'Look,' I said, pointing to a lonely-looking bench under a lamp on the Promenade. 'I'll wait for you there.'
'Right you are, mate,' he said, and he turned to go.
'Leave your other bag here at any rate!' I called after him, but he didn't seem to hear that, and I stared after him until he was claimed by the darkness of the Valley Gardens.
I sat down on the bench, and watched the waves for a while. Then I looked to my right, where the Prom curved around towards the Spa, which was like a little mansion with a ballroom, restaurant and orchestra. But this Sunday evening the Prom curved away into darkness, and the Spa might as well have been spirited clean away.
Because I was looking the wrong way, I didn't see the woman who approached out of the darkness from the left and sat on the bench alongside me. She wore a blue dress, which came out from underneath a grey-blue double-breasted coat, which she hugged tight about her. Her hair was a mass of dark curls under a fetching hat with a peaked brim and a feather in it. I thought: She looks like a hunter. Who was the Greek female who was the hunter? I couldn't recall.
She looked out to sea, and I watched her face from the side. It was squareish, darkish, a little plump with wide green eyes. She was wrapping the coat tight around herself, and I thought: If she's so cold, why is she sitting here and not walking briskly? But then she left off with the coat, and gave a sort of startled gasp, as though she'd just remembered something. I thought: She'll go off now. But she crossed her legs right over left instead, and began waggling her raised right boot. The wife would do that when she was restless, but this woman was not restless; she was bored, more like - and idle with it. I liked the look of her though, and I thought I'd better stop eyeing her in case it became obvious.
I craned my neck backwards to see whether I could catch sight of Tommy Nugent coming out of the gloom of the Valley Gardens. But there was no sign of him, so I looked forward again, and counted three wide waves as they came in, turning themselves inside out and going from black to white in the process. I knew the woman was eyeing me, so I tried to watch the sea as though I had some special understanding of its moods and movements.
Another night walker came up out of the darkness to the left: a man in a great-coat and a high-crowned bowler. He walked a little white dog with the lead wrapped around his wrist, and he was eating a fried fish from a bit of paper. He stopped just in front of the bench, and leant against the railing, half looking out at the wild sea, half at the woman on the bench. He might have nodded at her and nudged his hat when he'd come up, or he might just have been setting it right after a gust of wind.
The fish didn't half smell good, and the dog thought so too, because it would sit down, begging to be given a scrap, then shuffle about and sit down again, just in case its master hadn't noticed the first time. The man ate the fish with a superior look, as if conveying to the dog: 'Well yes, I suppose you would like a piece, but then who wouldn't? It happens to be excellent grub, otherwise I wouldn't be eating it.' After a few moments, the woman spoke up, and I was glad - encouraged, somehow - to hear that her accent was mild.
'Will you give your dog some of that fish, for heaven's sake?' she said.
'He doesn't like fish,' said the man, and I couldn't tell whether the two knew each other or not.
'You could have fooled me,' said the woman.
'It's cats that like fish,' said the man.
'Try him,' said the woman.
'Oh all right,' said the man, and he dropped a bit of fish that the dog caught and ate in an instant.
'I saw Jepson in town today,' said the woman.
'The magician?' the man asked, rather unexpectedly, as he finished off the fish and crumpled up the paper.’ He’s in town early.'
'Or late,' said the woman. 'He was in Boyes's.'
'Oh aye?'
'Household Goods department. .. Returning a kettle. He was after a full refund.'
'Why?'
'It was faulty.'
'How?'
'In the only way that a kettle can be faulty, Mr Wilson,' replied the woman (and she gave me a look as she did so). 'It had a hole in it.'
'Well,' said the man (evidently Wilson), 'what about it?'
'He was very angry.'
'He's entitled, isn't he?' said Wilson, who was surprisingly off-hand with the woman, considering how pretty she was. 'If I bought a kettle with a hole in it, I'd do my nut.'
'Yes, but you're not The Magical Marvel of the Age,' said the woman... With all due respect.'
The man pulled a face, which might have meant anything.
