We turned into Fossgate, where I suddenly saw my whole life standing six feet before me: the wife in her good maternity dress with the warm blue wrap on top, and the unknown baby seeming to ride out before her. Had she been doing her marketing? No. She did that on Wednesdays. Rather, she'd been to collect her week's typewriting, for there was a paper parcel under her arm. She was looking into the illuminated window of the shop that stood beside the Blue Boar: Dove and Crenshaw, Bespoke Tailors for Ladies and Gentlemen. She was looking at the millinery corner – no, the gloves, the fur-lined ones. I couldn't help but notice this even as I swayed out into the middle of the road, almost into the path of a bicyclist, who shouted out just as I gained the kerb at a point ten feet or so beyond the wife. I saw her turn towards me as I set foot into the Blue Boar, where Sampson was already giving his report from the parlour bar.
'No sign of Miles,' he said.
I just stared back at Sampson, struck dumb. I knew all the blood had run from my face at the sight of the wife… But had she seen me? The worst of it was the glasses. How to account for the peepers? Another pint was coming towards me from Valentine Sampson. He didn't play low with the drinks, and that was a fact. My mind was full of new horrors: the Camerons lying dead on the cinder track and the wife sitting quite alone in the dark parlour at home. I had never kept anything from her before, and now it was as though the locking pin had been pulled out from our marriage. One thing I could take comfort from: the wife would not follow me into the parlour bar of the Blue Boar. Even Lydia would not do that.
Miles Hopkins did step into that small crowded parlour bar though, and just a moment later.
'Sorry, mates,' he said with a grin, 'my train was late.'
He swirled Sampson and myself into a tight circle of three and, saying nothing more, produced from his coat a fine pocketbook stuffed with folded banknotes. The three of us stood there breathing beer fumes onto this money, and there was not only the smell of beer, but the smell of sweat and of greed. One word was uttered as we broke, and it was Sampson who spoke it.
'Good-o,' he said.
I looked across the bar top, where gas jets burned for cigar smokers and saw, at the foot of the back wall, that the low double doors giving on to the cellar were open. I could see into the pit of the cellar, but not to the bottom of it, and I had a picture in my mind of this tiny pub perched on top of a great hole. It was a smarter place than the Garden Gate though. A cut above. More drinks were bought, with whiskys to go with the ales, and Valentine Sampson led us over to a table. Here, the pair produced their own stolen or somehow purloined goods yard passes. They matched mine in all particulars except for the name.
'It's well minded is that place,' said Sampson, meaning the goods yard. We all nodded for a while. Then Sampson said: 'It was hardly likely we could fix all the guards on the gate.'
'… So we fixed the bloke who prints the passes,' said Miles, who had become not so watchful, but quite larky after his triumph at the station.
'Fixed him? How much?' I said.
'Two guineas, I think… That right, Miles?'
'Two quid is what he was promised,' said Miles. 'What he got was a different matter.'
'What did he get?' I asked.
'He got what was coming to him,' said Sampson, putting his glass up for more beer. The fellow drank like a pond. 'See, Allan,' he continued, 'once you've fixed a bloke…' 'Once you've tickled him out of the narrow path of rectitude…' put in Miles Hopkins, who was tossing and catching a coaster. 'Once you've done that, then you have him,' said Sampson. 'You have him because you can rat on him,' I said, regretting it directly because once again Valentine Sampson put his eyes on me with no accompanying smile. 'Not so much rat on him, mate,' Miles Hopkins said quietly, 'as let on you might do.' 'You see, Allan,' said Sampson, 'if you rat on the Company blokes, who are you ratting on 'em to? Some toff, that's who. Because when it comes to it… who benefits? Top brass. You know who the top man on the railway is, don't you? Fellow name of Lord Grey.' 'It was him,' I said, 'but now he's chucked it in.' Hopkins was looking at me; Sampson was frowning. 'Why has he chucked it in, Allan?' he asked. 'Gone off to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government.' 'Bloody typical is that,' said Sampson, sitting back. Silence for a space, then Hopkins said: 'Most blokes of your stripe wouldn't be expected to know that, Allan.' 'Aye,' I said, colouring up,'… daresay.' 'Most blokes of your stripe wouldn't be expected to know anything at all, Allan,' said Sampson, 'and don't take that amiss, brother.' 'I'm a great one for reading,' I said. 'If I take a pint, I'll usually read a paper at the same time. Drinking beer somehow doesn't quite seem enough in itself if you know what I mean.' Sampson was frowning at me again.
