The Blackpool Highflyer Read online

  THE BLACKPOOL HIGHFLYER

  Andrew Martin grew up in Yorkshire. He has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday and Granta, among many other publications. His highly acclaimed first novel, Bilton, described by Jon Ronson as 'enormously funny, genuinely moving and even a little scary', was followed by The Bobby Dazzlers, which Tim Lott hailed as 'truly unusual - a comic novel that actually makes you laugh'.

  In praise of The Necropolis Railway, the first Jim Stringer adventure, the Evening Standard said 'the age of steam has rarely been better evoked', while the Mirror described the book as 'a brilliant murder mystery'. This was followed by The Blackpool Highflyer and The Lost Luggage Porter. The next books, Murder at Deviation Junction and Death on a Branch Line, were shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Novel Award and in 2008, Andrew Martin was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. The sixth book in the series, The Last Train to Scarborough, was praised as 'thoroughly engaging and entertaining' by the Sunday Express.

  Further praise for The Blackpool Highflyer:

  'An engagingly jaunty novel reminiscent of early H. G. Wells or Arnold Bennett... An irrestistible excursion into a bygone world of Wakes Week trips to Lancashire seaside resorts in their breezy heyday, and an era when the railways were a pride and pleasure, not a national disgrace.' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times 'Evokes Edwardian Yorkshire and Lancashire, their great industrial prosperity and singular ways of living, quite brilliantly in a historical whodunnit which for its fresh and stealthy approach to past times deserves the adjective Bainbridgean.' Ian Jack, Guardian (Books of the Year)

  'Another atomospheric experience, a trip to a lost world in amusing company.' Hugo Barnacle, New Statesman

  'A long, meticulously crafted hymn of praise to the age of steam.' Gerard Woodward, Daily Telegraph

  'Absolute bliss from start to finish.' Publishing News

  'The Necropolis Railway was exemplary historical crime fiction, full of atmosphere, intrigue and striking characters. Railwayman Jim Stringer, the main character in that novel, returns in The Blackpool Highflyer, an equally enjoyable mystery . . . What's particularly pleasurable about The Blackpool Highflyer is that Martin takes his time, evoking the period, the people and the age of steam railway without losing the momentum of the mystery.' Peter Guttridge, Observer

  'Marvellous... With admirable economy [he] brings an increasingly distant society vividly and exhilaratingly to life.' Sunday Times

  'A must for anyone into early Edwardian social history and northern seaside culture, steam trains, ventriloquism, literary thrillers and witty, incisive writing... The entire trip is enjoyable, surprisingly educational and oozing with Edwardian atmosphere.' Martin Radcliffe, Time Out

  'Terrific stuff ... A ride to delight each and every discerning reader.' Philip Oakes, Literary Review

  'A compelling thriller . . . Everything about this book rings true, down to the last trivial, but fascinating, railway fact. A stunning achievement.' Daily Mail

  The Blackpool Highflyer

  A Novel of Sabotage, Suspicion and Steam

  ANDREW MARTIN

  faber and faber

  First published in 2004 by Faber and Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House 74-77 Great Russell Street London WCIB 3DA This paperback edition published in 2005

  Typeset by Faber and Faber Limited Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  All rights reserved © Andrew Martin, 2004

  The right of Andrew Martin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank, in no special order, Geoff Felix, ven- triloquial figure maker; Professor Colin Divall of the National Railway Museum; The Blackpool Civic Trust; Peter Charlton, for advice on music hall; Jennifer Pell of the Fred Wade Bookshop, Halifax; Ron Johnson and Clive Groom, ex-train drivers; Dr J.A. Hargreaves; Michael Farr, David Gel- dard and Michael Stewart of the Transport Ticket Society; The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Society, especially Chris Leach, Mike Fitton and Noel Coates; Conrad Varley and the staff of the Queen Street Mill Museum, Burnley; Bob Vaughton of the South Devon Railway; David White, Rouge Croix Pursuivant at the College of Arms.

