The Necropolis Railway

Chapter Two

Monday 16 November

On my first morning I climbed out of bed at five, an hour before my alarm rang, and put on the old black suit of Dad's that I would be wearing for work. He'd said I ought to wear a collar and tie, and I'd said that sort of thing was for the porters, the little men of the railways, and that I would not keep a collar on my shirt but would wear a kerchief, and we had agreed on that. I had two caps with me down in Waterloo: my best cap and my other one. As it was my first day and I was nineteen and felt myself on a heavenly mission, I stood up, put on my best one, and prepared to look in a glass to see how much I resembled a fellow of the right sort. But there was no looking glass, and it would have been too dark to see into one even if there had been, which was all just as well.

Then I sat back on my bed and watched my new alarm go around to six o'clock. It did go off at six, which made me feel a juggings for not trusting it, but I had a dread of having to be woken by a call boy on my first day.

I stepped out of the front door, and there was my welcome to Waterloo: a man in an Ulster, stiff with mud, was banging a metal bar against the iron ladder that went up the side of the viaduct. The fellow was saturated, and the queer thing was that he quite looked the part, for his coat was bell-shaped and swung in time with his blows. Above him, the cold wind raced under and over the dirty tarpaulins that bandaged Waterloo.

I turned away from this scene and, thinking things would pick up with the sun, I began to walk. It took me one day to realise that the quickest way from Waterloo to Nine Elms Locomotive Shed was along the river. On that first morning, however, I attempted to walk there through ordinary streets, following the viaducts whenever I thought I might not be going right, but this proved no simple matter since they were tangled up with the buildings. The dismal streets were full of dark warehouses instead of ordinary houses, and full of men and their horses and waggons bringing things into Waterloo or taking them away and making a great din about it, and what with the noise, the strangeness of the streets and my fearfulness of being late, I was in a very fretful condition when I finally came upon the main gates of Nine Elms.

It was Monday 16 November 1903, bang on seven o'clock, and I could've done with some cocoa inside me. I walked past a pub called the Turnstile, ever closer to those golden gates, although they were far from golden, of course.

'Who are you, mate?' he said, a funny little bloke who was suddenly in my way. 'I'm new, I'm to come on as a cleaner.' 'I might be able to help in that.' 'Oh, yes?' 'It depends who you are, though.'

This funny little fellow, who had, I believed, the accent of the true cockney, was very keen to have my name, so I thought I would give him it, and then I would be able to get on: 'Jim Stringer,' I said, and held out my hand.

His name was Vincent, and he had a little nose, little eyes, a round white head with dints in it, and a big grin on him that came and went like electric light. His cap was right on the back of his head, and even though he was only a young fellow like myself he had precious little hair. 'I'm looking for the foreman,' I said to him. 'Now what foreman is that, mate?' 'The foreman of the shed, I think.' He gave me a long, funny look as if I'd said something a bit fishy. 'You want to book on?' 'That's it.' I'll show you to the timekeeper,' he said. 'His name's Bob Crook, but he's Mr Crook to you.' There were a lot of people coming and going around the gate, but it seemed that I was stuck with this eager little chap. He took my arm and steered me into a long, hot building at the side of the gate. There was one room inside and, starting from the back of it, there was a clock, then a man on a stool under an electric light, then a small desk with a ledger on it, then a metal table scored with a chequerboard pattern on which sat hundreds of numbered metal disks, each about the size of a sovereign. The walls were glazed bricks, there was a good fire going, and everything looked hot and shiny, including the man at the table, who was dipping his long face into a steaming cup of tea. 'Good morning,' I said.

Instead of replying, the timekeeper carried on very carefully drinking his boiling tea. Meanwhile, his clock ticked. It was as if he liked the sound of it and wanted everybody else to pay close attention.

'Stringer?' said the timekeeper, after about half a minute had ticked by. 'Yes, sir,' I said.

'You're number one hundred and seventy-three,' said the timekeeper, and he stood up, gave me a disk, and sat back down.

Well, he wasn't friendly, but he'd been expecting me at any rate; he wrote the time next to my name in the ledger while Vincent started booting the fender.

'Will you be going off-shed?' said Mr Crook, without looking up. 'I don't think so,' I said. He wrote something else down in his book.

