The Blackpool Highflyer

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 another said 'l amp;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.'

'She's quite often seen at the station' said Bob. 'And she doesn't just come here to see Knowles.'

'Why does she come then?' I asked him.

'Catch a train,' said Bob.

'Where to?'

He shrugged.

'Being married to the SM she has a pass all over the line' said Dick.

'So you see,' Bob put in, 'because we don't sell her the tickets, we don't know.'

Now all was quiet in the booking office. George seemed half asleep in his chair all of a sudden, with the cigar lodged in one of his waistcoat pockets. Dick was leafing through a book of accounts. Bob was looking out of the window with his hands in his pockets.

There was another knock on the door and Dick opened it. A grinning kid stood there with a box in his hand. 'Afternoon, mates,' he said. He uncombed his hair by smearing his hat across his sweaty head, then he passed the box to Dick, handing across a docket at the same time. 'Fleetwood singles,' he said, 'numbers five hundred to six thousand on the nose.'

Bob passed a book to Dick, who'd begun unwrapping the parcel, which contained bundles of tickets tied with white ribbons.

But George was scowling from his seat as Dick began to record receipt of the tickets in the ledger. 'We're counting on a full complement this time, old man,' George said to the kid.

There was something funny about the way Dick wrote in the ledger. At first I couldn't see what it was; he just looked greedy to get the words and numbers down, but it struck me after a second that he was holding two pens, writing with both hands.

George saw me watching. 'Like a blinking octopus, en't he?'

Bob, who seemed proud of Dick over this, said: 'He can do sales and receipts at the same time.'

'Five hundred to six thousand exactly,' said Dick, looking up from the ledger and turning to the ticket bundles. 'Looks like they're all here.'

'Have you lot seen the show they're putting on down there?' said the kid, pointing at the floor, but meaning the platforms beneath.

'What show, old man?' said George to the kid (even though he didn't look more than fifteen).

'Picture-taking,' said the kid. 'Photographic artist. He has all the brass lined up.'

Dick walked over once more to the window.

'You'll not see it from there, old man' said the kid, who then gave a funny look towards George.

'I'm off down to look,' said Dick, and Bob went too.

'Good fellows if they can be turned the right way,' said George, when they'd gone. 'Not a lot of steam in them really, but…' He got to his feet and began putting away the tickets from the new parcel, or trying to. He couldn't quite reach the top of what I took to be the rack for Fleetwood singles. I asked if I could help, being six inches taller than George. 'It's quite all right,' he said, and took a stool from the other side of the room. 'They must be put into the racks in a certain special way.'

'Well, yes,' I said, 'in number order, lowest number at the bottom.'

'Bit more to it than that, chief' said George.

But there wasn't, as he knew very well.

'Where do the tickets come from?' I asked.

'From Headquarters in Manchester, of course,' said George. 'They're sent over here in parcels as needed.'

'All in number order?' I said.

'That's the idea: in number order, and parcelled in batches of two hundred and fifty.'

With none of the Fleetwood singles put away, George walked over to his revolving seat once more and sat down. Just as he did so, there was a passenger at the window, and he had to sell a ticket.

When the sale was complete, George pitched the coin into the wooden drawer and turned again towards me: 'They go in runs of ten thousand, you know,' he said, and then gave me a sideways look to see whether I did know. Well, I had a vague notion but didn't let on, so he continued talking like a penny book. 'It's the Edmondson ticket that's used. Has been for donkey's years. For every type – Liverpool singles, let's say – the run is ten thousand, but the system only allows four digits to be printed on the tickets so how can that be since ten thousand is five?'

I gave a shrug, for I really didn't know.George smiled. 'Rather a pretty little catch, en't it? Well, what's the number of the first ticket in a run, would you say?' 'One' I said, looking again at 'step on at goole for the continent'.

'Nought, nought, nought, one, you mean,' said George, 'because remember that even though you can't have more than four digits, you can't have fewer than that either.'

'I see,' I said.

'So that's your answer, is it? First one in a run's nought, nought, nought, one?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Quite sure of it, are you?'

'Well it's obviously not,' I said, 'from the way you're carrying on.'

George was grinning like a street knocker.

'Very well then,' I said, 'what is the first number in the run?'

'Fish and find out,' said George, and he spun around in his chair.

I could have brained him there and then. 'I give it up,' I said.

'Oh come on,' he said. 'Take a shy.'

Something I'd read in the Railway Magazine came back to me, and I knew the answer, but I had a queer feeling that it would have been quite crushing to George if I'd come out with it, so I said again: 'No. Can't work it out.'

In celebration of his victory, George gave one more spin on his chair, and said: 'The first number's nought, nought, nought, nought. That way, the last one's the ten thousandth even though its number's only nine, nine, nine, nine. I must say, old man, it should be no riddle to anyone of normal intelligence. It's a very good thing you're not in this line of work.'

