The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Thirty

The next day, Thursday of Wakes, we were booked for another run out to Southport and back. Most of those on the train had already had time away elsewhere earlier in the week and were light-headed with holidayness. There'd been some bottle-throwing from the windows.

All this skylarking, all this life… and Robinson lying dead after drinking his fill of the Irish Sea.

During the day the questions had picked up speed and rolled into a blur: had I put the police on to Robinson or would they have questioned him anyway? And was that the reason he jumped off the pier, or was it the loss of his fortune?

After the Southport turn, I'd taken a pint with Clive in Sowerby Bridge and was later than usual going back up Horton Street. The wife, I knew, was being kept late at Hind's by the summer stock-taking, so I was in a fair way for a call at the Evening Star.

I took my pint while reading the Courier, which was thinner than usual on account of the holiday. I looked for news of Robinson's death, but there was nothing. Newspapers, I knew, waited for the inquests, and the reports always ended the same way: 'A verdict of Suicide while of unsound mind was recorded.' It was hard to imagine Robinson, with his specs and his brainy looks fitting that bill.

I had my two pints then pushed on up the street with my coat over my shoulder. Walking past the Imperial, I looked through the window, and there in the jungly darkness sat George Ogden. He was at his supper, and enjoying it so much that he seemed to be singing at the same time as eating, moving his hands in the air and fluttering his fingers in between mouthfuls. His eye caught mine and he froze for a moment, like a bioscope broken down; then he stood, with his napkin still at his throat, and signalled me for me to come in. A waiter saw him do so and strode up to the door, taking guard.

'Might I just come in for a moment?' I said, which was not the right way at all of going about it.

'Of course you might, sir,' said the waiter, and there was a bit of sauce, I thought, in the way he threw back that word 'might'.

I pulled my cap off my head. I almost handed it to him, and he almost took it, but we both thought better of it in time.

I walked over to George, feeling for the first time the blast of those fans on my hair. The place was only a quarter full: frock coats and wine glasses; Halifax swells with their legs stretched out, showing me the sharp creases in their trousers. Nobody looked up at me, in that steady world of wine drinking, as I walked across to the beaming face of George Ogden. But I couldn't help notice how my boots did not make any play with the lights and how my trousers just flopped like cloth tubes.

George was still standing. There was no food and drink on his face, but it was all only just inside it, and he glistened like a ripe red apple.

'Hello, Features,' he said, putting out his hand and pointing to the empty chair opposite his own.

'Having a bit of a blow-out?' I said.

The waiter, walking past, heard me say that and going by the face he pulled didn't much like the sound of it.

'Spot of supper, that's all,' said George.

'You do yourself pretty well.'

George looked down at his plate. 'It was potted shrimps to start, and this is steak and kidney pudding. Well, it was. I've a mind to finish off with wine jelly and brandied peaches, then the coffee and cheese, of course. Now the wine carafe's empty, I see…'

George was waving for the waiter.

'Some sound wine for the two of us' he said and he winked. 'You will join me in a glass.'

'I've just had a couple of pints down the hill' I said.

'Beer?'

I nodded. It would hardly be anything else. 'You wouldn't like to settle up and go back there with me, I suppose?' I said.

'I will not drink those apron washings,' said George.

The waiter came over and George said: 'Another of these please,' waving the carafe.

'Could I have a glass of beer,' I interjected.

The maps of India seemed to come up onto George's cheeks, but faded into the general rosiness pretty quickly. 'Will you run to a beer for a good fellow like this one?' George asked the waiter.

It seemed that the fellow could, but that he would be putting himself to a fair bit of trouble in the process.

'I've been able to pull the string,' said George when the waiter had gone, 'but it really is quite amazing the airs they put on here.'

Then he suddenly asked: 'You ever been to London?'

'I lived there for a while' I said, 'Waterloo way.'

'South, en't it?' said George.

'It is in the Southern Division,' I said, proudly.

'Ever get up to the Cri?'

'The Cri?'

'The Criterion, I mean.'

'What is it? Music hall?'

'Leave off' said George. 'I don't hold with those places at all. No, the Cri is rather a select bar and restaurant… Mind your eye!' he said, for the waiter was coming up to us, swirling down a silver tray with another of the queer wine containers and a glass of beer. The beer had too much froth and looked like an ice cream; tasted all right though.

George was saying something to the waiter, thanking him for going out of his way with the beer and asking for his pudding. He seemed born to it all, I had to admit. 'What does your dad do, George?' I asked.

'Dad? Oh he's in the potty house.'

'That's a good 'un,' I said, taking another pull on the beer.

'No,' said George, 'honour bright. Dad was a solicitor in a small way of business…'

'Where?'

'York,' said George. 'Near there at any rate.'

'Where near there?'

'Well,' said George, 'ever heard of a spot called Bishop- thorpe?'

'Can't say I have. Well anyway,' I went on, 'I'm very sorry to hear it, George.'

He was frowning perhaps, and I wondered whether I had found the limit of his cheerfulness, but he put his napkin to his face, wiped his mouth, and when the action was done he was smiling again.