I'm very sorry, Mr Crook,' I said, 'but what do I do with this?' Feeling like an ass, I held up the token. 'You return it to Mr Crook,' said Vincent.

Thinking this a queer bit of business I started to give the token back to Crook, but as I did so, he cried, 'Not now, for Christ's sake.' 'You hand in the token at the end of your turn,' said Vincent. 'Come on, let's be off.'

We turned towards the door – the fellow Vincent wanted me out of that spot for some reason.

'Number one hundred and seventy-three,' said Crook, just as Vincent was pushing open the door. I looked back at him. "That makes you the new Henry Taylor,' he said, and both his eyebrows jumped. 'Who's he?' I asked.

'Another bloke we had on' mumbled Vincent, who was holding the door open. 'And where is he now, Mr Crook?' I asked the timekeeper.

'Interesting question, that is,' he said, getting a bag of shag out from under his little desk.

'Nobody knows what happened,' said Vincent, 'and that's all about it.'

The wind flying through the open door was playing havoc with the timekeeper's fire but the gentleman himself didn't seem to mind. I looked above the fireplace and there was a noticeboard with details as to special trains, signalling alterations, and an article about the weather torn from a newspaper: 'GOOD PROSPECTS FOR MACINTOSH TRADE,' I read.

'That Taylor kid,' said the timekeeper, digging his pipe into the shag, 'well, at first – around the back end of August, it would have been – they thought he'd gone home, fearing himself not up to the mark for an engine man, but it's more likely if you ask me that he's gone to the bottom of the river.' 'What river, Mr Crook?' I said.

The timekeeper looked up at me with a frown while his fire blew back and forth, and I remembered about London, which had a great many of most things but only one river.

I did know that the timekeeper knew of Rowland Smith, and the peculiar circumstances of my coming to the London and South Western Railway, but I decided to say my piece: 'I'm from Yorkshire, Mr Crook,' I said, 'and this is my second railway start. I was on the North Eastern to begin with – not on the traffic side but portering.'

But Crook was still thinking about the earlier matter, for he nodded in a vague sort of way, saying, "The Taylor kid… nineteen. Good-looking boy. I've heard the mother's half dead herself over what happened. She'll be crying over him at this present moment, if you want my guess.' And he turned to look at his clock, as if to make quite sure; then he picked up his tea and put it down again. 'It's one for Sherlock Holmes, if you ask me,' he said, and both his eyebrows went up again.

As the timekeeper began lighting his pipe, Vincent had me out through the door, shouting, 'I'm taking him to the Governor, Mr Crook!'

We started walking across a patch of sooty nothing between the timekeeper's room and the beginning of the tracks. 'There's a job waiting for that bloke making up shocks on the penny horribles,' said Vincent. 'He's bloody wasted here.' He stopped and looked at me, and said, 'What made you chuck portering up north? Or did you get stood down?' 'I wasn't stood down. I wanted to get on to the traffic side.'

'I've heard of chaps leaving the railways,' said Vincent, 'and I've heard of a lot more that got the boot, but I never heard of anyone going from one territory to another like that.' Feeling suddenly glum at this, I thought: no, nor have I.

I remembered how Dad, in high excitement, had gone to Whitby Library to look up Rowland Smith starting with the Peerage, but had not found him there or anywhere else. I had seen Dad that night drinking beer on his own, which was unusual and meant he was anxious.

We started wandering across the windy greyness, and what met my view was familiar from the pages of The Railway Magazine but at the same time different. Two hundred yards to our right was a broken-down loco shed with about twenty roads going into it: I knew from my reading that engines went into there but they did not come out, for the Old Shed was a locomotive's graveyard. The tracks went into it on either side of something I hadn't read of: a house that must have been a remnant of earlier streets. It made a strange sight because, even though the windows were bricked up, smoke was racing from the chimney.

Beyond the Old Shed was the New Shed, which was semi-round and a real gobstopper, with twenty roads fanning into it from two turntables. As I watched, two engines were chuffing into the grey haze that was around the shed, and two were chuffing out, heading away towards a horizon filled with black engines, more than anybody knew what to do with, just waiting, like some great army, for the work of the day.

