The Necropolis Railway Page 3

  I fished in my jacket pocket for the first of the letters from Rowland Smith, and viewed again the miracle that had brought me to this cold, crashing shed: 'I think I have the power to bring you on without resorting to the usual formalities ... Testimonials will be required, however ...' The letters fluttered in the icy breeze, looking suddenly very flimsy indeed. Noise was coming from all parts of the shed, like the banging of hundreds of broken pianos, yet for the time being there was not a soul in sight. Any idea that I had made a mistake - and a dangerous one at that - in coming to Nine Elms must on no account be allowed.

  Chapter Three

  Baytown

  It seems a horror to think of it now, so many years on, but the whole of my life is divided into the times before Rowland Smith came strolling along that platform at Grosmont, and the times after. 'Before' started in 1884, the year in which I was born, my mother died, and the railway came to Baytown.

  Baytown, which the gentry called Robin Hood's Bay, was just a few tall thin houses - a quiver of arrows on the edge of the sea - and if one dog barked, everybody heard it. Dad thought he was the cream of Baytown because he was a butcher and not a fisherman. He told me that the trouble with Baytown wasn't that it stank of fish but that it stank of fishermen, and perhaps that's why I started to like the trains, which called at this funny, fishy little town but didn't have to stay.

  If you stood on the front with your back to the sea you could see the train come across the top of the cliffs from Hawsker in the north, stop at Baytown, then head south to Ravenscar. Only two people watched them with me and the first was Crazy May, who was crazy, maybe because she had one eye lower than the other, and who all day long crushed crabs on the beach for the seagulls and couldn't remember whether it was the trains that were scared of the horses or the horses that were scared of the trains.

  The other was Mr Hammond, who had been a swell in his day but had made a mistake in London which was never to be spoken of, but had put him in Queer Street, so that he could no longer be in business. When I was tiny he took me on the train to the West Cliff marshalling yard at Whitby and we would watch a little 172-class cutting fruit and fish specials. That was the engine for me because it had a name: Robin. As we watched, Mr Hammond smoked cigarettes and told me the differences between a handbrake, an engine brake and a vacuum brake, and so on. He was very amiable considering I was just a kid. "The smoke box is at the front of the engine,' he would say, 'and the firebox is at the back.' He must have told me that hundreds of times before it sank in.

  Later on, Dad and I would ride the train to Darlington to watch the Atlantics flying down the main line. After every one that went past, I would look up at him and say, 'What about that, Dad?' and the poor fellow always had to think of something to say, for I had no mother after all.

  I had no aspirations to a life at sea; I did not want to be a butcher either. I would look at the letters on Dad's shop -'Stringer: Family Butcher' - and wonder what there was 'family' about it. I remember the barrels of ice in the cold room at the back and the fire in the shop at the front - those two always fighting each other, it wore me out to think of it somehow. My ambition instead was to be on the railways. I read everything I could lay my hands on that had for a subject trains, and had The Railway Magazine every month for 6d, which my Dad paid for because he thought it was improving. Not that he wanted me on the railways. Dad wanted me in his shop, but he changed his tune when myself and three other lads from Baytown were offered five bob each to build a bonfire for Captain Fairclough's firework-night carnival.

  Fairclough lived at Ravenhall, and the whole headland was his garden. The fire took a while to get up, but I was told it was still smoking on the seventh, and I expect that's why the Captain sent me a letter, having heard from one of the other lads that I wanted a start on the North Eastern. Fairclough had more connections than York station, and he said that he would be willing to write to the general manager of the North Eastern Railway telling him I was an eminently suitable person to go on.

  Now, if Captain Fairclough, who had done something at Khartoum and got the QMG for it, had suggested informing the Governor of Armley Gaol that I was a very good person for a fifteen-year stretch, then that would have been it as far as Dad was concerned: I would have been off. But he did still want me clerking in some way. 'I would prefer you in a post offering some prospect of advancement to stationmaster,' he would tell me, 'and I do not mean stationmaster at Robin Hood's Bay.'

