Reuben gave me one of his looks which meant he was getting ready to say nothing.
'The fellow's been moving in narrow ways all day' I said.
Reuben was still looking in the window, but now sly, like. There was gold lacing on his coat and cap, but it meant nothing to him. His beard was like what's left of a thistle after the flower has gone.
'There was no soap over yonder' I said, 'so all I could do was take a piss.'
'Aye,' said Reuben, looking away from the glass and towards me at last, 'well tha must do what tha can.'
Where was Clive? And why had he not seemed put out by the smash or anything that had happened since? Why had he come out laughing from his interview with Major Harrison of the Board of Trade?
I looked down at my grimy hands. Clive could not have put the grindstone on the line because he'd been with me since first thing that Whit Sunday morning, and the stone had been placed within the hour before we struck it.
And anyway: why would he do it?
Chapter Nine
You'd have guessed the weather was set fair even under the glass of the excursion platforms, but when I stepped out of the station with Reuben I was startled at what I'd been missing: rows of glass charabancs waiting under the high, burning sun; the widest of clean blue skies somehow letting you know that the sea was at hand, though not for the present to be seen; and, across the road, the Westfield Hotel, fairly dazzling in its whiteness.
When we were clear away from the shadow of the station, Reuben stood still for a while, nodding and saying over to himself, 'Gradely… gradely,' even though it was hardly the weather for old men in gold coats.
We were now on the Valley Road leading down to the South Shore: Italian gardens, lily ponds, rock pools, bamboos and all vegetation out of the common; white ladies with the smaller sort of parasols in the miniature zigzagging roads, laughing at all these corners they were made to turn in order to get nowhere at all. But it didn't matter because whatever way they faced gave postcard views: the Valley Bridge connecting fun with more fun, the mighty Grand Hotel high on its own cliff – a cliff all to itself! – with its stone starfish and dolphins all around the roof. I'd been born just along the coast at Baytown, and the one telegraphic address I knew as a boy was that of the 'Grandotel Scarborough'. Many messages under that head, it was said, were sent out in code for they were starting wars, or finishing wars, and all that kind of carry on.
The harbour, down below the hotel, was like a sort of circular village in the sea, and the beach was a creamy brown – sand, I mean – whereas at Baytown it was rocks, and the sight of anybody sitting on it was a sure sign a drink had been taken.
We walked on, and the sound of a brass band floated up to us and expanded to fill the sky. If you could imagine a whole town saying, 'I am first class -1 am in the pink,' well, that was Scarborough in the summer.
Reuben was next to me as we took it all in. At large in his guard's uniform, he looked like an old campaigner from some forgotten war, which to my mind he was, having had a hand in the building of the Settle-Carlisle line. I had read that the winds on the high viaducts there could stop a locomotive in its tracks.
As we walked on, I fancied I could feel the heat of the sun and an extra heat on top – the coal dust burning on my skin. I took my coat off, but my shirt and my undershirt were like a further two coats, and these I could not take off. How Reuben was managing under his thick coat I could not imagine. The further we walked, the more my boots and my woollen trousers became my enemies, but we eventually struck the Scarborough and Whitby, the pub Clive had spoken of. As we walked towards the door, I noticed a torn scrap of a poster on its walclass="underline" 'see monsieur maurice', it read, 'the ventriloquial paragon at the floral hall, scarborough'. The bloody man cropped up everywhere.
Stepping into the Scarborough and Whitby, you saw the truth of the day: everybody's face was red. The sun had fairly exhausted them, or beaten them in a fight.
'What's yours?' I asked Reuben.
'Shilling of brandy,' he said, in a thoughtful sort of way.
I took a glass of pale ale, as recommended by Clive, while wishing he'd been on hand to take one with me. It was very hard to talk to Reuben, because everything he might have to say was buried so deep.
'Clive's gone off,' I said again. 'Don't know where.'
There was a bit of a question put into that, but Reuben said nothing.
'Odd that he shouldn't let on' I said.
Reuben didn't seem to have heard this, but something must have progressed in him, for he said, nodding: 'It's a rum go-'
Nothing was said for another short while. Then I had an idea: 'Reuben' I said, 'why is a football round?'
It was a quarter to one by the clock over the bar as I said this. At getting on for five to, Reuben said: 'Well… it would have to be.'
'But why?' I said, and I saw the daftness of the whole thing. The riddles in Pearson's didn't work without speed.
Reuben had finished his brandy. 'Thinking on…' he said, '… I had two of these, last time I came here.'
'Will you take another, Reuben?' I said.
He shook his head. 'Just thinking, like.'
'When were you last over here then?'
'Nineteen hundred,' he said.
I nodded, hoping he might continue, and he did after a little while.
'Generally speaking,' he said, 'I'll only take one drink.'
'But the last time you were in Scarborough, you had two?'
He nodded. 'Aye.'
We were back to square one. I bought another glass of pale ale and Reuben watched me drink it. There were so many questions I could have asked him that in the end I asked none at all.
Reuben made his way back to the station when I'd finished my beer, and I walked out a minute later. It had been a mistake to have a second drink, as I learnt the minute I struck sunlight. I walked past the Spa, which had four domes and was like something out of Arabian Nights. It was all French windows at the front and a black and white floor inside that I knew was supposed to be a marvel of the age. They didn't charge you for standing on it, but walk in there and order a cup of tea and you'd get a nasty shock when the bill came. That was all on account of the fancy floor. It had cost fortunes to put in, and they had to be got back. There was a band playing, which put me in mind of the Hemingway's Special Piano that might one day be sitting in my parlour. The wife would enjoy a trip to the Spa. She would hate it but she would enjoy it too. And that went for the Grand Hotel in spades. The Spa was nothing compared to the Grand.
I carried on, going uphill now towards the Esplanade: all the South Shore was the superior end of town, and the Esplanade was the pinnacle – home of the seaside gentry. I looked across the South Bay towards the castle, where a lot of dressing up in olden-day costumes went on, maypole goes, and things of that kind. There were benches along the Esplanade, and not one without its spooning couple. But one bench was longer than the others, meaning that the lovebirds were a decent distance away.
I sat down, feeling like the filthiest thing out, and the lad was saying to the lass: 'Oh do let on, Rose.'
It was strange to think, from their closeness on the bench, that they could have any secrets from each other, but there it was. They were not factory folk. He would be a clerk, a George Ogden sort, except without the appeal of that funny fat fellow. The pair of them had fallen to staring at me now, and I wondered what they made of me: a collier let loose from his mine, they were probably thinking; the wrong sort for the South Shore, any road.
Rolling away below the bench was a hillside park with rockeries and tinkling little streams looked after by a gang of men in uniforms. Below the park was the South Bay pool, which was really just a walled-off section of sea. On the landward side of it were smartly painted blue chalets for changing – and every time a swimmer came out it was a different story: sometimes they would be straight in with no shilly-shallying, sometimes one foot would be dangled down followed by a lot of walking about the edge and thinking. There was no skylarking in the pool because this was the South Shore, and everybody swam very daintily, their heads tipped sideways. I looked out for the prettiest doxy, of course, but it was hard to spot the faces under their water bonnets. And then my eye fell on a head I knew. It was Clive's.