I was certain there'd be a to-do over the bill and wanted to be off before it happened, but first, I needed to use the Gentlemen's.
Well, there was a fellow lived in there: he had a desk, a chair and a little stack of newspapers to be going on with. He passed you a towel when you'd washed your hands, and you put a penny in a silver bowl by the sink.
When I came back, the beaming smile on George's face was turned up to full. A sovereign was lying on top of a folded paper that I took to be the bill, and a glass of brandy and a big cigar were waiting at my place. The cigar was longer even than the 'A's I'd had the week before from the Albert Factory. I looked at the cigar band and there was a beautiful picture of a tropical scene: a whole other world, half an inch square.
'I've taken the liberty of laying in stores,' said George.
A lighted match was before me. I lit the cigar, drew on it. It was tighter, more complicated somehow than the 'A's and 'B's: more to it all round. I sipped the brandy, once, twice, and by degrees my suit became just my suit and nothing to be ashamed of. I checked on the waiters again and none were looking our way.
'Not so bad is it after all?' said George.
'I shouldn't let you stand me all this.'
'Nonsense,' said George, and he just smiled at me for a long time. It was pleasant in a way, because he was a good smiler, but I thought: What's he fishing for? Trouble was, I wouldn't trust myself not to give it, even though it couldn't be a good thing.
He leant forwards and began talking railways: about how the Lanky had its faults but was a great show really; how it had carried twenty-six millions of tons of freight in the year before; how its freight engines lit up the nights across Yorkshire and Lancashire; how it was, all in all, a fine place to make your corner.
'I see you in Manchester,' he said to me quite suddenly.
'Manchester Victoria?' I said, to stretch out the moment of pleasure.
'I picture you as part of the brass,' he said. 'At first, I thought: railway police. That's the thing for Jim Stringer, on account of his great stickability; his wanting to know. You've showed me that over this stone on the line business…'
'I still mean to get to the bottom of that,' I said, trying to look gravely at George, but not succeeding and feeling foolish in the attempt.
'But I now feel you have the steam to go further,' George went on.
I knew it was all daft talk, but I was carried along with it. 'But I'm not the right sort, am I?' I said. 'You know that very well.'
'Not a johnny, you mean? I wouldn't worry over that. You have a gentlemanly way of going on, pleasant looks. I don't say you wouldn't benefit from a new suit, but fate intended you for a fortunate man, Jim Stringer.'
Why would anybody say that if they did not think it true? Why?
I told George about my visit to Winterbottom, the Scarborough tailor, and early on he began to shake his head.
'You must not buy off the peg,' he said. 'Of course it'd make no odds up on the footplate, but in the offices at Victoria you'd be found out.'
'Shabbiness is a false economy,' I said, nodding, just as if I was already there in those offices at Manchester.
'You have it,' said George, and he fell back to smiling at me for a long time.
Another brandy came along for me, and a quarter of an hour later I floated out of the Imperial on a wave of beer, brandy and cigar smoke, leaving George behind for what he called his 'nightcap'. I was canned, and I was looking forward to the cold night air of Halifax. But of course when I came out into Horton Street the air was still warm, and another trick was in store, for all the buildings seemed to lift and turn so as to let me see them in a new way.
Chapter Thirty-one
The next day, the Friday of Wakes, the Hind's Mill lot came back from Blackpool, but it wasn't Clive and me that brought them in. Instead, we were running specials from Hebden Bridge into the Joint, which was no distance at all, and I felt sorry for those who'd only been able to get as far away as Hebden in their only week off during the year, pretty spot though it was. It was like a prison breakaway that had not come off.
That evening at seven I was coming back up from the Joint with my shadow stretched out before me as long as a railway carriage, but the heat of the day still at my back. I was quite done in, and the sun had gone from being a daily marvel to plain hard work.
My shadow reached and touched from time to time the boots of a tired man in black plodding up the hill under a black bowler. He stopped for a while at Sugden's ice-cream cart, but Sugden was not about, and there was no boy holding the pony. The fellow looked very agitated waiting there, and for a moment I thought he was going to try making enquiry of the white pony which was letting the man know, by certain sideways glances, that it would rather be left alone.
As I came up to the man, I saw that it was Bob the book- ing-office clerk. Or was it that other rather half-baked chap, Dick? Was it the one who had the same name as Arnold Dyson's dog, or was it the one that could write with both hands?
It was the second: Dick.
'If you want a penny lick,' I said, 'you'd best go in the Crown. That's where you'll find Sugden.'Dick seemed a bit embarrassed at being caught wanting an ice cream, and pulled at the ends of his stiff collar. 'Well, you know,' he said, 'anything for coolness.'
'How do you fancy a pint in the Evening Star?' I said.
I was in no hurry to get home, since the wife would be out again, I knew. She was taking Cicely Braithwaite to a meeting of the Co-operative Women's Guild. This had been fixed up and put off several times, on account (I guessed) of Cicely not being over-keen on going.
Dick was looking me up and down: rather nervous of the working man, in his holed clothes and with his stink of yellow soap. But he voted yes. 'You've talked me into it, old man,' he said.
We walked in past the red billiards table, which he looked at long and hard. 'It's a good make,' he said.
'Do you play?' I asked him.
'Not really. I can generally see when a shot's on, but I can't make it myself.' He laughed nervously.
'But you can write with two hands,' I said.
'Yes, I can that,' he replied, and he sounded a little more Yorkshire, and a little happier now. Maybe it was the sight of the pint of Ramsden's I was passing his way.
He took his first go at the beer and I let him talk cricket for a while, and then we took another glass each and I thought: Well, I'm sorry for you, mate, but now the bombardment must begin.
It was one facer after another, but he took it pretty well, and the airs and graces that go with ink-spilling work gradually fell away.
'Do you remember when I stepped into your office that time, and George spoke of some tickets going missing?'
He nodded. He was looking at the beer barrels behind the bar. 'There was a pretty solid row over that,' he said.
'Why?'
'Well,' he said. 'Tickets going missing… It's the next worse thing to money being taken.' 'So Knowles was down on you?'
'Like I don't know what,' said Dick. 'We all thought we'd be sacked. Sacked or reduced over it anyway.'
'And that would be because the tickets went from your office?'
'That's just it,' said Dick. 'Did they? The tickets always come in from Manchester. That's where they're all printed up. They come in by train with a lad riding along of them. Now the lad says he brought this particular load up. Some of them were third-class returns to Liverpool. Not so many of those. Maybe just one block of two hundred and fifty, and then there were a good many more of another sort.'
'What sort?'
'Blackpool singles,' he said.
'That's it,' I said, and he looked at me strangely.