'My immediate aim', I said, 'is to find the blower.'
I was searching for it in all the mix-up of levers and little wheels, and without a murmur of complaint Tommy dragged his bad leg over to my side again.
'That's always the question when you're new to an engine,' he said, putting his hand on a certain little wheel.
I put a bit of blower on to wake up the fire, then put coal in the four corners, where it was too thin. Being out of practice, I had trouble reaching the back of the box, but Tommy wasn't watching.
'We're booked to leave at five fifty-two,' he said, 'and we'll be in by three minutes past seven, or a little later depending on whatever slow freights are moving through Malton, and who's in the signal box at Seamer. There's one bloke there who…'
'What about this injector?' I cut in.
'Have a go,' he said. 'See for yourself.'
I turned the wheel of the injector that was on the blink (all engines have two and both have to be working tolerably well since their job is to put water in the boiler, and boiler water is what stands between any engine crew and an explosion). The wheel was stiff, but the injector made the right sort of singing noise, and the water level in the gauges rose without any bother. There was now more steam coming out of the overflow, however.
'Looks worse than it is,' said Tommy, going back to his side. 'You'll have to put a little more rock on, what with the falling pressure. But it's nowt to worry about really.'
'Good thing there's no hills on the way,' I said.
'No hills, no tunnels, nowt. It's that bloody boring.'
'I could never find engine driving boring,' I said.
'I could,' he said.
'When I was on the footplate, it was absolute life to me.'
'Just try doing it for twenty years,' he said, 'then see.'
A clang on the boiler plate from a shed attendant told Tommy he could roll forward onto the turntable. He drove while sitting on the sandbox, to spare his bad leg – and while talking.
'Why d'you pack it in if you were that keen on it?' he asked, before he remembered what the Chief had said. 'Oh aye – your missus. She's the pushing sort, is she? Well, that's all right. You want a lass with a bit of go.'
'You married?' I enquired, leaving off shovelling as we came to rest on the turntable.
'Engaged just last week, Jim,' he said, as we began to revolve. 'Costly business that was: nine carat ring with garnet.'
But he wore no ring himself, of course. Tommy was saying something about how he was pushing fifty now, but it was better late than never and she was a lovely lass. The eyes of every man in the shed were on us as we revolved. It made me feel quite embarrassed.
Then we stopped with a jerk, and were arse-about-face to the shed exit. That was the first surprise, since I'd been banking on us going out forwards. I put the'gear to reverse, and Tommy gave a gentle pull on the regulator while talking about his intended, who was called Joan, who was twenty years younger than him and pretty well placed, being the daughter of the fellow who owned the shop called the Overcoat Depot on Coney Street. I kept up my end of the conversation by asking who made the giant grey coat, about fifteen foot long and covered in bird shit, that hung from the flagpole near the roof of the Depot, and Tommy not only knew the answer, but had a tale to tell about it as well.
However, I left off listening as we came out of the shed into the heart of the railway lands, where the church bells were still ringing, but in colder and darker air. Over the tracks all around us hung red and green lamps, like rows of low stars, and each one meant something. I'd got my living in the middle of this mysterious web for years, but forgotten how it worked, and even Tommy Nugent had to keep silence for a while as he began to pick his way in the J Class.
We first raced backwards towards a pegged signal and a red lamp that I was sure would check us. But we ran on past them, because it turned out they belonged to another track after all. We carried on going through the railway lands just as though aiming for the main 'up' and a run backwards all the way to London. But after clattering over a diagonal mass of tracks we came to a stop, and Tommy indicated for me to put us into forward gear. We were still some way off from the station, and I was interested to see how we'd get into it.
We again clattered over the diagonal mass, this time heading forwards, and Tommy stopped us under the eye of the waterworks signal box, which was five hundred yards in advance of the station on the 'down' side. We then reversed into the echoing, bluish gloom of the great station, and buffered up to the little rake of Scarborough coaches that waited for us on a short platform, Number Ten, with Tommy talking again about what might or might not be waiting for us in the Paradise guest house, just as though what he'd done with the engine was of no account at all.
I wound down the hand brake, leant out, and looked backwards. The coaches we'd backed onto had been brought up from Leeds, for we were about to make the second part of the Leeds-Scarborough run that Blackburn had done in its entirety, owing to the sickness of the York man. Our service, in fact, would be exactly the same as the one he'd worked into Scarborough.
They were a miserable looking lot, the half dozen or so boarding at York for Scarborough – didn't seem to want to drag themselves away from the gaslights of Platform Ten. In summer, Scarborough was a better place to be than York but in winter the scales tipped, and York was better. As the passengers boarded, our train guard climbed down from his van, and came walking up. Had he been briefed by the Chief? Had he buggery. He was a big bloke, with a blank white face behind blank glasses. I half turned away from him, and began shovelling coal as he handed a docket to Tommy. I could tell he was eyeing me, but if Tommy never had the same fireman twice it ought not to signify.
In fact, Tommy didn't even bring up the subject.
'Injector exhaust's playing up worse than usual,' he said to the guard, who might have worked that out for himself, since he was standing in the hot cloud the leak was making. He said nothing as Tommy talked but stood motionless on the platform until his glasses had completely steamed over from the leak. He then turned and walked back to his guard's van.
I left off shovelling when he'd gone, and said to Tommy, 'He's not a York bloke, is he?'
'Les? He lives in Scarborough.'
'Not at the Paradise guest house, I hope?'
'No – he has a flat near the goods station.'
'Quiet sort, en't he?'
'He's half blind is Les White,' said Tommy, as though that was somehow an answer.
He left it to me to look for the 'right away' from the platform guard. Tommy was nattering away as I looked out, and was still nattering when the whistle blew. He did hear it though, because he gave a tug on the regulator, and we started rolling.
'… Half blind,' Tommy repeated in a thoughtful sort of way.
'That's why the traffic office took him off the footplate.'
'He'd been a driver, had he?' I said, and we were making a new noise, owning to being on the iron bridge over the river Ouse, which rolled black under the riverside lamps.
'Passed fireman, Les was, but failed his eye test for driving. So now he's a guard. Just counts the carriages, makes up his dockets… then sits in his van playing chess.'
'Who against?'
'Himself. Seems rum to me – I mean to say, how can you ever win? There again, though, how can you ever lose? Funny thing about those cheaters of his…'
I was counting off the dark landmarks of retreating York: railway laundry, cocoa works, gas works.
'Cheaters?' I said.
'His blinkers.'
'You what?'
'Less glims. Those bloody bins of his…'
'You mean his spectacles?'
Tommy frowned.
'Aye,' he said after a moment, as though the word would just about do at a pinch. 'He got 'em about a year
