'Go on then,' I said.
Walking down a hill didn't suit George Ogden any more than walking up a hill. With every step the breath was knocked out of him, escaping with a little whistle, which was sometimes accompanied by a jet of smoke from his 'A'.
'It was wreckers' he said.
'I know that' I said.
'But this is what you don't know,' he said, quite sharp: 'they were going for the next train.'
Above the station, the flag of the Lanky and the flag of the Great Northern slept side by side in the great heat.
'Why would they be doing that?'
'Beats me.'
'Well, what makes you think they were?'
'Simple,' said George. And the next speech he made standing still in Horton Street, with his fingers in his waistcoat pockets and his cigar always in his mouth: 'The next train was knoivn of. The Blackpool Express. Runs every day, even Sunday: eight thirty-six. Famous train, and the only timetabled one of the day from Halifax to Blackpool. It was in the timetable, do you see, there to be found by anyone picking up the month's Bradshaw. Yours -' Here he took one hand out of his waistcoat, to point at me,'- yours was an excursion, and a late-booked one at that. Some excursions get into the Bradshaw's, those known of long in advance. Yours didn't. Some – those known about a little less in advance – get into the working timetables. Yours didn't. Some get into the fortnightly notices, but yours missed that as well. The first we all knew of yours was in the weekly notices.'
'Do you fellows in the booking office get the same weekly notices as us engine fellows?' I asked.
'Wouldn't be much point in having different!' said George.
That was true enough.
'Wreckers are sometimes just kids out for fun,' I said. 'They want to make the train jump. They wouldn't be particular as to which train they tripped up.'
'No,' said George. 'But another sort might be. If they had planned to send one particular train galley west, odds on it would have been the second.'
'Yes,' I said slowly, 'unless they had seen the weekly notices, and they knew of our train.'
'Yes' said George, even more slowly.
'But that's half the Lanky,' I went on. 'Every stationmaster and signalman from here to Blackpool, and everyone who reads a stationmaster or a signalman's notices, which, since they're pinned up all over the shop, is hundreds.'
'Thousands!' said George.
We now carried on walking towards the station, with me wondering where this conversation had got us, but thinking very hard over it, and over the broken window of the Thomas Cook office.
Chapter Eleven
There were two booking offices at the Joint: one for the Lancashire and Yorkshire, one for the Great Northern. That's why it was called the Joint. They were on a sort of wooden bridge, in a building that was like a pier pavilion and went over the tracks and platforms. You climbed dark dusty steps which smelled exciting in some way, and fanned out to left and right, depending on whether you wanted the Great Northern ticket window – which you would if you wanted a connection to London – or the Lanky side.
Between the ticket windows was a door, which I supposed was as good as invisible to passengers, for it was through this that only the ticket clerks came and went. Once through the door, things split into two again. To the left, small letters on a door said 'gn ticket office'; to the right, small letters on another said 'l amp;y office'.
As I prepared to follow George through this second one, I asked him: 'Have you ever been through the other door?'
'Wouldn't care to,' he said, shaking his head.
'Why not?'
'Because it's exactly the same as this show, except with different printing on the tickets.'
As he said the word 'tickets', that's what I saw. The walls of this big wooden room were made of them, and they muffled any noise. I could hear the station below but it might have been a mile away. All around the walls were dark cabinets with wide, thin drawers, and above the cabinets were racks in which the different types of tickets stood in columns. The tickets, thousands upon thousands of them, were imprisoned in their long thin racks. They were dropped in through the top and could only be slid out from the bottom.
In those few wall spaces where there weren't ticket racks, there were pictures. One was the famous Lanky poster that had been in the Thomas Cook excursion office, 'step on at goole for the continent'. I thought of holidays, and again of the broken window at the excursion office. Had Paul done it? Or even Alan Cowan himself?
There were two other clerks in the office: one sitting at the ticket window, another leaning against one of the racks. George introduced them as Dick and Bob, and as he did so, all of their voices sounded lost, as if they were outnumbered and beaten down by the tickets on all sides.
I had seen this pair before and secretly thought them a very medium pair of goods. They might have been in any line of business. There was nothing railway-ish about them. They both shot me funny, complicated looks, because they knew me for an engine man, and an engine man does not wear a stiff collar. But he does start at the head end of the train, and that's the important thing. Or so I'd believed until the smash. Being at the front end put you in the way of trouble. I had struck trouble, and been found wanting.
I shook their hands, and then they fell to staring at George and his cigar. 'Better not let Dunglass or Knowles see you with that thing in your mouth,' Dick said.
Dunglass was the chief booking clerk.
'Smoking's only allowed in the general room,' added Bob, rising from the seat at the ticket window. The ticket office had the wooden, empty smell of a cricket pavilion.
'Nonsense,' said George, who now took Bob's place at the ticket window.
In front of George at the ticket window was a great wooden guillotine that could be dropped down at the close of business, or, as I was to learn, at any time that suited. George also had a money drawer, and at his elbow a date stamp which looked like an iron head with a thin mouth for the tickets to go in.
There not being any passengers to be dealt with, George swivelled around in the chair, which was set on wheels, and, using his cigar as a pointer, indicated the racks, saying very loudly: 'First-class singles
There were lots of these.
'Second-class singles…'
More still of these.
'Third-class singles…'
Yet more – a good two dozen racks of these.
'Heaps of Thirds, aren't there?' I said.
'What?' said George, sitting back, taking a pull on his cigar. 'Well, nine out of ten passengers go Third. It's a third-class world, I'm afraid… except for some of us.' At this, George swivelled right round in his chair, with his boots lifted up off the ground, and the face of a kid riding a whirligig. Bob and Dick looked at each other and smiled. George was the star turn of the booking office.
'First-class returns,' George continued, putting his feet down to stop the chair and pointing to another part of the booking office, 'Second returns… Third returns, policeman- on-duty tickets, clergymen tickets, staff privilege, angling tickets, market-day specials, platform tickets.'
He was going on rapidly now, his cigar jumping about; I couldn't make out where he was pointing.
'Now,' said George, 'your first-class singles are white, your second-class singles are red, your third-class singles green. Your first-class returns are white and yellow, your second- class returns are red and blue, your third-class…'
'Tell him the interesting stuff,' said Dick, or Bob, very timidly.
'What do you think I am doing?' said George, quite indignantly.
'No, the really interesting stuff.'
'Is there any way of recalling who's bought a ticket on any particular train?' I asked the office in general.
George frowned. 'You can say which tickets have gone,' he said, 'but not who's had 'em.'