The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Twenty-one

In the week before Wakes we were mainly holding fire on the excursion trains, for it was the last time anyone would want to go away. After the Skipton run, we were back on the Rishworth branch for the Tuesday and Wednesday, with another Scarborough excursion booked for the Thursday.

In that week, Halifax was full of scuttling people, cancelling their orders for milk or newspapers, stocking up on straw hats and other summer goods, taking their money out of the banks. All pleasures were kept in check, the better to enjoy the jamboree coming up.

Halifax was living in the future, and every day the Courier contained The Wakes Outlook', giving reports on all the places that the townsfolk might be heading for in the coming week. At Rhyl, bowling, yachting and golfing were in full swing. At Penzance, the outlook was good for holidays; glass steady, wind from the north. At Yarmouth, the Winter Gardens stood ready to accommodate the people if it rained. Military bands were on the beach. Fine weather was almost sure at Douglas, Isle of Man, and as for Blackpool…

Blackpool, we were told day after day, was 'ready', and the Courier gave a list of the 'Principal Attractions' in the town. On the Tuesday I read, while rolling into Rishworth, that these included the Singing Simpsons at the Tower and the Palace, and 'Henry Clarke and Young Leonard' at the Seashell. He was a fine ventriloquist but I wondered why he'd been mentioned and not the other, grander one, Monsieur Maurice. Perhaps he would take his turn as a Principal Attraction another day. He was a regular bill-topper at the Seashell, after all.

But Monsieur Maurice certainly wasn't mentioned the next day, as I sat reading the Courier around the back of the Albert Cigar Factory, with George Ogden waiting beside me.

We were kicking our heels, sitting on a wall at the loading bay while the narky little fellow who dished out the damaged cigars kicked around boxes in search of half a dozen 'A's for each of us, George having said he would stand me them.

He was a queer sort about money. He'd already asked for a rent reduction, and half the time I expected him to put the bleed on. Yet he'd paid me for the window. Whenever I thought about George and money, I thought about the missing tickets, and that led on to thinking about all the other business.

He was about five feet away from me, wiping his face with a little handkerchief. We'd met at the Joint and walked up together after our day's work. I hadn't seen him in a while, for he'd stuck to his usual habit of staying out late. 'Blessed hot,' he was saying now.

It was smoky, too. From the amount of black stuff tumbling upwards from the Albert chimney, they seemed to be at the highest pitch of cigar-making for that day.

'What's the blooming fellow up to?' George fretted. 'You wouldn't think it too taxing to find a dozen cigars in a cigar factory.'

'But it's substandard ones we're after,' I reminded him.

'The difficulty in this place', George said, 'would lay in finding any other kind.'

George seemed out of sorts. He went back to his pacing, I to the Courier and the Wakes Outlook.

'"A telegram from the Isle of Man today'", I read out loud, '"says if the weather is fair, the nights are as enjoyable as the day. This arises from the… "'I hesitated a little over the next word, '"pellucidity of the atmosphere and the play of light on the mountains and sea.'"

'Mountains!' said George, turning about to face me. 'On the Isle of Man! That's obviously written by some fellow who's never seen the Pyrenees.'

'You've seen 'em yourself, have you?'

'I might run over there one day,' he said, standing still and running his hands up and down his marvellous waistcoat.

'What are you doing for Wakes?' I said.

'Why, I'll be slaving in the booking hall of course,' he said. 'But that's my style, you know. When the common herd are gallivanting about, I'm getting my head down for a bit of serious work.' He nodded at me to drive home his point: 'And vice versa,' he added.

I'd been kicking my boots against the wall, and suddenly a clod of soot from Sowerby Bridge shed fell down from one of them. We both looked at it.

'Things'll be pretty slow after the first couple of days' I said. 'Everyone'll be gone by then.'

'Yes' said George, 'but then it's all stock-taking and putting the records of the whole year straight.'

Here was my opportunity. 'Did those missing tickets ever turn up?'