  'But the fellow up there, Langan, has thirty shillings a week,' I would say, 'and with his coal auctions he does a lot better than that. They're not lawful, of course, but that's all right.'

  I would say things like that so as to tease Dad, and in hopes of making our pretty part-time slavey, Emma, start laughing, because then she was even prettier.

  Dad took to spending evenings in the back parlour with The Railway Magazine, and in the morning he might say, in a thoughtful sort of way, "There are twenty thousand bikes taken into Newcastle station every year.'

  ‘I know that, Dad,' I would say.

  'Who do you suppose is in charge of them?'

  "The bicycle booking clerk, Dad. Who else is it going to be?'

  'He would have to be quite a respectable party, looking after that amount of bikes.'

  I did not want to be a bicycle booking clerk, so I would give no opinion on that. I wanted to be a driver, and I knew I could do it. I'd practised on my safety bike by coming down Askrigg Hill without touching the brakes or without hands on the handles, and without a lamp if it was after dark. I secretly felt that I was built for high speed: my eyesight, I felt certain, was six-six, and I knew I had the lean looks of an engine man. But Dad got his way, and I applied to the North Eastern for something that would lead me into the clerical line all the same. I had my certificates, and my testimonial from that famous gentleman, Captain Fairclough, and my letter was very well greased: ‘I feel that I am able to hold my own in a gentlemanly way ... I am seventeen years old, and need scarcely say that I am a total abstainer . ..' (Which was true give or take the odd sip of dad's Sunday night jugs of ale).

  I was called to York by some johnnies in top coats who said there was a chance I could go on immediately as a lad porter at Grosmont, but first I had to answer such out-of-the-way questions as 'What is the difference between up and down?'

  I got my start the following week.

  Chapter Four

  Monday 16 November continued

  I asked a fellow where I might find Flannagan, the charge cleaner, and he just pointed to a whole row of huts at the top of the shed and walked on. Then Vincent reappeared, coming around the corner of a long-boilered locomotive. 'All right, mate?' he said. 'You're still looking a bit lost.'

  He seemed in high spirits once again; he was a very changeable sort.

  'Come here, mate,' he said, and he showed me into one of the huts in the line. There was a thin stove, and a seat like a shelf going all around halfway up - and that was it, except for a lad who was pretty much all teeth.

  'This is where the firemen who do the half-link turns mess,' said Vincent. These words came out all of a tangle, and I hadn't untangled them before he went on: 'It's quite a decent spot,' he said, chucking his cap on the bench, 'except for this one thing. Have a good look about, and tell me what's missing.'

  'Well,' I said, 'any number of things are missing,' which made Vincent look put out, and the toothy kid go red and walk out of the door.

  "The main thing lacking in here,' said Vincent, who hadn't said a word to the toothy kid, 'is a kettle, and there is no kettle because there is no place to boil a kettle, are you with me?' Vincent knelt at the stove and flipped open the door, which fell down on its hinge and came to rest sticking out. 'So we put our billies on here,' he said. 'They take at least ten minutes to boil, and we do one at a time.'

  I couldn't see why he was telling me this, but tried to keep up an interested face.

  'Now, if it ever happened that all the lads came in here
at once’ said Vincent, 'this is the order in which we would brew up: first billy on would be Clive Castle, who's a passed fireman who sometimes does firing turns on the half, depending on how busy they are with the Brookwood runs. He's sort of half on the half and half not. Next it would be Joe somebody - just can't quite remember his name - who also fires up at odd times. Then it would be the last fireman, the bloke who's just gone.'

  'He's full-time on the half though?' I said.

  Vincent nodded.

  'What's that fellow's name?'

  Vincent gave me another of those long looks that he went in for. 'Mike,' he said after a while, and it caused him a lot of pain to say that word.

