The Necropolis Railway (20 page)

I leapt down as soon as we pulled up because all of a sudden I could not stand to be close to half-link men. As I walked along the platform, I struck the Necropolis toffs climbing from their carriage and talking of some private business. First down was the young one, who I heard saying, 'He was not of our kidney.' He then gave a hand to Erskine Long, who, from his looks, was back to his old fretful self, and was saying, 'But what would you have brought it to, Mr Argent?'

1
should like to have brought it to a vote
’
the younger man replied.

Erskine Long put his top hat on his head and said, 'But it has all been carried on with the agreement of the board, has it not?'

'Not precisely, no. I should have said main force was nearer the mark.'

A third gent, who had come out of the carriage and was putting on black gloves, said to the young man: 'But your objection is not to the sales but rather to the -'

Argent nodded once, sharply, at this new fellow. 'Primarily it is to the terms on which the ground has been sold
’
he said.

In spite of using my slowest saunter, I had moved some way out of earshot by then, and they were quitting the station in double-quick time, heading for their beano at the American Hotel. Alone on the platform, I thought of how quickly the darkness came down these days, and how quickly the Necropolis packed up. Every day, I thought, is a half day here.

When we got back, Nine Elms was freezing. I went in to see the Governor. His two fires were roaring and there were a couple of Christmas cards on the wall behind him. I wondered who could have sent them, for he was out with every man in the shed.

He was looking at one of the big ledgers he kept on the shelves behind him. For the first time he had his black frock-coat off: there was a red waistcoat underneath, and this, with his white hair and red face, made him look like Father Christmas himself. With Nolan sending sour looks my way, the Governor told me that, provided I kept him informed of any news or events touching mortalities past or present, I could carry on cleaning for the half-link until Christmas, although having given long consideration to the matter, he had decided I was not to go off-shed again. He then asked whether I wanted to take any days for Christmas aside from Christmas Day, on which Nine Elms was closed. This all came out of the blue, and I suddenly had an idea of how I could use the time. I had five days annual allowance of holiday. I asked for Tuesday 22nd to Christmas Eve, and Boxing Day and the 28th too. The 27th was a Sunday so this gave me a good long run for action. The Governor looked surprised -he must have thought I was really going to make a Christmas of it - but he put me down for all these in another one of his books.

As he did so, I asked whether he'd made a note in any of those volumes as to Henry Taylor's last appearance at the shed.

'It wouldn't be in there,' he said, 'and I can't recall it.'

'Would you be able to tell me the last time he went off-shed?'

The Governor frowned a little at this, but after a few seconds he pulled down one of the volumes, searched for a page, ran his finger down a column, and said, 'Wednesday 12 August - to Brookwood.'

'And who was he riding out with on that day?'

The Governor looked down at the page again. 'Arthur Hunt,' he said, 'with Vincent doing a firing turn.' He shut his book with a bang, and said, 'Watch yourself.' He looked at me for a long time and smiled.

In the Governor, at least, I had struck a good man at Nine Elms.

Chapter Twenty

Friday 18 December

On the morning after Smith's funeral, Crook eyed me very closely as I took my token. Walking across the barrow boards towards the shed, I had to stop for one of the two Piano Fronts to come out. Clive Castle was on it. He also gave me a long look, and the only good thing to say was that there was as much curiosity as coldness in it, which I put down to him trying to guess how I would fare with the man who'd brought me on burnt to a cinder.

When the Piano Front had gone past, I saw Vincent and Hunt coming out of the Old Shed talking closely, and I couldn't help but wonder what business had taken them in there.

Then Fl
annagan was before me: he had one boot in the ash and one on the track, so he was about on a level. He told me, in between a good deal of cursing, to light the fire in Thirty-One because they wanted to find a leak of steam. This was a turn up, and I quite fancied the idea of it, but I said I took my orders from the Governor.

'He's taken sick again,' he said, lurching towards me and putting on a boss, 'so hard lines: Mr Nolan says you'll have your orders from me.'

I followed him up to the engine. 'All the water needed's in the tanks,' he said, and left me to it.

Well, I gave it a go but I still could not throw coal to the front of the box, and the harder I tried, the more my shovel banged against the top of the firehole. I started picking up the lumps and shying them down to the front by hand but even that didn't really come off because they were so heavy. Half an hour later, with bad coal cuts to my hands, I set off to look for kindling, but naturally nobody was helpful because I was the Governor's little favourite and had been Smith's little favourite, and that last gentleman dying didn't seem to have done me any good at all. At the top of the shed I did come across an old ladder, though, which I took back to Thirty-One and began smashing up, feeding the rungs into the firehole. Then I went to the rag store, where a bloke was ripping rags. I said, 'Have you got any soaked in oil?' and he said, 'Fuck off.' So I went over to the oil cans with a wheelbarrow full of rags. The oil cans were upside down in a line in the most freezing part of the shed; there was daylight and cold racing in through holes in the walls all around, piercing me like swords. It was a puzzle why they had the oil in the coldest corner, because when the temperature was below a certain level it would hardly flow. I stood there holding the rags under the oil taps. I knew it wasn't the right way of going about the job, but I doubted anyone would put me straight.

After a while I wheeled my rags back to Thirty-One, and I'd just begun stuffing them in the hole when Arthur Hunt sprang onto the footplate. We stared at each other for a long time. 'Get out of it,' he said, so I started to climb down from the footplate on the other side. 'Not off the engine, you clot,' he said, and there was something about the way he spoke that made me look at his face again, but there was nothing there except the usual fierceness.

