'How old is he?'
'Ten,' said Mr Ferry, and there was Arnold Dyson, standing in the doorway.
His face said the same as before: railway accident. His hair said it, too – it was fighting against the Brilliantine that somebody had combed onto it. You could see a lot going on in his eyes, all of it bad. He wore a black suit with a big white collar, a rig-out meant for somebody who looked more like a child.
'You remember Mr Stringer,' said the matron to the boy.
I really thought she was about to add: The one who killed your mother.
Without waiting for an answer, which was just as well, for I do not think there would have been one, she was up and at him, brushing away crumbs from his coat. 'You muck-tub; you look a perfect fright,' she said, 'Bath bun… plain bun… Somebody ate a good tea.' Still brushing the boy's coat, the matron turned to me: 'Clarted with it, he is. Now you and Mr
Stringer here' she said to the boy, 'are to take a turn about in the gardens.'
It was the first I'd heard of it.
Mr Ferry picked up his newspaper, saying, 'I think I'll come along' which I was very glad of.
We walked back along the corridors, with Mr Ferry merrily asking about engines, and keeping the conversation going. The boy dragged behind. As we walked along a corridor, a door opened, and a great wave of children, all boys, all in their great black capes, swept towards us. There was no adult or master in sight, and as they swept by on either hand – all silent, but all nearly speaking – I half expected to see that they'd carried Arnold Dyson off with them. He was one of their own after all, and did not belong with us. But when I looked back he was still there.
Outside the front of the college, on the raised level that ran around the house, Mr Ferry leant against a stone urn full of flowers and began reading his newspaper.
I stood a few feet away with the boy, holding out Pearson's Book of Fun.
'This is yours,' I said. 'You left it on the train.'
No answer. He was looking out at the gardens like a little lord of the manor. Mr Ferry was making a lot of noise with his newspaper.
'Would you like me to read out some riddles?' I said.
'Read 'em to yourself' said the boy.
'Come on now.' I opened the book at 'Some Riddles', and began reading the first one I struck: "'Why is a football round?'"
'Leave off' said the boy.
'Leave off, Mr Stringer' called Mr Ferry from behind his newspaper. 'Remember your manners.' I could not see Mr Ferry's face but somehow knew he was smiling over this.
I closed the book. 'Well then…' I said. I very much wanted the meeting to be over, being sure that at any moment the boy was going to accuse me of murdering his mother.
After a while longer of being stared at by him, I said: 'What did you do today?'
'Nowt.'
'Trigonometry first half of the morning,' called Mr Ferry from over by the urn, 'then Euclid. Afternoon: nature walk, composition, scripture.'
'Are you liking it here?' I said to the boy.
'I take as I find,' he said.
'If you would ever like to take a turn on one of the engines we have down at the shed I'm sure it could be sorted out.'
'What shed?'
'Sowerby Bridge shed. It's where the Halifax engines are mostly kept.'
'Why are they not kept at Halifax?' He sounded like the wife.
'It's all to do with history,' I said. 'The railways went to Sowerby Bridge before they came to Halifax, so the shed was put there.
'Well,' said Arnold Dyson, 'I wish they'd never come at all.'
I took off my cap and put it back on again, cursing myself. Of course most boys, like the son of Robinson, the light-suit- ing man sacked from Hind's Mill, were engine mad, but this one had the best of reasons not to be.
Mr Ferry seemed to be really taken up with his newspaper now.
'What's the name of your dog?' I asked Arnold Dyson. 'Reuben Booth, that's the guard on the train, the one that has it for safekeeping… He wants to know.'
'I'm not telling.'
'Why not?'
'Because then he'll be somebody else's dog.'
'But there's nothing else for it, is there?' I said. 'Reuben's a great hand with dogs, you know.'
'He's going to have to be,' said the boy. 'He's not too particular about getting bitten, I hope. Bob's a quarrelsome sort when he's -' 'That's his name is it? Bob?'
The boy looked away. 'Is not,' he said.
'I know a ticket clerk called Bob,' I said.
The boy turned and looked at the door of the college. 'So what?' he said to the door. He smeared his hand hard across his hair. Then he looked at his hand. He didn't like the Brilliantine. He put his hand through his hair again, harder.
A clock began to strike seven, and, all in a moment, Mr Ferry put down his newspaper, collected the boy, and took him back inside the college.
I stood on my own. I felt bad about Arnold Dyson because I'd tricked the dog's name out of him, and what was more, Pearson's Book of Fun was still in my hand.
Mr Ferry came back through the door towards me, saying: 'He's tough stuff, isn't he?'
'Well, I'm not a great hand at talking to kids.'
Mr Ferry nodded. 'Ticklish,' he said.
I remembered the Farthing Everlasting Strip, still in my pocket. I had made a poor fist of things all round: it had been crazy to offer Dyson a ride on the footplate. But Mr Ferry was still smiling at me with his newspaper folded under his arm, as if he knew all would come right in the end.
'Oh, while I think on,' he said, looking up at me, 'why is a football round?'
Chapter Twenty
It was only a little way across town from the Crossley Porter Orphanage to the other frightening mansion: the Infirmary. I walked from the one to the other across Savile Park, stopping at a drinking fountain on the way. All around me were children playing, jumping about in funny boots like little comedians. The killer had taken all that away from Dyson; the killer and me, working together. And now he was cut off from the world by a beautiful garden.
The garden in front of the Infirmary was not quite up to the same mark, although there were little clusters of people in bathchairs admiring it. I walked through the lodge and found myself in a wide, high room with lilac walls, and white, empty fireplaces. The nurses were in lilac and white too, criss-crossing underneath a sign reading 'accident cases' with an arrow beneath. I watched them for a while, liking the sound of their skirts – and there wasn't one not beautiful.
There were two bearded doctors laughing, and when they moved aside I saw a small woman, neither a doctor nor a nurse, standing behind a high desk and smiling across at me: 'Can I help you, sir?'
I pulled off my cap and walked towards her in noisy boots. 'I would like to see a Mr Martin Lowther. He would have come in on Saturday, I think, with two broken legs.'
'Ward Seven,' she said, without so much as a glance at a ledger or paper. 'Follow the signs.'I walked along many bright, empty corridors with tall windows. A lot of glaziers had been here, and the windows gave on to gardens that could compare to the ones at the orphanage, with wide lawns and many strange-shaped hedges, like chess pieces. You might come round from breathing ether and, looking at these, not be quite sure which world you were in. It didn't look like any part of Halifax, and that was the fact.
I came to double doors that had the sign 'ward 7' above them, and then the words, 'mrs bailey, matron'. I walked through the doors and there was a desk with a woman sitting at it: half nurse, half lady-clerk, and I did not like her face. You could have put over what it was like by just drawing a cross. She seemed to be signing, or making some kind of mark, on slips of paper.