Only half the lamps were lit, and the wide, dark terminus stood nearly empty. A long coal train was parked at the excursion overload platform, as though to send out a message: Forget about coming here for pleasure this time of year. Other coal wagons were scattered about on the approach roads, and a little pilot engine waited with a bloke leaning out of the cab. He'd no doubt be put to rounding up the wagons; meantime, he was smoking and watching us come in.
Scarborough, being a terminus, had a strange arrangement that made the working complicated. We drew right up to the buffer beams on Platform One. We would then – as I supposed – uncouple our coaches, and the pilot would pull them back, releasing our engine. In the normal course of things we'd then work backwards to the engine shed, which was about a mile off, take on water, turn on the turntable, and head back to York. But our engine was not fit for the run back, or so we would make out.
Tommy Nugent was already on the platform, and making his lop-sided way towards a door under a big lantern: the office of the night station master. He knocked, the door was opened, and in he went to start lying.
I looked back, and the last of our half dozen passengers were stepping down from the carriages. They walked through the leaking steam and away towards the exit. Leslie White, the guard, was coming up through the steam as well. He stopped, and turned his specs in my direction.
'Where's Tom?' he said, and I saw there was a wooden box and a folded board under his arm. I read the label on the box:
The Empire Chess Set.
'In there, mate,' I said, indicating the SM's closed door.
White's spectacles tilted that way, then back to me.
'You're running light back?'
'Reckon not,' I said.
And I indicated the steam whirling all around us.
He gave the shortest of nods, turned on his heel, and went off. There was a crew room somewhere about. He'd book off there. When he'd gone, I was left quite alone on Platform One. I saw the pilot engine simmering away on the approach road, but the driver of it made no move. The door of the night station master's office opened, and Tommy stepped out.
'He's telephoning through to the shed,' he said, and his voice echoed in the empty station. 'They'll look at the engine overnight.'
The bloke in the pilot engine had now stirred himself, and was buffering up to the back of our coaches. Tommy was heading for the platform edge, prior to climbing down and uncoupling. But to spare his leg, I said I'd do it. I jumped down onto the filthy ballast, and began unscrewing the brake pipe. As I worked, I saw Tommy's boots, and he was talking at a great rate once again, as though to keep my spirits up.
It'd only be the work of a moment, he said, to run up to the shed, make out the card describing our engine's defects, and book off. We'd have a bit of a spruce-up, but not too much because we did want to look like engine men after all, then it'd be off to Paradise to sort out that bad lot, perhaps with a stop for a pint on the way. He generally took a pint at the end of a turn did Tommy, if not several, and he didn't see why he should do any different this time. But I didn't know about that. Now that the journey was done I wanted to be off to the house of mystery as soon as possible, get in and out, have the whole business done with.
It would be another half hour, though, before we untangled ourselves from the railway lands of Scarborough…
The pilot pulled back our coaches and took them off to the darkness, making for the tunnel that led to the main Scarborough sidings at Gallows Close, where excursion carriages by the hundred were stored in winter much as a lad's train set is stowed in a cupboard when school term begins. We then worked the J Class back to the engine shed, where Tommy fell into a long, echoing conversation with a very tall fitter, whose long brown dust-coat looked as though it might be hiding the fact that he was really two men, one standing on the shoulders of the other. The shed was dark, and smelt of the dying fires that had been dropped into the pits below the engines. Tommy Nugent's voice came drifting through the floating wisps of smoke.
'… And that's how I know it's not the clack valve, you see. Now the stuff's not coming out full bore, so it's not completely shot, but of course the higher the pressure the faster the leak, and what it could really do with is…'
Why did he have to go on so? The valve needed replacing, and that was all about it. They'd be very unlikely to have the right one in the Scarborough shed so we'd have all the excuse we needed to hang about in the town for ages if we wanted. I wandered into the booking-on vestibule, where there was a little less floating smoke, and a little more light, thanks to two gas lamps sticking out over a wide, green North Eastern Railway notice board. I walked up for a look. I was informed that two new dummy signals were in place on the Scarborough approach, and a certain water tank had been discontinued.
Company employees were to refrain from removing the newspapers from the engine men's mess, otherwise newspapers would no longer be provided. A small quantity of gunpowder had been found under a seat on a train running between Scarborough and Filey and a general warning was accordingly issued to all employees of the railway. A fellow from the shed had won a barometer at cycle racing.
In one corner of the board was a space for notices of a more general nature. A seven-roomed house was for sale in Scarborough: 'In splendid condition – large garden.' My eye ran on to the notice directly beneath: 'PREPARE FOR A RAINY DAY!' I didn't read that, but moved directly to the one below.
Paradise Guest House. All rooms excellent and nicely furnished. Baths, hot and cold water. Sea views. Five minute walk from station. Railway men always welcome, cheap rates for short or long stay. Apply Miss Rickerby at Paradise Guest House, 3 Bright's Cliff, Scarborough.
Miss Rickerby – she sounded a respectable enough party. A picture composed in my mind of a thin, jittery woman who almost outdid her white dress for paleness, but I realised I'd called to mind a Mrs Riccall, who worked in the pharmacy on Nunnery Lane, York, and was known to the wife. Just then Tommy Nugent came limping into the vestibule.
'Well, I'm finally shot of it,' he said, meaning the J Class. 'I've told 'em we'll come back in the morning about ten to see what's what.'
'We'll try to,' I said. 'It all depends on events.' Tommy stood still under the gas with his cap in his hand, and he made his eyes go wide, and blew upwards, which
caused his curly hair to move.
'Quick wash and brush-up, then Paradise it is!' he said.
I didn't show him the notice posted by or on behalf of Miss Rickerby because I'd finally worked out what was making him talk at such a rate: Tommy Nugent was spoiling for a scrap, and I didn't doubt he'd prove a brave man if it came to it. But that didn't mean he didn't have the wind up.
Chapter Thirteen
I might have been sleeping in my metal quarters as I heard the sound of a bell amid the sea roar and the creaking iron. It might have been the bell that woke me. There came another, and I counted five strokes in all. Were we within earshot of a coastal church?
No, the bells were floating along with us; we had made away with them, carried them off. They rang them for the watches, and five strokes did not mean five o'clock. I thought again of the run to Scarborough, and how I ought to have known not to head for the sea. I figured a boat approaching the Scarborough harbour, lurching on the waves like a. drunkard; I called to mind the clock tower above Scarborough railway station, white against the Scarborough night, a foreign look to it somehow. I thought of the porter who was keen to lock the station gate, as though he had secret and illegal business to conduct there; I saw a heap of razors, safetys and cut-throats, and a hot bluish room. I saw again the gigantic needle hanging in the air. I began to count, and the needle faded.