His long body suddenly folded, and he was looking through the firehole. 'What's that in there?' he said.

'A ladder,' I said.

He nodded; he didn't seem to think it was so out of the way. 'All right,' he said. 'Go to the stores and get a tin of kerosene. Tell them you've been sent by Lord Rosebury.'

In the stores, they were very surprised to hear me come out with it but Lord Rosebury did the trick, and they gave me the stuff in double-quick time. I fairly ran back - for this turn up had put me in a fever of excitement. Hunt was winding the rags around bits of wood, and shoving them through the firehole door. When he'd done this, he took out a match, lit it, and held the flame between our two faces. He turned and dropped the match in the hole, and the fire started straight off with a soft rolling roar. 'One match,' he said, turning back to face me, 'gives you five hundred horses. Not such a bad exchange, is it?'

Then, for a marvellous moment, he smiled, and my whole dream of high speed seemed to come alive. 'A life on the footplate is the best sort, isn't it?' I ventured, because although I was somewhat more doubtful on that score than I had been before, I did still hold it to be true.

'An engine driver,' said Arthur Hunt, 'is an Adonis in every way: a first-class man in mind and body, and it is no wonder that he commands the respect of his fellows as a result.'

I nodded; this really was a bit of all right.

'But a driver is also a piece of dirt beneath the chariot wheels of the big man,' continued Hunt, becoming fierce once more. 'It's, "On that engine or you'll be up the bloody road in two minutes." You're hanging out to get your air, you're choking to bloody death, everything's red hot, you've got wind, rain, fog, broken rails -' He broke off here and, looking back into the firehole, said, 'You need to put a bit more on at the front.'

'Oh, but how?' I said.

There and then he showed me how to swing a shovel. He showed me how the common sort of fireman did it, then how the better sort went about the job. The thing was to let your bottom hand slide on the handle, and not to
try,
so I tried very hard at not trying but it didn't really come off, so Hunt said, 'Imagine you're chucking the lumps at White-Chester - aim straight for the bollocks.' That didn't really do it either, but he made out I was improving. He told me that any fireman will be chucking coal for years on end before being passed for driving, and that you'd finish up a cripple unless you kept your movements to a minimum.

I was just wondering why he had stopped putting me on ice when he said, 'We have a mutual improvement class on

Monday evening at eight o'clock. Would you come along?'

'Who will be there?' I said, after a pause.

'Besides myself?' said Hunt, and he was back to his dead voice now. 'Besides myself there will be Vincent, Mr Rose
...
Mr Nolan and Mr Flannagan will come along too, I should think.'

'Mr Flannagan?' I exclaimed.

'He is all for improvement,' said Hunt.

Well, I thought, there's a lot of scope for it with him.

'You are not to let on to anyone about it,' he said.

'Where does it happen, Mr Hunt?'

'In the office at the back of the Old Shed.'

'Of course,' I said. "Thank you very much, Mr Hunt.'

I tried to smile at him, and he tried to smile back.

Chapter Twenty-One

Saturday 19 December - Sunday 20 December

'How is the engine-driving life?' asked my landlady, who was at her boiler. 'Fine,' I said.

She stirred my clothes into the mixture. 'Except that you are not driving engines,' she said.

She never ceased to remind me of that.

'And you do not sound as keen on whatever it is you are doing as you were before.'

'There was another murder,' I said, so as to get at her.

'My goodness,' she said. But she didn't seem very interested, and nor did she turn around; she was in a devilish strop, and I was beginning to think I should have passed by her kitchen and gone straight to the Citadel this Saturday night, the one place I could be sure of putting aside thoughts of Arthur Hunt's strange behaviour and the mutual improvement class on the Monday to come, where I would be at the mercy - in a dark and deserted shed full of crippled locomotives - of all the many enemies I had managed to make in such a short time at Nine Elms.

'A man who used to be a director of the London and South Western was burned to death in his flat,' I said, because her behaviour did not put me in the mood to mollycoddle.

'And was it an accident?' she asked, still with her back to me, and now scraping soap into the boiler.

‘
I
don't think so,' I said.

I wanted to give it all to her straight to see how the ordinary sort of person might react. Then I started with my questions, which were the one bit of power I had in London. 'When Henry Taylor lodged here, did anyone ever come calling for him?'

'One man came calling.'

'What did he look like?'

'I only remember one thing about him.'

'What?'

'Teeth.'

Mike, I thought.

'It is why no one will lodge here,' she said, 'because they know what happened.'
‘I
lodge here,' I said.

'But you didn't know. I haven't had any luck with my notices, in any event.'

I thought of the one she had given me, which I had quite forgotten to do anything about. My landlady washed our clothes in silence, and I fell into my habit of reading the names on the tins on the mantelpiece: Bird's Eye Custard, Marigold Flake, somebody's candied peel, Goddard's Plate Powder, raisins, currants.

'What's wrong?' I said eventually, and not in a very friendly way, either.

'You come in here,' she said, still not turning around, 'and all you do is tell me about your horrible rattling trains, and men crowning each other and burning each other, and you keep coming back to the boy who was here, who I only saw half a dozen times, and you make me feel awful about taking his money in advance, and keeping his book. You shouldn't be in this lodge if you don't like it.'