The Blackpool Highflyer

There was a tug on my coat and the wife was standing next to me. We began walking down the hill to the town. Far below us, trams and horse buses were cutting through Halifax at a great rate, and folk were filing down all the streets that led to the Joint, which was full of engines coming and going. Freedom for the wage slaves: that's what we were looking at, for the Friday buzzers were going off all over.

'Do they talk much in the mill about the lass that died?' I said.

'Some do,' said the wife. 'She was popular – a bonny girl.'

'Do they ever say she might have been saved?'

But the wife didn't seem to hear that.

'Cicely is a good soul,' she was saying, while looking at flowers by the roadside, 'but she has an awful time of it. Hind treats her like a slavey – just like one of the work people, even though she's been in the office for donkey's years.'

'Where is Hind?'

'He has a yacht,' said the wife, 'and he's on it. Has been for a week.'

'Where?' I said. 'Cruising off Llandudno. You can send letters to it by posting to somewhere in Llandudno. He can send them back as well, worst luck. All week, the correspondence has been letters from Mr Robinson's solicitors saying that the price offered for his share in the mill is not acceptable; Hind saying that no more is to be offered because the light suiting of Robinson's has brought the mill almost to bankruptcy; and letters to wine retailers asking for Champagne to be sent out to Hind's yacht. If I put the wrong letter in the wrong envelope there'd be fun.'

'You mean if you sent the Champagne to the solicitors?'

'No, you nut. If the solicitors for Robinson found out how much Hind was spending on himself.'

'What about Hind Senior, the founder. What does he make of all this?'

'That fossil! Who knows if he thinks at all. Hind's the only one who talks to him. It was in King William's day when he founded this mill, you know, and it was powered by water.'

'Do you think he's on the yacht right now with Hind?'

'Is he heckers, like,' said the wife. 'The fossil hardly ever leaves Halifax, and he's due at the mill right now.' Then she pointed to a roadside flower: 'Foxglove,' she said quite fiercely.

'But they did lose money over the light suiting, and it was this fellow Robinson's fault, wasn't it?'

'It had been his idea, but young Hind had agreed to adventure it. I'd help Mr Robinson if I could… He has a little boy, you know, Lance, rather grown-up for his years, and he wrote a letter to Cicely to pass on to Hind. It was asking for his dad to be given his job back. Quite heart-breaking it was, according to Cicely. Well, that boy's mad on engines. Peter Robinson's often over here with all this solicitor business, and I thought you might show the boy about the station.'

'I'd say you were sweet on this Robinson' I said.

'Well, he had his points, you know.'

'Like what?'

'He gave me my start, for one thing. He was always gentlemanly to the workers, even if he was flogging them to death.'

'Where is he now?' 'At home.' 'In Halifax?'

The wife shook her head. 'He lives in Lancashire, at St Anne's.'

'Oh, you'd like it there,' I said. 'It's just before Blackpool; it's like Blackpool with everything taken out. Peaceful, like.'

'What I would fancy,' said the wife, very slowly, 'is a trip to Hebden Bridge.'

This was a turn up. The wife was not a great one for taking trips. 'Hebden would be a start,' I said. 'It's the prettiest spot within ten miles of here.'

'In fact I am going – tomorrow afternoon, with Cicely. She did want cheering up, you know. Would you come along?'

'I book off at one o'clock tomorrow,' I said, 'so I could do. Shall I ask George?'

The wife shook her head. 'I don't care for that one… I've read there are lots of wild flowers in the hills above Hebden.'

'You bet your boots,' I said.

'Jim…' she said. She did not often use my name, so I was certain she was going to say she was expecting. Instead, she said: 'I mean to take more of an interest in nature.'

'It's all the rage now,' I said.

'I mean to plant something in the garden.'

It was the first I'd heard it called that. 'You mean in that tub we have in the yard?'

'Tub in the yard! You're no loss to house agency, are you?'

'What are you going to plant?'

'Mint,' she said.

We'd drifted halfway down Beacon Hill Road. Two coal trains were crossing under the North Bridge, both going slow – lazy in the evening heat, and sending an echo all around the town. The wife had stopped again; she was looking down at some heather by the road.

'When did Robinson leave the mill?' I asked her.

'Friday 26 May he got the letter. It was the day after he'd interviewed me for the job.'

'A fortnight before Whit, then?'

'Aye' said the wife.

I said: 'I do think the coppers might ask that gent a few questions about what happened, you know.'

The wife was still looking down at the tiny flowers. One of the coal trains had come to a halt between the Joint and the North Bridge goods station; the other had disappeared.

'Why would he want to stop the excursion?' said the wife. 'It was his flipping idea in the first place. There's any number of hundreds who might have had reason to do it, mind you. I spend half my days writing letters to people saying we can't take them on at the mill. Bobbin-setters, reelers, duffers. They might not want to see the ones that have jobs gallivanting off to the seaside. If it comes to that…'

'What?'

'No, I shan't mention it. You'll only go flying off.'

'No' I said. 'You must.'

'If it comes to it' said the wife, 'when they stopped making the light suiting they laid off two hundred weavers. But half of them were taken on a week later at that show.'

She was pointing at the letters spelling 'Dean Clough' standing up on the roof of the building just beyond the North Bridge. Each letter was taller than three men, and although the North Bridge was high enough to fit the goods station underneath, those letters towered above it. The Dean Clough Mill seemed to have been built by men who'd never seen another mill, and so had no notion of the correct size, but what they did have was an endless supply of bricks. You could fit twenty mills of the common run inside it. It was built by the Crossleys, who'd also – along with a certain Porter – put up the brass for the orphanage where young Arnold Dyson now lived.

As we watched, the buzzer at Dean Clough went off, and it was loud even to the two of us, half a mile across town and halfway up a hill. After a minute, the workers came out, like oil spilling from an engine casing. As they poured forwards, crossing through the shadow of the great chimney, the wife said: 'Eight thousand carpet designs possible… Four thousand colours possible… Six thousand two hundred folk employed.'

'Wage slavery,' I said, thoughtful, like.

A motorcar was coming up the hill towards us. We stood back on either side of the road to let it pass, and the wife looked after it in a dreamy way. When it had gone she said, 'That's a bobby dazzler!' Then she laughed at me from across the road, because this was one of her new Yorkshire sayings.

We walked on a little way, and there was a trap stopped in the road, with a man standing up in it. There was something else in the trap: it was a small scrumpled-up something, and, as we got closer, we saw that it was a person, and that it was dead, with the little eyes in the little head closed and quite sealed up for ever.

I got in before the wife. 'Hind Senior,' I said.