– ‹o›--
We walked along under the canopy of platform two. It was all shaded, and I wanted to be out of it quickly, into the world of light beyond where the photograph was being taken. That's the thing about sunshine day after day. It spoils you. You get so as you can't do without it.
The camera was set up at the platform end. Knowles was there, his two assistant stationmasters, the head porter and a handful of other high-ups. The photographer was at his camera, looking down into it through a sort of concertina tube. He had his own assistant alongside.
'It looks smart to have an assistant even if you never use him,' said George, as we stepped up to join Dick and Bob.
Knowles was at the front of the group, and Mrs Knowles was looking on. She was beautiful and she was smiling. Knowles was not.
'You small fellows go to the side,' Knowles was saying.
'All he wants is a whip,' George muttered.
Knowles had a brown, square face and a thin black moustache which was there to prove the care he took over shaving and everything else. He spoke fast, with a mouth that was like a machine. 'Where do you want me, sir?' he was asking the photographer. 'In the middle?'
At this George turned and rolled his eyes at me. 'A station- master isn't gentry, you know,' he said.
'How do you mean?'
'Just watch him.'
The group was all ready, like a small army in gold, except that too many of them looked like farmers.
'Now stay quite still,' said the photographer. Then he said, 'Stopping down', and began fiddling with the camera, while the assistant looked on, flinching every now and again. The photographer looked up, half towards the sun with a hand shielding his eyes. He looked away, very downhearted. The day was too bright.
Presently the photographer looked into his camera once more, then looked away again and took up glaring at his assistant. He then returned to his camera, but broke off at some small gust of wind that seemed to bring with it a change of light.
'Fellow's making a meal of it, en't he?' George whispered to me. 'I've messed about with a hand camera in my time… a touch of portraiture… Nothing to it really.'
Knowles coughed, being the only one in the party of photographic subjects who dared.
'The pharmacy up on New Bank has a dark room,' George continued in an under-breath. 'I have use of it at special rates.'
The photographer went back to his camera and peered into the rubber tunnel once more. 'Busy day for you fellows?' asked the photographer after a while. He was still looking through the camera.
This is a railway station, sir,' said Knowles, and just as he was doing so the photographer pressed a button and the camera clicked.
'Oh, heck!' said the photographer, and, standing up straight, he said to the party: 'Look, if I ask a question don't answer it, all right? I'm just thinking aloud.'
Meanwhile the assistant had gone live, darting towards the back of the camera, from which he removed something, smuggling it into the black bag. Then he smuggled something out of the black bag and fitted it into the back of the camera where the earlier article had been. The photographer was standing with his face tipped up towards the sky, eyes closed.
'Fellow's a perfect fool,' George whispered.
The photographer now walked a fair distance away from his camera, and just stood there with his hands on his hips.
'I've an important train expected in on platform six in three minutes,' called the stationmaster, 'and I zvill have to attend to it.'
'Yes,' said photographer, 'well now the sun's in the wrong place.'
'I expect Mr Knowles will be able to sort that out for you,' said one of the assistant stationmasters. It was a jest, so a bit of a risk, but Knowles's wife laughed – a lonely tinkle like breaking glass – and Knowles himself gave a smile. Well, nearly.
'Look at him now,' said George, 'dignity maintained at all costs. But I saw him in the Imperial once with Dunglass, and it was all "thee" and "tha", and when the waiter asked if they wanted beer or wine, he said, "nawther". He's teetotal, you know.'
George looked again at Emma Knowles. 'If I could just once…'
Knowles was now giving George the evil eye. Then his stare shifted to Dick and Bob, who both looked nervously back at George, waiting for him to speak up for them.
'Ogden' said Knowles. 'Who is presently in the booking office?'
'Just at this present time, sir?' said George, and two untidy red marks had appeared on his cheeks, like two maps of India. 'Well, fact is that business is rather light, sir, and we all came down very briefly to see whether we could be of assistance.'
'I am standing here, Ogden,' said Knowles, 'and I am trying to smile for this gentleman -' he pointed to the photographer '- and the cause is not helped by -'
But just as George was about to get what-for, the 'important' train – which didn't look in the least important to me, being a little local with three rattlers on – came bustling into platform six as threatened. Knowles broke away from the picture group to see to it, or to pretend to. As he dashed across the footbridge, I saw a man stepping off the train with a bulky portmanteau in his hand. He wore a cap and had too much hair. It was Paul, of the Socialist Mission. Close behind him walked a tall, thin man in a homburg hat. This one, who'd stepped off the same train, carried no bag, but had a bundle of papers under his arm.
'Hi!' I yelled. But it's a tall order to shout across four platforms with an engine in steam close by, and the two fellows were quickly up onto the footbridge.
I edged up to Bob. 'Where's that one from?' I asked, pointing to the train that had come into platform six, and was now rolling away.
Bob looked at his pocket watch and thought for a second. 'That's in from York, I reckon,' he said.
That was good enough for me. It could have connected there with a train down from Scotland. I was blowed if the second fellow wasn't Alan Cowan, leader of the Socialist Mission. Well, he looked just the sort. I gave a general nod towards the photographic party and began to give chase.
Chapter Twelve
I fell in behind the two as they walked past the cab rank outside the Joint. The thin man wore a suit of decent brown tweed. I could picture him in Scotland; I could see him in Dunfermline.
He kept a dozen paces behind Paul, and I thought: they don't want to be seen together. I couldn't go up to him, for I didn't know the fellow, so I ran past him and stopped Paul at the foot of Horton Street.
'Remember me?' I said. 'I stood you a lemonade at the Evening Star,' and even as I spoke, I thought it was a pretty poor beginning.
He put down his portmanteau. The long hair, coming out from under the bowler, made him look old-fashioned, and then it came to me from childhood books: Richard III.
I pointed back down Horton Street, and said, 'Would that fellow be Cowan, because if so…?'
But even as I looked, the man in the brown suit was stepping into the Crown, looking just as though he was after a spot of dinner, and I knew I was wrong.
'Who?' said Paul.
'Sorry,' I said, 'made a bloomer.'
And the nasty smile went crawling across his face.
'Where's Alan Cowan just at present?' I said.
'Piccadilly Circus,' Paul said, instantly. 'Well, that's where he was speaking at midnight last night. Meeting of the unemployed.'
If they're unemployed, I thought, why must they wait until midnight to hold a meeting? 'Keep pretty close tabs on him, don't you?' 'I'm not the only one,' said Paul. 'He's a world-class ideologue, is Alan.' 'Would you take another drink with me?' I said.
Nasty smile as before. 'All right,' he said, and he picked up the portmanteau once again.
In the Evening Star, he left the bag with me at the bar and went off to the Gentlemen's. As the barmaid came up, I was torn between looking into the bag and another plan, and it was the second that won out.