  'Next billy on,' he continued, 'is mine because I was passed for firing on the half-link six weeks back, but I've been kept back on cleaning - though really I'm just kicking my heels - until everything's put straight in the office. Now if you should ever come up from cleaning to firing on the half you'd put your billy on the stove next, making you fifth in line and last.'

  I told him that if I ever came up from cleaning to firing on the half-link I would probably bring my tea in a bottle, and he didn't like this one bit. Then I said, 'Look, what is this half-link business? Engine men work in links, and a link is a sort of bundle of duties. You can't have a half-link, and no one's told me I'm to be on it in any case.'

  'You sure of that?'

  'Honour bright.' But I could tell that he still didn't believe me.

  'But you are on it,' he said slowly. ‘I know that from the special cleaning duties you've been given. And why shouldn't there be a half-link: it just means a little link, that's all, and I'll tell you what: I'd rather be on half-link than bottom-link.'

  'Bottom-link?'

  "The bottom-link's the one above the half-link. Slow-goods: cutting coal waggons in the dark, hour after hour.' 'Why in the dark?'

  'You get in amongst moving coal waggons and it's bloody dark, I'll tell you.'

  'But what does the half-link do, then?' I asked, for he still hadn't got to that.

  "The half-link isn't like any other link. It does a dog's dinner of local turns, but most of its work is on that one particular special sort of run.' He stopped here and gave me a queer look. 'But you don't need telling about that, mate.'

  I asked him how he made that out, and he said, 'You're being put to cleaning the engines for that run, and doing nothing else, by the sound of it, except getting more than your fair share of rides on them, which is probably so you can get up to firing before you're properly ready for the job. Where did you say you were from, mate?'

  'Baytown.'

  'Now I've never heard of that spot.' 'Gentry would call it Robin Hood's Bay.' 'Still never heard of it,' said Vincent. 'Does it have electric light?'

  'Whitby has electric light,' I said, but he hadn't heard of Whitby either.

  'What brings you down here?' Vincent asked, and I found that I was taking against the fellow in double-quick time. I thought: Rowland Smith brought me down here, with his letters that all of a sudden seemed so mysterious. It would have to come out in time, but I mumbled something about there being more chances for a lad south than north, adding: 'This special run you spoke of - it's all goods, is it?'

  Vincent thought about this for a while. 'It's mixed.'

  'Mixed goods?'

  'No, mixed goods and passengers. It's not what you might call. . He seemed to drift away for a minute here, but he came back galvanised: 'Of course, with the sort of running I'll be putting up, I'll be off the half-link and on to suburban runs in under six months, you bloody watch. After that the sky's the limit.'

  "The Bournemouth Belle!' I said.

  'You've got it, brother. Eighty miles to the fucking hour, and the big penny in the pocket. Do you want to see where the half-link drivers have their twenty minutes?'

  "That would be fine,' I said.

  The half-link mess turned out to be hanging in the blackness off the side wall of the engine shed. It had a wooden staircase leading up to it, and a metal pipe connecting the back of the shed with the floor, and I wondered: now, what is holding this thing up, the pipe or the staircase? because neither looked up to the job.

  'We can't go in, of course,' said Vincent when we'd got to the top of the stairs, 'but we can look through the window.'

  There were proper tables and chairs, though of a rough sort. Two men were sitting in the mess, both smoking pipes and reading newspapers, the nearest one's being all about sport - 'GOLFING NOTES', I read, and 'ROWING FROM THE UNIVERSITIES' - while the chap at the far end was behind a newspaper of a smarter sort: 'EAST LONDON WATER, PRESENCE OF DANGEROUS BICCILLI'.

  The sportsman was side-on to me so I could see that he was a wide, pinkish bloke with curly yellow hair, and a face that seemed to have burst a long while ago. All I could see of the other was his paper, with pipe smoke rising above it, and two thin legs shooting out from underneath with shiny boots on the end of them.

  'That's Barney Rose,' said Vincent, pointing to the sporting paper, 'and that there's Arthur Hunt,' he added, pointing to the second man, and I could tell from the way he spoke that this fellow Hunt was really the man for him.

