The Blackpool Highflyer Read online

  hand, saying

  'Won't

  you join me, old man?'

  So I bit the end off my 'B' - which George frowned at - and

  started smoking it.

  I might have taken two draws on the cigar when we came

  alongside the Thomas Cook excursion office in Horton Street.

  They were queuing out the door as usual, but the window

  was boarded.

  'Hey!' I called to George. 'That's been smashed.'

  George didn't even stop walking; didn't even remove his

  cigar from his mouth. 'Friday night, old man!' he called.

  'High spirits!' Then he added: 'I've no use for that place

  myself. I won't go in for your whirligig holidays. Besides, the

  trains can be dangerous from all I hear.'

  'It's not the trains,' I said, staring at the boarded window.

  'It's the loonies with the bloody millstones.'

  Without a word to George, I stood on my cigar, crossed over

  Horton Street and began pushing towards the front of the

  queue of excursionists, apologising as I went. As I did so, I

  realised that George was behind me, not apologising, but saying, every now and again, 'Step aside there', and the funny

  thing was that his big cigar allowed him to get away with it.

  There were three clerks inside the excursion office, all looking very hot and bothered, and surrounded by posters of people standing at the seaside in golden sun, and grinning fit to

  bust under straw boaters. There were some Lanky posters up

  there as well, and two or three of the same one: a poster showing a steam packet, and the words: '

  STEP ON AT GOOLE FOR THE CONTINENT'.

  'Who smashed your window?' I asked one of the clerks,

  who was in the middle of serving an elderly party in a dinty

  bowler.

  'Mr Bloody Nobody,' he said, and then, after a quick glance

  at me, 'It wasn't thissen, by any chance, I don't suppose?'

  George was right behind me, smoking into my ear. 'Bloody

  sauce,' he said. 'Why, it's slander, is that.'

  The clerk now turned to George: 'And will

  you

  get out of

  here, and leave off poisoning us all with that dratted great

  cigar.'

  'That was slander as well,' said George, when we were

  back outside in Horton Street.

  'Come here,' I said, and I led him back across the road to

  the wall of the old warehouse. The poster was still there: '

  A MEETING TO DISCUSS QUESTIONS'.

  'I reckon it was that lot that smashed the window’ I said.

  "Ihey want to stop all excursions, and they want to frighten the

  railways off.' And I told George all about Paul, the socialist

  missionary-cum-anarchist, and how there might be a connection with the stone on the line.

  'Anarchists . . .' said George, when I'd finished. 'There's a

  lot of those blighters in Germany, from what I read in

  The Times.

  Bomb-throwing's meat and drink to them, you know.

  Then there's the bloody Fenians too.'

  'Well, that puts my mind at ease, I must say,' I said. 'Why

  do they do it?'

  George puffed on his cigar, using it to think. 'Get in the

  newspapers’ he said.

  We walked on, heading for the Joint, and George said, 'Do

  you care to know my theory on your little bit of bad business?'

  'Go on then,' I said.

  Walking down a hill didn't suit George Ogden any more

  than walking up a hill. With every step the breath was

  knocked out of him, escaping with a little whistle, which was

  sometimes accompanied by a jet of smoke from his 'A'.

  'It was wreckers’ he said.

  'I know that’ I said.

  'But this is what you don't know,' he said, quite sharp:

  'they were going for the next train.'

  Above the station, the flag of the Lanky and the flag of the

  Great Northern slept side by side in the great heat.

  'Why would they be doing that?'

  'Beats me.'

  'Well, what makes you think they

  were?'

  'Simple,' said George. And the next speech he made standing still in Horton Street, with his fingers in his waistcoat

  pockets and his cigar always in his mouth: 'The next train was

  knoivn

  of. The Blackpool Express. Runs every day, even Sunday: eight thirty-six. Famous train, and the only timetabled

  one of the day from Halifax to Blackpool. It was in the

  timetable,

  do you see, there to be found by anyone picking up

  the month's

  Bradshaw.

  Yours -' Here he took one hand out

  of his waistcoat, to point at me,'- yours was an excursion,

  and

  a

  late-booked one at that. Some excursions get into the

  Bradshaw's,

  those known of long in advance. Yours didn't.

  Some

  -

  those known about a little less in advance - get into

  the

  working

  timetables. Yours didn't. Some get into the fortnightly notices, but yours missed that as well. The first we all

  knew of yours was in the weekly notices.'

  'Do you fellows in the booking office get the same weekly

  notices as us engine fellows?' I asked.

  'Wouldn't be much point in having different!' said George.

  That was true enough.

  'Wreckers are sometimes just kids out for fun,' I said. 'They

  want to make the train jump. They wouldn't be particular as

  to which train they tripped up.'

  'No,' said George. 'But another sort might be. If they

  had

  planned to send one particular train galley west, odds on it

  would have been the second.'