'It doesn't do for a man who's supposed to have mysterious powers to get all worked up about a faulty kettle,' said the woman.
'Well, that's his look-out,' said the man, and, giving a half nod to the woman, he went off into the windy darkness as the woman said, partly to herself: 'He put on such a lovely show at the Winter Gardens, as well.'
The woman now stood up and sighed at the sea. She took off her hat, and drove her hand into the mass of curls. Then she turned and headed off into the Valley Gardens. I watched her for the space of three lamps, and at the instant she disappeared there was Tommy Nugent coming the other way, grinning and limping, kit bags in hand.
'You all set?' I said, standing up.
He gave a nod; there was no mention of taking a pint. He seemed minded to get on with it now. We walked towards the funicular railway that led up towards the Grand, and I read the famous sign: 'Two hundred and twenty steps avoided for id.' But it wasn't working. The two carriages were suspended halfway up, like two signal boxes dangling from a cliff. It was a strain for Tommy to climb the steps, but he never moaned. As we toiled up, we had the high north wall of the Grand Hotel towering alongside us. There were no windows in it, and a dark slime ran all the way to the top.
Tommy was saying about he'd had enough of the J Class; he'd try to lay his hands on one of the Class Qs. They had a good height to the cab roof; you weren't all cramped up in there as with the Js. They'd been express engines, but were now coming off the main line, and were ideal for the medium distance, semi-fast trips like the Scarborough runs. He was talking to cover up nerves, I felt sure of it.
At the top of the steps, we were in the square that stood between the Grand and the Royal hotels. No-one was about. A horse whirled a hansom away from the front of the Grand, and I had the idea that every last person was fleeing the town. We turned right, making for Newborough, which was the main shopping street of Scarborough, but dead and abandoned now apart from the shouts of a few unseen loafers.
We went past a furniture store that showed in the window its own idea of the perfect living room, lit by a low night light. Next to it was a marine stores: 'All Kinds of Nets Sold'. After half a dozen shuttered and dark shops I saw the sign: 'Bright's Cliff. It was a short stub of a street at a slight angle off the Newborough - put me in mind of a drain leading to the cliff edge, a sort of cobbled groove over-looked by houses older than the common run of Scarborough buildings. At the end of it stood a single lamp that marked the very edge of Scarborough, and a steep drop down to the Prom. Near by stood an upended hand cart with a couple of old sacks tangled up in the wheel spokes. It might have been connected with some stables that looked half derelict.
The end property was turned somewhat towards the cliff edge, as though disgusted with the rest of the street, and a derrick stuck out from its front, from the forehead of the house's face, so to say. This must be for drawing things up the cliff. I walked directly to the end of Bright's Cliff and looked down. I saw an almost sheer bank, covered in old bramble bushes and nettles; then came a gravel ledge, then the rooftops of some buildings on the Prom: a public house, a public lavatory, and the Sea Bathing Infirmary. A little light leaked out of the pub, and, as I looked down, with Tommy Nugent breathing hard behind me, a man walked out of it - well, he was just a moving hat from where we looked, and the hat revolved on the Prom, and doubled back into the public lavatory, which must still have been open. I doubted that
the sea bathing place was open. There'd be very few takers for its waters in March.
Tommy tapped me on the shoulder, and I wheeled about.
'Paradise is that one,' he said, and ... Well, I didn't know about paradise but, as far as Bright's Cliff went, the house indicated was the best of a bad lot.
Chapter Fifteen
It was a house of white-painted bricks, and the paint was falling away a little, like the white powder on the face of a pier- rot. It was perhaps a hundred years old, and sagged somewhat. The windows were rather ill-assorted as if they'd been bought in a job lot at knockdown price, no two being the same size. The door was blue; over it was a fanlight of coloured glass with the name of the house set into it, the letters being distributed between the different panes like so: PA-RAD-ISE.
'You knock,' said Tommy, and he held one kit bag in each hand, as though he was ready to march straight in.
