The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Thirty-seven

All morning there'd been something amiss; all bloody summer there had been, and, as the train for Goole pulled out of Sowerby Bridge station, the answer came: blue blackness in the sky.

I had never been to Goole, but I knew it to be an inland port. The barges used the canals that went out from it – and there were any number of those. The sea-going ships came and went by the Humber Estuary, which by the time it reached Goole was called the river Ouse.

So the steamships went out into a river, and they could only do it when the tide was right.

The eastward ride to Goole was a two-hour touch, taking me right across Yorkshire. The rain was stalled in the blackness at Sowerby Bridge; skies were clear again over Wakefield, but our little train struck storm conditions once more at Pontefract, where the black ink was spilling across the sky. Here I leant out of the window as the guard was giving the 'right away', and one big raindrop was blown into my face.

The first lightning flash happened just as Goole appeared, and it seemed to bounce the whole town into my view.

Lightning is the real light, and all was revealed in an instant: the frightening black and red water tower, the tall coal hoists like factories on legs that could roll back and forth, and one of them seemed to be walking through the port in that bright, white moment, but no: that was the coal hoist that floated. I saw the sailing ships, plenty of those – the masts and yardarms made tall crucifixes – and the steamships too, with their backward-sloping funnels. Most would be of the Lanky's own fleet. The station was only a few hundred yards from the docks. As I stepped through the ticket gate, the wind made the sound of a motorcar – a motorcar far off but gigantic. The rain was flying in the wind; the bookseller outside the station had an oilcloth over all his wares.

'Batten down the hatches,' he said to me as I passed by.

I stopped beyond the station for a moment, looking at the docks. Goole was not like a town, but more like a giant system, with the moving cranes going one way and the trains running a different way, and the houses hard by the docks with sea water rolling before them instead of roads. The lightning came again from out over the Humber, like the blue lines you might see in the whites of a woman's eye, in the corner of the eye, almost out of sight.

And then the lightning came again, from a different side of the seaway, as if the light was blown by the wind.

I walked on into the docks. The first thing I struck was a church that stood in the centre of the low dock buildings, like the hub of a wheel. The flag on the steeple was having a rare old time of it. I saw that the clock was lit by lightning- coloured gas.

The time was midday – midday in summer and the town was dark, with gas lamps lit all across the docks.

I walked on, and the water that should have been down there in the docks was up and at me, and there was a sharpness to the wetness. There were half a dozen docks before me, each like a town square filled with water. At one dock close by, two men were winding wheels on opposite sides of a small pump. A white tube, shining in the rain, came from the pump and hung down over the dock wall into the water, and I thought: there's a man down there on the end of that. Well, he was out of the rain at any rate. Over the road from where I stood were two warehouses with a pub crammed between them. Along from the warehouses was a building that looked like a chapel, but was not. The wide doorway was propped open. Above it was a carving of two small galleons bobbing about on a sea, and, above these, a flagpole flew the seagoing version of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway badge. It was the shipping office for the Lanky.

The place was stifling: long lines of men in bowlers and steaming Ulsters stood queuing for tickets. The two blokes giving out the tickets at a long table were both smoking pipes. It took a long time for any man to get his ticket, for it was all a lot of fishing in pocket books, presentation of passports, checking of same; and finally the issuing of tickets that looked like little books, with each page needing to be stamped.

Behind the ticket clerks was a wide painting showing the fleet of Lanky steamers, each in its own bit of sea, and all set in a circle going around a sort of gravestone on which were two columns headed 'continental ports' and 'days of sailing'. Today was Monday. On Monday there were sailings to Amsterdam, Antwerp, Ghent, Hamburg, Rotterdam. All ships conveyed merchandise, but would take passengers too – it was ten bob to most places.

I walked up alongside one of the fellows in the queue. 'What time are the ships going off today?' I asked him.

'Four o'clock.'

He'd answered without looking at me. He looked like a criminal. Every man jack of them in that queue looked as if he was escaping from somebody or something. And then I noticed a copper standing in the corner of the room, and for the first time I was set thinking about what I would do if I tracked down George. Up to then I'd just been dreaming of saying to him: 'I know you did it, you fucking rotter.'

I don't know exactly why, but I never tried asking the ticket clerks in the shipping office whether they'd sold a ticket to a fellow with the particular looks of George Ogden. It was something about the length of the queue, and the way the blokes silently smoked as they tore and stamped the dockets. I knew it would be like talking to a wall.Then there was the copper.

I could put the whole matter in his hands. But no, not yet. It would be Manchester all over again if I did that.