'It's quite all right, old man. Dad was always a little blue, and then he just got bluer and bluer, and… well, they call it a hospital, you know. The Garden Hospital. It's a pretty name… Just going to drain off, old man.'

He stood up, and walked off to the Gentlemen's. He came back, not walking but rolling, full of himself all over again.

'Question for question, Mr Stringer,' he said, sitting down.

'That's fair do's,' I said, and I waited.

'Your Mrs Stringer, she's a regular beauty, you know.'

I wished he would stop saying that.

'How's she liking it at her mill?'

'Getting on all right,' I said.

'Do you know her movements this weekend?'

He must have seen the look coming over my face – and it was a look of horror – for he quickly put in: 'It's only that I must pay the rent, you understand.'

I wanted to keep George Ogden away from the wife, even in his talk. I said, quite sharply: 'She should be back home by now. You can come along with me and pay it directly.'

'I may be kept here a little late with brandy and a cigar,' he said. 'Second matter' he went on, sipping wine. 'Any news of Lowther?'

I sat back. 'Curious question,' I said. 'How the devil should I know?'

George frowned.

'Tickets, after all' I went on; 'it's your line of country, isn't it?'

'No, no' said George. 'We sell'em, he inspects'em, or did. It's quite different. I'm pig-ignorant when it comes to the inspecting side.'

George's pudding came, and he set to.

His trouble was that he was not ignorant of anything. He had brains to spare – brains not used up in the booking office at the Joint.

As George put down his peaches it didn't seem right to watch, and my eyes began to rove over the restaurant. I caught sight of our waiter, and was glad to see he was looking at George and not me. The look in that waiter's eye said: now, can this gentry come up to the chalk as far as the bill is concerned? I too was wondering about George's pocketbook. How could he afford brandied peaches and all the rest on a booking clerk's wages?

I was certain there'd be a to-do over the bill and wanted to be off before it happened, but first, I needed to use the Gentlemen's.

Well, there was a fellow lived in there: he had a desk, a chair and a little stack of newspapers to be going on with. He passed you a towel when you'd washed your hands, and you put a penny in a silver bowl by the sink.

When I came back, the beaming smile on George's face was turned up to full. A sovereign was lying on top of a folded paper that I took to be the bill, and a glass of brandy and a big cigar were waiting at my place. The cigar was longer even than the 'A's I'd had the week before from the Albert Factory. I looked at the cigar band and there was a beautiful picture of a tropical scene: a whole other world, half an inch square.

'I've taken the liberty of laying in stores,' said George.

A lighted match was before me. I lit the cigar, drew on it. It was tighter, more complicated somehow than the 'A's and 'B's: more to it all round. I sipped the brandy, once, twice, and by degrees my suit became just my suit and nothing to be ashamed of. I checked on the waiters again and none were looking our way.

'Not so bad is it after all?' said George.

'I shouldn't let you stand me all this.'

'Nonsense,' said George, and he just smiled at me for a long time. It was pleasant in a way, because he was a good smiler, but I thought: What's he fishing for? Trouble was, I wouldn't trust myself not to give it, even though it couldn't be a good thing.

He leant forwards and began talking railways: about how the Lanky had its faults but was a great show really; how it had carried twenty-six millions of tons of freight in the year before; how its freight engines lit up the nights across Yorkshire and Lancashire; how it was, all in all, a fine place to make your corner.

'I see you in Manchester,' he said to me quite suddenly.

'Manchester Victoria?' I said, to stretch out the moment of pleasure.

'I picture you as part of the brass,' he said. 'At first, I thought: railway police. That's the thing for Jim Stringer, on account of his great stickability; his wanting to know. You've showed me that over this stone on the line business…'

'I still mean to get to the bottom of that,' I said, trying to look gravely at George, but not succeeding and feeling foolish in the attempt.

'But I now feel you have the steam to go further,' George went on.

I knew it was all daft talk, but I was carried along with it. 'But I'm not the right sort, am I?' I said. 'You know that very well.'

'Not a johnny, you mean? I wouldn't worry over that. You have a gentlemanly way of going on, pleasant looks. I don't say you wouldn't benefit from a new suit, but fate intended you for a fortunate man, Jim Stringer.'

Why would anybody say that if they did not think it true? Why?

I told George about my visit to Winterbottom, the Scarborough tailor, and early on he began to shake his head.

'You must not buy off the peg,' he said. 'Of course it'd make no odds up on the footplate, but in the offices at Victoria you'd be found out.'

'Shabbiness is a false economy,' I said, nodding, just as if I was already there in those offices at Manchester.

'You have it,' said George, and he fell back to smiling at me for a long time.

Another brandy came along for me, and a quarter of an hour later I floated out of the Imperial on a wave of beer, brandy and cigar smoke, leaving George behind for what he called his 'nightcap'. I was canned, and I was looking forward to the cold night air of Halifax. But of course when I came out into Horton Street the air was still warm, and another trick was in store, for all the buildings seemed to lift and turn so as to let me see them in a new way.