But gentle, like.
The garden was the kind that makes you feel riff-raff in working boots, even if you've been at the Erasmic Soap for the best part of half an hour, as I had. And even though it had likely been another fellow in working clothes – gaiters too, probably, and a clay pipe in his mouth – who'd made it all. Every. flower-bed was a different colour and a different world. You'd look at one and think, that's the prettiest, with those giant orange flowers; then you'd look at another and see blue flowers, small but more of them, and you'd think, no, that one tops it, and so on. What all the beds had in common was a big stone urn in the middle.
Feeling like I'd climbed from the audience onto the stage, I stood at the top of the wide stone steps leading to the front door and rang the bell, which was set in an iron circle as big as a dinner plate. They went big with everything, the Crossleys.
The door was opened by a most unexpected person: a tiny, untidy woman who seemed to be just passing by. 'Oh, come in then,' she said.
I told her my business. She looked down at the package in my hands and said, 'That's all right, come along with me.'
She began leading me along a corridor, past rows of portraits. 'Our founders,' she said, putting out a small arm as she walked, and I marvelled at how founders are always bald men with beards no matter what it is they've founded.
'We've got plenty of nooks and crannies you know,' she said, after we'd turned a few corners.
But they were very big nooks and crannies.
As we walked, I could somehow tell the place was full of children, although I couldn't see any. It was a kind of trembling feeling, like when you have a mouse in your hand.
I was at last shown into a small wooden room marked 'visitors – boys' side', which, if I'd been running the place, I would have shifted nearer the front door. In the office was a matron – a big woman with a happy face and pink cheeks that didn't go with her black dress, just as the garden did not go with the house. She fished my letter out of a drawer and her face fell into a frown as she read it, which set me wondering about the spelling, until I remembered that the wife had typed it.
'What day was your train smash?' she asked, putting the letter down.
I felt like saying: It wasn't my smash. Instead, I said, 'Whit Sunday.'
'Pentecost,' said the woman. I was quite certain she was about to say, Well you shouldn't be driving engines on such a day, but she looked at me, smiled, put the letter away.
'Good of you to bring the book,' said a voice from the doorway.
Turning around, I saw a big, brown, strong man who looked ready for anything. 'Matthew Ferry,' he said, shaking my hand.
'I thought I might read the boy a couple of riddles,' I said.
Matthew Ferry laughed. 'You've a hope.'
'He'll be having his supper,' said matron, 'so we won't bring him out quite yet. Would you like to come through for a cup of tea?'
Mr Ferry was now holding the door open for me, and we walked for another half minute before turning into a sort of parlour, with a scullery connected. There were a few attempts to make the parlour homely – green tab rugs on the floor, a red cloth on the table – but the empty fireplace was too big, and the ceiling was too high. On the walls were thin wooden crucifixes, with dried flowers tucked behind them, and I thought again of Whit Sunday: the Lord's day, and an extra special one at that. Maybe you were asking for all you got by running trains on that day. Come to that, wakes weeks had started out as religious in some way.
Mr Ferry began cleaning a pair of boots as the matron went through into the scullery. Very shortly after, she was calling over the sound of a singing kettle: 'Never smiles, that one you've come for.' She returned with a filled pot on a tray, and cups.
'Sarcastic disposition,' said the man, smiling and pausing in his boot-cleaning.
'Well, I believe he's precious careful not to be seen doing it,' the matron continued.
'A lot of them are like that at first. They don't think it's fit to be seen happy in a place like this. They sort of think they're in church all the time.'
'Or at a funeral,' said Mr Ferry, 'a funeral going on for years and years.' He seemed quite happy as he said this. 'Do you know what the boy wanted when he came here?' he asked.
'I don't,' I said.
'Fires lighting. Everywhere he went.'
'But it's been so hot,' I said.
'A fire reminded the boy of home,' said Matthew Ferry. He was going forty to the dozen at his boot, smiling down all the while at the glace kid on the Nuggett's polish tin, who smiled back up at him. 'I had a long go at him a few days after he came in,' he continued, 'give him a chance to say whatever he might want to. I asked him about his mother but it was no go, and I had just one thing out of the boy.' He had stopped polishing. 'His mother', he told me, 'could make her eyes go crossed.'
'Well…' I said, and things went a bit quiet for a while.
They were not orphan's boots that he was cleaning. They were too big. And orphan boots would have come in bundles. No, these were Matthew Ferry's boots, and it struck me that a man would not be cleaning his own boots in front of a woman unless she was his wife – wife or sister, for they had the same high colour.
'Little bit of advice for you,' said Mr Ferry, who'd finished cleaning his boots and was putting the lid on the tin. 'When you see the lad, don't say: "I was sorry about your mother", because then you're going to have to say, "I was sorry about your father", "Sorry about your dog", "Sorry about you not getting your day in Blackpool", and so on till the cows come home.'
He had all the boy's misfortunes off by heart. No detail lacked.
'What did the boy's father die of?' I asked Mr Ferry.
'Heart gave out,' he said, quite brightly.
I realised I already knew that from Mary-Ann Roberts's letter. I picked up the cup of tea that Mrs Ferry had poured for me and took a sip, but it was too hot.
'He was in a similar line to yourself,' said Mr Ferry, folding his big arms, for the boots were now done.
'Engine man?' I said.
Mr Ferry picked up his teacup, poured some onto the saucer and blew – six shimmers, with the tea not allowed to come to rest in between each one.
'How many tons of coal do you have to lift in an ordinary day?' he asked.
'On a fifty mile run,' I said, 'it might come to… one.' I wanted to add: But there's more to the job than that.
The matron was talking to someone at the door, and it seemed that Arnold Dyson had been sent for. I put the book inside my coat, thinking to make a bit of a surprise out of giving it back.
'One ton?' said Mr Ferry. 'Now what would you say to firing the boiler in a mill?'
'Well, you know… It wouldn't suit.'
'Why not?' said Mr Ferry, smiling.
'Because a mill doesn't move.'
'It does not,' said Mr Ferry, standing up, 'even if you put six ton on the fires every working day, which is what Arnold Dyson's father was doing.'
'He was a boilerman?''That's it, fettling the boiler, but mainly shovelling coal and one day he just pegged out.' 'What mill was it?'
'Hind's. It's where he copped on with the mother.'
'Matthew!' cried the matron, 'we'll have less!'
He'd been grinning and glowing before, but this remark turned him up to boiling point and he gave out a laugh. 'We're talking of mills,' he said, brown face still beaming, 'so I'll use mill talk.' He picked up his tea and finished it in one go. 'I hear that lot are off to Blackpool again soon,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'Will you be firing the engine once again?'
I nodded back, trying to smile: 'Very likely.'
'Well I should keep an eye out!'
'When did the lad's father die?'
'Five years back. The boy could have come here then because fatherless will do for us, but his mother wanted to keep him. He was at board school in the morning, fended for himself until his mother came home in the afternoons. He would have gone on at the mill as a half-timer himself next year.'