The Lost Luggage Porter

by Andrew Martin

  nothing; blackness. I was in the same position as that kid.

  By now, I could only tell by my ears when we were in a tunnel. I looked to my left, and Sampson was asleep, an empty wine bottle rolling between his boots. Well, he'd had a long day of it. In slumber, his face lost none of its shape.

  'How is it you're so well up on railways?' said Hopkins.

  'I did some turns in the goods yard over at Leeds, as I told you.'

  Was it Leeds that I'd said? I couldn't recall. Come to that . . . Had I spoken of being employed in the goods yards at all?

  'In addition, I used to take the Railway Magazine,' I added.

  'Take it from others at railway stations, you mean?'

  I'd made another bloomer. Hopkins was playing one of his finger games, smiling at me over his hands. I finished off what was left of my own wine, saying, 'I had a hobby in that direction, you know.'

  Hopkins leant forwards, and settled himself with his elbows on his knees, giving up his finger exercises. It was a wild night outside, but the carriage was too close and dusty. I wanted to open the window but did not know how, or how to ask one of the Frenchers. I looked down at the book in my hands. The answer lay in there somewhere.

  Hopkins raised one of his hands, and pointed at me. I thought this would be the start of a speech, but instead the long pointing finger moved towards me, towards my face, towards my spectacles, and through my spectacles to my eyelash, which he touched, causing me to do the most ridiculous thing. I coloured up; I then tried to laugh.

  Hopkins was sitting back, smiling.

  'How much did they set you back then, mate?' he asked. 'I would hope they come cheaper than the sort with lenses. See ... I watched the fellow on the boat with glasses just like yours, and what with the rain and the flying spray they were all misted up.'

  'It's a disguise, if you take my meaning,' I said. 'I didn't want to look like I did before because of . . . something . . . something that occurred.'

  Hopkins, still smiling, said: 'Who are you, mate?'

  And that was the nerve-cracking moment, for I had no answer.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  'An ordinary working man’ I said to Hopkins as the train thundered on, 'always on the look-out for a spot of ...'

  'What?'

  'Adventure.'

  'And how do you find this adventure?'

  The wonder of it was that he had not immediately accused me of being a detective, but then he always went around the houses, this one. He nodded towards Sampson, who was still dead to the world. 'Do you not find him a bit. . . nuts?'

  'He gets a little excitable at times’ I said.

  'He does that’ said Hopkins.

  'In that case why stick with him?' I said, breathing a little easier at this new direction of the conversation.

  Hopkins shrugged.

  'Keep a cart on a wheel,' he said.

  'How are we off for the readies?' I said. 'And when's the share-out?'

  'Search me,' he said.

  'And what's the plan for Paris?'

  He made no answer but, turning towards the black window repeated my earlier words: 'An ordinary working man ...'

  At which Valentine Sampson suddenly started and said: 'It's a pity, but I will not work, little Allan. It's hardly any advance on slavery.'

  He'd uttered the words while still half asleep, or at the very moment of waking up. He looked at us both with wide eyes, as though waiting to be told something. But Hopkins remained silent and, presently, closed his eyes and fell asleep himself. I wanted to do the same but could not, for fear of what might be said. Instead I removed the spectacles for - at the very least of it - my disguise was all up.

  We were now running fast past a spot called Abbeville; then past another starting with 'A'; eighty miles per hour gait. A great church made of darkness and rain; outlines of the weird engines in the rain. Over a maze of lines at somewhere starting with 'L', then we were shooting downhill, into valleys made of tall, rough-looking buildings.

  The Gare du Nord, when we came to it, was fitted out like a palace, a freezing-cold palace with high arches, and electric light in great glass globes, and yet even here no platforms to speak of. We climbed down,

  and .. .

  We were too early.

  The day had not yet begun, and we had caught Paris all unawares. We walked through the ticket gate into a wide hall with a round window like a great white eye opposite the track ends. There were some small offices set into the walls below the window, and we approached one of these marked 'Consigne', which was French for left-luggage office. A clerk stood there with his hands on his hips as we approached. It was Napoleon waiting for Nelson, only lower down the scale of history.

