'Stow it, Tommy,' I said. 'Police don't go armed in this country… Does the Chief know you've brought all this ironmongery?'
'Why else would he send me?'
That might be right.
And as we rattled on through the night, I saw that in Tommy's eyes this gun – or these guns – made up for his crocked leg; gave him a value in this world that he didn't seem to get from driving an engine. The guns were the reason he'd come, and it was just like the Chief to have packed me off with someone like Tommy; part of his game of keeping me always on the jump. I was his favourite all right, but I paid the bloody price for it.
'Look, this is a fishing trip, Tommy,' I said. 'Do you know what that means? We go in and keep our eyes skinned. I come back and write a report saying whether further questioning is required. There ought to be no bother. We ought to be perfectly all right.'
'Ought to be?' he said. 'With these beauties, it's a surety. You know the firing positions, I suppose? There's standing…'
And he shouldered the weapon, with the dark streets of Malton rolling behind.
'Kneeling…'
At that, he did kneel down and aimed the gun in all the black dust of the footplate. I ought to stop him. Apart from anything else, the Chief had shown me the firing positions more than once, in hopes of getting me to take up shooting as a benefit to myself, the railway company I worked for, and the country I lived in.
'… And prone.'
Tommy baulked at that one, but I could tell he'd been contemplating lying flat to show me the third firing position. He was now stowing the rifle in the kit bag again. It appeared that he kept them wrapped in his clothes, towel, night-shirt; fairly buried they were by the time he'd finished. He then shut the locker door smartly, for Malton was coming up.
Three minutes later we were at a stand in the empty station. It was 6.35 p.m., but you'd have thought it was midnight. Of train guard Leslie White there was no sign. A couple of people had boarded, one had alighted, and we were waiting for our starter signal and the whistle of the platform guard, who stood a little way off with hands clasped and head bowed as though someone had lately died.
The signal gave a jerk, the platform guard looked up, and we were off. Tommy didn't wait for the whistle. For all that he seemed the most amiable of blokes, the business with the gun had set me thinking he was a bit crackers.
With one hand on the regulator, he was talking now about how he hadn't told Joan, his intended, what he would be about in Scarborough; how he'd tell her after the event, on Wednesday, when they were going to the Electric Theatre on Fossgate; how they reserved seats for every Wednesday; how you could get ninepenny seats for sixpence if you reserved but no seats there were very comfortable, which was why for preference they'd go to the City Picture Palace on Fishergate, only it wasn't possible to reserve there so you had to take pot luck, which was no use because Joan always wanted an aisle seat, not on her own account but so that he, Tommy, could stretch out his leg – this even though he always said he didn't care where he sat. 'The leg does not stretch out, and that's all about it,' he told me, before embarking on a further speech about how he was looking for a house over Holgate way to move into with Joan… and presently we were approaching Scarborough.
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.