I walked out of the shipping office and the storm was still there. I watched the rain hitting the sea like a quarrel and streaming through the circles of light around the gas lamps. The two men were still winding the wheels on the small pump connected to the air tube. And something being done in the docks was sending an underwater-bell sound floating over Goole.

I walked into one terraced street, turned into another. Between two houses was a shop with a wide black iron panel fixed to its front. Pressed into the iron was the shape of three balls, as if three iron balls had been hurled there when the iron was hot. I saw the remains of gold paint in the hollows, and below, also driven into the iron, the words 'harper brothers, money advanced on pictures, bronzes, violins amp; c amp; c.'

I stared at this place, and George Ogden walked out of its door holding a little case.

I was over the road from him and along a little. I shouted out and he ran directly around the corner with his funny, wobbling run. But it served him well enough because, as I stepped forward, I slipped on the slimy kerbstone, dashing the back of my head on the cobbles. I put my hand directly up to the wound that had been sewn. It was not torn. Then I hared around the corner, striking a long, empty street, dead straight. It ended in lines of railway wagons. As I watched, the nearest line of wagons jangled into life, and the words 'transhipment', 'coal factors and exporters', 'transhipment', 'coal factors and exporters', over and again in alternation, were dragged across the end of the street.

There was a little hotel. I hurried along to it and burst through the front door. It was full of very dry people in strange hats, and all smoking cigars. I was in the public bar and for a moment thought my hearing had gone west, for they were all speaking words I could not make out. They were all foreigners.

I came out of there double-quick and ducked into the next place. It was a little watery fishmonger's, with things floating in pails of cloudy water, but most of the fish already sold and the owner swabbing down the floor.

'You've not seen a fellow come by this way, have you?'

The fishmonger shook his head.

I gave it up. Back into the rain; back into Goole town.

George was in Goole at any rate, and he would only be leaving the town on a boat, and the boats could not set sail just yet.

So I walked about for an eternity in the blackness and the rain, keeping my eyes skinned. I must have stood for half an hour in front of a butcher's, with a line of dead rabbits over my head holding the rain off. Presently, I turned back to the docks, where the black water looked as though it was being beaten by hammers. There might have been getting on for half a dozen steamships loading. Horses were being walked up onto one of them, but it was mainly coal that was going in. As I looked on, a coal barge came by, snaking through the docks with smaller barges towed behind, all heaped with coal. I thought of the swan at Hebden Bridge, with the signets following behind in a line.

I found myself after a while back in the place near the church, bang outside the Lanky shipping office once again. I looked up at the flag, the little galleons carved over the door. Right over the road was the pub I'd spotted before. It also had two galleons on show – these on the pub sign. They were friendly-looking little ships, but the pub was just a white room, heaving with sea-going blokes. There was nothing on the wall but gas flares with no mantels, giving out a bright white light. Everybody was supping, and everybody was smoking, for what else do you do while waiting for your ship to leave? There were bags and portmanteaus all over the floor, and the fashion was to stand there swigging your ale with your foot placed on top of your bag, so as to stop it being carried away.

I pushed my way through to the bar, trying to avoid the hazards of the luggage pieces, and asked for a glass of ale from the barman, who was small and rough-looking, like his pub. Just as he passed the beer over, I saw something red in the far corner of the room: the redness of a glass of wine, the one glass of wine being drunk in that room.

Well, it was George Ogden drinking it.

As I moved over to him with my own glass in my hand, one of the big fellows waiting for transhipment knocked against Ogden, and half the wine was down his fancy waistcoat. When I got over to him, he was trying to rub it away, saying to himself, 'Just need a little something in a bottle to furbish it up.'

'It's all up, George,' I said.

He was not wearing his stiff collar. He was wearing the white shirt as usual, but he had on no collar at all and I saw his neck for the first time. There was a fair amount of it.

He closed his eyes for a second, as if he could magic me away by the power of his mind. But then he looked back. 'Hello, old man,' he said, putting his hand inside his coat and taking out a pocket book. He handed me a pawn-shop ticket and a banknote. 'Look, old sort,' he said, 'the fellow in that pawn shop's as tight as Kelsey's Nuts. He let me have a sovereign for the gold cross, and I'm now giving you the ticket and ten shillings. You'll have the balance directly I get myself straightened out.'

I put down my glass of ale on the nearest table, took hold of his shirt and pitched him against the wall. He bounced back off it. The blokes around us barely moved – it was a normal sort of event in this place.

'Careful, old sort' George said presently, 'I will not be slighted.'

'Let's have it' I said. 'Tell me about the tickets first.'