  'Yes,' I said slowly, 'unless they

  had

  seen the weekly

  notices, and they knew of our train.'

  'Yes’ said George, even more slowly.

  'But that's half the Lanky,' I went on. 'Every stationmaster

  and signalman from here to Blackpool, and everyone who

  reads a stationmaster or a signalman's notices, which, since

  they're pinned up all over the shop, is hundreds.'

  'Thousands!' said George.

  We now carried on walking towards the station, with me

  wondering where this conversation had got us, but thinking

  very hard over it, and over the broken window of the Thomas

  Cook office.

  Chapter Eleven

  There were two booking offices at the Joint: one for the Lancashire and Yorkshire, one for the Great Northern. That's

  why it was called the Joint. They were on a sort of wooden

  bridge, in a building that was like a pier pavilion and went

  over the tracks and platforms. You climbed dark dusty steps

  which smelled exciting in some way, and fanned out to left

  and right, depending on whether you wanted the Great

  Northern ticket window

  -

  which you would if you wanted a

  connection to London - or the Lanky side.

  Between the ticket windows was a door, which I supposed

  was as good as invisible to passengers, for it was through this

  that only the ticket clerks came and went. Once through the

  door, things split into two again. To the left, small letters on a

  door said '

  GN TICKET OFFICE

  '; to the right, small letters on

  anot
her said '

  L&Y OFFICE'.

  As I prepared to follow George through this second one, I

  asked him: 'Have you ever been through the other door?'

  'Wouldn't care to,' he said, shaking his head.

  'Why not?'

  'Because it's exactly the same as this show, except with different printing on the tickets.'

  As he said the word 'tickets', that's what I saw. The walls of

  this big wooden room were made of them, and they muffled

  any noise. I could hear the station below but it might have

  been a mile away. All around the walls were dark cabinets

  with wide, thin drawers, and above the cabinets were racks in

  which the different types of tickets stood in columns. The

  tickets, thousands upon thousands of them, were imprisoned

  in their long thin racks. They were dropped in through the

  top and could only be slid out from the bottom.

  In those few wall spaces where there weren't ticket racks,

  there were pictures. One was the famous Lanky poster that

  had been in the Thomas Cook excursion office, '

  STEP ON AT GOOLE FOR THE CONTINENT

  '. I thought of holidays, and again

  of the broken window at the excursion office. Had Paul done

  it? Or even Alan Cowan himself?

  There were two other clerks in the office: one sitting at the

  ticket window, another leaning against one of the racks.

  George introduced them as Dick and Bob, and as he did so, all

  of their voices sounded lost, as if they were outnumbered and

  beaten down by the tickets on all sides.

  I had seen this pair before and secretly thought them a very

  medium pair of goods. They might have been in any line of

  business. There was nothing railway-ish about them. They

  both shot me funny, complicated looks, because they knew

  me for an engine man, and an engine man does not wear a

  stiff collar. But he does start at the head end of the train, and

  that's the important thing. Or so I'd believed until the smash.

  Being at the front end put you in the way of trouble. I had

  struck trouble, and been found wanting.

  I shook their hands, and then they fell to staring at George

  and his cigar. 'Better not let Dunglass or Knowles see you

  with that thing in your mouth,' Dick said.

  Dunglass was the chief booking clerk.

  'Smoking's only allowed in the general room,' added Bob,

  rising from the seat at the ticket window. The ticket office had

  the wooden, empty smell of a cricket pavilion.

  'Nonsense,' said George, who now took Bob's place at the

  ticket window.

  In front of George at the ticket window was a great wooden

  guillotine that could be dropped down at the close of business, or, as I was to learn, at any time that suited. George also

  had a money drawer, and at his elbow a date stamp which

  looked like an iron head with a thin mouth for the tickets to

  go in.

  There not being any passengers to be dealt with, George

  swivelled around in the chair, which was set on wheels, and,

  using his cigar as a pointer, indicated the racks, saying very

  loudly: 'First-class singles

  There were lots of these.

  'Second-class singles .

  ..'

  More still of these.

  'Third-class singles

  ...'

  Yet more - a good two dozen racks of these.

  'Heaps of Thirds, aren't there?' I said.

  'What?' said George, sitting back, taking a pull on his cigar.

  'Well, nine out of ten passengers go Third. It's a third-class

  world, I'm afraid . . . except for some of us.' At this, George

  swivelled right round in his chair, with his boots lifted up off

  the ground, and the face of a kid riding a whirligig. Bob and

  Dick looked at each other and smiled. George was the star

  turn of the booking office.

  'First-class returns,' George continued, putting his feet

  down to stop the chair and pointing to another part of the

  booking office, 'Second returns .

  .

  . Third returns, policeman-

  on-duty tickets, clergymen tickets, staff privilege, angling

  tickets, market-day specials, platform tickets.'