  These people all supplied me with the hard facts which I then, very frequently, bent.by the same author

  Bilton The Bobby Dazzlers

  IN THE JIM STRINGER, STEAM DETECTIVE SERIES:

  The Necropolis Railway

  The Lost Luggage Porter

  Murder at Deviation Junction

  Death on a Branch Line

  The Last Train to Scarborough

  Author's Note

  This story is a product of the author's imagination, and has no connection with anyone who might actually have worked on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, or lived in Halifax or Blackpool in 1905, or given music hall performances in those towns.

  PART ONE

  Whit

  Chapter One

  The vacuum was created, and we were ready for the road. As we waited at Halifax Joint station for the starter signal, I sat down on the sandbox and carried on reading yesterday's Evening Courier, which a cleaner had left on the footplate of our engine. 'There are cheering reports of the weather from the numerous seaside resorts, and indications that the Whitsuntide holidays will be spent under the most pleasant conditions. Yesterday was fine everywhere and in every way ...'

  That would have been it, or something like, for the glass had been rising steadily since the start of March. 'Enjoyable sports at Thrum Hall,' I read. 'Everybody was in a happy mood at Halifax Cricket Ground this morning ...'

  I folded the paper and stood up. My driver, Clive Carter, was standing on the platform below. Further below than usual, for the engine that had been waiting for us at the shed that morning was, by some miracle or mistake, one of Mr Aspinall's famous Highflyers, number 1418. These were the very latest of the monsters, and I hadn't reckoned on having one under me for another ten years at least.

  'Now don't break it,' John Ellerton, shed super, had said to Clive and me that morning as he'd walked us over to it at six, with the sweat already fairly streaming off us.

  Atlantic class, the Highflyers were: 58 ’4 tons, high boiler, high wheel rims on account of 7-foot driving wheels, and high everything, including speed. It was said they'd topped a hundred many a time, though never yet on a recorded run. They were painted black, like any Lanky engine, so it was a hard job to make them shine, but you never saw one not gleaming. The Lanky cleaners got half a crown for three tank engines, but it was three bob for an Atlantic, and that morning Clive had given the lad an extra sixpence a hexagon pattern on the buffer plates.

  The sun was trying to force its way through the glass roof of the platform, making a greenhouse of the place. Next to Clive was a blackboard on which the stationmaster himself, Mr Knowles, had written, 'SPECIAL TRAIN', it said, then came heaps of fancy underlinings, followed by 'SUNDAY 11TH JUNE, HIND'S MILL WHIT EXCURSION TO BLACKPOOL'.

  After writing it, Knowles had turned on his heel and walked off. He might have given me a nod; I couldn't say. I'd nodded back of course, just in case. I'd heard that Knowles had started at the Joint by redrawing all the red lines in all the booking-on ledgers so as
to shorten the leeway for lateness, and there he was: marked down for ever as hard-natured. But I thought he was all right. He knew his job. If he wanted a word with the guard of a pick-up goods, he'd be waiting on the platform exactly where the van came to rest. If the brass bell wanted shining he knew it, and just where the nearest shammy was kept.

  Clive called up, so I leant out the side and looked along the platform. The clock said just gone five after, and we were due off at nineteen past. We had eight flat-roofed rattlers on, one with luggage van and guard's compartment built in. Most of the excursionists were up by now, but a couple of pretty stragglers were coming along carrying between them a tin bathtub piled with blankets and food. 'You never do know when a tin of black treacle isn't going to come in,' said Clive, and there was one, rolling about on top of the bathtub goods. Clive always had an eye out for the damsels. In society you might have said he was a rare one for the fair sex. At Sowerby Bridge Shed, though, which was the shed for the Joint, they called him 'cunt struck', and I believe he was the only engine man there not married. He lived by himself in a village I didn't know the name of, and came into the shed every morning on his bike.

