The Blackpool Highflyer

I was not really listening to George. I was thinking of Margaret Dyson and how, as I had picked her up, the life had spilled out of her.

'You're the same in some respects, you know,' George was saying, 'but you have your Mrs Stringer, and she will keep you up to the mark, old man, believe me.'

The doctor's words came back: 'I will go further, and say that if it is a delicate person you are dealing with…'

'Oh, whether you like it or not,' George Ogden was saying, 'believe me. And you will like it, for you're an intelligent fellow.'

'To put him or her suddenly upright may cost your patient his or her life.'

'And I knew, I just knew, old sort, that I could never keep anything back from you,' George Ogden was saying, 'and I'm really awfully sorry for trying.'

'Speaking of that,' I said, 'your dad's not in the nutty house at all, is he?'

George gave a laugh, and what was vexing was that it was a real laugh. 'He is not, old man! Though he should be, and I only wish the bastard were locked away. Why, Dad was a butcher, just like your old man, from what I gather. I say, did yours put little lumps of suet on the scales so as to give short change?'

'No,' I said.

'I don't want to talk about my pa any more, if it's all the same.'

'You clapped eyes on your mother lately?'

'No,' said Ogden. 'Why do you ask? She doesn't live with Dad any more on account of his being so…' He frowned, adding: 'I did have an arrangement to go and see Mother, but what with one thing and another…'

'Why'd you put the grindstone on the line?'

He was shaking his head at this right from the off. 'Now just a moment,' he said, 'I know as little of that as the newborn babe. I realise you thought it might have been part of some plan to do for Lowther, the ticket inspector, because of what happened to him later, but you see, old sort, Lowther was in with us on the ticket scheme. I sounded the fellow out, in a roundabout way, and he jumped at it. Lanky wages, you see: they make desperate men of the best of us.'

He looked at me, nodding for quite a while.

'Now I happen to know', he went on, 'that Lowther came to grief, over in those Hebden Crags, at the hands of a rather angry fellow from Ticket Despatch in Manchester.'

'The one who lost his job over the missing tickets?'

'That's him. I wouldn't have had it happen for worlds, you know, that a fellow should lose his position over the business, let alone another ending up with two busted legs.'

'You put the stone on the line,' I said, 'not because of the ticket business, but because you wanted to kill Cicely Braithwaite, who'd thrown you over.'

'If I could just…' said George. His hand was moving.

'Or at best you wanted to scare the bloody daylights out of her.'

George's hand was in his waistcoat and the clasp knife was in his hand, the one he used to slice the ends off his cigars. I saw it there, shaking in his fat hand, and I saw on the handle a picture of Blackpool Tower.

There came a great yell and a tug from behind on my coat.

I almost fell backwards at the yank that was given, and in that instant I saw the empty space where George had been standing and heard the barman roaring: 'You've not paid me for the fucking ale!'

'For Christ's sake!' I shouted, putting coins into his hands, 'you daft fucking cunt!' and I was fighting my way over the bags and through the crowd, after George, or the copper, but the copper who'd walked in had gone. In fact, half the lot that had been in the pub no longer were, and when I stumbled out into the street I saw why. Clear skies: the blue- ness seemed to go up and up, and all was order and good sense once more in the port of Goole, with happier-looking folk all about the place and the steamships not just steaming but moving.

All across the docks, I could see fellows walking in circles, pushing wooden spars attached to turning poles. The tide had risen to the correct level and the lock gates were being opened. Two of the steamers were already out on the Hum- ber, moving with no sign of effort over the wide, bright water.

I ran into the docks, looking for a copper, or looking for George. Had he loved Cicely Braithwaite, or tried to control her? They were the same thing. At any rate, I wanted to see him swing.

I dashed back and forth as the big blokes turned their circles and one lock gate after another opened, bringing a gentle rushing sound, the ringing of bells on the boats, and shouts back and forth between the boats and the docks.

This was the moment of freedom for those sea captains and they all wanted to be off and away. In amongst all the ship business I saw the diver, the iron man, up from underwater, sitting on a chair at the top of the dock wall near to me. With his two attendants standing by, next to the pump that was now still, he looked like a strange sort of king from another world, with his great iron boots that could have been gold, his white suit that could have been silk, and the great brass head. As I peered closer, I saw the face of an ordinary man staring through the window at the side of it.

'Where's the Holland boat?' I shouted to a man throwing a rope onto a moving steamship.

'Ouse Dock!' he shouted, and pointed over to a ship still in dock but steaming hard; there were horses on its deck in pens, and blokes working away before it, one on either side, turning the wheels that controlled the dock.

From behind me, George Ogden appeared with his tumbling run. He leapt a pile of ropes and stumbled, but still he had ten yards on me as I began pounding after him. He was making for the boat that was about to leave Ouse Dock.

The iron man was standing up once again and moving towards the top of an iron ladder that led down into the water. His attendants helped him all the way, as if he was an invalid. The breathing tube trailed behind. As I leapt the coil of ropes that George had leapt a moment before, I saw that the three were in George's path. I saw him try to leap the air tube, but his boot caught, pulling the pump over. I saw the pump topple and the iron man turn with a sort of slow shock, and… I couldn't see George.

Beyond, at Ouse Dock, I saw the lock gates moving, with water moving on them: two mobile waterfalls, swinging away from one another. The boat was a Lanky boat. Its name was written big on the side: Equity.

I looked again at the iron man, now alone on the dock. His two attendants were climbing down the iron ladder. They were both clinging on to the top of it and shouting things I couldn't take in, but as I got up to the top of the ladder, one dropped into the water, reluctant, like, and then the other. The last man that could help bring George up was the one that was dressed for diving, all togged up to sink.

I looked down. The assistants had been under and were up again now, moving the water with their hands, as if it was long grass they'd accidentally dropped something into.

I looked up again at the Equity, moving through the lock gates with a clear, confident rumbling of the engine, the horses all looking forward, with their manes streaming backwards in the direction of the funnel smoke. The sky, cleaned out by the storm, was light blue with a gleam of gold. The long grass in the meadows either side of the waterway was all blowing gently to the right. There was a church out on one of the banks with a pretty sort of barn near that, and you saw that Goole was not so great and terrifying a machine after all if you could be out of it and into country so fast.