This time there was no cause to stop at Preston, so those on board had all of thirty seconds to view the handsome new paintwork of that station. We were coming to the danger point now, Salwick and Kirkham, and Clive seemed in a hurry to get there, for he notched up once, twice, within the shadow of County Hall. Was he bent on suicide? No, the man was in the prime of life and making love in secret with the stationmaster's wife.
To put this from my mind I was throwing on coal, but Clive checked me with a funny look and shouted at me to get on the injector and put in more water. It went ill with me to move from coal to water. I wanted to stick at one thing, and wait. If all was well after Salwick and Kirkham, that would be the start of a whole new world. I would take a drink and have a beano with the wife in Blackpool, for I was to book off on arrival.
The signal box at Lea Green came and went. Harry Walker, the fellow in there, would be moving slowly between his levers, drinking tea. Maybe he'd given a wave. It didn't matter.
Salwick came up, more of a garden than a station, more of a graveyard than a station, and Clive was eyeing me. The engine was going at seventy, and neither one of us could properly stand.
I asked myself again how he could be so sure we were not to meet another wrecking attempt.
I laid my shovel against the firebox, forced my head out into the battering air and looked back. I saw the 8.36 from Halifax, the regular Blackpool express, a tiny train miles behind, crawling onto the fields of the Fylde.
I would not tell Clive to slow down, not even with the wife on board and her expecting. I was done with showing fear. I turned to the firehole, looked inside: the fire was shaking, every white-hot coal had been set jumping by the speed. I stood upright again, and my shovel fell and began clanking over the footplate towards me like a thing gone live. Clive was standing back from the regulator, bowed down before it and pulling at the flaps of two of his pockets, the flaps of the poacher's pockets. He moved his hands slowly up towards his hair and put his head down and ran his hands through his hair, faster and faster. His hair was all there, but it might not be, so he had to make sure over and over again. He was looking at his boots as he did it, seeing how they were faring new-on, for really they should have been spared the black dust of the footplate. The best thing you can do with a pair of boots is not wear them. The best you can do with a railway engine is not drive it.
I looked through the spectacle glass and it was clean. I could see for miles along the line. Blackpool Tower, the tallest building in the country, and there it was: a tiny thing, ten miles off, jumping about in the corner of the glass, trying to come loose and move to the centre. Why had Clive got his medal? Well, it came in pretty handy, made it harder for Knowles to stand him down. There again, if Clive had copped on with Emma Knowles, the stationmaster might be expected to do a lot more than sack him. A lot more.
My eye went back to the spectacle glass, and I kept on staring hard at the clear track unrolling before us; I was challenging the track, and keeping with it for mile after mile. A sunbeam flew very far along it in a short time, and I almost gave a laugh at that. I turned away and looked again.
'Brakes!' I screamed, and Clive slashed at the vacuum handle as though killing something, which he was – killing the vacuum – and we began at once to slow… but slowly.
You can shout for brakes once if you're a fireman – once if there's no reason, I mean. With the engine finally at rest, and time moving once again, Clive turned to me and said: 'What was it?'
I had no answer.
I looked up at the spectacle glass and Clive looked there too. It was clean but for a single fleck of soot, dead centre.
'It might have been that,' I said, and I started to say I was sorry, but Clive checked me, saying: 'You were right to call out.'
I knew then he was one of the grandest fellows I'd ever met. It's rum. You know people for a while and you have them down for one thing, then they suddenly seem to grow.
I jumped down and looked along the train. Heads were coming out of the windows, but nobody was climbing down this time. We'd not had to use the reverser, so the train had stopped with a steadier motion. Yet a man in a cap called: 'That were a bit of a jar.' It was a lonely voice, floating over the fields.
'Anybody hurt?' I called.
'I'll consult!' he shouted, but he was already laughing. He ducked back into his compartment, then stuck his head back out. 'One here in desperate need…' he bawled.
I began walking fast along the trackside towards him, fretting over having burnt the medical book. 'In desperate need of what?'
'A nice glass of stout!' the excursionist called back. 'Nay, I'm only -' He ducked back in again. 'We're all in fine fettle here,' he said, coming out once more, 'but can tha get on? It's nigh on opening time, tha knows!'
I walked on fast; there were different flowers in the meadow from the time before: tall, purple ones. The wife was in the third carriage back from the engine. As I walked, the carriages were high above my head. It was like going along those old country lanes where the road has sunk and the hedges have gradually been lifted up: a feeling of being too small and kept in your place.
When I came to what I thought must be the right spot, I called up. It was Cicely Braithwaite who pulled down the window strap and looked out. She was laughing too. There was laughing gas running through the pipes on this train, but when she saw me her laughter caught.
'It's not the same going-on as before, is it?' she said.
I shook my head. 'You all right up there?'
The wife was at the window too, showing a face that had been laughing. 'Do get on,' she said.
I looked along the line. The regular express was there behind in the distance, shaking in the heat, and so far off that at first I couldn't make out whether it was moving or not. But no. It was of course checked at the signal, and all my doing.
I looked up at the wife and grinned. 'When we get to Central, I'll meet you at the ticket gates,' I said.
She ducked back into the carriage as if I was just a spare part, standing down below the train where no person ought to be standing.
I turned to walk back to the engine.
'Ey!'
It was the wife, calling from the compartment; I turned while walking and she blew me a kiss. The holiday mood was certainly on her. At this rate, she'd be after a whole week in Blackpool.
Chapter Twenty-seven
In Central you could hardly breathe from the greenhouse heat burning through the canopies, and the press of people, and the nosebag smell, for the cab horses were at their dinner as we came in at just after eleven. A porter was standing on a stepladder, trying to put the excursionists into the right channels by a lot of shouting and waving of arms.
This was the busiest station in Europe.
We uncoupled and ran the engine to the shed, where everyone was too busy to think anything much of even a Highflyer coming in. Clive went off for a pint, while I legged it the quarter mile back to Central, where the wife was patiently waiting at the ticket gates.
'Did you notice we weren't wrecked?' she called over the noise of the crowd as I approached her.
Behind her at the gates was the ticket collector I'd seen the last time I'd been at Central, the one who'd thrown up the beer bottle. He was working now, collecting tickets but not looking at anyone who gave him one. His uniform still did not fit.
I kissed the wife. 'But we did have the stop,' I said, 'and in the exact same spot as before. Did nobody say anything in the carriage?'
The wife shook her head. She wanted to talk about something else. And I was glad to do it.