  'Going on all right, ladies?' he called out, and he began smoothing back his hair. Never wore a cap, Clive; liked to give his locks an airing. I knew that he used Bancroft's Hair Restorer, but whether it was to stop going grey or bald I couldn't have said. Even though he was only thirty-five - which made him fourteen years older than me - both were happening to Clive, but in such a way that a fellow looking at him would almost wish to be a little on the grey and bald side himself.

  Today he had on a blue suit that was different from the common run of suiting for some reason I hadn't been able to put a finger on, until he'd explained by saying, 'Poacher's pockets', which was no explanation at all, really. Clive wore a white shirt to drive in, where most settled for grey, and leather gloves, which were very nearly kid gloves, and also out of the common. He was a handsome fellow, I supposed, but it was more a question of dash - that and the natty togs.

  'Care for a turn on the engine?' he called to the doxies, and pointed up at the footplate. They laughed but voted not to, climbing up with their bathtub into one of the rattlers instead. They both had very fetching hats, with one flower apiece, but the prettiness of their faces made you think it was more. For some reason they both wore white rosettes pinned to their dresses.

  I looked again at the clock: eight-eleven.

  I ducked back inside and reached across to the locker for my tea bottle . . . but I was vexed by the tin tub. They would be tied together all day carrying it. And what was it’or? I took a go on the tea bottle, then threw open the fire doors and looked at the rolling white madness. Nothing wanted doing there. The Highflyers had Belpaire boxes - practically fired themselves.

  I fell to wondering about the man who'd built these beasts. The Railway Magazine would always tell you that Aspinall had 'studied at Crewe under Ramsbottom', but would never say who Ramsbottom was, and I imagined him as being left behind, sulking like a camel at Crewe while Aspinall rose to his present heights as Professor of Railway Engineering at Liverpool University, and General Manager of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

  I wondered if he ever called it 'the Lanky', as we all did.

  I stoppered the tea bottle, put it back in the locker. I wanted to be away: to have the benefit of the Flyer in motion - they were said to have a special sort of roll to them - because otherwise I'd be nodding off, with the early start I'd had and the heat from the sun already strong.

  Down below on platform three our guard, Reuben Booth - who was generally given to us on the Blackpool runs - was saying to Clive: 'Five hundred and twelve souls, two hundred and twenty tons'. Old Reuben would always give you the number of passengers if he could, besides the tonnage of your train, and with five hundred and twelve up, we were about chock full.

  Beyond him, over on platform one, I saw two men talking, and it was like a little play. One was Martin Lowther, the ticket inspector and a right misery. If anyone didn't have a ticket, he took it personal, like. He was looking at his watch, and the porter who was next to him across the way was looking at his. It was a Leeds train that was due in there, I reckoned, and Lowther was ardent to be on it. But as he glanced across to our excursion train, the situation cracked, and he broke off from giving slavver to the porter, and headed towards the footbridge, leather pouch swinging behind him. Next thing, he was coming down the steps onto our platform.

  'Eh up,' said Reuben, for he'd spotted Lowther by now, and so had Clive. He was looking along the platform at him as he came along, saying, 'I sometimes think that bastard's going to ask me for my ticket.' Lowther - who was now peering up through the windows of the carriages - lived at Hebden Bridge, and would from time to time be sent down from Distant Control at Low Moor. He had more gold on his coat and hat than Napoleon. Otherwise, he just looked like a murderer, with his black eyes and his big black beard. It would have been a courtesy for him to come up to us and say he would be riding on our train; instead he was climbing up into one of the middle rattlers, roaring - and he would roar it out - 'All tickets must be shown!'

  Of course, he had to crack on while the train was at a stand, for the rattlers had no corridors. We were to go to Blackpool express - without a booked stop, that is - but Lowther would be up and down whenever the signals checked us, clambering into compartments and asking for the tickets with his Scotland Yard air and a face like yesterday.

