The station clock tower came up once more, and I knew I had a brain injury of some sort – a concussion perhaps – because I could not see why a station would have a clock, leave alone a clock tower? It was asking for trouble, because the clock would only prove the trains wrong. I adjusted my position against the chain. No. It was churches that had clocks in the main, but why did churches have clocks? They did not operate trains. They were not in the business of time, quite the opposite really. But they did have them, and that was fact. It seemed to me that my brain was befuddled as before, but I was no longer subject to the flashes of electricity, and the sea was perhaps a little calmer. The violent rocking had been replaced with a calmer up and down, like a great breathing.
More visions came. I saw in my mind's eye an oil lamp burning red, a gas bracket giving a shaking white light.
I saw a knife polisher on a kitchen table, a packet containing rat poison and again the lamp burning red, as though by thinking of light, I might create light.
The chain room was darker than when I had been put into it. A tiny amount of moonlight came down through the hole that the chain went through, and this only illuminated the remainder of the chain. There was no mystery about where the thing went. It was not the Indian rope trick. This was the anchor chain – it ran up to the windlass on the fore-deck – and I had a suspicion that the anchoring of the boat, the end of the voyage, would be the end of me as well, because there would be policemen where we ended, and law and order generally – and the Captain meant to avoid that. Yes, it would be very dangerous even to sight land, because it would remind the Captain and the Mate that they would have to account to someone for holding me prisoner and I did not think they were over-keen to do that.
I was too bloody cold.
I sat against the chain and pulled the tarpaulin around me. I was supposed to be becoming a solicitor, a notion that seemed more than ever mysterious. I tried to recall having done some lawyering but could not. I had stood up many times in the police court but only as a policeman-witness. I had meant to be going into a quiet office over-looking the sleeping wagons of the old station, but there had evidently been a change of plan, and I would be going to the North Pole instead.
Running my hand over the tarpaulin, it came to me that it was not smooth as a tarpaulin ought to be, and it did not have the tar smell that generally came off a tarp. The smell in the chain locker was paint and oil, and I wondered whether it might serve as a sail locker as well. I swept my hand again over the canvas – for that's what it was – and found the thing I was after before I knew I was looking for it: a stretch of rope. I could not find the end of it and for all I knew it was longer than the anchor chain, but a length of it between my hands made a weapon. I sat back holding the rope and feeling there would be no half measures from now on. When the grey Dutchman came back, I would be on him; I would be on him quicker than thinking.
But after a while I set down the rope. It was too cold to hold. A short interval of time later, I pulled the oilskin more tightly around me, and made also to wrap myself in the great sheet, which might have been a sailor might have been something else again, but as I counted the faint ringing of a further six bells, it didn't seem to matter one way or another, and the only thing to do was to give in to the darkness, the rise and fall and the deep cold, and to sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
We had a scrub-down in the engine shed wash room. Then we walked back to the station along a cinder track, and climbed up onto Platform One. We exited the station through the main gates that a porter stood ready to padlock. It was only just gone seven, but he was shutting up shop. It was depressing, somehow, that a fair-sized station like this should close so early.
I said to the porter, 'Leslie White, our guard… has he come by?'
'Ten minutes since,' he replied.
With the station behind us, we stood at the top of Valley Bridge Road. A few wagons rolled through the streets but there were no trams to be seen, and precious few people.
Turning towards Tommy, I said, 'Paradise is on Bright's Cliff – it's on the south side, off Newborough.'
'Not far, is it?' he enquired, as we began to walk.
He came to Scarborough a lot but evidently did not leave the station very much. I mended my pace to his as we made our way along the dark canyon of the Valley Road. Tall houses stood a little way off on either side, beyond the Valley Gardens. They were beautifully tended, those gardens – and famous for it – but now they were enclosed in darkness. Halfway along, the sea came into view below us, with the white of the wave tops standing out clearly on the black water.
'It's getting up,' said Tommy, when he drew level with me.
He'd expected the sea to be quiet, like the town.
The tide was coming in, and the waves were like an invasion sweeping right up to the empty Promenade. The Grand Hotel was in view high on our left, the four turrets making it look like a great castle – a fortress against the sea. Lights shone at barely a quarter of the windows. The flags on the roof were all stretched out to the utmost by the sea wind.
'Bright's Cliff is on the other side of it,' I said. 'We've come a bit out of our way.'
'Oh, wait a bit,' said Tommy. 'I'm missing a bloody bag.'
It was true enough: he only carried one of his two.
'Reckon I left it at the gate,' he said. 'I put it down when you asked the bloke about Les White. Will you just hold on here?'
'Is it the one with the guns in it?'
'One of 'em,' he said, which I didn't quite understand.
'I'll go,' I said, because I was twice as quick as him and I wanted to get on, but Tommy wouldn't have it. He would fetch the bag himself.
'Look,' I said, pointing to a lonely-looking bench under a lamp on the Promenade. 'I'll wait for you there.'
'Right you are, mate,' he said, and he turned to go.
'Leave your other bag here at any rate!' I called after him, but he didn't seem to hear that, and I stared after him until he was claimed by the darkness of the Valley Gardens.
I sat down on the bench, and watched the waves for a while. Then I looked to my right, where the Prom curved around towards the Spa, which was like a little mansion with a ballroom, restaurant and orchestra. But this Sunday evening the Prom curved away into darkness, and the Spa might as well have been spirited clean away.
Because I was looking the wrong way, I didn't see the woman who approached out of the darkness from the left and sat on the bench alongside me. She wore a blue dress, which came out from underneath a grey-blue double-breasted coat, which she hugged tight about her. Her hair was a mass of dark curls under a fetching hat with a peaked brim and a feather in it. I thought: She looks like a hunter. Who was the Greek female who was the hunter? I couldn't recall.
She looked out to sea, and I watched her face from the side. It was squareish, darkish, a little plump with wide green eyes. She was wrapping the coat tight around herself, and I thought: If she's so cold, why is she sitting here and not walking briskly? But then she left off with the coat, and gave a sort of startled gasp, as though she'd just remembered something. I thought: She'll go off now. But she crossed her legs right over left instead, and began waggling her raised right boot. The wife would do that when she was restless, but this woman was not restless; she was bored, more like – and idle with it. I liked the look of her though, and I thought I'd better stop eyeing her in case it became obvious.