Behind the two was a funnel hardly bigger than either of them, and the top of it was ringed with red paint. They were not quite coppers, I decided, but were somehow in authority. I looked down at them from the gunwale on the port side, and that did no good at all. So I raised my two-two pistol and fired, making not the least effect on the generality of the sailors and crane operators and wharf men. But the two fellows in the launch looked up.
PART FIVE
Chapter Forty-Two
Forty minutes south of York, I looked through the compartment window at the town of Retford: red bricks in the morning sunshine, and a smoking chimney that I believed to be the brickworks, and which I always thought of as a sort of factory for making Retford.
I'd run through the place on the main line many times, and had passed through it going the other way only a little under a month before, on my return from London and my imprisonment aboard the steam collier Lambent Lady, owned and operated by the firm of Hawthorn and Bruce of West Hartlepool, and contracted to the Gas, Light and Coke Company for the Beckton run. The Captain was a Rickerby: John, brother of Adam and Amanda; and the First Mate was Gus Klaason. The great-coated fellow I'd alerted by firing Tommy's pistol was Wharf Master of the Gas, Light and Coke Company who'd quickly alerted the Port of London Authority, an outfit that ran its own police force, and it was those boys who'd taken in Klaason and Rickerby (whose shoulder my bullet had broken). The two had been left unguarded for a minute before a remand hearing at Greenwich Magistrates Court; they'd done a push and were no doubt steaming fast to the far side of the world very soon after. An enquiry was to be held into the matter and a Chief Inspector Baxter of the Port of London Authority Police had written me a letter of apology. But I hardly cared about the escape. Yes, Captain Rickerby had meant to kill me at the last, but his intention had been to save his family from disaster, and he'd certainly put off the moment as long as he could. He had also saved that petrified lad – name of Edward Crozier – from drowning by going about to collect him after he'd tried to swim to the foreign ship that came alongside. (Crozier had by chance seen me brought aboard, and then been roped into the job of guarding me.)
The PLA coppers had been decent sorts, and they'd made me a present of the blue serge suit they'd given me after my rescue. I'd had my choice of any number of suits or sports coats and flannels, since they'd seemed to have an entire tailoring department on the strength. They also had a first class police doctor, who'd told me that carbon monoxide (as from coal gas) combines with haemoglobin in the blood to make carboxyhaemoglobin.
He wrote the name down in my pocket book as a kind of souvenir, saying that this was a very stable compound – and this stability was not a good thing. The poison prevented the lungs sending oxygen to the bodily cells that need it, and it might stop heart, lungs or brain. When it took over half your blood, then you were done for one way or another. I might have been saved, the doctor said, by not having jammed the paste-board into the window frame of my room on my second night – that small amount of ventilation might have been all- important. The doctor did not believe I had taken any permanent injury from my experience, but he did fret about my loss of memory. He asked me questions to test the membranes of my brain, and seemed quite satisfied with the results of this quiz, which ran to enquiries such as 'What is the name of the Prime Minister?' But I had been testing myself ever since. I would run through all the railway companies that ran into York station, or try to put a name and rank to every man in the police office, and do it fast. I would hit a sticking point every so often. For instance, the name of the painting that had been attacked could not have been the Rickerby Venus, could it? I asked myself the name of the oldest pub in York and could not recall whether it was the Three Cranes on St Sampson's Square, the Three Crowns on Coney Street or, for the matter of that, the Three Cups on Coney Street. I had certainly known the answer once, and I wondered whether the forgetting might not be down to the gas.
Beyond the window, Retford had been replaced by flying fields. I stretched out my legs, loosened my tie, and thought about doing a spot of reading. Beside me on the seat was a copy of the previous day's Yorkshire Evening Press, which struck a happy, holiday note in some of its articles, the Easter week-end being in prospect: 'Great Rush to the Sea-side Predicted'; 'Everybody on Pleasure Bent'. All the regiments of the York garrison would be marching through the streets in aid of a recruitment drive, and there would be the showing of a film, The British Army Film, at the Victoria Hall in Goodramgate. It promised 'some very wonderful pictures of bursting shrapnel, of quick-firing guns springing out shells at the rate of thirty a minute'. Also, Constable Flower had arrested a 'drunk and incapable' on one of the far platforms of the station. He'd taken him into the cells in the police office by means of a luggage trolley, and this news had caused laughter when, later on in the day, it was announced in the police court.
Beside the Press was the latest number of the Railway
Magazine opened towards the back of the paper with the page headed 'What the Railways Are Doing' uppermost. This was the classified section of the magazine, and always carried the notices announcing meetings of the Railway Club, who were really a London lot, but whose meetings were open to anyone taking the trouble to write to the secretary for a ticket. At seven o'clock that day – the announcement was circled in my copy of the magazine – Mr A. K. Chambers would be reading a paper entitled 'The New Atlantics with Special Mention of the North Eastern Class Z', and I had the ticket for it in my pocket.
In the office, old man Wright, who distributed the post, had handed me the letter in which it came and I had made a point of satisfying his curiosity by opening the envelope in his presence and letting him see the ticket for himself. The meeting was to be held at the Railway Club's premises: 92 Victoria Street, London SW, and Wright had said, 'You've booked a day of leave for that?' Then, later, when he'd thought about it a bit more, 'Seems a long way to go just to hear about trains,' at which I'd reminded him that he was in fact in the railway police and so ought not be taking that tone.
It was quite in order to josh with Wright. His wife, Jane, would not be coming back to him as she had made plain both to Wright and to my own wife during a meeting of the Cooperative ladies. But he had developed a plan in response: firstly, he would no longer buy his groceries from any of the Co-operative stores, his wife and her new man, Terry Dawson, being employees of the Movement. This went hard with Wright because the Co-operative stores were much the cheapest, and he was a right old skinflint, but it was the principle of the thing. (The Co-operative slogan, 'The Friendly Store', now rang very hollow in his ears, he told me.) Second of all, he would leave work early twice a week to attend the dancing classes given in the room over the Big Coach public house on Nessgate. Once up to snuff with the two-step and the waltz and whatnot, he would go along to the Saturday afternoon tea dances that were held in many of the hotels of central York, and were known to attract the widows of the City.
'The best one's at the Danby Lodge on Minster Walk,' Wright told me one day in the police office. 'I'm going to try my luck there first.' 'You'll need a lot of luck,' Constable Flower had said, in an under-breath, and whether Wright heard it or not, he certainly wasn't put off. He seemed very confident about his plan, and I wondered whether the end of his marriage might not be the making of him.