  It was unusual to have an inspector on an excursion train, I thought, taking another look at the fire. An excursion was meant to be fun.

  It was now eight-fourteen.

  Clive climbed up next to me, and began looking in the soft leather book in which he would copy from the working timetable the details of any turn. It was all part of his exquisite ways, like not being able to stand coal dust on the footplate. Down along the platform Reuben Booth was untangling the green flag from the shoulder strap of his satchel, and trying not to bring his hat off while he was about it. Superannuation seemed to have passed Reuben by. He was very old, and very slow, which a fellow was allowed to be if he'd had a hand in the building of the viaducts from Settle to Carlisle, where as many men had died as in a medium-sized empire war.

  Steam pressure was climbing, and number 1418 was near blowing off, ardent to be away. Little ghosts of steam flew fast towards Reuben.

  The starter signal came off with the bang, but just as Clive reached with his gloved hand for the shining regulator, there came a noise from the platform. Chucking down my shovel, I looked out. Two of the excursionists - two blokes - had run across to the machine that gave cream biscuits. This was the usual sort of carry-on. I'd seen an excursionist miss his train back from Blackpool Central because he was monkeying about with a 'Try Your Weight' machine. Reuben was frowning at them slowly, while Lowther took the chance to leap down from one compartment and belt along to another, like a little black bomb. The two blokes at the machine were called back by some of their pals on the train: 'Give over, you silly buggers!'

  They climbed up again; Reuben waved his flag, and climbed into his guard's compartment. Clive opened the cylinder cocks and pulled the regulator not more than a quarter of an inch. The exhaust beats began, each one a wrench at first.

  'That cream-biscuit machine doesn't work, does it?' I shouted over to Clive as we rolled away.

  'Shouldn't do,' he called back, frowning. 'Never has done so far.'

  And we stood there grinning as the steam surrounded us.

  Chapter Two

  We came out from under the platform glass and the gleam on the regulator doubled all in a moment.

  In winter in Halifax, the smoke and sky were one, but on a good day in summer the sky was the sky and the smoke was the smoke - and every day was a good day for weather in that summer of 1905.

  We crawled down the bank from the Joint. Below, and sometimes to the side of us, and sometimes going over our heads on bridges, was the Halifax B
ranch Canal. The light was coming and going as we clattered along that groove, under the towering mill walls. Then it went clean out as we rumbled through Milner Royd Tunnel, with all the strange screams of the excursionists.

  We came out of that tunnel with the sun full on us, and Clive began notching us up while pushing his hair back. 'Special train!' he yelled, as the first kick of speed came.

  Well, all our trains were special trains.

  When I'd first started as his mate, Clive was on local goods. That was back in March, but come April we'd been made the excursion link, starting with a run to Aintree for the Grand National, and after that trip all sorts came along: Sunday School outings, club beanos, flower viewings, scenic cruises, at least a dozen Blackpool runs. And that with the holiday time barely started.

  We would often work an excursion to some pleasant spot, then come back 'on the cushions', meaning we would use our footplate passes to return on any Lanky train in our own time, so then, of course, we'd scrub up in an engine men's mess and go out for a glass.

  It wasn't all honey, for there'd still be ordinary passenger turns in between, and we'd often be put to working the branch from the village of Rishworth to Halifax Joint, which had no fixed crew. I said to Clive that this was our bread and butter, and he said 'our bloody penance, more like', for it was dull work. It was not above a couple of miles between the two places, and although all of Rishworth wanted to be in Halifax, Halifax didn't seem to want Rishworth, and we whiled away half our time on those turns waiting at signals outside the Joint.

  On the crawl down from the Joint we had been going south, but we were heading west now, and the Sowerby Bridge Engine Shed - our shed - was coming up. Clive gave two screams on the whistle for swank and, Sowerby Bridge being a small place, the whole town would have had the benefit. Clive wasn't known for scorching: instead, he would put up smooth running, sparing of coal. But he was sure to have a gallop with 1418.