We were being shaken to buggery, running far too fast for this stretch. Billington should not have been at the regulator. I fancied that he was racing because he wanted me to miss seeing the signal. Then he could point it out and get the glory. We should have told him about the stone on the track the week before because it might have checked him, made him think us jinxed.
I looked across at Clive, who was sitting on the sandbox. He would be going through hell at what Billington was doing to the engine, but he was back at the Pearson's Book of Fun.
Billington was shouting to me: 'Signal's coming up your side. Got your eye out?'
Clive looked up, and I thought he was going to say, 'She wants a brush on the brakes!' Instead he began to read aloud from the book: '"Why"', he shouted over the rattling of the engine, '"is a football round?'"
'What?' I called out, because I couldn't credit this.
Then three things happened: Billington yelled: 'Any second now!' Then he gave a cry of 'Bang off!' and there was the home signal for Kirkham Abbey, half hidden as promised. It was off so we were fine, but Clive was back at the regulator, Billington was tottering away towards my side, and we were slowing down. Clive hadn't exactly crowned him. There could have been nothing more than a shove, but it might have been the devil of violence, for I had never seen Clive riled before, or even move fast, come to that. Why, he must have risked crimping his trews, and Pearson's Book of Fun was left lying before the fire door. I put my shovel down, picked it up and brushed the coal dust off. I was going to return this to the kid, and I meant to return it clean.
The book was mainly riddles and the solutions were at the back. I was so light-headed that I searched out a poser from the first pages. 'Why is a football round?' I said, as we went through Kirkham Abbey station at a speed moderate enough to let me see a puzzled look coming onto the face of the porter.
At first Clive didn't answer, and I asked again, this time nodding to Billington – who was sulking like a camel behind me – to let him know that he might have a hazard too, but of course he wasn't game after what had gone on.
'Because if it were square,' Clive shouted back, 'the players would be kicking too many corners!' He turned to me and grinned.
When, not long after, we came up to the great signal gantry at Scarborough, which must have had fifty boards mounted on it, Billington spoke up for the first time since Kirkham Abbey: 'Work it out your bloody self,' he said.
The tracks going under the gantry were a mass of X's, and I wished we could look up the answer at the back of Pearson's Book of Fun, but we picked our way by degrees to the right excursion platform, and Billington bolted as soon as we got in.
But the queer thing was that so did my mate. No sooner had Billington scarpered than Clive was jumping down from the footplate, with the carpet bag in his hand, joining the steeplechase of excursionists racing down the platform for the ticket gates.
'Sign off for us, will you?' he called back.
I looked at the platform clock. It was nearly midday.
'Who's to put the engine in the shed?' I shouted at him.
'Thissen,' he said, with a big grin.
'Won't we take a pint?' I called, feeling quite dismayed.
'Sorry, Jim!' he called back. 'Got a bit of business in hand!' And he was off along the platform, but he turned after a few seconds, and with the excursionists flowing away on either side of him he called back once again: 'Scarborough and Whitby Brewery Company – South Shore.'
'Shall I see you there?'
He shook his head. 'The pale ale,' he said. 'It's the best thing out!'
I opened the fire doors, put on a bit of blower, then I stepped down with Pearson's Book of Fun in my hand. There were about twenty excursion platforms in all at Scarborough. Three-quarters were taken, and the rakes of silent carriages were like empty streets, but streets standing under glass in a milky light. Reuben Booth was coming towards me along the empty platform, moving dockets from one hand to another, like a conjurer trying a card trick he can't remember. It was all luggage-in-advance business.
As soon as he saw me he stopped and looked at the book. 'Pearson's Book of Fun: Mirth and Mystery, edited by Mr X,' he said slowly. 'Clive gave it to you then, did he?'
'I mean to return it to the lad,' I said.
'Right you are' said Reuben, and he nodded to himself for quite a while. 'The boy's been left -'
Here he stopped to wheeze for a time, and I thought for one crazy moment that he was about to say, 'He's been left a thousand pounds.' But no.
'- orphan.'
That word again; the fairy-like woman proved right again. Why couldn't that old bitch take the kid in herself?
'So it's Crossley Porter House for him then?' I said to Reuben.
The Crossley and Porter Orphan Home looked over Savile Park in Halifax. It was a school with orphanage above. The orphans were looked after by matrons or masters who were all immense; the masters all had big beards, and the women would've if they could. Or maybe it was just that the orphans were so small. The orphans slept on the fifth floor; everybody in Halifax knew that. If you were left without parents, or even just fatherless, you would be climbing those stairs.
Reuben looked down at his dockets.
'And what's to happen to his dog?' I asked.
'The dog?' said Reuben. 'That's at my place.'
Reuben was a kindly, untidy fellow – just the sort to have dogs. He lived in a house on the edge of Halifax which you could see on the run down from the Joint to Sowerby Bridge. It was on its own hilclass="underline" tall and thin in the middle of tall and thin trees, and looking liable to topple forwards into its own garden.
'It won't be the first I've taken on,' he said.
'No' I said.
'Folk put them in the van, label on the bloody collar: "Give water at Bradford", "Put off at Hebden Bridge", and I'll tell you what… half the time there's no bugger at Hebden Bridge to collect.'
'Don't they give a name and address when they hand a dog over?'
'I'll tell you summat else for nothing,' said Reuben sounding quite galvanised just for a moment, 'I've no notion of this beast's name.'
'I'll ask the boy,' I said. 'I'll take him back the book, and I'll ask him. I could take him a bit of sweet stuff too… Comfits,' I said, remembering George Ogden, 'only they don't like the hot.'
'Farthing Everlasting Strip' said Reuben, 'that's the thing for a lad. Mind you, they en't really everlasting -' He stopped here, and seemed to be thinking of something a million miles away before continuing:'- but they really do cost a farthing.' He was smiling, which I had never really seen Reuben do before, and all over a bit of toffee.
I asked him if he'd have a drink with me, and he said he would, so we fixed up to meet in the station booking office after I'd disposed of the tank engine.
I uncoupled it and ran it round to the Scarborough shed, where I signed my own name and Clive's. It was a sacking matter if discovered and reported, but you'd do it for a pal. Then again, you usually knew why you were doing it.
They didn't have an engine men's mess at Scarborough shed. They had an engine men's 'lobby', which sounded fine, but in the washroom there was no soap: plenty of Jeyes smell and acres of white tile, but not a smidgen of yellow soap. I'd known country stations where they'd lay on a pail, but even in those spots there'd always be soap.
When I met Reuben back at the station, he was looking at himself in the window of the booking office, a steady look with a tired sort of question in it.
'Do you have any idea where Clive's off to?' I asked him, and it came out quite short, for I was still vexed over the soap.