The Necropolis Railway

by Andrew Martin

  We stood about looking for motor cars, and two or three did come by. My landlady said they looked very strange, and I said you could supply the horse in your imagination. We also saw a motorcycle with a man on the front and a lady on the back, and my landlady said, ‘I should like to ride on one of those.'

  I said, 'Well, then, you'll have to find yourself a young fellow who has one.'

  'Why should I not have one of my own?' she said.

  I told her I had never seen a woman on a motorcycle before, and she said, ‘I daresay you've never seen a motorcycle before.' I said I certainly had, and she said, quite fiercely, 'Where?' I said on a railway waggon in a siding at Whitby, and she said, 'In a siding’ and shook her head.

  We walked through the front of what looked like a shop, and we were in the Central London Railway station for Tottenham Court Road. All tickets were 2d. As we rode down in the elevator my landlady had an even livelier look than usual in her eyes, and then I realised that all the half dozen fellows in there with us had the same moustache.

  On the platform, you couldn't see the wall for advertisements and maps. I learnt from one of the maps that the Central went in a nearly straight line from a place called Wood Lane to a place called Bank - not a bank or the bank, but just Bank.

  I was just going to ask my landlady about this - which I knew would involve the risk of a pretty sharp reply - when I saw that she was enquiring of a fellow in a uniform whether the electricity was Mr Edison's. He didn't seem to understand the question but he didn't mind being asked it by her. I could tell he was thinking that we were a handsome couple, and that I was a fellow with more luck than he deserved.

  There were no timetables of any sort, just signs saying 'Trains arrive every few minutes', and certainly we only waited ninety seconds or so before one came in. We liked the coaches, which my landlady said were like little villas. It was a funny arrangement, though: a loco at the front and one at the back, but they were just electrical boxes on wheels. When they moved there came a buzzing noise that just went on and on. I wanted them to breathe. As we buzzed towards our destination of Notting Hill, I said, "They often have steam locomotives along here, you know.' She asked why, and I said, 'To rescue the electrics!'

  'No!' she gasped. She would not hear of it. She said that, even though it was very good, it was very rattly, and I said that was because the track lengths were too short. She said that she'd read of draughtsmen in a spot called Cheapside who'd been drawing wonky lines ever since it was built, and then she asked: 'Why can they not have tyres like the motor cars?' and I couldn't think of a good answer.

  We came to Notting Hill, from where we walked to another station which also turned out to be called Notting Hill, and there took a Metropolitan train to Brompton, where we changed for West Kensington. This was all by steam, and the lines mainly went through brick valleys between the houses, although some of the valleys had roofs. All parts were very smoky, and I couldn't see why they bothered with windows in the carriages since, if you opened one, you'd be choked to death.

  'How can this work?' I asked my landlady, 'Steam engines underground?'

  She said, 'It can't. It will all be electric soon.'

  That was one up for her, but I didn't care for these little locomotives in any case. 'You wouldn't get me driving one of these,' I said. 'It would be like being a dog always on the leash.'

  My landlady told me not to be swanky.

  I asked where we were going, and she said, 'Timbuctoo.'

  It was a mystery tour, but as we rolled in to West Kensington my landlady told me to take a look out of the window, whereupon I saw a huge wheel, three hundred foot high, turning in the sky, with cabins for people to sit in.

  'Whatever next?' I said, sitting back down, closer to her than I had been before.

  We couldn't ride on the wheel because it was a guinea even for second class. It was like the Necropolis Railway in that there was little difference between second and first except the number on the door. We noticed that both classes were packed with johnnies, and I ventured to say, 'But I've got the prettiest girl of all.' But when I looked at my landlady she seemed not to have heard, which I was glad about.

  Underneath the wheel was an Empire exhibition of some sort, with elephants that you could see for free. We had a look at those while drinking ginger beer, then we walked through a pretty Japanese garden decorated with lanterns that was alongside the exhibition, and so returned to the District Railway. As we stepped into our carriage it was dark, and the wheel was still turning above the station with lights burning in every cabin, and the sky around seemed not black but very dark blue.

  We were back at Hercules Court for five-thirty. I asked whether she would like to come along to the Citadel. I told her about the mirrors with the electric lights like bunches of grapes, but could not persuade her. I said, could I go and get some bottled beer, and we could continue talking in the kitchen, so she made tea while I did that. The fire was going when I came back, and her hair was somehow different and even more fetching. When I finished my beer she just came over and sat on my knee, and I kissed her until she had to return to her father. As she rose to her feet I think I made a pretty good show of looking as if I had done that sort of thing a hundred times before.

  But when she'd gone it was as if I'd always been alone in the lodge, and had never had anything in my thoughts but the half-link and the mutual improvement class they had arranged for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Monday 21 December

  At five to eight in the evening, I clocked off, not at all liking the way Crook took the token from me, looked at his clock, and followed his note of the time with a full stop stabbed into his ledger with a force fit to break his nib. Then, instead of leaving the yard, I walked back into it, heading for the blind house that guarded the Old Shed, stepping over half of the twenty-three roads with my boots going into shaking puddles between the tracks and the rain blasting across my face. As I approached the mutual improvement class, I thought of that left-behind house as nothing more than an enormous, infernal well-head, where, once through the door, you would roll over in air and plummet instantly to the bottom of a mile-deep black hole.