  He was eyeing Sampson's kitbag, which of course was all we had to consign. The remaining notes were in there once again, though not the gun. Our boots rattled smartly on the polished stone as we closed on the fellow.

  When we were still some distance off, the fellow said, 'Bonjour, Messieurs', which came unexpectedly, for I'd expected surliness from him. Sampson made a go of replying in French and asking to leave the bag, for which he received a ticket on payment of money from his pocketbook. He put the ticket in his right-hand trouser pocket, which, I reckoned, was where he'd put the one given him at Charing Cross. As we walked away from the Consigne, Hopkins said something in an under-breath to Sampson, and I thought: is he telling him of the discovery he'd made about me? But Sampson's answer made me doubt it:

  'You'll not catch me taking any quantity of cash into a hotel here,' he said. 'A lot of thieving bastards, these fucking French are.'

  A thought struck me: perhaps Hopkins thinks it not worth mentioning after all that my spectacles are false. Perhaps he thinks there's nothing in it. As we walked towards the 'Sortie', I noted the location of the telegraph office.

  We stepped out of the Gare du Nord into a cobbled street. Over the road, in the rain and grey light, were cafes and restaurants with the widest fronts I'd ever seen, but all closed up, with seats stacked on tables outside. On the cobbles ahead of us was a mouse - same as an English mouse; no better, no worse. It dashed off as a cart came along the street pulled by a horse that looked high-mettled and restive. There was nothing fancy about this equipage, but that horse knew it was French all right. We began walking across the road, and the cobbles seemed to swim towards us in ripples.

  We walked on, turning left, right; I was following Sampson, too done-in to ask questions, or to think about whatever game Hopkins was playing.

  The buildings were tall, with windows in their roofs. Lanterns came and went, mounted on swan necks like thin, twisted trees, the gas still burning, though day was coming. We passed two smoke-blackened churches that were more like great theatres - all stacked up like mountains, with peeling posters outside. A blue, round something was stuck on to the front of one of them: sundial or clock? I slowly made out that it was a clock, and that the time shown was a quarter after five. Not two minutes later, the three of us were standing outside the door of a moderately sized hotel. The name was written in gold paint against the blackened stone: Hotel des Artistes. Three French flags sprouted over the door. I remembered what the Police Gazette had said of Joseph Howard Vincent: 'Likely to be found in hotels'.

  Well here we were, to the very life.

  Sampson pressed a bell, and we waited. Directly opposite the hotel was another great black church, lamps and trees in alternation across its front, but its windows were all bricked up.

  The door of the hotel was opened at last by a little fellow dressed in black and white; he was all smiles, so here was another kind of Frencher. We walked through the doorway: red carpet, more gold paint, some giant ferns, and paintings all around the walls of people half hidden in shadowy rooms. The place was quite swanky, or had been once. From the way he was speaking to him, I didn't believe that the little fellow in black and white knew Sampson, but I had the idea that Sampson knew the hotel.

  Their chat ran on as the litt
le man indicated that we should follow him up a winding staircase, and Sampson did not lower his voice a bit even though everybody in the hotel must have been asleep. As we walked, I felt my seasickness return on the endless, too-low steps and I wondered in a kind of fury how many of the sleepers in this place were artists. Sampson was quizzing the hotel bloke about something or other, and by my reckoning, the man half understood and half pretended to. What Sampson spoke was French, but it was a little off.

  We were taken to the fourth floor, which was the top one. Hopkins took one room, and Sampson and I were to occupy the other . . . which was two rooms: a bedroom and a sitting room; or three, if you counted the privy and bath off to the side of the sitting room. Our quarters were pretty grand but gone to seed somewhat: red carpet a little bumpy; a black smudge beneath the mantel of the white fireplace, which was quite a museum piece, Ancient Greek style. All in all it was a cute arrangement, for I was put into the bedroom (which did give me the bed, whereas Sampson was evidently making do with the couch in the lounge), but I would have to walk past him to quit these chambers.