I knocked, and there came the sound of a woman's laughter from beyond the door as I did it. The door opened slowly, and there stood a trim, well-dressed man, perhaps in the middle fifties. The laughter had stopped but the man was smiling pleasantly. He was the very last sort of person I'd bargained for, and I was silenced for a moment by the sight of him. He tipped his head, preparatory to asking our business. But Tommy was already speaking.
'We're two railway men,' he said. 'He's the fireman, and I'm the driver.' (I thought: Don't say that, it's not convincing.) 'We've just come from the station, and we're having to overnight in Scarborough.' He took a deep breath before continuing: 'Now we've heard...'
But the man cut in, turning a little to one side, and saying, 'Miss R! Two gentlemen in need of a bed - they're railway men,' he added, in a way I didn't much care for.
The trim man was now replaced in the doorway by a woman and it was the one who'd been sitting on the bench. She'd evidently just come in, for she had her grey-blue coat and hunter's hat still on. She looked a bit distracted, flushed and very pretty. I took off my hat, and she whipped hers off at exactly the same time, as though we were playing the looking glass game; and then she shook her curls.
The hall was rather cramped. The landlady stood on a brownish carpet, a little worn, under a swinging gas chandelier, with three of the four lights burning. The wallpaper was green stripes, also a little faded; there was a faint smell of paint. On the wall was a thin case with a glass front. Above it a sign said, 'Today's Menu,' but there was nothing in the case. The stairs were narrow, and rose up into darkness. The thin banister was rather battered ... and the hall was too hot. In spite of this, the woman seemed highly amused at something or other and she was beautiful.
I was on the point of speech, but Tommy was under way again.
'Our engine's broke down,' he said. 'It's an injector steam valve that's giving bother.'
'I'm awfully sorry,' said the woman, 'but you see ...'
'Steam's pouring out of the overflow, and when that happens ...'
The woman was eyeing me, half smiling. Did she remember me from the bench?
'We saw your notice in the engine men's mess,' I interrupted, for fear that if I didn't speak up soon she'd think me dumb.
'Ordinarily,' Tommy was saying, 'we'd have taken the engine back to York tonight but it's not up to the trip, so we've left it at the Scarborough shed, and in all likelihood they'll have it sorted out by morning.'
'Good,' said the woman, by which she no doubt meant: 'Shut up.' Then she said, 'We hate to turn railway men away, but we only have the one room available tonight.'
'Single bed, is it?' I asked.
'If that,' she said, with half a smile.
I turned about and looked at Tommy; then back to the woman, who looked as if she was trying not to laugh. It was fascinating to watch the movement of her lips over her teeth.
'Do you mind if we step away for a moment to talk it over?' I asked her.
'Not a bit,' she replied, and she retreated into the house, leaving the door on the jar.
I walked with Tommy towards the gas lamp at the end of Bright's Cliff.
'I'm going to take the room, Tommy,' I said. 'I'm the investigating officer and ... well, do you see?'
He put down his two bags on the cobbles, and, opening one of them, said, 'Fair do's, Jim. But you'll take a rifle, won't you?'
I'd forgotten about the bloody rifles.
'No,' I said, and Tommy looked put-out. 'I mean ... they're a bit small,' I said.
'Dangerous to a mile these are, Jim,' he said, 'and I should think the average room in that house is about ten foot across.'
'But they're meant for target shooting. I mean, they're miniature rifles, aren't they?'
'How big a hole do you want to make in their bloody heads, Jim?'
He was unwinding one of the great bandages he'd made of all his under-clothes.
'Well,' I said, 'I don't want to make a hole in their heads at all. I'm not trained up in rifle shooting.'
'No need to be a dead eye,' he said. 'Not inside a house. You're not going to need orthoptic bloody spectacles, Jim: just pull the bloody trigger. And I'll tell you something else: you're well away with this because it's about the only gun you could loose off indoors and not deafen yourself.'
He was obviously a good deal more concerned for the one firing than the one being fired at. I looked down at the kit bag, where one of the rifles was in clear view.
'I just don't fancy it, Tommy,' I said. 'I shan't bother.'
'Jim,' he said, glancing back over towards the door, 'those people are strange.'