Hopkins, leaning forwards and grinning at me, said: 'So the more you drink, the more you read?'
'Well… up to a point,' I said.
'Point is, Allan,' said Sampson, 'you put the fix on a bloke, you buy his silence at the very same time, and very little further action needs to be taken as regards that.'
'Except in the odd case,' said Hopkins, with a distant look.
We talked on, and I was half pleased, half worried that I seemed to be getting along well with Sampson in particular who, come nine o'clock, rose to his feet saying, 'Hadn't we better be off, mates?'
I half expected the wife to be still standing outside the door of the Blue Boar. She wasn't of course, and I didn't like to think of the moment at which she must have turned away to go home.
In Fossgate, Miles Hopkins hung slightly behind – watchful again – and I fell in with Sampson, who walked just as fast as before despite all the beer he'd taken, and looked just as spruce and kingly in his salt and pepper suit. The only thing that let him down was the sharp and sour smell coming off him, and an over-eager look to his walk. He was like a fine steamer that was shipping sea secretly, out of sight, far below the water line. He led us along Pavement, through Parliament Street, through Davygate, our boots clinking on the cobbles. It was cold, and the streets were mainly empty, except for the buried noise coming from pubs along the way. I could feel the Police Gazette in my coat pocket, burning away there, as it seemed to me. As we pushed on, the Minster bells struck nine, sounding soft and yet loud, filling the whole city, and when they'd finished, a new sound took their place: an echoing rattling and clanking. We were in Leeman Road; the passenger station was to our left, and the goods station stood directly before us with light blazing at all their windows.
Chapter Fourteen
The goods offices were at the front, and the goods station stretched out behind under a glass roof. From here, half a dozen lines reached out, soon multiplying to dozens and curving away to merge with the lines from the passenger station. An aeronaut flying over the whole mass of tracks might have understood it in a moment; anybody else would have taken years.
The booking office stood guard before the main building on its own island, under a great four-sided clock. Wagons approached the station from either side of it, and we came in behind a load of timber under a tarpaulin with our passes in our hands. Inside the main door was a wide, cold, white- tiled room. There was a long table and some blokes in long coats milling about it. Any one of them might be a goods yard guard; any one or none. Their main purpose seemed to be keeping warm. Valentine Sampson walked past them at a lick, holding out his pass, and Miles and myself fell in behind, our passes also held out in a grudging, take-it-or- leave-it sort of way.
In ten seconds we were through the offices and into the station, at the buffer end of the platforms. Valentine Sampson stood before us, breathing it all in, nodding to himself and giving Miles and me not a glance. He was a different man on a job: sober-sided all of a sudden and the more frightening for it. I realised that he was scouting about for somebody or something, and I looked out into the station with him.
The place just seemed too small for all the clutter within. Lines of tall vans stood in each of the stalls, and the platforms, backed in by engines out of sight. The platforms were clarted w
ith spilt paint and flour, half-cabbages, and the remnants of long-gone cargoes; all about the place stood goods lately taken down from the vans, goods about to go up, or goods just simply forgotten about: casks of grease, sacks of slag chippings, a children's merry-go-round in pieces, a big crate with the word 'Furniture' branded on the side, another stamped 'Clocks', half a dozen ladders stacked together and held by wire, a dozen new bicycles held upright by nothing but themselves. There was a weighing machine to each of the platforms, sometimes more than one, and a few of them crocked. On the platform before us were two high desks, one abandoned together with all the papers piled on top of it; at the second sat a clerk under a swinging gas bracket. With steam coming from his mouth, he was talking to a workman, saying: 'You've no bloody forwarding orders…'
Just then one rake of vans jerked into life, and began to be withdrawn from the station; they moved slowly, like a dozen convicts manacled together, and as they went, Valentine Sampson took a step forward. A fellow in a bowler and a paper collar – a clerk of some description -was coming along the platform as the train departed; he was a small man with a small moustache. He and Sampson closed, Sampson saying, 'All set?'