I was not having this. I had let him have his victory, and now he was making me eat dog over it. 'Well, I knew that all along,' I said.

'Oh leave off,' said George. He sat still in his chair, took his cigar out of his waistcoat and looked at it. 'See that the cigar bears the name of the registered star band,' he muttered quietly to himself, and when he looked up at me again, his he said, 'I'll buy the ticket myself, as long as it's not a really expensive one like a First to Liverpool, and then I'll let you have it, old man. Gratis. Folks will give worlds to get 'em.'

'Well,' I said, 'no need to trouble yourself over that.'

I wanted to put our little set-to behind us, and I thought of a question that would help me do it: 'You said there was some trouble over the tickets coming in?'

'It's just this,' said George. 'Some blockhead in Manchester keeps sending us short batches – causes the devil of confusion, puts all the ledgers out. It would turn your hair pink in streaks if you knew the half of it… everybody kept back hours after booking off time… as if it's not bad enough, being stuck in this poky hole.'

I looked again at the steam packet on the Goole poster, and, to change the subject, said: 'I have hopes of taking the wife to Goole.'

George nodded. 'As a shipping centre, it's hard to beat,' he said. 'The barges go along the canal like trains – all tied together, and when the ride is right there's some big ships to see.'

'The company keeps its own fleet of steam packets there I believe,' I said. 'It's a bigger show than Fleetwood, and I've not yet been out that way.'

George looked at me very gravely for a while, then took his plunge: 'Would you like a ticket for yourself and Mrs Stringer?'

'Staff privilege, you mean?'

George nodded.

'Well, I have my footplate pass for getting back from turns, but staff priv… Three a year you're allowed if you're an engine man, and you've got to put in for them weeks in advance. They're like gold dust, aren't they?'

'They are rather,' said George.

I tried to keep a carefree tone, but I had a bad feeling over this. 'And they must be signed by Knowles,' I said.

George nodded solemnly once again. 'I put 'em under his nose, and he generally signs 'em without looking.'

'Well -' I said.

'Only sometimes I don't bother.' George picked up a pen, stood up again and walked across to one of the racks – the one holding the staff-privilege tickets. He flicked a ticket out from the bottom and returned to the ticket window with it. He had burnt his boats now, for he would not be able to put it back except at the top of the stack, and then it would be out of order. 'I know Mr Knowles has got a lot on, and so to ease his burden a little I sometimes do the job myself,' said George. He was waving his pen over the blank ticket, working himself up to the moment, and I was looking at a new George. Except that somehow his being a little on the fly was not so very great a surprise.

'It's quite all right, old boy,' I said, thinking to soften the blow of my refusal by putting it in his own sort of swell talk.

'Oh that's quite all right,' said George in turn, putting his pen back into his coat pocket. He then began walking back over to the rack from which he'd taken the ticket. 'I was only skylarking in any case,' he went on. 'Now of course, it does sometimes happen that we take one out, and it turns out not to be needed…' He laid the ticket on the little ledge at the foot of the column from which it had come. 'So it stays there until it is required.'

I could've split, and George would have been stood down immediately, with worse to follow. So in a way I should've felt flattered, because he was showing me trust.

'Do you know what I'm going to have in my apartments at Back Hill Street?' George asked, suddenly.

'Your room, do you mean?'

'Damask curtains. I've got a mind to have 'em,' he said, standing up, 'so I'm jolly well going to have 'em.'

I nodded. 'The wife doesn't really hold with curtains,' I said. I wanted to keep talking to get the ticket business behind us. 'She won't do things in a sixpenny way,' I said. 'She must have the best of everything, and so she will wait until opportunity calls.'

'And do you know what's wanted in this office?' said George.

I shrugged, still a little dazed.

'What's wanted is a revolving ticket cabinet to go next to this revolving chair. That would save me having to sail backwards every time.'

'Wouldn't things become a little confusing, with you and the tickets both revolving? You might end up going one way, the tickets another.'

George stood up and walked over to the window. 'Glad to know your view on the matter,' he said, but of course he wasn't in the least. He looked through the window for a while, before turning to me and saying: 'Shall we go and watch the photographer?'

'But what about anyone coming to buy a ticket?' I said, at which George turned about and slammed down the hatch.

'They can buy 'em on the trains,' he said. He then lobbed a small amount of coin into the money drawer and took out another ticket from the racks. This he handed to me. 'Take it,' he said. 'It's a present. All paid for.'

It was the third-class single to Todmorden mentioned earlier: number 1234.

'Thanks,' I said.

'Come on,' said George, who was holding the booking- office door open for me.

– ‹o›--

We walked along under the canopy of platform two. It was all shaded, and I wanted to be out of it quickly, into the world of light beyond where the photograph was being taken. That's the thing about sunshine day after day. It spoils you. You get so as you can't do without it.