The door of Paradise was still half open, spilling coloured gaslight onto the cobbles of Bright's Cliff.
I said, 'They didn't look strange to me.'
Tommy now held a third bloody shooter in his hand: a pistol this time. It was very small and thin - there was nothing to it. It looked like a pop gun of Harry's.
'Two-two pistol,' he said.
'How many more have you got in there?'
'What do you say, Jim? You can carry this beauty in your pocket.'
I shook my head, and he fastened up the kit bag, covering over this final offering.
'Remember this,' he said, 'if Ray Blackburn was killed, and you click to the reason, they'll come after you no matter what.'
'Tommy,' I said, 'I can't hang about or it'll look funny. I'll see you at the station tomorrow, all right?'
And it appeared that I really had offended him, because without another word he marched along the short cobbled road until he came to the junction with Newborough, where he hesitated for a moment, before turning left and disappearing from sight.
I returned to Paradise and knocked on the opened door. The woman came again, and I liked being able to make her appear in this way - like Aladdin with his lamp. She now carried a cup and saucer with a bit of cake on the side. She'd disposed of her hat and coat, and wore a dress, more lavender than blue. I thought: What a pity that, being a married man, I can't fuck you, because you'd certainly make a very nice armful.
'My mate's gone off,' I said. 'I'll take the room if that's all right.'
She opened the door wider to let me in, turned and put her cup down on the bottom stair, and held out her hand. The house was boiling warm. The woman raised her arm over my shoulder and pushed the front door to.
'I'm Miss Rickerby,' she said, as the door closed behind me.
'Pleased to meet you,' I said. 'Stringer.'
And I found that we were exchanging smiles rather than shaking hands. I could tell immediately that she was at odds with the house. The place ought to have belonged to an older person. A clock ticked softly, and I thought of people's holidays ticking away. Would this hallway look any different in the summer months? It seemed all faded, and with a suspicion of dust. Also, it was kept hot as the houses of old people - those that can afford it - generally are. And the paint smell made it seem more, not less, old. Even the fanlight over the door was old, I thought, half craning round towards it, with old colours in it: a mustardy yellow, a green and a red of the s
ort seen in church stained glass.
'Shall I help you with your coat?' the landlady enquired. She seemed very keen to do it, and I thought: Is she sweet on me?
'No thanks,' I said, 'I'll manage.'
But I made heavy weather of the operation as she looked on.
'I like your badge,' she said, when the lapel of my suit-coat was revealed, and she leant forward and nearly touched it.
'Oh,' I said, with face bright red, 'that's the North Eastern company crest. Really it's three other railway company crests in a circle.'
'Why?' she said.
I tried to peer down at it. I must have looked daft in the attempt.
'It's the companies that were amalgamated to make up the North Eastern,' I said. 'The top one is the York and North Midland Railway. That has the city of York crest on it. The bottom left hand one is the Leeds Northern Railway and that has the Leeds crest and a sheep to show the woollen industry, together with ears of corn to show that side of the business, and a ship to show... well, shipping ...'
As I rambled on it struck me that there was a good deal more to this badge than I'd ever thought, so I said, 'Do you really want to hear about the third crest?'
She was looking at me with an expression of wonderment.
'Would you like a cup of tea?' she said, seeming to come out of a trance. 'Or would you rather see the room first?'
At the back of the hallway, to the right of the stairs, I could see the man who'd answered the door. He now wore some species of dressing gown over his suit. It was perhaps a smoking jacket - not that he was smoking, as far as I could make out, but just generally taking it easy. He too held a cup of tea. He nodded as I looked at him.
My coat was over my arm. A coat tree stood in the hallway, beside a small bamboo table on which stood an ornamental tea pot, a dusty circle of sea shells, some framed views of Scarborough, and a black album of some sort, closed. I reached out towards it, thinking it might be a visitors' book, that Blackburn's name might be in it, but something in Miss Rickerby's look checked me. However, after eyeing me for a moment, she said, 'Open it.'
The Last Train to Scarborough Page 8