The Necropolis Railway (12 page)

I had one question burning to be asked: 'Where's Vincent today?'

'On leave,' said the Governor.

'So he's not about?' I said, and the Governor said nothing, but looked across at the detective.

As I went back to tearing rags, I fell to thinking - because I had to think about everything - how Mike was careless with coal. On the footplate, he was one of those clumsy fellows whose boots always seemed too big. But it did look as if he'd been jacked in, and with him went the best hope of finding out what had really happened to Henry Taylor. Why would Barney Rose not look at me? And why had Arthur Hunt been off-shed with no engine underneath him? And then Vincent, who was certainly no friend of Mike's
...
that mysterious little fellow had five days holiday a year, and had taken one of them on this foggy November day . . . And then why had Arthur been off-shed with no engine underneath him?

One thing seemed certain: with Mike gone, the half-link was left with nothing but relief firemen. Vincent would have to go up. At the same time, though, there were 500 men at Nine Elms Loco Shed, and any one of them could have been the killer. Come to that, there were thousands of fellows in London who were off their boxes, and the wall around Nine Elms was low enough to let in any of
them.
Bob Crook, after all, was no sentry - you did not need to see him unless you were booking on.

When I'd finished thinking all these things - all destined for the back of the diary, to be mulled over for hours - my mind emptied for a while, except for the small part of it needed to keep me tearing rags. I did not quit the work but in due course a feeling of stark terror came over me, and with it thoughts of the shadows in the courtyard, moving and growing.

I had seen the devil of violence and yet I knew it was only the start.

Chapter Twelve

Thursday 3 December

I did not see Vincent until that Thursday. He was in the cleaners' mess eating his snap, and as I entered he walked out straight away, leaving some onion skins behind. That was probably because he'd heard I'd been on the footplate of Thirty-One, or because he was still not firing on the half despite the death of Mike; or just because he had his knife into me the same as everyone else. I didn't have the opportunity to tell him what I thought about Mike, which was just as well, because Vincent was the fifty-face man, and you couldn't tell him your innermost thoughts.

At the end of that day I kept a new promise I had made to myself (for I had nobody else to make it to): I went into the Turnstile, the pub just outside the engine-shed gates, and I dare say I was one of the few fellows ever to have stepped in there alone and with no prospects of a chat. It was a bare, blank place with two bars separated by a screen: there was no difference between the two, but one was for footplate men, the other for all the rest of the blokes. I don't know why, but I liked it; I thought it was the heart of something - and it was packed out.

I had only seen pubs from the jug-and-bottle doors, where Dad would send me from time to time, but as I said, he did not hold with taking a drink inside a pub. He wasn't church and he wasn't chapel or anything at all in the religious line; I suppose it came down to this: that a pub was a place where smart boots cut no ice.

I had stepped into the part that was for 'the rest'. Fighting my way to the bar, I got myself what the fellow in front had asked for: a glass of 'half and half. I didn't know what either half was, but after one sip I knew I'd better go carefully with it. The engine men, on the other side, took their ale in pewters. I looked all about me, watching the blokes chat, and wondered how it had come about that I was watching these revels but not joining in the fun. Presently I spied Flannagan, the charge cleaner. With his funny legs, this fellow was made for leaning up against a bar and that's what he was doing. As he talked to two young fellows I'd seen about the place cleaning, fetching tea for Flannagan and so on, I thought that perhaps one of my troubles - when it came to understanding all the exploits going on about me
and
getting myself some pals, which probably went hand in hand - was that I had not yet stood a drink for any Nine Elms man. The fact was that I had not stood anybody a drink anywhere, but I knew it was a manly sort of thing, and this was the place to start.

'Two gallons of linseed oil,' Flannagan was drawling, 'one gallon of paraffin, about a pint of bloody Brasso . . .' As I moved towards him with a weird sort of smile fixed onto my face, his talk gradually got slower as though he was a clockwork toy winding down, and when I was right alongside him, he stopped completely, with nothing but a look of disgust left on his face.

I had forgotten that the fellow to be bought a drink had to want to have one bought for him. So I turned away, and it immediately seemed that Flannagan got wound up again. 'Half a ton of rags, about a mile of bloody emery paper -'

'You're exaggerating now,' said one of the lads near him.

'I'm fucking
telling
you,' said Flannagan, 'and it still comes off black as night. That fucking engine was
built
dirty.'

'Get away, Mr Flannagan,' said one of the young fellows -but in a scared voice.

Back at the bar I tried to steady myself after this latest calamity. Looking up, I spotted Arthur Hunt in the drivers' part. Vincent was on one side of him, Rose on the other. Vincent shouldn't really have been in there, since, although he was passed, he hadn't gone up. But he was Hunt's nephew, and what Hunt said went.

Hunt was smoking a cigar, his sharp nose going forwards and his hair swept back. Vincent was quiet, just watching his uncle as though he was a god.

Barney Rose was looking semi-drunk, but Hunt was a different person altogether in the company of another engine man, even one as slack as Rose. I put my anxieties about the pair of them aside, and saw two engine men enjoying a drink after their turn, picturing them both on express rails, slamming down the lawn to Bournemouth.

'Dear old Teddy?' Rose suddenly said to Hunt, and it was evidently a great crack because they both laughed a good deal. It was strange to see Hunt do this because his face altered out of all recognition. Rose said, 'Chamberlain.'