The man nodded, turned about, and we set off along the platform after him. Above each of the platforms were metal signs hanging from chains, and I spied 'Peterborough', 'Birm- ingham Curzon Street', 'Glasgow General Terminus', 'Liverpool Great Howard Street'. These were other goods stations, and this was the shadow railway, the ones that your average Joe Soap, taking his railways to work or holidays knew nothing of. But I knew it from my days on the North Eastern and my time on the Lanky, and as we walked forwards, it was as though I was walking back into my own past.
We walked through the goods station, and out into the tracks beyond, where the business of loading and unloading continued without benefit of a roof. On the longest, straight- est road were more wagons covered right over with tarpaulins, like beds with the top covers pulled right up – beds with a body lying in them. A fellow walked alongside it, a hand lamp swinging in his hand. As he approached, I whispered to Miles Hopkins: 'Is he one of our lot?' Miles shook his head, and the man with a lantern seemed a hero as he passed by with nothing more than a nod. He had not been 'fixed' in the parlance of Sampson and Hopkins; he would not have to go down in my report. He was a railwayman of the right sort. He had the greyhound looks of a driver, and I had a bet with myself that he was in the running department.
I looked again at the ink-spiller walking ahead of us, alongside Sampson. He was nattering away in an under- breath to our leader, but getting precious little back in return. I could not hear their speech because of the jangle and clang of the sidings, and the great boom of the passenger station away to our left. We had walked through into an area where it was not so much the goods that were being moved as entire wagons and trains – these were the marshalling yards. A line of hopper wagons kept pace with us to our left, winched forward by a capstan, hydraulic powered, attended by blokes in long coats, one of them working the treadle with his foot. Beyond it, a horse walked a line towing a single wagon full of broken wood and metal – a wagon full of nothing. There was a great crash to the other side, and a rake of vans, shoved by a pilot engine, moved on their own as though blown by the wind. The shunter trotting beside like a cowherd with his long braking stick in his hand was half in control of those vans, and half not… for any marshalling yard was a wild and dangerous spot.
Gaslight came and went as we marched on; braziers and blokes came and went. These gangs of fellows would look up to us, and we would walk on, and I'd think; good for you, mates, you're off the hook.
Ahead of us, there was a conference under a gas lamp between the ink-spiller and Sampson. As a result of this exchange we now struck out to our right, crossing tracks by barrow boards, proceeding away from the direction of the passenger station. We came to a tall row of vans, each with the same slogan on the side: 'This Van Contains 500,000 Tins of Rowntree's King Chocolate'. It was a private siding for Rowntree's factory, and the thought crossed my mind: we're never going to have sweetmeats away, are we?
Hard by the line of chocolate vans was a shunter's cabin made of old sleepers but half gone west. The clerk and Sampson walked up to it, and the clerk ducked inside, emerging presently with a long iron bar – a crowbar, I saw, as he came closer – and a hand lantern.
'These'll see you right,' he was saying.
We now moved on, same direction as before. There were just two shorter sidings beyond the chocolate road, before the limit of the railway territory was marked by a high brick wall. One of the sidings was a van kip – half a dozen reserve brake vans on a slope; the other was a rake of vans on which the names of different companies were painted:
'I have a copy of the manifest here,' the clerk was saying to Sampson. 'It's the fourth from the right, you want.'
I made out the names of the three vans directly before us: 'Finsbury Distillery Company', 'Morrison and Co., Sail Makers amp; Co., Rotherhithe', 'Nairn Bros, Spirit Merchants, Strand'. To either side, the train stretched away into darkness.
Sampson was nodding: 'All for London, right?'