  He was going on rapidly now, his cigar jumping about; I

  couldn't make out where he was pointing.

  'Now,' said George, 'your first-class singles are white, your

  second-class singles are red, your third-class singles green.

  Your first-class returns are white and yellow, your second-

  class returns are red and blue, your third-class

  ..

  .'

  'Tell him the interesting stuff,' said Dick, or Bob, very

  timidly.

  'What do you think I

  am

  doing?' said George, quite indignantly.

  'No, the

  really

  interesting stuff.'

  'Is there any way of recalling who's bought a ticket on any

  particular train?' I asked the office in general.

  George frowned. 'You can say which tickets have gone,' he

  said, 'but not who's had 'em.'

  'Unless you happen to remember the person,' said Dick.

  'Or the ticket they get,' said Bob. 'A notable ticket number might do it. I sold a ticket for Todmorden this morning: third- class single, number one, two, three, three. That's a highly interesting ticket.'

  'Why?' I said.

  George answered for him. 'Because the next one's going to be one, two, three, four, see? Collector's item.'

  If George was right, and the wreckers had been aiming at the 8.36, the regular Blackpool express, the train after ours on that day, it might be handy to know who was riding on it. But I would not find out here.

  Just then, somebody tapped on the ticket-window glass and George swivelled around to face the customer.

  'Good afternoon, Doctor Whittaker,' he said, thrusting his cigar-holding hand down below his counter. 'Second-class return to Bradford?'

  At this he gave a sudden kick with both legs and his chair went flying backwards so that he was level with second-class returns to Bradford, or so I supposed. Bob and Dick gave me silly smiles as he did this. George reached across to the rack, and suddenly the ticket was lying in his hand. He had the trick of flicking it from the bottom of the rack. Then, by means of a strange, sitting-down walk, he dragged himself and his chair back to the ticket window, sliding the cigar into its tube as he did so.

  'Ninepence, Doctor Whittaker,' he said.

  But then he had to lean again towards the window, for the doctor - evidently a regular customer - had further requirements.

  'Cycle ticket in addition?' said George. 'That'll be one sixpence, Doctor Whittaker.'

  He gave a greater kick this time, sending himself back a good fifteen feet, the cycle ticket being a more out-of-the-way sort of thing than a second-class return, therefore kept further from the window. George took one from the rack, and went back to Doctor Whittaker, who it seemed was not done yet.

  'Cycle insurance also?' asked George, quite peeved after listening for a moment at the window.

  The doctor then had something else to say - something pretty sharp, too, that I could almost hear through the glass. When the speech had finished, George said: 'It is no trouble at all, sir, only you might have said first time. If you had said, you see, I would have known ...'

  He shot himself backwards once more, towards bicycle insurance, muttering as he went: 'Not being a great hand at mind-reading.'

>   When the sale was completed, George wheeled around to us all once more, beaming.

  'Quite a card, our George,' said Dick.

  Just then there was a knock at the door. It was a kid I'd never seen about the Joint before. 'Any of you blokes come across a photographer?' he said.

  Everybody said they hadn't, and the fellow left.

  'Rum sort of question,' said George, frowning when the fellow had gone.

  On the other side of the room, Bob, who was looking down onto the platforms through one of the windows, gave a cry: 'Hi! She's back!'

  George left off fiddling with his cigar and dashed over to the window along with Bob. I walked over more slowly.

  'What's going off?' I asked.

  'Mrs Emma Knowles,' said Bob, grandly.

  'Who's she?' I asked. 'Stationmaster's daughter?'

  'Wife!' said George. 'If you can credit it.'

  A tank engine was pulling out of platform two and a lady in white was walking along the platform in the opposite direction: little clouds of steam were flying towards her from the engine, like blown kisses. From the ticket-office window I could only see the top of her hat, but some hats promise beauty beneath, and this was one.

  'She looks lonely today,' said Bob.

  The finest woman in the town’ said George very sadly, as he walked back to his rotating chair at the ticket window. 'One day, I'm going to go down there and talk to her.'

  'You ought to, George,' said Dick, 'she couldn't eat you, after all.'

  'Actually’ said George, 'I wouldn't mind a bit if she did, you know?'

  'What would you talk to her about?' asked Bob.

  'I could put her straight about this show’ George said, indicating the whole of the booking office.

  'You'd talk to her about railway tickets?' I asked.

  'Only at first’ said George. 'Just to break the ice.'

  Emma Knowles walked on, disappearing under the building in which we stood.

  'Oh we do like her,' said Bob, turning away from the window and folding his arms.

  'Why does she come here?' I asked.

  'Take the air?' suggested Bob.

  'What air?' I said. 'It's all smoke, like any station.'

  'Old Knowles likes to show her off’ said George. 'Just rubbing it in, you know, look at me: villa looking over People's Park, housemaids, company cab at my door each morning, and this vision in my bed every night.'