  'Are they the only two drivers on the link?'

  "The only two full time on it, yes.'

  'And they've only got one fireman between them?'

  'Apart from the relief blokes who come and go.'

  In all my years of reading The Railway Magazine I had never heard anything to match it.

  'And that one fireman is the fellow called Mike that we've just seen in the firemen's mess?'

  On the subject of this toothy lad Vincent just nodded, and I could tell that it wasn't a matter of dislike but something more.

  'Henry Taylor,' I said, 'the one who went missing ... Was he firing on the half-link before he vanished?' Here I came in for another of his stares. Henry Taylor was the great unmentionable, but Vincent did bring himself to a shake of the head eventually.

  'Cleaning,' he said.

  'So I've been taken on in his place?'

  Another pause. "That's it,' said Vincent.

  'Don't these fellows ever do any work?' I said, turning back to look at the two engine men.

  "They're on their twenty minutes,' Vincent whispered. ‘I told you that.'

  We carried on watching them. They had both turned over pages, 'WRESTLING NOTES', I read on the sporting paper; on the other, 'TODAY'S SPEECHES'. Then TODAY'S SPEECHES collapsed and I saw the thin, wolfish face of the man behind the paper, like a dagger. He didn't glance at me but nodded quickly at Vincent before disappearing again behind the journal.

  This nod was electrifying in the effect it had on Vincent, who blushed as if that man had been his best girl. Then the other one, the comfortable one, put down his paper and nodded, but this nod was for the two of us, and quite genial. He stood up and opened the door, while the other just carried on with his paper and his pipe.

  'Well, lads,' said Barney Rose, 'Ranjitsinjih has hit thirty-four off one over for the second time in three weeks.'

  I tried to think of something to say.

  1 just had to pass on the news to someone,' said Barney Rose.

  'He's new,' said Vincent, pointing at me, and making no attempt to continue with the cricket talk. 'He's cleaning for the link.'

  There was a short silence; Rose moved his hand to his face, then away again. 'What's your sport, young man?' he asked, finally looking at me.

  'I'm not so hot at any game, sir. I concentrate on my work.'

  'But even so,' said Rose, in a dreamy sort of way.

  ‘I have most energetic aspirations,' I said, still hoping to bring the talk back to what it ought to have been, 'and my supreme goal is the footplate.'

  'Oh, my eye!' said Rose, before adding more quietly, 'Another Henry Taylor! He was always pretty keen to come up.' He was sweating and smiling in a strained way. 'Taylor was quite an ardent lad like yourself... but that's all right.'

  ‘I believe that any young railman
aspires to the footplate,' I suddenly heard myself saying, 'and I see no mystery in that, because I hold the life to be a grand one of freedom, healthy effort, endless variety, and delightful good friendship.'

  'Where on earth did you get all that?' asked Rose, and he really did seem astonished at my remarks. But I was watching the hard-looking fellow at the far end of the room who'd put the paper down once again and started staring at me. His shirt had no collar but it was clean and pressed. He looked like a grey wolf, and was obviously the right sort, but I did not like him, whereas I had always assumed that I would like men of the right sort.

  Tt has been indicated to me,' I carried on, giving this fellow back as straight a look as I could, 'that I might be climbing onto the footplate of a slow-goods in six months from now, and that I could be wielding the shovel pretty freely from then onwards.'

  Hunt took his pipe out of his mouth, and pretty well demanded, 'Who has given you all these promises?' For a working man, he talked like a swell, but with too much of London in his voice.

  'Mr Rowland Smith,' I said.

  From the look the man gave me - a look of nothingness -1 at first assumed he did not know the name, but that I could hardly credit.

  'Mr Rowland Smith,' I said, 'is a director of the company that employs you, sir: the London and South Western Railway.'

  'And you', he said, settling back on his bench in a way that made me realise that this wooden room was the kingdom over which he ruled, 'are his little friend?'