'Had a few away, that's all,' he said. 'Just a lark, really. I began by thinking it rather a pretty little scheme.'

'You needed help with it though.'

'Ha!' said George, 'and that's where things got a little tangled. I'll tell you what, old boy: you wouldn't believe – good chap like yourself – the vagabonds they've got on the ticket- collecting side over at Blackpool.'

'Don was one of them,' I said.

'Well I'm blowed!' said George, who was now getting back to something like himself. 'You've happened on that gentry, have you? Very nasty piece of goods indeed.'

'And his pal, Max, is a sight worse,' I said.

George blew out his cheeks. 'You're not wrong there either.'

'Where did he come into it? I asked. 'Max, I mean. He's not a ticket collector, is he?'

'Well now, Max…' said George. 'He was on hand just in case anyone should stumble over the scheme and then… well, how can I put it, old man? He is rather scarifying. I mean, Queensbury Rules don't enter into it with that particular chap, and that I can promise you.'

'You're waiting for a boat,' I said, ignoring this. 'Where are you off?'

'Holland, old man.'

In my mind's eye I saw George Ogden in Holland, wearing big trousers with patches sewn on, sticking his fat finger in the hole in the dyke.

'Thought I'd try my luck in Amsterdam,' he was saying. 'Now you wouldn't crack on, old man, would you? We've had some rare old larks, the two of us. I'll be honest, I liked your company. But could I ask you a question, old man? Why should you be up there, day in, day out, working for slave wages in all weathers, getting burnt, bashed about the head – I see you have stitches in – when many stupider fellows are sitting back in their offices and barely lifting a finger for twice what you're on? I only wonder because I saw you in the restaurant and you were like a cat on hot bricks, and it's not right that you should be. You must have a scheme, old man, otherwise your life will be quite wasted. Would you care for a refill?'

'No.'

Over the heads of the crowd in the bright, white room I saw the helmet of a copper. It was the one I'd seen over the way, in the shipping office. He was standing by the door, chatting to a bloke who looked as though he ought to be arrested by the copper, not passing the time of day with him.

'I had a sweetheart once,' George continued. 'Oh, she'd go for the salt with her knife as soon as wink. Well, I checked that in no time and schooled her in speech a little: "Six year", she would say, and I would say "No, sweet, six years". Now, she didn't like it one bit, but I kept at it. Started on the mill floor, that one did. I'm not ashamed to say it, old man: I was stepping out with a factory girl, but I put her up to going for the office, and it was the proudest moment of my life when she went typewriter in the same concern. And why do you think I bothered? Because she had brains, and I would not have them wasted, and I would not have her slighted. It was my duty to keep the wind off that girl, and I tried and I tried, and in the end, old man, you see, I failed.'

I was not really listening to George. I was thinking of Margaret Dyson and how, as I had picked her up, the life had spilled out of her.

'You're the same in some respects, you know,' George was saying, 'but you have your Mrs Stringer, and she will keep you up to the mark, old man, believe me.'

The doctor's words came back: 'I will go further, and say that if it is a delicate person you are dealing with…'

'Oh, whether you like it or not,' George Ogden was saying, 'believe me. And you will like it, for you're an intelligent fellow.'

'To put him or her suddenly upright may cost your patient his or her life.'

'And I knew, I just knew, old sort, that I could never keep anything back from you,' George Ogden was saying, 'and I'm really awfully sorry for trying.'

'Speaking of that,' I said, 'your dad's not in the nutty house at all, is he?'

George gave a laugh, and what was vexing was that it was a real laugh. 'He is not, old man! Though he should be, and I only wish the bastard were locked away. Why, Dad was a butcher, just like your old man, from what I gather. I say, did yours put little lumps of suet on the scales so as to give short change?'

'No,' I said.

'I don't want to talk about my pa any more, if it's all the same.'

'You clapped eyes on your mother lately?'

'No,' said Ogden. 'Why do you ask? She doesn't live with Dad any more on account of his being so…' He frowned, adding: 'I did have an arrangement to go and see Mother, but what with one thing and another…'

'Why'd you put the grindstone on the line?'

He was shaking his head at this right from the off. 'Now just a moment,' he said, 'I know as little of that as the newborn babe. I realise you thought it might have been part of some plan to do for Lowther, the ticket inspector, because of what happened to him later, but you see, old sort, Lowther was in with us on the ticket scheme. I sounded the fellow out, in a roundabout way, and he jumped at it. Lanky wages, you see: they make desperate men of the best of us.'

He looked at me, nodding for quite a while.