  Well, I would do that if it came to it, and he could fire his revolver and bring the whole fucking house down. For the meanwhile though, I lay on the bed, and while I had resolved not on any account to sleep, my lights were out in a second.

  I woke to see Sampson drinking wine from one of those plain bottles in the chair next to my bed. He wore trousers, boots, undershirt.

  'What time is it?' I asked him, sitting up.

  'Don't know, mate,' he said.

  'Those two you shot in the engine shed at York,' I said, rising to a sitting position, '. . . they might be dead; might be mortally injured.'

  'Correct,' he said, taking another pull at the bottle.

  He passed the bottle over to me, and I took a quick go on it.

  'Which would you rather?' I asked, giving it back.

  'Me?' he said. 'I'm easy.'

  I gained my feet and walked over to the window.

  'If it came to court,' Sampson said, 'and they'd only taken injuries, I'd say I was shooting to miss.'

  'And if they were killed?'

  'Say the same. Can't swing for attempt, you know.'

  I opened the window, looked out. French rooftops; French smoke coming out of them, meeting solid white, winter day. As I looked down, my gaze fell further than I'd bargained - down on to a railway valley: a dozen tracks cut between white cliffs of houses. On the wall opposite was written 'Vins', which meant 'wines'; it was like the word 'vine' so you could cotton on to it easily enough. I looked below again, and two trains crossed down in the pit, somehow giving me the idea - by the equality of the exchange - that it was about midday.

  'It won't come to that though,' Sampson was saying from his chair. 'Arrest, charge, committal, trial, verdict, sentence, periods of hard labour ... I can't be fucking doing with it, so I sweep away, little Allan, back and forth . . .'

  He was sitting forward in the chair, waving his arm from side to side.

  'Sweep away ... it's like when you're walking through the tall grass with a cane in your hand, and you want the bloody stuff out the way, so on you go slashing to the left and to the right...'

  'The clean sweep,' I said.

  'Bingo,' he replied. 'And you'd do it yourself if you could, mate, and so would he.'

  He turned to face the door, where Hopkins was standing.

  'How are we off for the readies, Sam?' he said, moving his room key between his fingers, as though his hand had a mind of its own. 'I'm in low water, just at present.'

  'Hark at the divvy hunter,' said Sampson, now standing up, and with a grin on his face, adding,'... Share-out'll come soon enough.' Then he turned to me saying, 'I warn you, Allan, it won't be quite a three-way split.'

  I recalled that he'd held back payment to the goods yard clerk, and I thought: he's generous in the tap room - but it

  was evidently a different matter with larger amounts.

  Sampson was putting on his coat, saying, 'Shall we take a turn through Paris, lads?'

  I put on my own coat, and walked into the main room. Sampson, following, asked, 'Where's your glasses, Allan?'

  'Reckon I'll not bother with 'em,' I said. 'Fact is, I. ..'

  Hopkins was in the sitting room, looking out of its window, which gave onto the same railway scene as the one in the bedroom. He had not stirred at the mention of the glasses, so no explanation seemed called for on his account, and Sampson had evidently lost interest in the subject, for he said, 'Let's away,' moving towards the door.

  ------ ---

  As we walked, it came on to rain.

  Everybody in Paris wore smaller clothes; they were smaller people. It was a proud place: soldiers, flags, stone angels, golden domes. Patriotic-like, even though I recollected from school history that they were always at each other's throats. All the cyclists scorched, all cab drivers shouted, and the sound of Paris - apart from the traffic - was the clash of plates and glasses, and the waves of chatter coming from the restaurants and bars. It was odd to think that all this had been going on all my life without me knowing.

  The words over the shops would go along a certain way with English but then they'd take a wrong turning, as with 'Fruiterie'. That or they'd stop some way short of their goal, as for instance 'Tabac'. We passed under a sign in the form of a golden snail.

