Lost baggage porter js-3

by Andrew Martin

  Seeing me at large, unguarded on the platform, he immediately said: 'Where's Sam?'

  And at that very moment, I could not have said.

  But a second later Valentine Sampson came into view with more supplies of wine, saying, casual as you like:

  'Train's due off in five minutes.'

  The three of us walked towards a book stall, where Hopkins picked up an English paper. The crowd was thickening about us now as train time drew near – all French voices.

  'Are we in it, mate?' asked Sampson, putting wine bottles into his pockets.

  'It's today's paper' said Miles, 'which means it carries news of what happened yesterday.'

  He was looking at Sampson in a strange way. Nothing would get Hopkins out of his groove. He was scheming at all times.

  Alongside the cabinet from which Hopkins had plucked the paper was a bookshelf – a little library in the rain. I picked up a small red volume called Paris and its Environs, with Thirteen Maps and Thirty-Eight Plans. A proper language! And I straightaway saw instructions for telegraphing and telephoning from France. Hopkins was watching me as I said: 'Reckon this might come in useful. It's only marked down as a bob 'n' all… Oh no, bugger that. It must be one franc.'

  Another shout came from the platform guard, and Sampson just lifted the book and put it into my hand, saying, 'For Christ's sake, little Allan, get a shift on.'

  The carriage had open seating, no compartments. After a great amount of shouting, the train left the platform at walking pace. To avoid the gaze of Hopkins, I looked down at the first page of my book: 'For those who wish to derive instruction as well as pleasure from a visit to Paris, the most attractive treasury of art and industry in the world, some acquaintance with French is indispensable.'

  Hopkins and Sampson were speaking in low voices over the mighty sounds of the engine pulling away. Hopkins had been speaking over the telephone – he made no bones about that. Had he telephoned York? It must have been a pretty fast connection, if so.

  I turned to the pages for Paris, and 'Post, Telegraph and Telephone Offices'. The chief telephone offices, I read, were in the Rue du Louvre and at the Bourse. There was a late telegraph office at the Gare du Nord. But telephone was the quickest.

  On a later page, I discovered that it was the same time in France as in Britain; Germany and Switzerland had different times. In the section at the back marked 'Language', selected words and phrases were given in English and French, and these were boiled down to the closest necessities such as 'How fond some people are of taking an immense lot of luggage'. Sampson was at his racing paper again. 'Of course, most multiple bets are just guesses' he was saying to Hopkins, who wasn't listening, but continuing to eyeball me.

  Some French words, I saw from the book, were the same as English. 'Omnibus' was 'omnibus'. 'Police' was 'police'. I then looked at some railway speaks: 'Nous allons bien vite.' We are going very fast. 'A quelle heure part le premier train?' At what time does the first train leave?

  Having set down his paper, Sampson was saying, in connection with something or other: 'It's always supposed that the big ones are put up.'

  Beyond the window, things were floating back fast in the darkness. 'What did your old man do for a living, Allan?' he asked me.

  'Butcher,' I said, instantly. 'Yours?'

  'Time' he answered.

  'He was a felon?' I asked, and Sampson's eyes went steely again.

  I looked through the windows. The French houses were wrong, with the wrong roofs – like a man with a bad hat. We went at a lick through a station: its name began with 'B', and there was sea here too, or a lighthouse at any rate. We were next hurled over a great junction, and Sampson was looking at the other passengers in the carriage.

  'Wouldn't mind giving her a shot,' he was saying.

  Silence for a space, then Sampson said:

  'That French cunt's staring at me.'

  I looked up. He might have meant one of twenty. Not that they were all cunts, but they were all French. A woman sitting behind Hopkins was holding a baby, and the sight knocked me. I thought: one of those will be in my way before long, and the second thought came: will I ever see it? The baby was pounding as hard as it could on the shoulder of the woman but that wasn't at all hard. I looked out of the window: 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 little 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 sa
me 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.

  ____________________

  ‹O›-- 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'.