'Missing tickets, old man?'

'It was you that told me of it.'

'You should be on the halls,' he went on. 'A Man of Marvellous Memory. But it comes back to me now… No, they never did show up, and the devil of trouble was caused by it. No end of bombardments from Knowles.'

The cigar fellow put his head out of his little office and called: 'I've got a dozen 'A's here.'

We began making for his little room.

'The tickets for the Joint are sent along from Manchester, aren't they?' I asked George.

'That's the idea, old man.'

'The tickets that went missing: were they singles or returns? And where were they for?'

George blinked a few times. 'Can't just remember,' he said. 'Gosh! I'll be forgetting me own name next!'

'Did you hear about what happened to Lowther, the ticket inspector?' 'Fell off one rock and smashed his legs on another, didn't he? Out at Hebden Bridge? In the mountains they've got there! Well, I expect the fellow was canned.'

'What makes you think so?'

'The poor fellow's famous for it. How do you think he got to be so glum? It always takes you like that in the end, you know.'

The 'A's were pushed over towards us. George took one of the cigars out of its box, and rolled it under his nose.

'Do you have a light?' he asked the little cigar man.

'No,' replied the cigar man, rather angrily, 'and I don't have the bob you owe me for those smokes either.'

George began fishing in his waistcoat.

'I was at Hebden Bridge with the wife and a friend of the wife,' I said. 'I had sight of what happened, and I thought he was pushed. I chased the fellow I thought did it all the way to Manchester. I couldn't see his face, but I'm sure he must have been connected with tickets in some way. Do you have any notion who it might have been?'

This was the facer.

But George simply turned to the cigar man, saying: 'Two shillings. I'm paying for this gentleman's half dozen as well.' He paid over the money and turned to me: 'You chased him to Manchester!' he exclaimed.

And now I felt he was joshing, or wanting to seem to be. 'I chased him to Hebden station and got on the same train. But I lost him at Manchester Victoria.'

We'd walked back out into the loading bay by now. 'Well,' said George, 'ain't you the dark horse?'

'Who do you think might have wanted to crown Lowther?' I asked him.

George stopped in the loading bay and his eyes went wide: 'There's absolutely hundreds that would,' he said. 'The fellow was a regular bastard.'

'He was on the train when the stone was found on the line,' 1 said. 'I wondered whether that might have been somebody's first crack at him.'

He was on the point at once. 'As to that, nobody knew Lowther's movements beforehand. So no wrecker could have guessed he was going to be on that train, and it'd be a damned queer way of trying to kill him, wouldn't it? I mean, talk about going round the houses.'

I knew the first part of this to be true, and the second part seemed the soundest of good sense. 'You know'I said, 'every time I look at the Wakes Outlook, I expect to read, "It is pleasing to report that no grindstones have been found on the lines going into the resort."

'I'd say you were becoming rather overwrought about the matter,' said George, who had the cigar in his mouth. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'as I've already mentioned to you, chances are they were going for the train that came along after – the regular Blackpool service. Cheerio, old chap.'

I watched him walk away across the empty, sunlit yard that lay behind the cigar factory. I'd not yet mentioned to him about the Socialist Mission telegram to the Courier. It came to me that George had described himself as a socialist, but I couldn't see him being in with that show. Besides, I was a socialist myself, of sorts.

Come to that (and this was a new thought), from all that the wife said, Robinson, late of Hind's Mill, might even be counted a socialist, of a toffy kind.

'I'm obliged to you for the cigars!' I called to George, and he raised his hand in a backwards wave.

His going off like that quite took the fun away from having bought the 'A's. Maybe he was just tired after his day's work. He did look jiggered, and seemed to be dragging his large shadow across the wide, dusty yard.

I'd meant to take him along to the Evening Star for a pint, and I decided to head in that direction anyway. On reaching Horton Street, I looked on the old warehouse wall for the Socialist Mission poster advertising the 'meeting to discuss questions'.

It was gone.