  The Old Shed itself was more fearful still, but if you are destined to shine there are some things that you must do, and you always know what they are. I had thought of splitting to the Governor, but in that case all the half thought of me would be true, so the matter could not be handled like that. I had to find out their programme.

  It was eight o'clock when I entered the Old Shed. I walked into that locomotive graveyard holding a bull's-eye lantern. The rain didn't stop hitting me when I stepped under the roof of the shed, but just whirled about the broken engines in a strange way. Who was the man who came over and wrote the numbers in chalk on the boilers and buffer beams, and why did he do it? How could there be improvement of any sort in this place? But there was one thing that gleamed, and I glimpsed it on a pile of ash straightaway. Picking the thing up, I saw that it was the weighty brass handle of an engine brake, brought to a beautiful finish, but for no reason. Well, it would come in handy if I had to crown somebody. I slid it into my coat pocket, where it fitted snugly from wrist to elbow, and walked on. At the top of the shed I struck some wooden lean-tos that were mainly smashed, but there was one brick building a little more solid than the others; it even had a door. I lifted the latch and walked in. There was a table, and I put my lantern down upon this, from where it shone onto a wooden model showing the workings of the motion of a locomotive. I turned the lamp and saw a chimney breast of crumbling black bricks, then some dusty bookshelves. I walked closer to these with my lamp in my hand. They had Continuous Engine Brakes by Reynolds, of course - about a dozen editions of it. I saw also Power in Motion, Fuel: Its Combustion and Economy and The Correct Use of Steam, along with books that seemed to have no connection with railways - Well Digging, Boring and Pump Work, Practical Organ Building - and others even further off the mark, such as Fabian Essay
s by George Bernard Shaw, King Lear by Shakespeare, and the works of Dickens.

  Turning back to the table, I spotted two candle ends. I lit these from my lantern, causing enormous posters on the walls to leap out at me: 'Every Member Shall Obey the Chairman', I read; 'No Member Shall Ridicule Another On Account of Lack of Knowledge'; 'Smoke Is Waste'. On the table I also saw papers headed 'A. S. L. E. & F.' - this was the name of the union. They had it in some sheds and not in others -1 didn't think it had got into Nine Elms. I picked up one of the papers and shone my light on to it: 'Fellow Members,' it began, 'It is my most painful duty to inform you that our worthy and respected General Secretary passed away from this mortal flesh at about 2 p.m., 20th September 1901...'

  Just as I was putting the paper down, I heard a mighty clang, and all the breath stopped on my lips. I walked towards the door, and there came another clang, then a third and a fourth, like a bell ringing in an abandoned church. I came out of the brick hut and shone my lamp down one of the middle roads. Nothing but a line of broken locos on either side of the beam, but the clanging carried on. I walked a little further across the top of the shed, and tried my lamp down another line. Nothing again but the noise. It was getting louder, and the clangs were becoming more frequent.

  I tried yet a third road, and there they were: the men of the half-link, with a couple of others besides, were approaching. They were little more than shadows behind their lamps, but I was able to make out that the smallest of them, Vincent, was carrying a metal bar of his own, with which he was striking the broken engines as he advanced in a line with his fellows. As I watched, a gust coming through a hole in the wall pulled all their coats to the right.

  I turned back towards the little room, and stood at the door, listening to the banging of Vincent's metal, which made different sounds, like slow, monstrous music, according to whether it was striking an old boiler or something solid such as a pair of buffers, but which was becoming more deafening by the second, all the same. It was as though a slow train crash was happening all around me.

  Arthur Hunt and his little gang were all out to get me, and it made no difference that Rowland Smith had died. They knew of the note he had written to me, and of the one I had written back. They knew I knew they had done for Henry Taylor and Mike: Taylor was killed because he was Rowland Smith's man, and had done something to rile one or all of them, and Mike knew what had happened to Henry Taylor so he had to go too. Then they had got round to the source of all their troubles, which was Smith himself, and they were certain I knew what they had done: they had taken paraffin from Nine Elms and they had burned him in his own flat. This explained all, and as for Sir John Rickerby ... well, that old gent could be put out of the picture, for he was an old crock who had fallen over at Brookwood and there was an end to it.

  I moved across the back of the shed, away from the road down which the half-link was coming, and somehow I struck my lantern against something. The buffer of a locomotive? I couldn't see. I couldn't see anything, for my part of the shed was in darkness now, which was the way it was always meant to be. Among the fearful banging there came a cry: "There he is!' And at that, there was not a particle of fear left in me, but just the need to run. I flung down the useless lantern and hared straight into a metal wall. I had struck the side of an engine, and done so head first. My mouth was all blood, and I spat and spat, and still it came.

