The Necropolis Railway

Chapter Sixteen

Tuesday 8 December continued

I climbed back up onto the platform, and through the door labelled 'South Bar' into a light, white, wooden room. The only bit of brick was the fireplace, and there was a good blaze going. There were a few wooden tables with white cloths. Being in that room made you feel it was sunny outside, but when you looked at the windows there was the dripping rain making sad patterns. A barmaid was handing over a jug of something and four glasses to Saturday Night Mack and some of his mates. Mack was leaning with his back to the bar, looking out into the room as if he owned it.

'You're back,' he said. 'Lads,' he went on, turning to his mates, 'here we have Mr Jim Stringer.'

He got another glass, and poured me out a drink from the jug. 'Red Lion,' he said, when we'd both had a good belt of it. 'We bring it up on the train for them. That was our idea, me and the boys. We're off duty as from now so we can take a pint.' 'We can,' said a little gingery fellow, 'and we do.'

When I started talking to Mack, most of the Necropolis boys turned away and went into their own bits of chat, all except for this gingery one, who was called Terry and might have been trying to grow a moustache, and might have been the fellow I'd seen Mack shouting across to in the Citadel. 'Hunt was in here, wasn't he?' Mack nodded. 'Been and gone,' he said. 'Did he say anything about me?'

'You know Arthur,' said Mack. 'Never says much about anything.' That was a good get-out on his part; quite the diplomat, was Mack. He didn't want to get you all het up in the way Vincent did. 'What's he doing now?' I asked. 'Oiling up, and other bits of business.'

Yes, I thought, whereas Barney Rose would have been sitting on the sandbox reading his sporting papers.

'Have you done any words of comfort today, Mack?' I asked.

'Not so far. It's a pity, because I do like to keep my hand in.' He filled his glass from the jug, and gave me a refill. 'I'll probably do one or two later on,' he said, settling against the bar again.

'People do get a bit down when they come back from the burials,' said Terry, 'especially if the bar's closed.'

Mack was looking down at my trouser bottoms. 'You're sodden, man. Where've you been?' 'Walking about among the graves.' 'Very nice,' he said. Then Terry said, 'You need to watch yourself doing that.' 'Why's that?' I said.

'Our chairman was in the habit of taking a quiet saunter among the headstones, and one day it was the end of him.'

Mack looked into the jug, said, 'Oh, me, dear,' and smiled at the barmaid – which was enough to get us another jug of Red Lion.

'What happened to him?' I asked Terry, but it was Mack who answered.

'Came up on the train one afternoon, drifted off for a stroll just like you, tripped and went flying – banged his head on a stone.'

I had that falling feeling inside me: was the monster down here too? 'What was his name?' I said.

'Sir John Rickerby,' said Terry, and it came back to me: he was the only one photographed and not painted on the walls of the Necropolis library. 'So this fellow actually died in the cemetery, did he?'

Mack nodded. 'Quite convenient when you think of it' he said.

'Do you know what it said on the stone he fell on?' said Terry. 'Now how should I know that?' 'Thy Will Be Done.'

"Thy Will Be Done' said Mack, and he made his eyes go big.

This was all too fast for me. 'How do they know he hit his head?' I asked, and even though I was bound for home, and all was at an end between myself and Nine Elms, I wanted my Lett's diary with me to write down the answers to the questions that would keep coming. 'How do they know someone didn't whack it for him? Did they have detectives up here?'

'I'll say,' said Terry. 'No end of the buggers, because they did have their doubts.'

'What is the world coming to' said Mack, 'when the Yard is sent in every time some old gent takes a tumble?'

'What sort of a gent was he?' I asked, and I could hear the voice of little Vincent in my head telling me to pipe down. 'He was all right,' said Terry, 'and he loved this place.' 'It's a pretty spot, isn't it?' I said. 'In a queer sort of way.'

Terry nodded. 'In the Smoke, you might go at things a bit harder if you know you've got a bunk-up like this waiting for you.' 'A happy ending guaranteed'1 said.

'That sort of thing. Yes, Rickerby was a nice old bird, but we struck a bigger pill with the next one, a fellow by the name of Erskine Long, who's green as duckweed, if you ask me. Smith's talking him into selling up the whole show – two thousand acres we had here, but it's getting smaller by the minute.'