  'They do eat snails, little Allan,' said Sampson, 'and they're proud of it.'

  'Less cargo,' said Hopkins, walking along behind, and, when I looked back he gave one of his secret smiles.

  Had he quite forgotten about the incident of the glasses?

  A French dog came by. French dogs were different: nervous and unstrung, and they paid no mind to the food in the streets. Food was everywhere, spilling out of the shops and restaurants. The Frenchers were boiling up soup on street corners, standing guard over barrels of oysters, and it all called for a sight more than three meals a day.

  We came to a stand outside some dining rooms.

  Inside, it was like a lady's bedroom: mirrors, lace curtains, fancy, tangled lamps. We watched through the window. At a table just inside the door sat a man with big ears and a cigar and from sideways on, he looked like a cannon. Were the faces all different, or was it the difference of the place that made them seem so? At a table further in sat the real prize: a man who was the spit of Napoleon himself, with a beaky nose, puffed-up chest; scant hair pushed over to the side. Sampson said, 'I know this spot', as if the fact was just coming to him. He pushed open the door, we walked in and I looked straightaway at a little sign above a curtain: 'Telephone'.

  We were shown to a table. Sampson said something, and then one of the clear bottles of wine was brought. Sampson knew the word for that, all right. We'd drunk it off before the menus were passed to us, and Sampson asked for another by saying: 'Encore.'

  Outside the rain was falling more heavily, but the restaurant was bright and jolly There was a fireplace to one side of us, with a huge mantelshelf, on which sat giant, empty bottles of champagne which put me in mind somehow of the gas cylinders.

  I looked again at the 'Telephone' sign, and saw that Napoleon was walking towards it, pushing back the curtain, giving me sight of the instrument. It looked nothing like the English ones.

  Sampson, smoking a cigar, said: 'If they know you here, they put you in that back room,' and he pointed through to a part of the restaurant where the tablecloths and napkins were even whiter, the red wine redder, the lamps still more jungly and flower-like.

  'But they don't know you, do they?' asked Hopkins.

  "They do not,' said Sampson.

  "Thank God for that,' said Hopkins, putting back more wine.

  He turned to me and grinned, and I thought: he's going to rat on me now - let on about the glasses. But instead something beyond the window caught his eyes, and he was up and out into the street. He walked away to the left, out of sight, and returned a minute later, grinning fit to bust. At the table once more, he produced a
pocketbook - a French one. There was a small paper inside, covered with tiny handwriting, and some of the colour-run notes.

  'Bit of all right,' said Sampson.

  'Real fag-ender, this was,' said Hopkins proudly, 'side pocket, sitting on top of a handkerchief with just the tip pointing up.'

  'You saw that all from here?' I said.

  'Lynx-eyed, en't he?' said Sampson, looking at me, and there was silence for a space, so that once again I thought the matter of the spectacles must come up, but instead the food arrived. It was the Plat du Jour (dish of the day) that Sampson had asked for and the turn-up was that it was sausage and onions, albeit of superior flavour. As Sampson called for more wine, Hopkins, who was tipsy by now, sat back in his chair and said: 'Tell you what, mates, I do miss the Garden Gate though.'

  He just sat there grinning for a while, and I knew he'd made a plan of some sort.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Half an hour later, we were walking by the river which came through the city in a stone channel. There were lines of flat barges, all covered up with tarpaulins as if to say: this is all French business, none of yours. We walked on into a park, where indoor chairs were placed outside. A man sat at one of them with an easel before him and an umbrella over his head; he was painting a fountain with stone horses set all around the edge. The design made it look as if the horses were trying to run away but were trapped by their hind legs; trapped by being painted. We sat on the chairs underneath a dripping tree, and I fished out of my pocket Paris and its Environs.

  'Can I have a look at that, mate?' said Hopkins. He seemed in better spirits now. I handed him the book, and he fell to reading in the 'Language' section. 'Only two things you really need,' he said after a while: "Une biere, s'il vous plait", then "Ou sont les toilettes?'"