The Necropolis Railway (25 page)

I used what remained of the light to fly back through the book looking for any other mentions of Stanley that I had missed. I came upon just one, during the June meeting: the Secretary had been requested to ask Mr Stanley to consider giving his Tuesday address on alternate weeks only, 'it having come to the attention of the Directors that the audience frequently consists of one or two people, and sometimes fewer' - but this, I knew, had not come about; the address had remained weekly.

I closed the book for 1903, and returned it to the shelf. I then stood before the fireplace and looked up at the pictures on the chimney breast, searching for some sign of curiosity in the faces of the Necropolis chairmen, but all that happened was that the clock ticked and the darkness grew.

Ten minutes later I was back on the tracks. The trains had not yet started up again but the lamps were on, showing me that the snow had been replaced by rain, which was coming down slowly. I could have gone into Waterloo in any old way but I marched in on the 'up' side so as to be quite correct, and to keep a little bit of order at least in my life. As I ran back along the great viaduct of Lower Marsh, I thought: I have solved nothing; all that has happened is that I have gone deeper into the mystery. I neared the ladder that would take me down to my lodge, and stopped. I was level with the roofs, and all about were the sleeping, streaming chimney pots, but there was a great clanging from somewhere.

It was only the work of a second to identify the cause and, sure enough, as I walked across to the ladder, the thing was shuddering in time with the clangs. I looked down and there was the human bell, chiming away. I thought: yes, people do like to hit metal with metal; there isn't necessarily any harm in it.

He was shocked to see me, because this was
his
ladder, after all, but he moved aside for me very meekly. I should have given him a 'Happy Christmas' as I climbed down, and would have done so had there not been so much on my mind and so much more to put in my diary, chiefly concerning Mr Stanley.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Friday 25 December - Tuesday 29 December

At midnight the trains started up, and it was as though the world started turning again, although I just kicked my heels in the lodge for the next three days, my only excursions being across the road to the dining rooms. What requests had Stanley made? What, if anything at all, did they have to do with the deaths that came hard upon those meetings to which the requests had been put? And were the questions in some way connected to the men of the half-link? There was only one way to find out, and that was to wait for the following Tuesday and ask.

At six in the evening on 28 December, the Monday, I walked from Hercules Court to the Necropolis station - by the usual route, this time - and there I saw the poster on the board propped outside the front: 'Extramural Interment: An Address'. It was to happen the next day at 8 p.m. Who wants to hear of cemetery schemes at Christmas? I thought, as I scurried back to my lodge, but it did not matter. I would be there, for one.

The Tuesday ought to have been the day I went back to work, but I did not return, for fear of more meetings with the half-link, and I kept to my room at nine o'clock when there came an awful pounding on the front door of the lodge, in which I had been alone, with no sight of my landlady, since Christmas Eve. The call boy had been sent. He was certainly a great hand at knocking, and it was queer to think that the sound would have once represented to me the greatest nightmare of all.

I took two pints at the Citadel before setting off to the address. They were meant to boost me, like the engine brake handle that was in my coat sleeve once again. It was just before eight, and the rain was coming down hard on my best suit as I walked once again to the Necropolis station. As I came within sight of the place, a black funeral van came swirling out through the gates and away - light and fast and free, having, I guessed, left a body behind. The traps and cabs were all rattling past at a great rate, and throwing out mud onto my suit as they went.

Passing Mr Stanley's sign, I walked through the gates and stood looking into the courtyard, lit by its gas jets, some trembling high up on the walls, some low down, like fireflies that had settled themselves in any old way. I turned towards the door in the arch and saw the board where the forthcoming funerals were posted up. Underneath large black letters spelling out 'In Memoriam' were the details of the burials at Brookwood on the following day - the last ones of the year, I supposed - of a Mrs Lampard and a Mrs Davidson-Hill. Both were to ride out in 'first', as were their mourners, and it struck me that this was why Twenty-Nine had been standing ready on Christmas Day.

I climbed the stairs, passing the trapped flowers, and walked through the double doors on the fourth floor marked 'Address'. Mr Stanley was there under an electric light, sitting at a table upon which were some papers, his bowler hat, a tumbler and a glass jug of water. His big head was dangling down and there was a gap in the black hair on the top of it -but it was not as if his hair had fallen out; it was just as though some of it had been worn away as part of the overall sadness of his life. Before him was a cluster of chairs - every one empty. There was a palm in the corner this time, fluttering in the wind and rain that was flying in through an open window. Stanley looked up as I entered, and I saw the long brown face and wide golden eyes. I took a chair at the front.

Stanley sat still for the next ten minutes while he waited, or pretended to wait, for a crowd to come in. I sat there and did the same, looking, I hoped, like a man without a care; but it was only those two pints and the brake handle that enabled me to pull it off. (I'll take two more besides, I thought, when this business is over.)

It was ten minutes, then, as I say, before I called out: 'Will you carry on with the meeting?'

Stanley made no answer, but rose to his feet and immediately commenced booming in that very unexpected voice: 'As it is appointed unto "all men once to die,'" he began, 'the subject of interment is one of universal interest.'

He looked at all the empty chairs for a while, and I looked at him, gladder than ever of the Red Lion inside me.