'Now I happen to know', he went on, 'that Lowther came to grief, over in those Hebden Crags, at the hands of a rather angry fellow from Ticket Despatch in Manchester.'

'The one who lost his job over the missing tickets?'

'That's him. I wouldn't have had it happen for worlds, you know, that a fellow should lose his position over the business, let alone another ending up with two busted legs.'

'You put the stone on the line,' I said, 'not because of the ticket business, but because you wanted to kill Cicely Braithwaite, who'd thrown you over.'

'If I could just…' said George. His hand was moving.

'Or at best you wanted to scare the bloody daylights out of her.'

George's hand was in his waistcoat and the clasp knife was in his hand, the one he used to slice the ends off his cigars. I saw it there, shaking in his fat hand, and I saw on the handle a picture of Blackpool Tower.

There came a great yell and a tug from behind on my coat.

I almost fell backwards at the yank that was given, and in that instant I saw the empty space where George had been standing and heard the barman roaring: 'You've not paid me for the fucking ale!'

'For Christ's sake!' I shouted, putting coins into his hands, 'you daft fucking cunt!' and I was fighting my way over the bags and through the crowd, after George, or the copper, but the copper who'd walked in had gone. In fact, half the lot that had been in the pub no longer were, and when I stumbled out into the street I saw why. Clear skies: the blue- ness seemed to go up and up, and all was order and good sense once more in the port of Goole, with happier-looking folk all about the place and the steamships not just steaming but moving.

All across the docks, I could see fellows walking in circles, pushing wooden spars attached to turning poles. The tide had risen to the correct level and the lock gates were being opened. Two of the steamers were already out on the Hum- ber, moving with no sign of effort over the wide, bright water.

I ran into the docks, looking for a copper, or looking for George. Had he loved Cicely Braithwaite, or tried to control her? They were the same thing. At any rate, I wanted to see him swing.

I dashed back and forth as the big blokes turned their circles and one lock gate after another opened, bringing a gentle rushing sound, the ringing of bells on the boats, and shouts back and forth between the boats and the docks.

This was the moment of freedom for those sea captains and they all wanted to be off and away. In amongst all the ship business I saw the diver, the iron man, up from underwater, sitting on a chair at the top of the dock wall near to me. With his two attendants standing by, next to the pump that was now still, he looked like a strange sort of king from another world, with his great iron boots that could have been gold, his white suit that could have been silk, and the great brass head. As I peered closer, I saw the face of an ordinary man staring through the window at the side of it.

'Where's the Holland boat?' I shouted to a man throwing a rope onto a moving steamship.

'Ouse Dock!' he shouted, and pointed over to a ship still in dock but steaming hard; there were horses on its deck in pens, and blokes working away before it, one on either side, turning the wheels that controlled the dock.

From behind me, George Ogden appeared with his tumbling run. He leapt a pile of ropes and stumbled, but still he had ten yards on me as I began pounding after him. He was making for the boat that was about to leave Ouse Dock.

The iron man was standing up once again and moving towards the top of an iron ladder that led down into the water. His attendants helped him all the way, as if he was an invalid. The breathing tube trailed behind. As I leapt the coil of ropes that George had leapt a moment before, I saw that the three were in George's path. I saw him try to leap the air tube, but his boot caught, pulling the pump over. I saw the pump topple and the iron man turn with a sort of slow shock, and… I couldn't see George.

Beyond, at Ouse Dock, I saw the lock gates moving, with water moving on them: two mobile waterfalls, swinging away from one another. The boat was a Lanky boat. Its name was written big on the side: Equity.

I looked again at the iron man, now alone on the dock. His two attendants were climbing down the iron ladder. They were both clinging on to the top of it and shouting things I couldn't take in, but as I got up to the top of the ladder, one dropped into the water, reluctant, like, and then the other. The last man that could help bring George up was the one that was dressed for diving, all togged up to sink.

I looked down. The assistants had been under and were up again now, moving the water with their hands, as if it was long grass they'd accidentally dropped something into.

I looked up again at the Equity, moving through the lock gates with a clear, confident rumbling of the engine, the horses all looking forward, with their manes streaming backwards in the direction of the funnel smoke. The sky, cleaned out by the storm, was light blue with a gleam of gold. The long grass in the meadows either side of the waterway was all blowing gently to the right. There was a church out on one of the banks with a pretty sort of barn near that, and you saw that Goole was not so great and terrifying a machine after all if you could be out of it and into country so fast.

As I watched, and the iron man's attendants roared in the water, the steamship moved into a turn in the centre of the channel, like a dancer; the horses were turning too, under the spinning smoke that was hanging over the shining water, hesitating.