The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin

  'She's quite often seen at the station’ said Bob. 'And she doesn't just come here to see Knowles.'

  'Why does she come then?' I asked him.

  'Catch a train,' said Bob.

  'Where to?'

  He shrugged.

  'Being married to the SM she has a pass all over the line’ said Dick.

  'So you see,' Bob put in, 'because we don't sell her the tickets, we don't know.'

  Now all was quiet in the booking office. George seemed half asleep in his chair all of a sudden, with the cigar lodged in one of his waistcoat pockets. Dick was leafing through a

  book of accounts. Bob was looking out of the window with his hands in his pockets.

  There was another knock on the door and Dick opened it. A grinning kid stood there with a box in his hand. 'Afternoon, mates,' he said. He uncombed his hair by smearing his hat across his sweaty head, then he passed the box to Dick, handing across a docket at the same time. 'Fleetwood singles,' he said, 'numbers five hundred to six thousand on the nose.'

  Bob passed a book to Dick, who'd begun unwrapping the parcel, which contained bundles of tickets tied with white ribbons.

  But George was scowling from his seat as Dick began to record receipt of the tickets in the ledger. 'We're counting on a full complement this time, old man,' George said to the kid.

  There was something funny about the way Dick wrote in the ledger. At first I couldn't see what it was; he just looked greedy to get the words and numbers down, but it struck me after a second that he was holding two pens, writing with both hands.

  George saw me watching. 'Like a blinking octopus, en't he?'

  Bob, who seemed proud of Dick over this, said: 'He can do sales and receipts at the same time.'

  'Five hundred to six thousand exactly,' said Dick, looking up from the ledger and turning to the ticket bundles. 'Looks like they're all here.'

  'Have you lot seen the show they're putting on down there?' said the kid, pointing at the floor, but meaning the platforms beneath.

  'What show, old man?' said George to the kid (even though he didn't look more than fifteen).

  'Picture-taking,' said the kid. 'Photographic artist. He has all the brass lined up.'

  Dick walked over once more to the window.

  'You'll not see it from there, old man' said the kid, who then gave a funny look towards George.

  'I'm off down to look,' said Dick, and Bob went too.

  'Good fellows if they can be turned the right way,' said George, when they'd gone. 'Not a lot of steam in them really, but. . .' He got to his feet and began putting away the tickets from the new parcel, or trying to. He couldn't quite reach the top of what I took to be the rack for Fleetwood singles. I asked if I could help, being six inches taller than George. 'It's quite all right,' he said, and took a stool from the other side of the room. 'They must be put into the racks in a certain special way.'

  'Well, yes,' I said, 'in number order, lowest number at the bottom.'

  'Bit more to it than that, chief’ said George.

  But there wasn't, as he knew very well.

  'Where do the tickets come from?' I asked.

  'From Headquarters in Manchester, of course,' said George. 'They're sent over here in parcels as needed.'

  'All in number order?' I said.

  'That's the idea: in number order, and parcelled in batches of two hundred and fifty.'

  With none of the Fleetwood singles put away, George walked over to his revolving seat once more and sat down. Just as he did so, there was a passenger at the window, and he had to sell a ticket.

  When the sale was complete, George pitched the coin into the wooden drawer and turned again towards me: 'They go in runs of ten thousand, you know,' he said, and then gave me a sideways look to see whether I did know. Well, I had a vague notion but didn't let on, so he continued talking like a penny book. 'It's the Edmondson ticket that's used. Has been for donkey's years. For every type - Liverpool singles, let's say - the run is ten thousand, but the system only allows four digits to be printed on the tickets so how can that be since ten thousand is five?'

  I gave a shrug, for I really didn't know.George smiled. 'Rather a pretty little catch, en't it? Well, what's the number of the first ticket in a run, would you say?' 'One’ I said, looking again at 'step on at goole for the continent'.

  'Nought, nought, nought, one, you mean,' said George, 'because remember that even though you can't have more than four digits, you can't have fewer than that either.'

  'I see,' I said.

  'So that's your answer, is it? First one in a run's nought, nought, nought, one?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Quite sure of it, are you?'

  'Well it's obviously not,' I said, 'from the way you're carrying on.'

  George was grinning like a street knocker.

  'Very well then,' I said, 'what is the first number in the run?'

  'Fish and find out,' said George, and he spun around in his chair.

  I could have brained him there and then. 'I give it up,' I said.

  'Oh come on,' he said. 'Take a shy.'

  Something I'd read in the Railway Magazine came back to me, and I knew the answer, but I had a queer feeling that it would have been quite crushing to George if I'd come out with it, so I said again: 'No. Can't work it out.'

  In celebration of his victory, George gave one more spin on his chair, and said: 'The first number's nought, nought, nought, nought. That way, the last one's the ten thousandth even though its number's only nine, nine, nine, nine. I must say, old man, it should be no riddle to anyone of normal intelligence. It's a very good thing you're not in this line of work.'

  I was not having this. I had let him have his victory, and now he was making me eat dog over it. 'Well, I knew that all along,' I said.

