The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Thirty-two

The Saturday of Wakes, I was with Clive on the Rishworth branch from five in the morning. The afternoon I had off.

Arriving back at the Joint from Sowerby Bridge shed, I walked to the booking office. Bob was at the window.

'Is George in?' I asked him.

He shook his head. 'Day off.'

I walked up Horton Street and did not stop at the Evening Star.

I wanted a normal sort of Saturday, with the town packed to bursting, the pubs with all their doors propped open, the trams flying about and the shop goods set on trestles in front of the windows so you couldn't help notice all the bargains going. But it was just the silent streets, with the sun hanging above and every tram looking like a runaway.

At three o'clock I reached Back Hill Street. The wife wasn't in: she was off seeing the midwife she'd been put on to by the Maternity Branch of the Co-operative Women's Guild.

I sat on the sofa in the parlour with a book of the wife's: it was by Charlotte Bronte, and I couldn't get on with it, but I had determined to read and wait for a while, so I finally took up one of my old Raikvay Magazines and started an article on joint stations. The first was the Tri-junct at Derby, shared by the North Midland, the Midland Counties and the Birmingham amp; Derby Junction Railway. It was madness: three stationmasters. But then they all became the Midland Railway, so the station was no longer joint. There was no mention of Halifax Joint, which was rather disappointing – sort of made you feel like you didn't exist.

There was then an article on joint lines…I heard the parish clock strike the half hour, and could wait no longer. I walked up by the inside stairs to George Ogden's bedroom. In case he was asleep inside, I knocked on the door, then I clattered on the door. Hearing nothing, I opened it and walked in.

The room was a jumble of dead plants and unread books. You could tell they were unread just by looking at them, just by the silence that surrounded them. All he'd done was set them in piles, but the piles had fallen over. The sunshine coming through the window was rolling gently over the dead plants, as if to say: well, I did my bit for you lot, you know.

I reached for the first of the books, Letters of Descartes, and there inside it was the wife's neatly typed-out contract for regulation of payment of rent, notice periods and so on. I picked up the next: Hazlitt: Essays. Inside was a tiny blue flower, dried out and itself turned almost to paper. I brushed it away and caught up the next volume, the biggest of all: Don Quixote.

There suddenly came a great crashing at the front door. It was not knocking but an attempt to bring it down, so it could hardly be the postman, early with the evening delivery.

I dashed down, and there at the front door was a scruffy man with a big head and big boots, turning and looking about the street. Next to him was a small man with fair hair, light, white beard, wide pale-blue eyes and a beer bottle in his hand. It was a big one, and it was broken, too.

As soon as I opened the door, this fellow passed this bottle to the taller one and, looking away towards Hill Street, said, 'Give him something for himself.'

'Is it a delivery?' I said, and the broken bottle hit the side of my head. I was up and at the bottle man and got one good one in, but then he did a leap and put his whole weight into his boot and his whole boot into my stomach. I was now down on the floor in the parlour, and the fair-haired one was sitting on the sofa with my copy of the Railway Magazine, taking my place in all particulars.

This was Cornstalk, the ticket collector I'd seen at Blackpool Central after my night with Clive at the Seashell, and then again while meeting the wife. He was the one who'd thrown the beer bottle in the air; the one who looked not like a railwayman but an angel gone to pot. I sat up on the floor as best I could, and there was a flowing free coolness on the side of my head. I slid my fingers over the skin on the side of my head and they moved through wetness, and then they were under skin. I slid my fingers back down through the blood and the skin fell; I moved them up once more and it rose again. It was a simple mechanism, like a letterbox, a shortcut to the inside of my head. The feel of it stopped me moving.

'Some Notable Joint Stations', Cornstalk was saying, and even as he was speaking he was tearing the pages. He stood up so as to make a better fist of the ripping, saying, not to me but his mate with the boots, 'I don't go much on this paper, you know.'

'What is it, Don?' asked Boots.

'Fucking Railway Magazine, Max,' said the fair-haired kid. 'I don't care for it because it always seems to remind me of fucking railways. Ask him "Where's George?'"

Max, the boot specialist, turned to me. I was still sitting on the floor. There was a warm sound in my head.

'Where's…'

He had many teeth, all white but assorted shapes and sizes; all strangers to each other. He smelt of old meat.

'… George?' I said. 'He's gone.'

'What's that? He's a fucking gonner you say?' said Max, leaning down over me.

'We fucking know that,' said Don to Max.

'He's gone,' I said again. 'What do you want him for?'

'Owes us brass,' said Max, who was taking from his pocket a bag of something. White powder. He held it out to me.

'Stick your finger in,' he said.

My blood was starting to stick my collar to my neck. I pulled the collar away. 'Did you two cunts put the stone on the line?' I asked Max, who was still holding out the white bag.'Did we fucking what?' he said, and I knew they hadn't.