  The clattering was everywhere, now, and in among it were cries I couldn't make out. I wanted more light and less noise. I whirled about and darted forwards again, this time with my hands out before me, but they struck an engine soon enough. I turned again, turning about and about, trying to finish so that I was facing the black mouth of the shed where the rain and the night waited. But whenever I moved forwards I touched an engine. The whole shed seemed to have been picked up and turned about, so that the locomotives were set across my path to the entrance. But that couldn't be - I had simply faced the wrong direction twice.

  The half-link were spreading out; I could see the flashes from their lamps, and the banging... It seemed they were all at it, and I knew this was how they did their murders: as though they were playing a game. I thought I would go distracted with funk, yet I wheeled about for the third time and began to make my run.

  I ran hard with my hands out, and as I ran I realised that the banging had stopped, but that that was not good. At any moment the stick would be smashed into my face. No, some sixty tonner would fly forwards to check me, and what good would my brake handle be against either? The banging of the half-link men and their strange cries had stopped, and everybody, it seemed, was waiting for my smash. I ran and I ran, with my arms out to the side of me now, skimming two rows of engines, keeping them in their place, parallel with my running and not against me. I came out of the shed into the freedom of the rainy night, with the fires and the lamps of the yard. That wasn't a safe place for me either, though, so I kept on running.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Thursday 24 December

  The day after the mutual improvement class that never was, I lay low in my room, reading the notes in my Lett's diary and waiting, revolving in my mind the Christmas plan I had made in the Governor's room after Smith's funeral. My engine brake handle was at all times on the mantelshelf. I didn't fancy even walking in Lower Marsh, mainly because it had suddenly come to me that there was nothing keeping the half-link in Nine Elms. I had no doubt that they had meant to put the kybosh on me and would do so again at the first chance they got. Down there, among the wild, big-booted fellows, they could twist me in broad daylight.

  On Christmas Eve, my landlady unexpectedly appeared with a small cake, which I thought proved she was my girl, although it was a shame for her to have chosen such a milksop. We ate the cake in the kitchen before a straggly fire, with the washing - which she said she was anxious to get out of the way - boiling merrily behind her. There was some holly resting on the tins on the mantelpiece. She told me she had been distributing notices about her spare room all around Waterloo, and that the terms were now being advertised as 'extremely moderate', and it was down to half a minute from the station. We finished the cake and I opened a bottle of beer. She stood up and walked over to the chimney piece. There was an envelope alongside the tins and holly; she stared at it for a while, then caught it up and gave it to me. On the front it said: 'Mr Stringer'.

  'Is it for me?' I said, and she rolled her eyes to heaven.

  It was a Christmas card showing a signal man in his signal box. He was being brought a hot punch or some like drink by a little girl, and there was snow all around. Inside, the card said 'With fond wishes for a merry Christmas', underneath which my landlady had written, 'Merry Christmas, Mr Stringer', and signed it with her name, which was Lydia. I was quite struck dumb for a moment; I began to say that I would keep this for ever, and to apologise for not having got her a card, but she would not let me speak, and instead asked me what the biggest difference was between London and Bay.

  I said no stars in the sky in London, and she liked that, I could tell. She asked - I fancied a little anxiously - whether I would like to go back to Yorkshire, and in doing so she hit on the very thing I'd been thinking of as the only thing to do if my last plan failed.

  ‘I would go,' I said, 'if you would come with me.'

  When the words were out I could not believe I had said them.

  My landlady stood up and said, 'Oh', and I made to stand up too, and all was confusion for a second. Presently, though, we were both back sitting down, and she said, in a curious tone, 'So you're half on a half-link?'

  I said that that was it exactly, and explained as best I could about links, of which there were many, and half links, of which there was only one. I added that I might soon be leaving it.

  'Maybe your half-link can join up with another half link and become a whole link?' she said. She didn't know very much about railways, but she looked very good, and there ought to have been some way of doing something about it, especially since this was
Christmas. But after only a moment or two of spooning, she went off to her father's place, from where she would be going on to church.

  Afterwards, I could not return to my room; those moments with my landlady had galvanised me into acting in a more manly way. I had a pound in my pocket book and some coppers besides. I would brave the street, with a pint at the Citadel as my prize.

  It was a cold but clear night and I actually spied two or three stars in the sky, which was a lot for London. I thought: I can see them because it's Christmas. And there were no low types in the street, and I thought that in this case the reverse was true: they had been removed from my sight because it was Christmas.

  The Citadel was full of orange light, galloping piano music - 'Hold Your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy' - and advertisements for beef, plum pudding and special beers. Everybody was already having a jolly time of it, and I thought: if everybody is saturated now, what will they be like by the end of the evening? But it was amazing how some people in London could keep it up. There weren't any Christmas decorations as such that I could see, but with the fancy white electric lights, the big rippling fire and red-faced people, there might have been a thousand.

  I walked with my beer towards the Comfortable Corner, but there was a man already there with a small glass. He was very large and sad, and was talking to himself in an under-breath. It was Stanley, the man who gave the address at the Necropolis in favour of extra manure, or whatever it was. As a barmaid came up to take the glass, he looked up, and his golden eyes flooded with sadness. The cause was lost, by the looks of him. Then he stood to hunt in his pockets for money and I went off to hunt for a seat in another part of the pub, but, not finding one, drunk two pints standing up.