I climbed up and took a seat in Third – it was a corridor carriage. The smashing of the Bass bottle had sobered me up, and I wished I had something to read. Two toffs came by fast along the corridor, one saying to the other, 'It's just this way, now, follow me,' very much at home, as though the train was his personal property. They were looking for first class, I supposed.
From the platform I heard the guard blow and give the right away, then there was an extra bit of business. The guard was calling to somebody. 'Hurry up now, sir,' and by the respectful tone of voice, I judged it to be another toff coming along at a clip, also making for First. I heard a carriage door slam and Monsieur Maurice, the ventriloquist, was walking along the corridor, breathing heavily. He turned into a compartment two or three along.
I sat under the flaring gas, looking at the Photochrome pictures over the seats opposite: they all showed Nelson's old flagship washed up on the beach at Blackpool. I waited until the gas works came up, which at night became lots of tiny blue lights spread out along the tracks. I stood up, moving along the corridor until I saw the ventriloquist. He was asleep with his head on his chest, the point of his beard going into his chest like a knife. Across his knees was a newspaper. There was a small cloth bag at his feet. He was more Morris Connell now than Monsieur Maurice.
I went back to my carriage and thought about Clive. Would he still be under the pier with Grace? More likely he'd be pegged out in the barracks – the engine men's lodging over the road from Central. He'd have to be on the milk train at four though, and back over the Pennines before first light, because the two of us had a seven o'clock go-on at Sowerby Bridge shed. How was he able to be so cool about the prospect of another smash? Maybe it was just his nature. Perhaps that was how a fellow of the right sort ought to be. Then again, perhaps he knew for a fact there wouldn't be another smash, the first one having been arranged by himself. But why would he do that? So that he could get his medal and come out the hero. But why would he want to come out the hero? He was not so determined to get on in his work, as far as I could see. He had never once mentioned that he was aiming for the top link or anything of that nature.
Ten minutes out of Blackpool, we started rattling wildly over the Fylde, like something being blown along. I looked out of the window for a while and saw the signal lamps coming up, shining green, green, green all the way.
I fell into a doze, and heard the bang of the starter signal going off at Halifax. The wife was aboard the train, and we rushed away and had a smash, but the wife was all right because she explained that it hadn't been a real train but only the echo of a train.
At Preston, I was woken by mailbags being thrown onto a barrow and the shouting that always goes along with that job. My connecting train for Halifax, which would be emptier still, was waiting on the opposite platform. I picked up my cap and walked along the corridor. The ventriloquist had left his carriage but his paper was still there. Thinking it could come in for the ride to Halifax, I picked it up. It was a paper for the show business, and running right down one side of the front page was a long thin drawing of a long thin comedy policeman. I picked it up, and saw that one item on the front page had been circled in penciclass="underline" 'Henry Clarke and Young Leonard: A Laughing and Applauding Hit in May at thePalace Theatre, Halifax. Re-engaged for the First Week of June. Too Strong for All Rivals.'
Clarke, the good ventriloquist of the evening just gone, must have been the one I'd meant to see at the Palace in Halifax but missed; I'd gone along later and got Monsieur Maurice instead. I looked again at the paper and for a second thought of ventriloquism as a job like any other, with one man put up against another in the fight for wealth and ease of living.
‹o›--
I returned to Halifax at getting on for two o'clock, and, hurrying along Horton Street, I looked on the old warehouse wall for the Socialist Mission poster. It was still there, speaking of the 'a meeting to discuss questions'. If they do go ahead with it, I thought, it would be them answering the questions, and the coppers doing the asking. Alongside it was a poster for the Halifax Building Society: 'as safe as houses' read the slogan, and that made me hurry along faster still towards Hill Street, where there was just one light burning – upstairs in our house.
I was through the front door and up the stairs in a trice. But quietly. The wife was asleep, having left the gas turned low for me. There was new glass in the window and I looked through it. When you have a new window, the bit of the world it shows looks clean and new as well, even if, as in this case, it should only be the gas lamps and sleeping houses of Hill Street.
As I looked at this scene, George Ogden walked slowly into it, coming from the direction of Back Hill Street. He had his hands in his pockets. Then he turned and looked up. When he saw me looking back, he grinned, and put up one fat paw to wave. He was signalling me to come down.
It was well past two by now, but I crept back down the stairs, out of the front door, and round to the side, where George was still beaming. 'Evening, old man,' he said. He was pulling his waistcoat down over his belly, so that I could see the assorted shapes of the little items in the pockets.
'Evening?' I said, 'It's getting on for dawn. Where've you been?'
'Supper at the Crown,' he said.' Anchovy cream of turbot, then veal kidneys with gin and juniper berries, turnips, asparagus a la creme and roast potatoes on the side, followed by pears a la cardinal with apricot syrup and brandy, cheese plate and biscuits, pot of coffee and liqueurs. But that's by the way.'
'Hardly,' I said.
'It seems to be the window-breaking season in this town,' he went on. 'Thinking it over, you're blaming the nutty dyna- mitists, I suppose.'
'You what?'
'The socialist-anarchists?' He was holding out a ten-bob note; he pushed it at me. 'They seem to have fixed on you as the fellow to blame for the hardships of all the working men in Halifax, which seems to go a bit hard, since you're a working man yourself and not taking home above, what, twenty-seven bob a week?' He pushed the note at me. 'I'm feeling rather flush just at the moment, so you'll oblige me by pocketing this forthwith, old bean.'
Well, I was so tired that I just took the money. 'Thanks, George,' I said, 'I'm much obliged to you.'
'But how did they ever get your address?' he called to me as I made for the front door.
'Turn in, George,' I said. 'It's late.'
Chapter Sixteen
I clattered on the small door inside the big door at Hind's Mill, for there was no bell in sight.
We'd booked on at five that morning, taking a special to Fleetwood for the Drogheda steam packet, then coming back light. The engine had been running hot; I'd scorched the back of my hand on the motion in finding out, and had been on the look out for carbolic ever since. Meanwhile my hand was wrapped in a mucky bandage. It was Friday 30 June, four days after the late turn at Blackpool. We'd not been back since and there'd just been one other excursion in the week: church ladies to Southport on the Wednesday – trouble-free, but I'd been fretting about George Ogden, who, by paying for the window, had only made me think he must have been the one who smashed it. But he couldn't have been, because I'd seen him in his room only a second later.
The door of Hind's was opened by a bonny, plump girl in a white dress with a red ribbon round her middle. She looked like a sort of very nice cake, all prettily wrapped up. 'Oh,' she said, 'I thought it was going to be Mr Hind Senior. He generally comes along Friday afternoons with his gentleman's gentleman for a nosey… An inspection of the weaving hall, I should say.'