Don continued tearing up the Railway Magazine, fighting with it over at the sofa. His face was going pink, which made his eyes seem bluer, his beard whiter.

'Take a lick of this fucking sherbert,' Max said, moving the bag closer to my face. He said sure bert, drawing it out. His head was too long. It looked like something you saw on its own in a museum.

I could feel the blood a long way south inside my shirt now, heading down in force towards my belt.

'Did George put the stone on the line?' I asked.

Max still didn't seem to cotton on to what I was saying, but Don did, and, looking over to Max, he said: 'Doesn't sound like one of his strokes, does it?'

But Max had only one idea in his head. 'Sure bert,' he said again, and the bag was right under my nose.

'I don't want any fucking sherbet,' I said.

'Are you sure about it?' he said, and I stood up and swung at him, missing, and falling over. He kicked me in the belly and I was down again, couldn't breathe, could only bleed.

'I want to put this lot on the fire now,' said Don, the angel gone to pot, who was standing at the sofa with the remnants of the month's Railway Magazine all around him. 'I want to get a fire going and I want to get this lot on.'

'There is no fireplace, Don,' said Max.

'Jesus Christ, you're right,' said Don, looking at the hole in the floor.

The wife would be back very soon. If there was trouble of any sort with the examination, if her pelvis was too small, she might be kept late. But the wife was strong and perfectly built.

I saw now that Max, holding that powder of his, wore gloves. On a day of this heat they were not required. Max picked some of the powder from the bag and threw a little of it towards me. It hung in the hot dark air of the parlour like stars. I rolled back away from it.

'That's it,' said Max, leaning over me with his horse's head, 'You do right. Quicklime, see. Be the blind home for the rest of your days, mate: half fare on the fucking trams, basket weaving and chair caning… riding that long push bike with all the other fucking blind blokes. You've fucking seen 'em…' He leant forward again, roaring: 'En't yer? Six of the buggers to one bike, and all blind as fucking bats.'

'No, Max,' said Don, who'd sat back down on the sofa, with his hands in his pockets. 'The one at the front can see. Tell him: we know Ogden's done a shit. Now where's he gone?'

'I don't know.'

Don was frowning on the sofa, with his legs wide apart, looking down at his pointed boots.

'He's the landlord though…'

'George has flitted,' I said.

'Now that does sound like him,' said Don, standing up, and he nearly looked at me this time. Then he said, 'Put his fucking lights out with the quicklime. One eye, any road.'

Max's horse's head fell forwards and changed. He was looking down at the bag of lime and the change in his face was a grin. He punched his gloved hand into the bag, and there was a clatter at the door. Two letters came floating through and I wondered if my eyes would last to see them land. I rolled away again from Max as he threw the lime. I stood up and swung the coal scuttle at his head, and he was flying at me, boots first.

Don was at the door saying, 'Letter for George,' and then he gave a chuckle as he opened and read it. 'It's from his ma,' he said. 'She's expecting to see him tomorrow at her place. No wait, today, at seven.'

'Has she put down the address?' asked Max, after putting me down again with another kick.

'She has that,' said Don. 'People generally do in letters, you know, Max.' He put the letter in his pocket, saying, '54 New Clarence Road, Bradford.'

With that they were out of the door, and a second later it was the wife who was standing there.

'Who were those loafers just coming out of the house?' the wife asked, but the breath went out of her when she saw me sitting on the floor with the wonderfully clean and straight split at my temple, and the bag of quicklime spilled alongside me.

'I know that address,' I said, all in a daze, 'I know the address on the letter.'

As the wife was bandaging my head with one of her petticoats, I said, 'How was your pelvis?'

'Never mind that,' she said, 'what about all this?'

'It was all railway business,' I said, for it had been: railway ticket business.

She was looking at the old mantel. 'The gold cross has gone' she said.

I looked up at our marriage lines, at the place where the gold cross wasn't. 'It will be put straight soon.'

'It will,' said the wife. 'It will be put straight and it will be over, this and all railway business.'

This was the second time there'd been scrapping in her house over trains. The first time was down in London.

By writing to her son, George's mother had accidentally saved me, but what was she accidentally bringing on herself? I then remembered about the address: 54 New Clarence Road, Bradford, was the place George told me you wrote to in order to obtain biscuits if the machine at the Joint failed.

I saw the second letter on the floor, the one that had arrived with the letter from George's mother. Holding the petticoat to my head, I picked it up and put it into my coat pocket.

We then walked across Halifax to the Infirmary, a place I had been sure I would not be returning to until the wife was twenty-eight weeks gone, and maybe not even then. We struck barely anybody on the way.

This time, I followed the sign for 'accident cases', and I was the only one, so I was taken directly through for sewing.