on the line to dry, and some were put up here.' She pointed to the swinging airers. 'Next, I cleaned out the copper and scrubbed it for next time.' 'But it's still going -'

'When I had finished,' she said, cutting me off, 'I looked again at all your clothes, and realised they were still in a terrible state, so I did them all again.'

'It's because I'm cleaning engines,' I said.

'By transferring all the dirt to yourself,' she said. 'Why do they not give you something to wear other than ordinary clothes?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'In America, footplate men do have uniforms.' She looked at me very curiously.

"They're blue,' I added, wanting to keep my explanation to a minimum so as to avoid being called boring once again.

'Blue would be a good colour for it,' she said, 'and pitch black would be better still. I see no reason why the trains cannot be electrical, and they will be in time. They will be quicker, cleaner, less noisy, and we will not ail be living in this hell.'

I was knocked for six by all this. I said, 'In Baytown, where I come from, they do the washing on a Monday.'

'They,'
she said. "That is exactly it.'

'We had a part-time slavey to do ours,' I said, adding: 'You object to the work, I suppose?'

'What else is open to me? Sweating at the pickle factory or the rag shop.'

I said, 'You could go into an office and be a typewriter.'
‘I
don't mind it so much,' she said, ignoring me. 'My father is rather old-fashioned, but a good man, and I will come into his two houses. Then what a difference you'll see.'

'Gas upstairs?' I said.

'Do leave off
’
she said. 'Electric light!'

'You are very up-to-date, a modern woman!' I said, for I had heard that expression somewhere.

‘I
hope to be when I come into the houses; and then I'll be free, too,' she said, at which she gave me a big, sudden smile that was as shocking as if the lion had toppled off the top of the brewery.

‘I
have heard of free women
’
I said, 'but never met one before.'

She was still giving me that really big smile.

I said, 'Shall I tell you something that isn't boring?'

'If you can,' she said, still smiling.

'A man was killed at the shed this week.'

That did for the smile; but it was not boring.

'Killed accidentally?'

'No. If you ask me, somebody crowned him.'

As I said this she carried on with her work, but she must have let her eye linger on the book that was on the table, half underneath the towels. Nothing but a matter of weeks in London, and I was looking for strangeness all about me. I picked up the towels, and my landlady said with a sigh, 'Hawk eyes.' It was
Continuous Engine Brakes by
M. Reynolds. But the important words were written by hand on the first page: 'H. Taylor, April XII1902.'

'He wasn't here for above two months
’
said my landlady, 'and then he
...'

'What?'

She shrugged.

'You might have told me
’
1
said.

She said nothing to this; she did not seem greatly distressed by whatever had happened to Henry Taylor.
‘I
suppose he owes you money
’
I said. 'Oh, no. It was a pound down for him as well.' 'What happened to his things?'

'His father came for the box - a gentleman from Dorset.'

I imagined Henry Taylor sitting on the platform of a halt in the Dorset hills with the SM's flowers behind and Rowland Smith walking up. In my mind's eye, I could not make Dorset any different from Yorkshire, and I could not make Henry Taylor any different from myself at Grosmont.

'The worst of it is,' I said,
‘I
think
he
was done in too - just like Mike.'

'The one who was crowned this week?'

I nodded.

'This is Waterloo,' said my landlady, 'and it is a very bad place. Men are the slaves of the factories and the railways, and the women are the slaves of the men - whether in the homes or the night-houses. There is drunkenness, opium, cramped quarters and all that goes along with it.'

'But you live here.'

'I have no choice, and have my church and my god, Mr Stringer,' she said.

As, by that most unexpected remark, my prospects of making her my girl disappeared, she seemed to become still more beautiful.

"The book was left under the bed,' my landlady went on, and she handed it to me.

'What did you know about Henry Taylor?'

'He was handsome enough.'

I did not like to hear that.

'When did he die?' I said, quite harshly.

'It is not known that he did.'

'When did he go from here, then?'

She was back at the boiler now, poking at the clothes very lazily. 'August.' 'When in August?'

'He was last in this house on the twentieth of August - a Wednesday. I happened to be here the night before, and I heard him leave for work.'

'At what time?'

'Six. Two hours later they sent a man around - a very young man.' "The call boy.' She said nothing. 'Do you mean the call boy?'
‘I
suppose so. He was a boy, and he called.' 'Do you know which way Taylor went to work?' 'Along the river, I think.'

She had gradually turned away from me as she spoke, and I saw she was no longer stirring but simply holding the stick in the boiling water. Then she sniffed mightily, or so I thought, but at the same time she dragged one of my undershirts out of the water and held it in the air with a waterfall coming off it. She could have been crying but it might have been the steam on her face; her eyes, at any rate, were prettier and more full of light and darkness than ever. She let the undershirt fall back and, turning around to face me, said, 'You are like a detective.'

