The Blackpool Highflyer

'Excuse me,' I said, 'but I've come to see Mr Martin Lowther.'

'Well, you've come at visiting time,' she said, adding, as she glanced up at me,'… by accident or design.'

'It was by design,' I said.

'Mr Lowther is not at all well,' she said, 'and I don't think he'll see you.'

'Oh, but if you just once asked him…'

She sighed. 'What's the name?'

'Stringer,' I said. 'Jim Stringer, fireman of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.'

'Is it necessary for him to know that last part?'

'It wouldn't hurt,' I said.

'But are you a friend of his, or family, or… what? I'll not have him disturbed over a work matter.'

I was about done with pretending to smile, so I gave it up, saying: 'You'll find that he'll see me.'

She stood up and went off into the ward, but not for long, and she came back grinning, so I knew it was a bad look-out. 'He'll not see you,' she said, 'I knew he wouldn't. Two gents came along not twenty minutes since; they gave me their names, just as you've done; I went in to ask and he turned them away as well. Taken very bad, he was, just at hearing they'd turned up.'

'What were the names?' I asked, and she answered before thinking about it: 'Mr Crocker and Mr Kilmartin.' She bit her lip directly after the words were out.

'Well, I shouldn't wonder he was taken poorly,' I said. 'Do you honestly think they're real names? Because if so, think on… What did the two of them look like?'

'I don't know, I'm sure,' she said, for she'd clammed up now.

'But you saw them, so you do know.'

The woman looked at me and said in a loud voice: 'Doctor Laing!'… Then, quieter, to me, 'I'm having you sent away from the hospital.'

The doors moved and Dr Laing was there. It was like shuffling a deck of cards. He was small and he was smiling. 'You would like to see Mr Lowther?'

'I would,' I said.

He turned to the nurse-clerk. 'What is the gentleman's name?' he asked.

'I don't recall,' she said, and I wondered whether she'd tried it on Lowther in the first place – not that it would have cut much ice.

Laing turned back to me, still smiling. 'You see, Mr Lowther has just got nicely off to sleep after being very upset.' And I could see now that this smile of his was more of a brick wall. 'Who shall I say has called?' he said.

I thought of the names given by the two earlier fellows. 'Say that a friend came by,' I said, and, by doing that, I meant to set Lowther's mind at ease, but as I walked back out of the Infirmary it struck me that I'd likely done nothing of the sort, for, as far as I knew, Martin Lowther didn't have any friends.

PART TWO

Wakes

Chapter Twenty-one

In the week before Wakes we were mainly holding fire on the excursion trains, for it was the last time anyone would want to go away. After the Skipton run, we were back on the Rishworth branch for the Tuesday and Wednesday, with another Scarborough excursion booked for the Thursday.

In that week, Halifax was full of scuttling people, cancelling their orders for milk or newspapers, stocking up on straw hats and other summer goods, taking their money out of the banks. All pleasures were kept in check, the better to enjoy the jamboree coming up.

Halifax was living in the future, and every day the Courier contained The Wakes Outlook', giving reports on all the places that the townsfolk might be heading for in the coming week. At Rhyl, bowling, yachting and golfing were in full swing. At Penzance, the outlook was good for holidays; glass steady, wind from the north. At Yarmouth, the Winter Gardens stood ready to accommodate the people if it rained. Military bands were on the beach. Fine weather was almost sure at Douglas, Isle of Man, and as for Blackpool…

Blackpool, we were told day after day, was 'ready', and the Courier gave a list of the 'Principal Attractions' in the town. On the Tuesday I read, while rolling into Rishworth, that these included the Singing Simpsons at the Tower and the Palace, and 'Henry Clarke and Young Leonard' at the Seashell. He was a fine ventriloquist but I wondered why he'd been mentioned and not the other, grander one, Monsieur Maurice. Perhaps he would take his turn as a Principal Attraction another day. He was a regular bill-topper at the Seashell, after all.

But Monsieur Maurice certainly wasn't mentioned the next day, as I sat reading the Courier around the back of the Albert Cigar Factory, with George Ogden waiting beside me.

We were kicking our heels, sitting on a wall at the loading bay while the narky little fellow who dished out the damaged cigars kicked around boxes in search of half a dozen 'A's for each of us, George having said he would stand me them.

He was a queer sort about money. He'd already asked for a rent reduction, and half the time I expected him to put the bleed on. Yet he'd paid me for the window. Whenever I thought about George and money, I thought about the missing tickets, and that led on to thinking about all the other business.

He was about five feet away from me, wiping his face with a little handkerchief. We'd met at the Joint and walked up together after our day's work. I hadn't seen him in a while, for he'd stuck to his usual habit of staying out late. 'Blessed hot,' he was saying now.

It was smoky, too. From the amount of black stuff tumbling upwards from the Albert chimney, they seemed to be at the highest pitch of cigar-making for that day.

'What's the blooming fellow up to?' George fretted. 'You wouldn't think it too taxing to find a dozen cigars in a cigar factory.'

'But it's substandard ones we're after,' I reminded him.

'The difficulty in this place', George said, 'would lay in finding any other kind.'

George seemed out of sorts. He went back to his pacing, I to the Courier and the Wakes Outlook.

'"A telegram from the Isle of Man today'", I read out loud, '"says if the weather is fair, the nights are as enjoyable as the day. This arises from the… "'I hesitated a little over the next word, '"pellucidity of the atmosphere and the play of light on the mountains and sea.'"

'Mountains!' said George, turning about to face me. 'On the Isle of Man! That's obviously written by some fellow who's never seen the Pyrenees.'

'You've seen 'em yourself, have you?'

'I might run over there one day,' he said, standing still and running his hands up and down his marvellous waistcoat.

'What are you doing for Wakes?' I said.

'Why, I'll be slaving in the booking hall of course,' he said. 'But that's my style, you know. When the common herd are gallivanting about, I'm getting my head down for a bit of serious work.' He nodded at me to drive home his point: 'And vice versa,' he added.

I'd been kicking my boots against the wall, and suddenly a clod of soot from Sowerby Bridge shed fell down from one of them. We both looked at it.

'Things'll be pretty slow after the first couple of days' I said. 'Everyone'll be gone by then.'

'Yes' said George, 'but then it's all stock-taking and putting the records of the whole year straight.'

Here was my opportunity. 'Did those missing tickets ever turn up?'

'Missing tickets, old man?'

'It was you that told me of it.'

'You should be on the halls,' he went on. 'A Man of Marvellous Memory. But it comes back to me now… No, they never did show up, and the devil of trouble was caused by it. No end of bombardments from Knowles.'

The cigar fellow put his head out of his little office and called: 'I've got a dozen 'A's here.'

We began making for his little room.

'The tickets for the Joint are sent along from Manchester, aren't they?' I asked George.

'That's the idea, old man.'

'The tickets that went missing: were they singles or returns? And where were they for?'