'It comes home to every human breast, not only with a solemn but an emphatic closeness,' Stanley continued in his surging voice. 'Whatever, or whosoever, the head of a family in this vast population of London may be - whether high or low, rich or poor, young or old - he knows that sooner or later himself, his wife, his children, his domestics, his associates, must each in rotation pay the great debt of nature and descend into the silent mansions of the tomb.'

He paused here, seeming to shrink rapidly as he did so, and when he next spoke it was in that fast, pernickety mutter he came out with when not speechifying; this mingled with the clattering of the jug against the glass as he poured himself some water.

"These words were written by the founder of our Necropolis Movement some sixty years ago.'

(Stanley might have given out a name for this founder, but I had not caught it.) 'In the same year he also wrote the following . . .' He breathed in and came out with the big voice again: 'Within numerous and loathsome decomposing troughs, for centuries past in the heart of the capital of a great Christian nation, the most depraved system of sepulture has existed that has ever disgraced the annals of civilisation.'

As Stanley spoke he would rotate a few degrees in one direction then back, his whole huge body - too big for any work it was ever called on to do - rocking gently as he came to rest facing one way or the other. He reminded me of some seaside automaton that I had seen, but his eyes were alive - as beautiful and sad as any woman's.

He took a short drink, put the glass down hard. 'Our founder calculated,' Stanley went on, resuming his rocking, 'that within the first thirty years of his life, one and a half million corpses had been partly inhumed, partly entombed, within the metropolis. During that time the amount of poisonous gases evolved from putrefaction into the civic atmosphere, beyond that absorbed by the soil, exceeded seventy-five million cubic feet. And further, this system, which whether as regards public health, public morals or public decency, is the most gigantic abuse that has ever -'

'You needn't continue with the full address for my sake,' I said.

Stanley stopped and looked at the blackness beyond the windows for a while; then he took a step towards me. "The address, once begun,' he said, using his ordinary, smaller voice and facing towards the windows, 'has never been abandoned for any reason.' He shifted his head slightly so that he was looking at me from the sides of his eyes, and all of a sudden he looked like a slugger. "The first Mr Gladstone, when he came to hear the Tuesday Address, said that he had never heard the case for extramural inhumation put with such eloquence since the days of our founder.'

"That is something,' I said, and I thought: he's off his onion.

'He is reputed to have written a letter to the board,' said Mr Stanley, still not looking at me, 'but they have never seen fit to give it any very wide circulation.'

'Where is the founder today?' I said after a while, as though the fellow had been a great pal of the two of us.

Mr Stanley's eyes flickered and then he put them on mine for the first time. 'He has gone beyond this world.' He continued to stare in a most unnerving way.

'You mean that he is in Surrey, I assume
...
in Brookwood
...
that he is dead?'

Mr Stanley gave me a sharp nod, then his eyes left mine, and I felt very relieved.

'So they have you to speak up for the Necropolis, and speak this dead man's speeches?' I said after some little while.

With no expression in his voice or face, Mr Stanley, looking now slightly to my left, said, 'At a rate of nine shillings per address, fifteen shillings and travelling expenses for any address that takes place outside London.'

He turned around, and picked up the jug again. He filled the glass with his wide, shaking hands, and drank the water.

'Is there much call for addresses outside London?'

'There is no call for it
whatsoever.'
And he switched his eyes back onto mine; I did not like it.

'And within this city the interest is not great?'

'Not great.' Still the eyes were upon mine; and he had not put the jug down. 'You are speaking to one who has performed very great service on behalf of this company,' he said.

'You were speaking of all those poisonous gases.'

'Our founder did.'

'But since his time, very shortly after the creation of the Necropolis, I think, there was an act of some sort.'

'There have been many acts.'

Still the eyes; his eyes were like fires.

'No, I mean an
act
- an Act of Parliament allowing the creation of cemeteries inside the city.'

As I spoke, he looked down at the jug. It was a well-made, big thing, but it looked small in his hands. 'That has been one of the acts, yes,' he said, looking up again, 'and yet somehow a hopeful spirit is maintained.'

Still staring at me, he now rapidly stood, and I thought: the death of Sir John Rickerby is where it starts; all else follows from that. With my right hand I felt the heaviness of the brake handle under my sleeve.

'It is by written contract that addresses are supplied,' said Stanley, stepping out from behind his table and beginning to pace before it. 'Do not think that any individual, let alone a barrister of twenty years' call, would be so blind as to get into this sort of work without making stipulations pertaining to, for example, the minimum number of addresses to be given over any given period. Naturally there are to be more in winter than summer. The call for the addresses is greater in winter if only because the rooms in which it is given are -'

And here he stopped his pacing.

'The rooms are what?' I said.

'Warm,' said Stanley, and then he was off again, pacing back and forth.

'But you just speak for money,' I said. 'You have no personal interest in any of what you say.'

'Intramural burial is a grievous wrong, and one particular aspect of the company's operations is of special interest.'

'Which is what?'

His eyes were on me again; they were not like fires, I decided, but like flowers.

'Trains.' He took another step towards me.

'Trains?' I said. 'Oh, they're a bit of all right, aren't they? Quite exciting, you know.'

Stanley nodded. 'As a means of conveyance for the dead, yes.'

1
am on the railways myself, on the London and South Western Railway, to be exact. I clean the funeral engines.'
‘I
know,' he said.

His eyes stopped dancing and went dead. He seemed to be in the grip of a fever; he was sweating freely - and this with the coldness of the night coming through the open window.