  'Oh leave off,' said George. He sat still in his chair, took his cigar out of his waistcoat and looked at it. 'See that the cigar bears the name of the registered star band,' he muttered quietly to himself, and when he looked up at me again, his he said, 'I'll buy the ticket myself, as long as it's not a really expensive one like a First to Liverpool, and then I'll let you have it, old man. Gratis. Folks will give worlds to get 'em.'

  'Well,' I said, 'no need to trouble yourself over that.'

  I wanted to put our little set-to behind us, and I thought of a question that would help me do it: 'You said there was some trouble over the tickets coming in?'

  'It's just this,' said George. 'Some blockhead in Manchester keeps sending us short batches - causes the devil of confusion, puts all the ledgers out. It would turn your hair pink in streaks if you knew the half of it . . . everybody kept back hours after booking off time ... as if it's not bad enough, being stuck in this poky hole.'

  I looked again at the steam packet on the Goole poster, and, to change the subject, said: 'I have hopes of taking the wife to Goole.'

  George nodded. 'As a shipping centre, it's hard to beat,' he said. 'The barges go along the canal like trains - all tied together, and when the ride is right there's some big ships to see.'

  'The company keeps its own fleet of steam packets there I believe,' I said. 'It's a bigger show than Fleetwood, and I've not yet been out that way.'

  George looked at me very gravely for a while, then took his plunge: 'Would you like a ticket for yourself and Mrs Stringer?'

  'Staff privilege, you mean?'

  George nodded.

  'Well, I have my footplate pass for getting back from turns, but staff priv . . . Three a year you're allowed if you're an engine man, and you've got to put in for them weeks in advance. They're like gold dust, aren't they?'

  'They are rather,' said George.

  I tried to keep a carefree tone, but I had a bad feeling over this. 'And they must be signed by Knowles,' I said.

  George nodded solemnly once again. 'I put 'em under his nose, and he generally signs 'em without looking.'

  'Well -' I said.

  'Only sometimes I don't bother.' George
picked up a pen, stood up again and walked across to one of the racks - the one holding the staff-privilege tickets. He flicked a ticket out from the bottom and returned to the ticket window with it. He had burnt his boats now, for he would not be able to put it back except at the top of the stack, and then it would be out of order. 'I know Mr Knowles has got a lot on, and so to ease his burden a little I sometimes do the job myself,' said George. He was waving his pen over the blank ticket, working himself up to the moment, and I was looking at a new George. Except that somehow his being a little on the fly was not so very great a surprise.

  'It's quite all right, old boy,' I said, thinking to soften the blow of my refusal by putting it in his own sort of swell talk.

  'Oh that's quite all right,' said George in turn, putting his pen back into his coat pocket. He then began walking back over to the rack from which he'd taken the ticket. 'I was only skylarking in any case,' he went on. 'Now of course, it does sometimes happen that we take one out, and it turns out not to be needed ...' He laid the ticket on the little ledge at the foot of the column from which it had come. 'So it stays there until it is required.'

  I could've split, and George would have been stood down immediately, with worse to follow. So in a way I should've felt flattered, because he was showing me trust.

  'Do you know what I'm going to have in my apartments at Back Hill Street?' George asked, suddenly.

  'Your room, do you mean?'

  'Damask curtains. I've got a mind to have 'em,' he said, standing up, 'so I'm jolly well going to have 'em.'

  I nodded. 'The wife doesn't really hold with curtains,' I said. I wanted to keep talking to get the ticket business behind us. 'She won't do things in a sixpenny way,' I said. 'She must have the best of everything, and so she will wait until opportunity calls.'

  'And do you know what's wanted in this office?' said George.

  I shrugged, still a little dazed.

  'What's wanted is a revolving ticket cabinet to go next to this revolving chair. That would save me having to sail backwards every time.'

  'Wouldn't things become a little confusing, with you and the tickets both revolving? You might end up going one way, the tickets another.'

  George stood up and walked over to the window. 'Glad to know your view on the matter,' he said, but of course he wasn't in the least. He looked through the window for a while, before turning to me and saying: 'Shall we go and watch the photographer?'

  'But what about anyone coming to buy a ticket?' I said, at which George turned about and slammed down the hatch.

  'They can buy 'em on the trains,' he said. He then lobbed a small amount of coin into the money drawer and took out another ticket from the racks. This he handed to me. 'Take it,' he said. 'It's a present. All paid for.'

  It was the third-class single to Todmorden mentioned earlier: number 1234.

  'Thanks,' I said.

  'Come on,' said George, who was holding the booking- office door open for me.

  -------- ------

  We walked along under the canopy of platform two. It was all shaded, and I wanted to be out of it quickly, into the world of light beyond where the photograph was being taken. That's the thing about sunshine day after day. It spoils you. You get so as you can't do without it.

  The camera was set up at the platform end. Knowles was there, his two assistant stationmasters, the head porter and a handful of other high-ups. The photographer was at his camera, looking down into it through a sort of concertina tube. He had his own assistant alongside.

