Then, for a marvellous moment, he smiled, and my whole dream of high speed seemed to come alive. 'A life on the footplate is the best sort, isn't it?' I ventured, because although I was somewhat more doubtful on that score than I had been before, I did still hold it to be true.
'An engine driver,' said Arthur Hunt, 'is an Adonis in every way: a first-class man in mind and body, and it is no wonder that he commands the respect of his fellows as a result.' I nodded; this really was a bit of all right.
'But a driver is also a piece of dirt beneath the chariot wheels of the big man,' continued Hunt, becoming fierce once more. 'It's, "On that engine or you'll be up the bloody road in two minutes." You're hanging out to get your air, you're choking to bloody death, everything's red hot, you've got wind, rain, fog, broken rails -' He broke off here and, looking back into the firehole, said, 'You need to put a bit more on at the front.' 'Oh, but how?' I said.
There and then he showed me how to swing a shovel. He showed me how the common sort of fireman did it, then how the better sort went about the job. The thing was to let your bottom hand slide on the handle, and not to try, so I tried very hard at not trying but it didn't really come off, so Hunt said, 'Imagine you're chucking the lumps at White-Chester – aim straight for the bollocks.' That didn't really do it either, but he made out I was improving. He told me that any fireman will be chucking coal for years on end before being passed for driving, and that you'd finish up a cripple unless you kept your movements to a minimum.
I was just wondering why he had stopped putting me on ice when he said, 'We have a mutual improvement class on Monday evening at eight o'clock. Would you come along?' 'Who will be there?' I said, after a pause.
'Besides myself?' said Hunt, and he was back to his dead voice now. 'Besides myself there will be Vincent, Mr Rose… Mr Nolan and Mr Flannagan will come along too, I should think.' 'Mr Flannagan?' I exclaimed. 'He is all for improvement,' said Hunt. Well, I thought, there's a lot of scope for it with him. 'You are not to let on to anyone about it,' he said. 'Where does it happen, Mr Hunt?' 'In the office at the back of the Old Shed.' 'Of course,' I said. "Thank you very much, Mr Hunt.' I tried to smile at him, and he tried to smile back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Saturday 19 December – Sunday 20 December
'How is the engine-driving life?' asked my landlady, who was at her boiler. 'Fine,' I said.
She stirred my clothes into the mixture. 'Except that you are not driving engines,' she said. She never ceased to remind me of that.
'And you do not sound as keen on whatever it is you are doing as you were before.' 'There was another murder,' I said, so as to get at her.
'My goodness,' she said. But she didn't seem very interested, and nor did she turn around; she was in a devilish strop, and I was beginning to think I should have passed by her kitchen and gone straight to the Citadel this Saturday night, the one place I could be sure of putting aside thoughts of Arthur Hunt's strange behaviour and the mutual improvement class on the Monday to come, where I would be at the mercy – in a dark and deserted shed full of crippled locomotives – of all the many enemies I had managed to make in such a short time at Nine Elms.
'A man who used to be a director of the London and South Western was burned to death in his flat,' I said, because her behaviour did not put me in the mood to mollycoddle.
'And was it an accident?' she asked, still with her back to me, and now scraping soap into the boiler. 'I don't think so,' I said.
I wanted to give it all to her straight to see how the ordinary sort of person might react. Then I started with my questions, which were the one bit of power I had in London. 'When Henry Taylor lodged here, did anyone ever come calling for him?' 'One man came calling.' 'What did he look like?' 'I only remember one thing about him.' 'What?' 'Teeth.' Mike, I thought. 'It is why no one will lodge here,' she said, 'because they know what happened.' 'I lodge here,' I said.
'But you didn't know. I haven't had any luck with my notices, in any event.'
I thought of the one she had given me, which I had quite forgotten to do anything about. My landlady washed our clothes in silence, and I fell into my habit of reading the names on the tins on the mantelpiece: Bird's Eye Custard, Marigold Flake, somebody's candied peel, Goddard's Plate Powder, raisins, currants.
'What's wrong?' I said eventually, and not in a very friendly way, either.
'You come in here,' she said, still not turning around, 'and all you do is tell me about your horrible rattling trains, and men crowning each other and burning each other, and you keep coming back to the boy who was here, who I only saw half a dozen times, and you make me feel awful about taking his money in advance, and keeping his book. You shouldn't be in this lodge if you don't like it.' 'I didn't say I didn't like it.' 'And you complain about the water on the floor.'
"That's gone,' I said. "There hasn't been any water on the floor for some time now.'
"That's only because it hasn't been raining so much,' she said. 'It's been cold but it hasn't been raining.'
'Well,' I said, 'I am very sorry about all that. I will be going now.' I walked towards the door; I was in very low water, for a man ought not to be turning his back on a face like hers. 'At the church…' she called after me.
'What church?' I said. I had forgotten that she was keen on religion, and if the subject gave me hopes of continuing in her company, then I was all in favour.
'All Saints… where they've put up a scheme to help the ladies of the night-houses.' "The fallen women, you mean?'
"They are not fallen,' she shouted. 'It is the men who come to them who are fallen.'
I nodded, remembering a little bit of Bible class: 'Well, everybody is fallen, anyway'1 said.
She was now looking at me in amazement for some reason. 'Oh, you're not at all interested in this' she said.
'I certainly am' I said, and the beautiful looks of her – she really was an eye-opener – and the thought of her going to waste in this kitchen with its empty tins and the soap works towering over her garden, which was no garden at all, made me walk towards her and put my hands on her shoulders.
Of course, I took my hands down quickly enough when I realised what I had done, but she hadn't seemed to mind, and it was with the strangest mix of sadness and happiness that I listened to her woes.
'Well, it is the ladies who are to be involved' she said, more calmly, 'and I do mean the ladies. Oh, they all have their own broughams – and one of them a motor brougham – and three hundred pounds a year to do nothing with, and all I wanted to do was help in some small way, really nothing more than be on hand. I told them that I would make tea, I would make beds, but it is not to be. My face doesn't fit because they think I'm a skivvy, but it's just that our skivvy is taken sick, and has been for quite some time, and if you're not the right class in that place then the Christian religion goes right out of the window, Mr Stringer, I promise you it does.' 'I'd say you were in the wrong church.'
'Would you?' she said, and she almost smiled. 'Are you church, Mr Stringer, or chapel?' 'I think chapel is more modern' I said, because I knew she liked to be up-to-date, and it was also a way of not having to say I was neither.
'You're right,' she said, and then, although she was not quite crying, she gave a mighty sniff, so I handed her my undershirt, which was on the table waiting to be washed. 'Why are you giving me this?' 'So that you can blow your nose on it.' 'But it's your undershirt.'
'Would you like to come on a jaunt with me tomorrow?' I said. My plan was to cheer her up. And to spoon with her as well.
'Of course I wouldn't. Well, I couldn't. Anyway, where would we go?'