'Wait until we tell your father, Jim,' she said. 'He'll just die of pleasure.'
My dad was a lovely old fellow, but an out and out snob.
'Actually,' the wife ran on, frowning, 'I think that really is a danger in his case. You're to break the news gently. At first, just tell him you're going into a law office and work up from there.'
She sat back on the bed, and picked up another letter.
'This came as well,' she said. 'It's postmarked London.'
She looked a little worried as I opened it, as if she thought it might contain something that would stop me becoming a solicitor. It was from Railway Titbits magazine, from the editor himself. He was delighted to inform me that I had won the competition in the January number: I had successfully named all ten termini pictured and placed them correctly in order according to date of construction. A one pound postal order would shortly be despatched to me. I showed it to Lydia, who said:
'It really is a red letter day.'
'There must have been hundreds got the answer right,' I said. 'I expect I was just the first name picked out of the hat… I probably shouldn't have entered, being a railway employee.'
The wife rolled her eyes.
'Send the pound back, why don't you?'
'It's the first competition I've ever won,' I said.
'How many have you entered?' the wife asked.
'One.'
'Well then,' she said.
'What did you get up to today?' I asked, as I undressed, for it had not been one of her days in the Co-operative Women's office. I knew that as long as Robert Henderson's name didn't come up, then I'd be happy.
It didn't. She'd worked about the house, dug some of the plot that was intended as the kitchen garden, pulled up two more sycamore saplings that had taken root in the wrong places, and gone for an evening walk into Thorpe with the children. I turned down the lamp, and we tried to sleep.
'I can't get off,' the wife said after a while. 'I'm so excited.' 'Let's read, then,' I said, and I turned up the lamp, and picked up my Railway Magazine, while the wife reached across to the night table, where she found a book that I knew to be called The Practical Poultry Keeper by T. Thornton.
'Now let's see what's what,' she said, and opened the book at the beginning. It was the umpteenth time she'd started it, and after five minutes she tossed it across the counterpane.
'That flipping book,' she said. 'But they're getting on with it now, you know…'
'Who are?'
'The hens. Three eggs today.'
Was that a good rate of production for fifteen hens? The answer to the mystery lay in The Practical Poultry Keeper, but it was a stiffer read even than An Introduction to Railway Law.
Half an hour later, we were still not asleep.
'What are you thinking about?' the wife asked.
It'd been a while since we'd done any lovemaking, what with all our changes of life, and I thought this might be the moment. But then I thought of old man Wright.
I said, 'Did you know that the Wrights have separated?'
'Oh yes, that's very sad. Well, it's sad for him. She's overjoyed about it. She's gone off with Terry Dawson.'
'Who's he when he's at home?'
'Honestly, don't you pay any attention to Co-operative business?'
'No.'
'He's assistant manager of the Co-operative butchers on South Bank. You go there every week, Jim, just in case you've forgotten. But as from next month he'll be managing the new store in Acomb.'
'So he's the coming man of the York Co-op? Wright's very cut up about it. Do you think you might have a word with her?'
'I could do, but I wouldn't hold out much hope. He's such a misery. A woman's entitled to a bit of fun in her life, you know.'
'I can think of a way of giving you a bit of fun,' I said, and I put down the Railway Magazine. 'It only would be a bit, mind you.'
'Ten termini,' said the wife, as I inched over to her side. 'That's going some.'
'Railway Titbits…' I said. It isn't for the true rail enthusiast, you know. Come to think of it, I don't suppose most of its readers could name one railway termini.'
'You can't have one termini,' said the wife, as we fell to.
Later on, we still weren't asleep.
'What are you thinking about now ' Lydia asked.
'Just thinking on,' I said.'… I've been promised a lot of things lately: ownership one day of this house, perhaps; a start at Parker's office; a pound from Railway Titbits. Only thing is…'
'What?' said the wife.
'I've got to go to Scarborough first.'
The wife eyed me.
'When?'
'Sunday.'
'What? For the whole day?'
'For the night.'
'The night?'
And that, somehow, was what bothered me: the idea of staying the night in Scarborough during the off-season, and the suspicion that the Chief hadn't so much given me a job as set me a trap.
Chapter Eight
The sky was not quite black. Proper blackness rolled upwards from the funnel, and the sky was different to that: a dark, drifting grey. The ship plunged and rose with no land in view as I walked before the Captain's pistol. The ship was about the length of an ordinary train and it moved straight, both over and under the waves like a needle going through cloth. The thread it dragged was a long line of white in the blackness of the water. Parts of the decks were picked out with the white light of oil lamps hung from railings, and here the decks shone with rolling water. The sea flew at the three of us as we walked. We were getting some weather now all right, and it was waking me up by degrees. To my right, a sail was rigged. It was higher than a house and a constant shiver rolled across it diagonally. It was both white and black, covered in coal dust. I knew that a steam ship would sometimes rig a sail if the wind served. We were advancing on the mid-ships, the bridge housing. I couldn't have named all the ship's points, but some of the right words came to me from Baytown, the sea-side place where I'd been born. In going to Scarborough I had returned to the sea and that had been a mistake, but I could not just then have said why or how. I had gone too near the edge of land and somehow fallen off the edge, and the sea had taken me.
I turned about and saw the Captain, with gun held out.
'Where are we going?'
'Aft,' he said.
Another sea came, breaking white over the decks and soaking me through, but that was quite unimportant. The pressing matter was the pain in my temples. Coming fully awake seemed to have brought it on. I did not want to look left or right – that was one result of it; and I wanted to sit down. I wanted badly to sit down and be sick. After that, I wanted breathing time to remember who I was. I had been imagining myself in all the places I knew a certain Detective Stringer to have been and I knew that I had at one time kept a warrant card in my suit-coat pocket that would very likely carry that name, but I did not want to look at it just in case I had confused myself with someone else. We stopped at another ladder, and another wave flew at us. We were like the clowns in the circus who attract buckets of water wherever they go. I was meant to climb this ladder; the Captain held my arm as I did it.
'We must get to the bottom of this business,' I said, and he made no reply. I made two further remarks to him as I climbed the ladder: 'Are you two the whole ship's company?' and then, 'This is a bad affair.' All three remarks went unanswered, and no wonder.
The ladder took us to a low iron door that was on the jar. I pushed at it, and we were into a saloon: here was a lessening of the coal smell. White-painted planks had been fitted to the iron to make wooden walls. I noted an oil lamp on a bracket, two couches, a wooden chair; books on a folding table. Another ladder, or something between a ladder and a staircase, came down into the middle of this room.
'Do go up,' the grey man seemed to say. It sounded as though he was asking politely, but that wasn't it. 'Go,' he repeated, as I eyed him. There was spittle always behind his teeth when he spoke, as though the sea rose and fell inside him as well as all around.