  'It looks smart to have an assistant even if you never use him,' said George, as we stepped up to join Dick and Bob.

  Knowles was at the front of the group, and Mrs Knowles was looking on. She was beautiful and she was smiling. Knowles was not.

  'You small fellows go to the side,' Knowles was saying.

  'All he wants is a whip,' George muttered.

  Knowles had a brown, square face and a thin black moustache which was there to prove the care he took over shaving and everything else. He spoke fast, with a mouth that was like a machine. 'Where do you want me, sir?' he was asking the photographer. 'In the middle?'

  At this George turned and rolled his eyes at me. 'A station- master isn't gentry, you know,' he said.

  'How do you mean?'

  'Just watch him.'

  The group was all ready, like a small army in gold, except that too many of them looked like farmers.

  'Now stay quite still,' said the photographer. Then he said, 'Stopping down', and began fiddling with the camera, while the assistant looked on, flinching every now and again. The photographer looked up, half towards the sun with a hand shielding his eyes. He looked away, very downhearted. The day was too bright.

  Presently the photographer looked into his camera once more, then looked away again and took up glaring at his assistant. He then returned to his camera, but broke off at some small gust of wind that seemed to bring with it a change of light.

  'Fellow's making a meal of it, en't he?' George whispered to me. 'I've messed about with a hand camera in my time ... a touch of portraiture ... Nothing to it really.'

  Knowles coughed, being the only one in the party of photographic subjects who dared.

  'The pharmacy up on New Bank has a dark room,' George continued in an under-breath. 'I have use of it at special rates.'

  The photographer went back to his camera and peered into the rubber tunnel once more. 'Busy day for you fellows?' asked the photographer after a while. He was still looking through the camera.

  This is a railway station, sir,' said Knowles, and just as he was doing so the photographer pressed a button and the camera clicked.

  'Oh, heck!' said the photographer, and, standing up straight, he said to the party: 'Look, if I ask a question don't answer it, all right? I'm just thinking aloud.'

  Meanwhile the assistant had gone live, darting towards the back of the camera, from which he removed something, smuggling it into the black bag. Then he smuggled something out of the black bag and fitted it into the back of the camera where the earlier article had been. The photographer was standing with his face tipped up towards the sky, eyes closed.

  'Fellow's a perfect fool,' George whispered.

  The photographer now walked a fair distance away from his camera, and just stood there with his hands on his hips.

  'I've an important train expected in on platform six in three minutes,' called the stationmaster, 'and I zvill have to attend to it.'

  'Yes,' said photographer, 'well now the sun's in the wrong place.'

  'I expect Mr Knowles will be able to sort that out for you,' said one of the assistant stationmasters. It was a jest, so a bit of a risk, but Knowles's wife laughed - a lonely tinkle like breaking glass - and Knowles himself gave a smile. Well, nearly.

  'Look at him now,' said George, 'dignity maintained at all costs. But I saw him in the Imperial once with Dunglass, and it was all "thee" and "tha", and when the waiter asked if they wanted beer or wine, he said, "nawther". He's teetotal, you know.'

  George looked again at Emma Knowles. 'If I could just once .. .'

  Knowles was now giving George the evil eye. Then his stare shifted to Dick and Bob, who both looked nervously

  back at George, waiting for him to speak up for them.

  'Ogden’ said Knowles. 'Who is presently in the booking office?'

  'Just at this present time, sir?' said George, and two untidy red marks had appeared on his cheeks, like two maps of India. 'Well, fact is that business is rather light, sir, and we all came down very briefly to see whether we could be of assistance.'

  'I am standing here, Ogden,' said Knowles, 'and I am trying to smile for this gentleman -' he pointed to the photographer '- and the cause is not helped by -'

  But just as George was about to get what-for, the 'important' train - which didn't look in the least important to me, being a little local with three rattlers on - came bustling into platform six as threatened. Knowles broke away from the pictu
re group to see to it, or to pretend to. As he dashed across the footbridge, I saw a man stepping off the train with a bulky portmanteau in his hand. He wore a cap and had too much hair. It was Paul, of the Socialist Mission. Close behind him walked a tall, thin man in a homburg hat. This one, who'd stepped off the same train, carried no bag, but had a bundle of papers under his arm.

  'Hi!' I yelled. But it's a tall order to shout across four platforms with an engine in steam close by, and the two fellows were quickly up onto the footbridge.

  I edged up to Bob. 'Where's that one from?' I asked, pointing to the train that had come into platform six, and was now rolling away.

  Bob looked at his pocket watch and thought for a second. 'That's in from York, I reckon,' he said.

  That was good enough for me. It could have connected there with a train down from Scotland. I was blowed if the second fellow wasn't Alan Cowan, leader of the Socialist Mission. Well, he looked just the sort. I gave a general nod towards the photographic party and began to give chase.

  Chapter Twelve

  I fell in behind the two as they walked past the cab rank outside the Joint. The thin man wore a suit of decent brown tweed. I could picture him in Scotland; I could see him in Dunfermline.