'No, no,' said the clerk, 'all from London. This is a "down" road, you see. "Down" is away from London, while your "up" lines… they take you to it.'
Sampson fixed a glare on the little man. There was a pause; the wind made a winding sound, as if working up to something. Sampson spat:
'Where they all off to?' he said, nodding again towards the vans.
'All different places. See, they're about to be cut. The Morrison and Co. – that's for South Shields. The Spirit van – that's…'
'Leave off for Christ's sake,' said Sampson, seizing the crowbar and lamp from the clerk. 'How long are they going to remain?'
'I have it set down just here,' said the clerk, turning the pages of the manifest; but he couldn't make it out in the darkness, and Sampson was already striding off over the cinder road towards a fourth van. As he closed on it, the white- painted name seemed to flare up: 'Acetylene Illuminating Company, Queen's Road, South Lambeth, London, S.W.'
Well, I'd seen those words before: in the Occurrence file handed me by Weatherill.
Sampson set down the lantern by the track and, gaining a foothold on the bogey, began scaling the van like a mountaineer on a rock face.
'New thing for me, this is,' said the clerk, looking on.
No answer from Miles Hopkins, who was watching his partner with a worried look. Sampson was trying to jemmy open the door on the van, which was locked with a padlock, and sealed with wire and a ball of wax.
'Come away, you bastard!' roared Sampson, who was spread out against the van.
'… Been writing abstracts all morning,' continued the clerk.
No reply again from Hopkins.
'I spent the best part of the afternoon consigning potatoes…'
Hopkins looked around, and down, at the little fellow.
'Best thing to do with 'em,' he said.
As Sampson grafted away with the crowbar, I heard the beat of an engine away to our right, towards the front of the rake of vans. This'll put a crimp in, I thought… If they're going to pull the vans away… Sampson continued to labour with the jemmy, and curse at the lock, while the talkative little clerk tried his luck with me:
'We had a new lad on this week,' he said. 'Silly bugger was charging for the weight of the sacks as well as the spuds.'
He looked up at me.
'You don't do that.'
'I know,' I said, and watched Miles Hopkins as I did so, but his eyes were stuck on Sampson. I wanted to say to the goods clerk: I'm on your side, pal, but then I thought: I'm not on his side. My job is to see him put away. I thought of asking his name – for the report – but he wouldn't have given it, and I would hardly have been able to bear hearing it if he had.
I looked again at the van. Acetylene was used to give light, but it could also be used in place of coal gas for burning through metal and was so used in any
up-to-date engine shed. I looked down at the clerk: 'How long you been with the company?' I asked him. 'Nigh on forty year, and no bloody pay increase in ten. Four nippers I have, it just won't do… A fellow must keep his soul in his body. How long you been working for Mr Duncannon?' He was nodding towards Sampson; this was evidently the name he knew him by. 'About an hour,' I said. Sampson had climbed down from the van, the door still fast. But no: as he raised his lamp, I could see that the lock was busted, that the thin wire of the seal was floating in the wind as Sampson drew back the great sliding door like a mesmerist revealing something miraculous. I could make out only blackness inside, though. 'Bingo!' said the clerk. 'Nobbut six penn'orth o' steel, those padlocks!' As Sampson strode back towards us, there came a jangle from the right hand end of the rake. He wheeled about at the noise, and the vans jumped… then they settled again. 'They'll not move till midnight, I swear,' said the clerk. Sampson had the crowbar raised as he closed on the clerk. 'I'll bloody coffin you,' he was saying. 'I en't lying,' said the clerk. I'd taken his constant nattering as a sign of nerves, but he was turning out to have a lot of neck. 'How much money have you had off us?' said Sampson, still with the crowbar raised. 'Five quid,' said the clerk, 'and the rest promised, but it ought to've been ten quid down, that was the agreement as you know very well. We shook on that – thee and me.' The clerkly language was going to pot now. '… And that chap was looking on…' He pointed to Miles Hopkins. 'Ten quid down, and ten to follow, you said, if I could show you to the acetylene van. Well there it bloody is!'
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