'I've seen that gent in person'1 said, remembering the little fret kidney I'd spotted talking to Rowland Smith on my first trip to the Necropolis station; he hadn't seemed such a pushover to me. 'Know all the top brass, don't you?' said Mack. 'Was Rickerby in favour of selling up?'

'Dead against' said Terry, 'which is why he never wanted Smith about the place. But really, he was put in the show by the bloody South Western.'

'Why did the South Western Railway want him in?' (I imagined Vincent coining at me again: 'Very curious, this boy.')

'Cor, mate' said little Terry. 'We've told you that fifty times.' He said 'we', but Mack was now chatting to the barmaid. 'To sell up' said Terry. 'By contract they're supplying the trains and men, and getting nothing in return on account of business being so bad.' 'Who'd want to buy all this land?'

'Who bloody wouldn't?' muttered Mack, turning back around.

'A good line to be in, hereabouts' said Terry, 'is building villas for the clerks who've got two quid a week and are bursting to prove it by getting their hands on a bit of garden.' 'Rickerby died just this year, didn't he?' Mack nodded.

'August sort of time' he said, before drifting off altogether and striking up bits of chat with his other mates, leaving me with little Terry.

'Mack's a great fellow' he said, 'and he's a great fellow even with a head full of beer, which is more than you can say for some. But he's always pretty nervy at any talk of the police.' 'Why is that?' 'There's been some little exploits, thieving from bodies, thieving o' bodies, if it comes to that.' "They dig them up, do they?'

'That's it – your better class of stiff they might very well do. Not that it happens too often, but there's been a spade taken to a few graves recently, here and in other places; some have been made off with, others chucked about for a lark, and Mack's been… well, they've said to him: "What do you know?'" 'Who have? The police?' 'No, but the bosses from this show. They've made things quite hot for the lad.' 'Why him, though?' 'Because Mack's Mack, isn't he? There's only one of him.'

Terry caught up his drink, and I said, 'I saw some fellows earlier on. One was on a horse. I'd hardly think stealing bodies was the kind of thing you'd get up to in daylight hours anyway, but…'

"They were marking off the poles for selling,' said Terry. 'Face up to it, mate,' he continued, 'they haven't quite managed to make this place a public fad, have they?'

'They've tried, though, haven't they?' I said, thinking of Stanley, the man who gave the address. 'Oh, they've tried,' said Terry. "They're trying still.'

After a little while, some of the mourners came in looking sorely in need of a pick-up. Mack came back and showed me a sign behind the bar reading 'Spirits Served Here'. He was grinning all round his head at that. Then he told me of ghosts he'd seen at Brookwood, and I wondered whether he'd seen a lot more since they'd had the Red Lion down in the cemetery, and he said, now he came to think of it, yes he had.

I rode back with Mack in the empty coffin carriage. I wasn't much company for him. The fate of Rickerby I'd pushed to the back of my mind, and my own troubles were back at the front. I kept telling Mack I'd stood myself down and that was it, and he kept trying to make out that things could still turn out all right, but then here was a fellow who believed in life after death. Who was firing with Hunt as we rode back to the Necropolis I didn't know, and when we arrived at the station and the mourners were turfed out of the carriages, I scurried along the platform fast, trying not to glance at the cab of Thirty-One. But I couldn't help seeing Hunt standing outside it, too big for his little tank engine, dabbing his hands with that folded cloth of his. I chanced a look his way. He was staring hard at me. Well, I was so out with everything that I just decided to go to my lodge. This time I found the staircase that led down from the platforms to the courtyard, so I didn't have to use the iron ladder. I walked across the courtyard and under the arch, where I saw the sign reading 'Extramural Interment: An Address'. It was to be held that evening.

As I came out of the Necropolis station it was raining trams and omnibuses. Every window looked black, every face looked troubled; the lights hanging on the front of the shops were too big, swinging too low, and the trains crashing through one after another had the whole place shaking. As I walked, there seemed no solidity in the pavement beneath my feet; my guts were knotted and my head throbbed. I would quit my lodge that very day; I would go straight to King's Cross, and home.