'Joseph Chamberlain?' said Hunt in a thoughtful sort of way, rising as he did so and walking towards the bar. 'Now if that gentleman had not had all the advantages this world has to offer,' he called back to Rose, 'then I think -'

'I've got it,' called Rose. 'Plumber!'

Hunt purchased two more pewters of beer. 'I'm not so sure,' he said, going back with the ale. 'I mean to say, there's a fair amount of skill in that.'

Rose took a long pull on his beer. 'Plumber's mate, then,' he said after a while.

'What are the duties of a plumber's mate?' asked Hunt.

'Carrying spanners,' said Rose. 'Brewing up for the plumber.'

Hunt nodded. 'And do you need certificates for it?'

'I'm sure that a couple of testimonials would suffice to get you a start in that line.'

'But where would a clot like Chamberlain get a decent testimonial?'

'Mr Balfour might give him one?'

'Mmm,' said Hunt, and I hoped he was going to smile again, because I liked to see what happened to his face when this novelty occurred. But thinking better of this, I finished my drink and left before he could look up and see me and have his evening spoiled.

Chapter Thirteen

Saturday 5 December

On the Saturday, I booked off at four-thirty and turned my back on Nine Elms, which was full of rumours and coppers, and walked back to my lodge along the riverside. Along the Embankment, which was as busy as any road, I watched the black water sliding up and down the hulls of the rolling, smoking boats. Waterloo was a stranger place than Nine Elms, with a stranger smell, and the god of it all was the stone lion watching the black river from the top of the Red Lion brewery. The sun was going down, but that smoke was still going up, and the traffic and the people were all still going strong as the sky turned pink.

I turned away from the river into York Road: hundreds and hundreds of people were coming at me under hats. I stopped under my coffee viaduct and there was yet another new person - a young woman - standing behind the stall.

'Money in the tin?' I said.

"That's it, love,' she said.

Her eyes were very blue, and very white around the blue-ness. When I'd paid she tipped her head and stretched out her arms like a dancer, pushing her bosoms to the front of her semi-clean white dress. It's not often, I thought, that you see anyone so very beautiful do anything so strange. I moved along Lower Marsh with my coffee feeling ashamed of my thoughts. I bought some Vianola soap from the Vianola Soap Pharmacy over the road from my lodge, because I had planned an extra good wash for myself before taking a pint down at the Citadel. I had found myself quite galvanised by my drink at the Turnstile, despite the difficult circumstances; several things had become clearer in my mind, although I had found, when I came to put them in my Lett's diary, that they amounted to nothing much. The thoughts were along the following lines: that although Barney Rose was under the gun at Nine Elms, he had a better friend in Arthur Hunt than I had first thought.

At any rate, I resolved that there would be no harm in taking a drink more often after my turns. I was moving away from Dad by degrees, but that was only right. He would not stop
being
my dad by any of this.

I looked up at the wall of my lodge, and saw that an advertisement for 'Go West Cheese' had been put on top of some of the 'Smoke Duke of Wellington Cigars'. 'Stower's Lime Juice, No Musty Flavour' was still there.

My lodge was dark and hot. Instead of going straight up the narrow stairs to my room, I went into the kitchen for a bowl of washing water. My landlady was there, folding clothes. The boiler was bubbling away in the corner giving the place the drowsy air of a Monday morning. The place was more like a factory than a kitchen, with no decoration apart from a line of tins on the mantelshelf and a framed bit of embroidery above the tins reading 'Commit Thy Way Unto The Lord'.

I gave my 'good evening' and paid my rent; then, in keeping with my new idea of boldness, said, 'It's quite all right either way, but did you manage to get any cocoa in?'

My landlady looked up at the tins on the mantelshelf, and I did the same: Bird's Eye Custard, Marigold Hake, somebody's candied peel, Goddard's Plate Powder, raisins, currants.

'No,' she said.

'Oh, well,' I said.
‘I
would like to collect a bowl of hot water to have a wash, if that's all right.'

She put the kettle on, then leant up against the table, saying, 'And how is life on the railways?' She looked very grave; very beautiful, too, in a strange way. Every one of her expressions seemed to contain a lifetime of meaning. She said again, 'How is life on the railways?'

'Well, it's not all honey
’
1
said.

Two racks full of airing clothes were swinging slowly above our heads. She went over to the boiler, moving the clothes inside around with the stick, watching me. She laid the stick on the side of the boiler before walking over to the table. This was covered in blue cloth. There were two piles of folded towels on it, and a red book. My landlady touched one of the piles of towels and let it tumble on top of the book. Then she looked at me and nearly smiled, which was more thrilling than if she really had smiled. Suddenly she whirled around and started moving the tins on the mantelpiece. I could see the tops of her gypsy boots, and, being embarrassed, I embarked on one of my Gladstone speeches, for which I cursed myself even as the words were coming from my mouth.

‘I
am endeavouring to rise in the estimation of my mates, not by boasting of my accomplishments but by being at all times civil and obliging, ensuring that when my driver comes to collect the engine on which I have been working, not only are the motion and boiler thoroughly cleaned, but also that the footplate is swept up and the boiler front plate -'

'Mr Stringer,' said my landlady, 'you are very boring.'

'Oh,' I said.

'How would you feel if I told you all the details of my working day?'

'I would be very interested.'

'Right,' she said, with considerable force. 'Today I started at six, when I realised that you had left out your laundry for me to wash.'

'But you told me to do that!' I protested. 'And there were only two shirts and two undershirts.'

(My long Johns I had been too embarrassed to put out, and I had been endeavouring to clean them myself when my landlady was absent.)