The New Shed was dark, except for holes in the roof where the daylight came shooting in, and the smell of coal and oil had me worrying about the burning feeling that came with each intake of breath. All around was the sound of coal smashing into locos from above, coal crashing out of them into the pits below. We walked along next to a row of fancy lampposts, all lit, that ran between two lines of engines, and it was like walking along a street except with locomotives instead of houses, and all sprinkled with glittering black. I could hear twice as many men pounding away as I could see, and then I solved the mystery: half of the fellows were working under the engines with candle ends to see by.

Vincent led me to the top end of the shed, by which I mean the back of it, where there was a kind of black cricket pavillion with a name painted on the door: 'P. T. Nightingale, Yard Master'.

'Governor,' said Vincent in an under-breath as we went in, 'and Governor's Clerk.'

It was very bright and warm inside, with two fires going. There was a man in the corner with his back to me. He had an amazing quantity of white hair that looked like fleece, and was sitting at a high desk on a high stool and coughing. I could not help but think that if his desk wasn't so tall he wouldn't need such a high stool. Before me was another man sitting on a normal-sized chair at a normal-sized desk. He was also a more normal-sized fellow. He was wearing a brown bowler with no hair coming out from underneath, and he had a little face but very fiery; his head looked like the top of a match.

He looked up at me, and Vincent pointed at him, saying, 'Give Mr Nolan the token.'

Mr Nolan looked at it and called out, 'Number hundred and seventy-three,' at which the gentleman in the tall chair, still coughing, turned around. Mr Nightingale was a boozy-looking sort, and I thought: I'm standing in the red-faced room. But he was handsome all the same, and more of a hawk than a nightingale. Now Nolan was holding the token out towards me again. 'Take it back,' said Vincent.

I was pretty tired of this token by now, but did as required. Then Vincent said to the Governor, 'I expect he'll be on general cleaning so I'll take him off to Mr Flannagan.'

Vincent turned on his heel, but the Governor leant forward on his high chair, and it was like a signal moving to stop. His face was all twisted up. 'And who the hell do you think you are?' he said, 'the bloody District Locomotive Superintendent?' 'No,' said Vincent, with no question of a 'sir' to follow.

I had not expected this kind of thing from Nine Elms men; I had expected them to be all one, like the Brigade of Guards.

'You take him to stores, and find him a rule book,' said the Governor to Vincent, 'then take him to Flannagan, who can show him about, but his duties are to be set directly by me.'

'He's not coming onto the half, is he?' asked Vincent, and I didn't know what he meant, but he said it in a peevish sort of voice that would have got him stood down immediately on the North Eastern.

There was another long look between them. 'I will come down from here in a second,' said the Governor, 'and I will put you on your fucking ear.'

This was not the way it should have been; it was not the way at all. Nolan the clerk came in quickly: 'Why do you want his duties to be set from this office, Mr Nightingale? Is there any particular reason for it?'

'Bampton Twenty-Nine and Bampton Thirty-One,' said the Governor – at which Vincent cursed in an under-breath -'have not been coming off-shed to a standard of cleanliness befitting their special duties.'

'I've been going at those of late,' said Vincent. 'I've had no complaints.'

Ignoring this latest incredible remark coming from low to high, the Governor, looking at me, said, 'I'd like to see these two shining like thoroughbreds when they go to work, and I will arrange with the drivers of these locomotives for you to have a number of rides out on them. Is that clear?'

It was not clear at all, but I nodded a 'Yes, sir' as the Governor began coughing once again. As soon as we were out of there I asked Vincent who Flannagan was: 'Charge cleaner,' he muttered, and I thought again of this Henry Taylor, and wanted to ask how a Nine Elms man could just go missing, but I could see that Vincent was sulking like a camel and not keen to say anything more. As I looked at him, he turned his back on me and began walking away between two lines of locomotives.

I fished in my jacket pocket for the first of the letters from Rowland Smith, and viewed again the miracle that had brought me to this cold, crashing shed: 'I think I have the power to bring you on without resorting to the usual formalities… Testimonials will be required, however…' The letters fluttered in the icy breeze, looking suddenly very flimsy indeed. Noise was coming from all parts of the shed, like the banging of hundreds of broken pianos, yet for the time being there was not a soul in sight. Any idea that I had made a mistake – and a dangerous one at that – in coming to Nine Elms must on no account be allowed.