I stood up and called down to him, but all that happened was that one of the park keepers half looked up and the clerk alongside me on the bench said to his girclass="underline" 'Would you like to see what's going off at the aquarium?' which really meant, Let's get away from this vulgar fellow.
As I watched, Clive pulled himself out of the water and, with not a glance at the lady swimmers (which was not a bit like him), walked into one of the blue chalets. By now, I could feel the skin of my face tightening. I was being burned by the sun, but I would not move from my post. After ten minutes, Clive came out of the chalet, and I lost him in the throng standing about the turnstile of the baths. But I got him in my sights again as he began walking up the paths of the park.
He still carried the carpet bag, and his swimming costume (an article I would not have expected any fellow of the right sort to possess) must have been in there, but the bag looked emptier than before. He kept putting his hands through his hair. He wanted the sun to dry it, but he wanted the sun to get it right.
As he climbed towards the Esplanade, I made up my mind: if he saw me I would be friendly, otherwise I would keep back and watch.
He did not spot me, and I began walking back in the direction of the Spa and the Grand. I fretted that I ought not to be spying on a pal, but I knew that my reason for doing so was in some way connected to the stone on the line.
I followed Clive back up the Valley Road towards the station. He stopped for a while under the Valley Bridge. He started walking again, and I thought he might be making for the station, but he turned off before he got there, or dissolved into air before he did, for the next time I looked he was gone.
Clive couldn't have put the stone on the line, but he could've asked somebody else to do it. He could have paid them fair wages, just as he paid the cleaners to put a hexagon shine on the buffer plates of the engines he fancied; just as the socialist missionary, Paul, was paid fair wages by Alan Cowan.
Chapter Ten
We were back on the Rishworth branch the Thursday and Friday after the Scarborough run. I was able to get nothing from Clive over his movements at Scarborough, and had eventually given up.
On the Saturday afternoon, the wife went off to the Cooperative ladies to hear about 'Health in the House' and 'Thoughts on the Minimum Wage', and when she'd gone I took down my Railway Magazine and lighted on an item about 'the largest signal gantry in New Zealand'. It wasn't very big, as even the Railway Magazine admitted: 'From the photo it is evident that New Zealand is far behind the mother country.' It was meant to be a joke, I supposed.
The words of Dr N. Kenrick came back to me: 'It is only a matter of common sense to keep the head low.'
I would take a stroll. And I would try to find some company. I walked upstairs ready to tap on George Ogden's door, but I saw that it was ajar. I was full of curiosity about this fellow, who I had seen nothing of all week. He had use of the scullery, but he never did use it. He would go up by the back stair late at night and very quietly, but it was a kind of quietness – by which I mean not very – that told me he'd taken a drink.
I pushed the door and George was inside, sitting on the truckle bed, with the plants – half of them quite dead – on the floor around him.
'George,' I said in an under-breath, and he came to life, like a penny-in-the-slot mannequin.
'What ho!' he said.
'I'm off up to the Albert Cigar Factory. If you knock on the back door they give out cigars that have got a bit bashed.
They've usually only had a little nick and they come very cheap, less than half price.'
'They're quite all right, are they?' said George, standing up. It was heartbreaking to see him so galvanised over such a little thing.
'They have 'A's and 'B's,' I said.
'Good,' said George, 'I'll have an 'A'. This will be our first step to better acquaintance. I'm to book on at two, but I'll have plenty of time, won't I?'
He stood up, collected his hat, picked up a letter that was lying on one of his boxes, and caught up one of the packets of biscuits. 'Care for a cream biscuit?' he said. He sounded like an advert, and his face looked like an advert too as he bit into the biscuit: a big smile decorated with crumbs and bits of white sugar cream.
'Don't they sell those down at the Joint?' I said.
'That's it,' he said, 'from the penny-in-the-slot machine.'
'I didn't think it worked,' I said. 'Well, the excursionists can never make it work.'
'Excursionists?' said George. 'Daft lot! I expect they just put their money in and hope for the best!'
I said I thought that was more or less the recommended procedure.
'It is if you're a juggins. Now listen, there's an address on the side of the machine' said George. 'You write in to it if the thing is not giving out biscuits, and they send you any number of them back, gratis. Duggan's Sweetmeats, 54 New Clarence Road, Bradford.'
'You have it by heart,' I said.
'That's the best way' said George. 'You ought to give it a go.'
'But I've never put money in the machine,' I said.
George said nothing to that. 'You get a very gentlemanly letter of apology too,' he went on, 'signed in person by the chairman himself.'
We were crossing Ward's End, dodging the darting wagons and traps and their hot, cross drivers. All the pavements were chock full, as if the heat had turned the whole town inside out.
'You're very lucky in your Mrs Stringer,' George said.
'Yes,' I said, 'I know.'
'She's rather pretty.'
I thought to myself: now that's going a bit strong, but I didn't really mind it coming from George Ogden. It would have been different if a dog like Clive had said it.
'She stops at home as a rule, does she?'
'Used to,' I said. 'She works at a mill now.'
I could not bring myself to say the words 'Hind's Mill'.
'I wouldn't fancy that myself,' said George. 'You'll see a lot of weavers in some pub of a Saturday night, crowding around the "Try Your Fortune" machine, startled at whatever comes up, and it's enough to make a fellow weep. I mean to say, the tickets might just as well read: "You're a weaver in a mill, you will stay a weaver in the mill, and when you are quite worn out you will leave the mill, and then you will die.'"
After that little lot, I found that I didn't quite know George Ogden. I would have to think on.
I said, 'The wife is in the offices at her mill, you know?'
'Of course she is, old man,' he said. 'Don't mind me at all.'
A tram was stopping outside Victoria Hall, and George Ogden suddenly made a run for it. It was an unnatural sight, George running. It was like a man having a fight with himself while on the move, and it seemed that half the street came to a halt in order to marvel at the spectacle. He jumped onto the tram then jumped directly off with the conductor bawling at him. There were post boxes on the trams, and George had just posted his letter. You weren't supposed to do it like that though. The boxes were for fare payers only.
As he strolled back to me, the conductor was giving us the evil eye, but luckily his tram was carrying him further off by the second.
'You want to watch he doesn't open the box and take your letter out,' I said.