'I bloody knew it,' I said. 'They've heard from the Socialist Mission again?'
Ellerton nodded, and even he looked pretty cut up. 'Now, he says the cops have not been able to dig up anything about this lot, and they're still of opinion it's a bluff.'
'But what did the message say?' I asked Ellerton.
Clive was looking down at his new boots.
'Bit of blather,' said Ellerton, 'but really just this: no excursions to run in Halifax Wakes.'
'But they will run, won't they?' I said.
'Of course they bloody will,' said Ellerton, and he turned on his heel.
Clive looked at me and grinned: 'That'll teach you to talk to strange blokes in pubs,' he said.
I shouted after Ellerton, 'Did they mention a fellow called Billington, an engine man killed at York?'
But I don't think he heard.
Chapter Twenty-six
At the Joint, originality was at a premium: everyone was doing the same as before. I wanted to shout out distracting things, to check the heavy programme of entraining and luggage loading.
We'd been put into platform three once more, where Knowles's blackboard again stood, reading: 'special train, sunday 9th july, hind's mill, wakes week excursion to Blackpool', with masses of underlining beneath. Station- master Knowles was watching from the far end of the platform, the back end of the train.
To make things different, to give the kaleidoscope a shake, I jumped down from the footplate and took a turn along the platform, just as the first excursionists were climbing up. On my stroll, I struck other novelties. There were seven rattlers as before, but this time all third class. The Hinds, father and son, would not be coming along. And there was no Martin Lowther patrolling the train with a face like yesterday, ticket nippers at the ready. At the end of the train, I nodded to Knowles, who half nodded back then turned on his heel and walked off.
I looked back along to the engine. Clive was standing by it, in his special place, where he could be looked at and admired; glancing down sometimes at his new boots, then up at the waves of happy excursionists, keeping his eye out for the pretty ones as they came running over the footbridge, tumbling down the steps and searching out their compartments along the platform, all sporting their white rosettes. Another tea at the Tower was evidently in store.
There was a banging of doors, laughing and shouting. Two of the trippers were at the cream-biscuit machine once again, rattling the little metal drawers that should have opened and never did.
Some new posters of Blackpool had appeared along the platform: half a dozen all the same, with the beach looking like a mustard plaster, the Tower brighter, friendlier and not so frightening as when you were up close, and the slogan running along underneath: 'Blackpool holds perennial delights'.
The luggage went into the place next to the guard's part, and here was another difference. Far more goods were for the van than before, this being a whole week away. Reuben Booth was in charge of the loading, or maybe he was just getting in the way of it. He had all on to check the boxes the porters were pitching in.
I walked back to 1418, and to Clive. Reuben was coming up, too.
'Five hundred and one souls… two hundred and twenty tons,' he said. The tonnage was the same as before, the extra Third in place of the First making no difference. The numbers were a little down. Well, not everybody could get away for a whole week. And then of course Margaret Dyson was dead, her boy in the orphanage.
Now Clive was giving me his special happy nod, meaning look at the doxies, and there was the wife, walking hand in hand along the platform with Cicely Braithwaite.
'It's the wife,' I said. 'I think I told you she'd got a start in the office at Hind's.'
'Which one's she?' Clive asked, double-quick.
'The beautiful one,' I said, 'what do you expect?'
'Well now,' he said, 'they're both rather handsome.'
'The one on the right,' I said, as the wife and Cicely stopped about three carriages down. They both wore the white rosettes.
The wife and Cicely spotted me, and gave a wave as they climbed up into their compartment.
'Will they not come and take a look at the engine?' asked Clive.'No point asking the wife'1 said. 'She thinks all engines are mucky, smelly things.'
Clive frowned. There had been no takers at all so far for his fancily polished buffers. 'I hope you've explained to her that they're cleaned from top to bottom for about six hours at the start of every working day?'
'Oh yes'1 said; 'more than you can say for our house, that is.'
As the Hind's excursionists continued to climb aboard, I opened the firehole door and put on more coal. The wife was on the train now and, short of main force, there was nothing I could do about it. I knew it was not worth trying to persuade her to stay in Halifax. The Socialist Mission had not threatened this excursion in particular, and we were one of hundreds that would be leaving the Joint over the coming week. That was the argument she would employ.
I looked at the high-set, gleaming injector handles, the beautiful wide black numbers against the clear white background of the steam-pressure gauge, all so prettily set off by the bright red danger mark. To a fellow of the right sort, there could be no handsomer sight in the kingdom. There again the fire was a little thin to left and right, so I picked up my shovel, turned towards the tender and set to.
At eight-eighteen Clive was up next to me, moving the gear to full forward. I leant out to watch the starter signal, and… nothing happened. Perhaps they've thought better of sending us out after all. I looked away from the signal, looked back, and then it fell. Clive pulled the regulator (I got a whiff of the Bancroft's as he did so), and the engine gave its first mighty bark, like something being roused that doesn't want to be roused.
We started to roll, though.
We moved into the sight of the sun, and I turned once more to the tender and the coal. As the beats came faster they began to drown out the cheering of the excursionists, and that was all right by me, for I meant to trust my luck to the brightness of the day, and lose myself in the work.
We rolled, faster than I would have thought right, along the side of the branch canal, then under the branch canal, which brought on a short night-time, then into Milner Royd Tunnel, which made for a longer one.
Coming out of the tunnel Clive was at the reverser, notching up the great engine with his hair falling forward over his eyes. With the higher gear engaged, the rocking began, like the start of a dance, and it was the start of a dance, for our feet fell into the old way of counterbalancing. I thought of Mr Aspinall, sitting in his office in Manchester, and wondered whether he knew what he had let loose with this great mechanical greyhound.
Clive gave his two screams on the whistle as we passed the shed at Sowerby Bridge, and I swear that a horse pulling a dog cart up Town Hall Street was stopped by the shock of it. Clive was not known as a scorcher but maybe the habit was growing on him, for we went through Hebden Bridge clear twice as fast as we should've.
We climbed to Todmorden without noticing it was a climb at all. I could not see the church clock that was lit at night, nor (for we were going at such a lick) any of the churches that might have held it. This engine, I thought, makes churches disappear. I looked for the school with the huge cot in the window, the house with the birds circling above, but these tilings lived in a slower world and were not to be seen today.
Clive was at the gear again. He wanted 1418 faster, and all the signals did too, for every one of them was down as we galloped on over the Pennine Hills.
Crossing from Yorkshire to Lancashire was no more than jumping a ditch, and Blackburn might have been a village, for it was coming up and then it was gone, with not much in between save for a smudge of smoke.