The Blackpool Highflyer

This wasn't lad's talk. 'Yes,' I said, 'but we must get on if we're to learn all about the engine -'

'He had the notion that people would want light suiting -'

'Now this handle', I said, 'controls the cylinder cocks.'

'It wasn't one of his better ideas,' said the boy.

'The cylinder cocks', I went on, 'are most important because -'

'I'm wearing the light suiting just now,' said the boy.

'Well,' I said, 'it does look nice and light. Now if you look here -'

'It's rational,' said the boy, simply.

I nodded, saying: 'Perhaps we'd better start with the fire.'

'But people don't want it.'

'Well, I expect they will in time,' I said.

'But it'll be too late for Dad -1 mean Father,' said the boy.

'The cylinder cocks', I said firmly, 'allow the steam into and out of the cylinders, and you must always remember to open them before moving the engine.'

'And what happens if you don't?'

'Then the piston would push the condensed water, which would knock the end out of the cylinder bore.'

The boy gave a little jump at this. 'I bet you'd catch it if you let that happen,' he said.

'Yes,' I said, 'you certainly would.'

'What would become of you if you let that happen?'

'If you were an engine man? And you let that happen?'

Lance Robinson nodded, eagerly asking, 'Would you be stood down?'

The kid was stuck on the question of people being sacked.

'It depends,' I said. 'It would depend what other daft things you'd done in the past. The shed superintendent would be down on you like a ton of coal though, no question of that. Now we come to the regulator,' I went on. 'There's a real art to controlling it, and the motto is -'

'What can a driver work his way up to?' said the boy.

'Well, most just stay driving,' I said. 'They like it, you see. But others go on to different things: traffic management in the company offices, engineering. There's lots you can put in for.'

'If a driver came to our house, would he come in at the tradesman's entrance?'

'Why would an engine driver go to your house?'

'Oh I don't know. Dad's train mad as well, you see. He's got hundreds of Bradshaws' all lined up in the dining room.'

I pictured again the grindstone on the line. I turned to the boy. 'Has an engine driver ever been to your house?'

'Oh, I don't know,' said the boy. 'I shouldn't think so. What's that?'

He was pointing at the pressure gauge.

'That tells you the steam pressure,' I said, 'how much pushing force you've got.'

I had a case against Robinson in my head, of course, but until now it had looked rather sick. There'd been a pretty solid row at Hind's that had ended with him being stood down from the company – all just before the stone was put on the line. According to the wife, Peter Robinson owned a car, and a car had been racing along beside us that day. If it wasn't just hooligan's work, then the stone had been put on the line by someone who knew Hind's Mill, or someone who knew the railways, or better still both. And here was Robinson, coming up strongly on both counts.

The boy, Lance, was looking up at me.

'A working head of steam,' I said, 'on a fair-sized engine would generally be about two hundred pounds to the square inch. Now you need a very hot fire to get it up to that.' 'How hot?' asked the boy.

I told him to stand back, and I opened the fire door. The boy stepped further back when he felt the fire.

'Hotter than that' I said, and I closed the fire door.

'Can I take another squint in there?' he said.

I liked the kid. He didn't look it, but he was game. I opened the door once again, and we watched the rolling, orange flames.

'It's just a different world,' said the kid, and whether he meant inside the fire or the engine-driving life I couldn't say.

'I wear spectacles as you can see,' said the boy. 'Would that stop me driving engines?'

'No,' I said. The true answer was 'yes', but it hardly mattered. The kid was far too posh ever to be on the footplate.

'Is it dangerous to work on engines?' he asked.

'Very,' I said, and I could not help trying a little fishing. 'There's wreckers,' I said, 'for one thing.'

'There was something put on a line at Whit,' said the boy. 'You had to clap the brake on and a lady was killed.'

'How do you know?' I asked, fast, but then I realised he might very well know.

'Because it was the mill where Father was a director – it was their Whit excursion to Blackpool.'

I now abandoned the engine-driving lesson. Careful questions were wanted, and I decided I would fare better with the kid if I did not let on that I'd been firing the engine on that occasion.

'Would you mind telling me what else you know about it?'

'It was reported in the Blackpool paper, which we see at St Anne's, being just a little way along the road, and Father cut out the article.'

'Did he point it out to you himself?'

'No, Agnes saw him reading it – saw him cutting it out too.'

'Agnes?'

'Our maid. We used to have two, but she's the only one left. We had a washerwoman on Mondays, and she's had to go too; and we had a gardener, and he's gone because the garden's gone. Well, we're selling the paddock at any rate. My pocket money's been cut down from half a crown a week to sixpence, but Father says there'll be a dividend for good schoolwork.'

I was thinking on. Robinson had certainly been hit hard by losing his place at Hind's.

'I'm fourteenth in Latin,' the boy was saying, and I didn't know whether that was supposed to be good or bad, but I nodded at him and smiled.

'He can do better than fourteenth at Latin,' came his father's voice from the platform. 'But how is he at engines?'

'He's not scared of the fire, sir,' I called down, 'so he's off to a very good start.'

'Call me Peter,' said Robinson, which as we both knew meant that from now on I would call him nothing at all.

The boy climbed down to his father, and I altered my plan. I would just get to it. 'I'd like to thank you for taking on my wife at Hind's,' I said.

'Anyone would have,' he said. 'It was one of the last things I did there, and one of the best. Lydia is a very fine young woman. There's a lot of steam in her, you know.'

'I know,' I said. 'It's none of my business,' I continued, leaving a pause where there should have been a 'sir', 'but did you happen to know that I was firing on the excursion when the trip was halted?'

Robinson moved the Manchester Guardian from being under his left arm to being under his right arm. 'No, I didn't,' he said, 'because I'd already started my paper war with the other two partners by then, and was cut off from all business. We were quite at loggerheads, Jim, with everything going through the lawyers, so you see I couldn't have gone off on a jolly with them.'

'The Whit excursion was your idea, as I understand it, sir?' And the 'sir' came out of nerves because I knew I was going in strong.

Robinson nodded. 'I can claim the credit for that, I think. There'd always been the Wakes Week trip of course, but I thought: it's fifty-five hours a week in the mill, fifty weeks a year. Why not have a respite at Whit as well, when the weather's warming up and the fun is just nicely getting going at Blackpool?' He smiled and moved the Manchester Guardian back to the arm it had been under before. 'Of course it had to be Blackpool,' he added.

Lance Robinson was by now holding his father's hand, and for some reason staring directly up at the glass canopy of the station roof.

'Do you have any ideas about the stone that was placed on the line, Jim?' said Robinson. 'I'm rather cut off out there at St Anne's. Nobody's been brought in for it, as I understand?'

'I do have a few ideas' I said. 'Yes.'

'He thinks it was wreckers' said the boy, still looking up.

Mr Robinson looked at me, wanting more. He touched his glasses.