For the first time I felt that I had the upper hand with her. 'You've talked to detectives?' I said.

"Three times,' she said, and then, being sure she was about to cry but hating the thought of it, I felt that this was enough.

I slapped the table with my cap, and said, 'The pharmacy over the road has been telling me, by a dozen adverts all across its front, to "Buy Vianola Soap".'

'And you have finally given in,' she said, smiling somewhat again.

I nodded.

'Now I am going to have a wash.'

'Good,' she said, and with her mystery smile returning we were back on equal terms.

She pushed one of the towels towards me with the book now on top instead of underneath. She reached up to a shelf, took down a bowl and filled it with hot water. I walked upstairs and unwrapped my soap, which was rather on the small side but took away the stink of Nine Elms Loco Shed in an instant. I lay down on the bed and slept for half an hour. When I woke up the sky was a smokier red, and the banging and the crashing were still going on but further out in the distance. I looked at my room - at all the things that Henry Taylor had looked at from the same truckle bed. It was a lonely spot in a crowded place, but when I thought of my landlady downstairs I felt that, whatever lay in store for me, I wouldn't mind for having been here with her for a while.

Chapter Fourteen

Saturday 5 December

continued

I walked down Lower Marsh, and had no trouble: there were too many girls about for that, even though they were lasses of that particular sort - that watchful sort.

The Citadel was a round pub with mighty lanterns dangling over each door (except that one had been smashed off, leaving just the gas pipe, which came down and around like the trunk of an elephant). These you passed underneath to get to a circular bar with mirrors around the top, the bull's eye of the boozer. On the ceiling were paintings of dancing ladies, and there were signs everywhere saying 'Piano Most Nights'. I couldn't see a piano anywhere but I soon learnt that you didn't need one in the Citadel because after a while it just erupted into song, like tinder catching fire.

I took a pint of Red Lion and carried it across to a seat marked 'The Comfortable Corner', although there were no corners anywhere, the place being circular, so this was perhaps a joke. The joxies on the next seat were certainly laughing as I sat down. I had never seen such pretty drunks.

I had bought my pint, thinking my first would also have to be my last, but when I got to the end of it the Citadel seemed quite the place to be, and, sitting there, I began to think once again that progress was being made in my thoughts. But that did not last long, for they all went wrong in the end, like the broken gas pipe: Rose and Hunt were true engine men put to work on a sleepy branch, for which they would have hated the bosses like old boots - and Rowland Smith had been one of the bosses. But then he had also put himself on this balmy branch, and that after having risen to the top of the South Western in what must have been very short order, for he was still a young man.

As to Vincent, I was out with him, but like as not that was only because he knew I was up to the mark for an engine man and might beat him to the regulator. But why could he not relax even for a minute?

Then again, as to the murders
...
were they really anything of the sort? Perhaps Henry Taylor was only lying low, and maybe Mike had fallen on the footplate and hit his head on the handbrake or had some other accident of the sort not unusual around any engine shed.

I started thinking again of Vincent, and when I looked up I had hocussed him out of the air, for he was standing before me with a pewter in his hand. (He's putting on swank, trying to look like an engine man, I thought.) There was a circular sort of fellow next to him, also carrying a pint, and wearing a crushed and twisted black suit. He was shouting, 'Trousers! I say, trousers!' to someone in another part of the pub. I had seen him somewhere before.

'All right there?' said Vincent, over the noise of the other.

So he was talking to me again, and very matey with it.

'This is Mack,' he said, pointing to his pal. 'Saturday Night Mack, I call him.'

Saturday Night Mack was still yelling to someone in the middle of the pub, and it struck me that he was the fellow who'd been holding the brush and being scolded at the Necropolis station.

'Mack!' shouted Vincent, 'pay attention, man!'

He introduced us with words that let me know I was in for more sensation. 'Mack works for the Necropolis. You went into their station on the Red Bastard, didn't you?' Vincent added.

'Thirty-One,' I said, 'yes.'

Vincent sat down in front of me and put his pewter on the table, while Saturday Night Mack carried on shouting across to a gingery bloke.

'Well, you've been a bit bloody silent on the subject, for

Christ's sake,' said Vincent.

'So have you. You've been a bit silent on all subjects, if you ask me.'

'Well, I'm all ears now. Who was Barney's mate for the trip?' 'Mike.'

'Oh crumbs. It knocked me for six when I heard. I was on leave, you know.'

'But who would do that to Mike?' I said. 'Search me,' said Vincent. 'He was a good fellow,' I said. 'Top hole,' said Vincent.

We both took a drink. Talking to this kid?, I thought, was like walking on hot coals.

'Bit of an over-steamer, though,' I said.
‘I
noticed when I went on that trip with him.'