The tram bowled along fast and high along the edge of the road, wobbling slightly, like a hoop being bowled, and in two minutes Blackpool was left behind. There were fields to our left, and dry grasses, sand dunes and the sea to our right. Sand had been blown onto the wide, white road. A long steamer was going by in the opposite direction.
'It's like Africa out here' said the wife.
'Now I don't know about that,' I said.
Then the big gardens started coming up, and hotels all covered in ivy. We got off next to a miniature golf course. There was a low wall all around it made of dazzling white stones. As the wife and I stepped down from the tram, some smart sorts looked up from their game and stared at us.
'Do you think we passed muster?' asked the wife as we turned away from them in order to cross the road and reach the sea.
The beach was a startler. There were no fortune tellers or funfairs, but pretty banners stuck in the sand advertising shows by the Happy Valley Pierrots and the Jolly Tars, and there were three donkeys sleepwalking over the sand with children in sailor suits on their backs.
So this was Robinson's home. He'd done pretty well to get here, but now he'd lost all of his money because of the light suiting and the way he'd been treated by Hind, father and son.
We sat on the wall that divided the beach from the road.
'I bet they're all snobs round here' said the wife.
'Aye' I said.
'But I would like to live here.'
I looked at her.
'Well, I don't see why the snobs should have it all to themselves,' she said. 'And I've just had a vision of our little boy or girl skipping along the front.'
'Did you have a vision of our bank account at that time?' I asked her.
'I would come here,' she said, 'and I would get up a socialist club.'
'Oh they'd like that,' I said.
The three children were getting down from the donkeys. There were no more takers, and the donkey driver was getting out his pipe.
'I don't like that building on the pier though,' said the wife.
The pavilion on the pier was rather weird.
'I expect you'll be able to get it knocked down when you come here,' I said.
'You see how all the benches around it face away,' she said. 'That's so you don't have to look at it.'
I thought it more likely that this was so you could look out to sea. I then wondered again at how the train had not crashed this time, and how the wrecker or wreckers had left us alone. I felt grateful to them, which was the wrong feeling, I knew.
'Did you get a look at Clive,' I asked the wife, 'the driver of the engine?'
'I did, yes.'
'He's a handsome devil, wouldn't you say?'
'Yes,' she said, and then she laughed. 'Your face!' she said.
'Do you think we might pay a call on Robinson?' I said. 'He's rather keen on you, you know.' The wife didn't seem to hear this; or she thought it a notion too daft to bother with. She was brushing sand off her skirt. 'Bustle up!' she called, and she was off across the wide, bright common that seemed to take up half of St Anne's-on-Sea, aiming for a pile of stones that were built up at its centre. She was a hundred yards ahead in no time and seemed too lonely, so I began running to catch her, when I saw beyond her a small boy seeming to spin backwards from behind the pile of stones. He was playing some secret backward-jumping game, and wearing a green suit. It was Lance Robinson.
He didn't know the wife, of course, but he knew me – and from a fair distance too, even though he was not wearing his spectacles.
'Oh hello,' he said as I came up close (the wife was looking at the stones in the background). 'The green's my home-from- home now that the paddock's gone. Have you come up from Blackpool?'
'I have that,' I said, and I called the wife over and introduced her to the boy.
It came out that the wife was working at Hind's, and the boy said: 'Cicely told me she had a new person working with her. I like Cicely. She's a brick, although Dad always used to say she wasn't a great hand at correspondence.'
The boy turned to me, and said: 'Cicely's awfully pretty, don't you think?'
'Well…' I said.
The wife, leaning against the stone, was making funny faces at me as if to say, Now what do we have here?
'Did you come along on the tram?' said the boy.
I nodded.
'It's smarter here, isn't it?' said the boy. 'It's nothing like Blackpool really, even though we're sort of tacked on to it. Our house is one of the first ones in St Anne's, and when we bought it, the Post Office had it down as Blackpool. Dad tries not to be snobby but he played merry hell over that, and he got it changed.'
Lance Robinson was doing his little backward dance on the grass. 'I'm not supposed to say that,' he said. 'Merry hell, I mean. I got it from our maid, the one that's gone. Would you like to come to tea?'
'Oh no,' said the wife immediately, and quite horrified.
'Yes,' I said. 'That's very kind of you.'
I wanted to see the Bradshaws that Robinson was supposed to keep lined up on his shelves. I wanted to see the fellow's motorcar, not that I could remember much of the one that had followed us to the Fylde, or the one that had frightened old Hind to death.
Lance Robinson turned and I began to follow him. The wife was fixed to the spot. But she followed along after a little while, and began chatting brightly enough to the boy: 'This is a lovely spot, isn't it? I don't think we can take tea, although it is awfully kind. Perhaps we'll just say a very quick hello to your father, who's a very pleasant gentleman… But we shan't come into the house.'
We were passing by an empty bandstand now, and stepping off the green. The boy wasn't used to walking with other people; he was going too fast, and his green coat was flying out behind him.
'It's the light suiting,' I whispered to the wife, as we followed the boy down a wide road of tall houses.
'I know,' said the wife. 'It's sad.'
I knew what she meant. At first I couldn't think of the word, but then it came to me. The boy had been put into clothes that made him a kind of experiment in motion – an experiment that had failed.
'Now listen,' the wife whispered, 'we are not to stay.'
'There was no stone on the line for Hind's today,' I said. 'Why not, do you suppose?'
'Oh give it an airing,' said the wife. 'I thought you'd finished with that.'
'I've got to work out why there was a stone before, and why there wasn't one this time. One difference from Whit was that the governors of the mill were not on the train: Hind and Hind Senior. Now think on: who would have wanted to see off the two Hinds? And who might already have done the job on the older one?'
The boy had come to a halt ahead of us. He stood at a turning leading into another wide white road of tall houses with exhibition gardens. He was putting on his glasses as we got near. 'I don't wear them outdoors,' he said, hooking them over his ears with his head down, 'but I'm supposed to.'
This meant we were drawing near.
'Father's not home,' said the boy, looking up.
The wife nodded, and I could see she was relieved.
'He's dreadfully worried,' said the boy.
There was a low fizzing in the street. All the gardens were full of bees.
'The police', said the boy, setting my heart thumping, 'have been here…'
Where? I thought. Which one is the house? They all looked like tall churches, and they were all joined together: a dark line of giants behind the gardens. You were really meant to see the gardens not the houses.
'How could you lose a mill?' asked the boy from behind his spectacles. 'Dad had one. He sold it, then went in with Hind's and now nothing's left and Mother won't pay calls because then people would have to come back, and they would see we only had one maid… If a mill came down to me,' the boy went on, 'I would sell it straight off and put the money in the Post Office.'