The camera was set up at the platform end. Knowles was there, his two assistant stationmasters, the head porter and a handful of other high-ups. The photographer was at his camera, looking down into it through a sort of concertina tube. He had his own assistant alongside.

'It looks smart to have an assistant even if you never use him,' said George, as we stepped up to join Dick and Bob.

Knowles was at the front of the group, and Mrs Knowles was looking on. She was beautiful and she was smiling. Knowles was not.

'You small fellows go to the side,' Knowles was saying.

'All he wants is a whip,' George muttered.

Knowles had a brown, square face and a thin black moustache which was there to prove the care he took over shaving and everything else. He spoke fast, with a mouth that was like a machine. 'Where do you want me, sir?' he was asking the photographer. 'In the middle?'

At this George turned and rolled his eyes at me. 'A station- master isn't gentry, you know,' he said.

'How do you mean?'

'Just watch him.'

The group was all ready, like a small army in gold, except that too many of them looked like farmers.

'Now stay quite still,' said the photographer. Then he said, 'Stopping down', and began fiddling with the camera, while the assistant looked on, flinching every now and again. The photographer looked up, half towards the sun with a hand shielding his eyes. He looked away, very downhearted. The day was too bright.

Presently the photographer looked into his camera once more, then looked away again and took up glaring at his assistant. He then returned to his camera, but broke off at some small gust of wind that seemed to bring with it a change of light.

'Fellow's making a meal of it, en't he?' George whispered to me. 'I've messed about with a hand camera in my time… a touch of portraiture… Nothing to it really.'

Knowles coughed, being the only one in the party of photographic subjects who dared.

'The pharmacy up on New Bank has a dark room,' George continued in an under-breath. 'I have use of it at special rates.'

The photographer went back to his camera and peered into the rubber tunnel once more. 'Busy day for you fellows?' asked the photographer after a while. He was still looking through the camera.

This is a railway station, sir,' said Knowles, and just as he was doing so the photographer pressed a button and the camera clicked.

'Oh, heck!' said the photographer, and, standing up straight, he said to the party: 'Look, if I ask a question don't answer it, all right? I'm just thinking aloud.'

Meanwhile the assistant had gone live, darting towards the back of the camera, from which he removed something, smuggling it into the black bag. Then he smuggled something out of the black bag and fitted it into the back of the camera where the earlier article had been. The photographer was standing with his face tipped up towards the sky, eyes closed.

'Fellow's a perfect fool,' George whispered.

The photographer now walked a fair distance away from his camera, and just stood there with his hands on his hips.

'I've an important train expected in on platform six in three minutes,' called the stationmaster, 'and I zvill have to attend to it.'

'Yes,' said photographer, 'well now the sun's in the wrong place.'

'I expect Mr Knowles will be able to sort that out for you,' said one of the assistant stationmasters. It was a jest, so a bit of a risk, but Knowles's wife laughed – a lonely tinkle like breaking glass – and Knowles himself gave a smile. Well, nearly.

'Look at him now,' said George, 'dignity maintained at all costs. But I saw him in the Imperial once with Dunglass, and it was all "thee" and "tha", and when the waiter asked if they wanted beer or wine, he said, "nawther". He's teetotal, you know.'

George looked again at Emma Knowles. 'If I could just once…'

Knowles was now giving George the evil eye. Then his stare shifted to Dick and Bob, who both looked nervously back at George, waiting for him to speak up for them.

'Ogden' said Knowles. 'Who is presently in the booking office?'

'Just at this present time, sir?' said George, and two untidy red marks had appeared on his cheeks, like two maps of India. 'Well, fact is that business is rather light, sir, and we all came down very briefly to see whether we could be of assistance.'

'I am standing here, Ogden,' said Knowles, 'and I am trying to smile for this gentleman -' he pointed to the photographer '- and the cause is not helped by -'

But just as George was about to get what-for, the 'important' train – which didn't look in the least important to me, being a little local with three rattlers on – came bustling into platform six as threatened. Knowles broke away from the picture group to see to it, or to pretend to. As he dashed across the footbridge, I saw a man stepping off the train with a bulky portmanteau in his hand. He wore a cap and had too much hair. It was Paul, of the Socialist Mission. Close behind him walked a tall, thin man in a homburg hat. This one, who'd stepped off the same train, carried no bag, but had a bundle of papers under his arm.

'Hi!' I yelled. But it's a tall order to shout across four platforms with an engine in steam close by, and the two fellows were quickly up onto the footbridge.

I edged up to Bob. 'Where's that one from?' I asked, pointing to the train that had come into platform six, and was now rolling away.

Bob looked at his pocket watch and thought for a second. 'That's in from York, I reckon,' he said.

That was good enough for me. It could have connected there with a train down from Scotland. I was blowed if the second fellow wasn't Alan Cowan, leader of the Socialist Mission. Well, he looked just the sort. I gave a general nod towards the photographic party and began to give chase.