'Aye,' I said, 'amateur.'
'And you know which team he plays for?'
'We do.'
'It's pretty easy to track down football teams, you know. They're generally to be found on football pitches.''
'His lot dodge about a fair bit.'
'Give over. It's all league and cup, league and cup.'
'There's friendlies as well,' I said. 'That's where he split the goalie's skull - in a friendly.'
'It's a queer town, is this,' said the wife as we walked on towards the station. 'There's red dust everywhere . .. especially on you.'
She lifted her hand up towards my bowler hat.
'It's iron,' I said. 'The air's full of iron. Puts most of the populace into an early grave.'
'I like it!' said Harry from behind.
'Get in? Lydia called, stamping her boot, and holding open the booking office door. But Harry had stopped in the snow for a good cough.
'Connection's gone,' Lydia said, shaking her head. That was her expression for when Harry was off into his own world, which was a good deal of the time. She walked out into the snow again, and fairly dragged him in through the station door, where the air was a little warmer from the unseen engines waiting. He was a funny, forward little lad, our Harry, but a very good speaker, considering he was just two months short of his fourth birthday.
Lydia took from her basket the cough cure and spoon she'd carried with her to Middlesbrough, and fed it to the boy amid the swirl and bustle of the ticket hall - for now the evening rush was starting.
We found the Whitby train waiting on the main 'up' platform, and then .. . well, Harry would have to have a look at the engine. He never missed. I led him along to the front, and there stood an M1 Class 4-4-0. 'Outside steam chest - good runner,' I said to Harry, although of course that went over his head. 'It's eeeeenormous,' he said, which is what he almost always said. He then removed his mitten, threw it down on to the snowy platform, and there in his palm was a tiny tin engine.
'I got this today,' he said. 'I keep it in my hand.'
'Where did you get it from?'
'Monster lucky tub,' he said.
'Which shop?'
'Don't know.'
'It's a bobby-dazzler, that is,' I said.
I was glad he'd fished a locomotive out of the bran tub, even if he ought not to be getting presents so close to Christmas. I fancied Harry might make an engineman one day - succeed where I'd failed. But the wife wanted him educated to the hilt, make an intellect of him. Even at a little under four years old, she swore he had all the makings.
Harry was coughing again, so I whisked him back along the platform to where the wife waited, and we climbed up. The steam heat was working in the carriage, but Harry still coughed. He was on the mend from his latest bad go, but he had a weak chest: at age two he'd had pneumonia. Three months in the York Infirmary, pulse at a fever rate for days on end. Our sick club didn't cover the cost, and most of our savings were gone.
We settled ourselves in an empty compartment, and I took out from my pocket the Middlesbrough Gazette for Monday 13 December 1909. A succession of polar lows were moving south in an Arctic airstream. There had been much freezing of water taps and gas mains, and now widespread snow was forecast for the district.
The train was being quickly boarded: it was the main service of the evening down the coast to Whitby. You could go by the country way, but I wanted to see the sea. People clattered along the corridor, carrying snow on their shoulders, shouting about the weather: 'Bad weather for thin boots, this is!'
Harry settled eventually, and the wife took out her library book - something on the women's movement, probably with a dash of religion. She always had something like that on the go.
The whistle blew and we were fast away. A moment later, a man and a woman walked into the compartment, and Harry immediately fell to staring at them, which I couldn't stop without drawing attention to the fact that he was doing it.
They were both small. The woman carried a big basket stuffed with parcels. As she pulled the white fur mantle off her shoulders, I caught sight of Lydia's flashing eye. It meant this was the fashionable kind of mantle, worthy of notice. The woman sat down quickly, but took a long time settling herself. The man wore wire- rimmed spectacles, a flat, snow-topped sporting cap, black suit and a green topcoat of decent quality. The cap didn't belong, for he did not look the sporting type.
He carried a valise and a canvas case about a foot and a half square. He looked twice at the notice on the string rack over the seats: 'Light articles only'. He took off his specs and blew on them, as though thinking about that sign. Then he stowed the case on the rack anyway. He put his topcoat up there, and whipped off the cap; he was bald, except for a line of hair that ran round the perimeter of his scalp. It was just a memory of hair, marking the boundary of where the stuff had been. His nose was queer as well. It was an arrow, coming out sharply and going in again quite as fast. It was just right for supporting his specs, though.
Sitting down, he gave me a quick nod, which made his red face turn redder still.
As we rocked away from Middlesbrough station he took some papers from the valise and began leafing through them at a great rate, while occasionally making jottings in a notebook. I looked out of the window. The iron district was to my left, the mighty furnaces burning under the snow. The woman was reading a picture paper - Household Words or some such. I caught sight of the question: 'A lemon cake for Christmas?'
The man lifted his feet and rested them on the seat over opposite, at which Harry's mouth opened wide. I knew what was coming, but could see no way of stopping it.
'It's not allowed!' said Harry, pointing at the boots.
Lydia shook her head, though she was almost laughing at the same time. The man coloured up and - continuing with his note- making - took his feet off the seat.
'Don't bother on our account,' I said to this clerk-on-the-move, who acknowledged me once again with a nod.
Harry was now looking out of the window.
'The boy's quite right though, isn't he?' the woman was saying. 'Where would we be if everyone put their boots on the seats?'
She looked at the man.
'Where would we be, Stephen?'
'I'm sure I don't know, Violet,' he said, hardly looking up from his scribbling.
(She did not look like a Violet - too pale.)
'I think it comes from his being a policeman's son,' said Lydia, at which the clerk looked up over his glasses at me.
'The man two doors down from us in Wimbledon is on the force,' said the woman. 'He's quite high up - an inspector, I think.'
She was pretty but, like her husband, small in scale - like a child playing at being an adult. Whenever she spoke, she caused a commotion, or so she seemed to think, for she rearranged herself afterwards, refolding the gloves that rested on top of her basket and patting down her skirts.
'He's only been in the street for a year,' she went on. 'Well, we all have. But the milkman for the area, who was known to give short measure ... he doesn't try it in Lumley Road.'
She looked at us all.
'...that's because of the Inspector.'
'James is on the North Eastern Railway force,' said the wife, after a moment. 'Detective grade. He's going for his promotion on Christmas Eve.'
And because we were in company, she left off the words: 'He'd better get it as well.'