or thereabouts'. It's the Lady's way.'
I couldn't tell whether he was cross about it, or just making fun.
'What did you say was wrong with your engine, old man?' enquired Vaughan, who'd evidently had the tale from Miss Rickerby.
'Leaking injector steam valve,' I said.
'Doesn't sound too bad. Couldn't you sort of wind a rag around the blinking thing?'
'There were other things up with it as well,' I said.
'Like what, Jim?' said Vaughan, as Fielding looked on smiling.
I thought: Are these two in league?
'Oh,' I said, 'stiff fire hole door… some clanking in the motions.'
'You know, I think I've had that…' said Vaughan.
Fielding shook his head at me, as if to say: 'Whatever are we to do with him?'
'You worked on the railways, you say?' I asked Vaughan.
'After a fashion. Tell you about it over a pint, if you like?'
This was a bit sudden.
'Where?' I said, feeling rather knocked.
'I know a decent place in the Old Town.'
I was thinking: What is he? Alcoholic? Because we'd barely met.
'I generally take a pint before supper,' he said.
Howard Fielding had turned towards the window and gone dreamy again. There seemed no question of him coming along.
'Hold on then,' I said to Vaughan. 'I'll just get my coat.'
'Meet you in the hallway in two minutes,' he said, and it seemed he meant to remain in the room with Fielding until then.
Besides fetching my coat I would change my shirt and put on my tie in place of my necker. This way, I'd be able to hold my own at supper, which was to be supper after all, and not 'tea'.
As soon as I stepped from the sitting room, the door closed behind me.
Who had closed it?
Odds-on it had been Fielding, except that he had been over by the windows, and furthest off.
I climbed the narrow stairs between the faded green stripes. The stair gas made more noise than light – a constant, rasping exhaling. Bronchitic. It troubled me somehow, and here came the old man, glaring from under his curls. He ought to have been happy with hair like that. I reached the attic storey, pushed open the door of my room, and I was checked by a sharp bang.
By the low, red light of the oil lamp I saw what had happened: the card had once again fallen from the window frame, and a surge of sea wind had hurled itself at the glass. I sat down on the bed, inched along towards the end of it, and jammed in the card once more. Coming away from the window, I swung my legs in such a way that my boots clattered against the first of the two scuttles on the hearth – the one that held the kindling and paper – and knocked it over, spilling the papers.
There were many folded sheets from the Scarborough Post. 'Yesterday the sea was black with bathers,' I read, under the heading 'Shortage of Lifeguards Complained Of. The paper was dated Tuesday, 25 August. There were also handwritten papers headed 'Menu'. The first offered a choice of celery soup or shrimp paste and biscuits; then beef and macaroni stew could be had, or cottage pie. No date was given, but just the word 'Wednesday'.
I looked down again, and saw another piece of paper – this one printed – and it looked familiar. It was a fragment torn from a booklet I'd often seen but never owned: the rule book for North Eastern company engine men. I reached down slowly, and with shaking hand caught it up: 'On Arriving at the Shed', I read. And then, beneath this heading, 'On arriving at the shed, your engine requires to be thoroughly examined.'
Was it Blackburn's? Had this been his room? I thought of his black eyes reading it. Or had they had another engine man in since? If it was Blackburn's property, how did it come to be in the scuttle?
I began to put the papers back, including the torn page from the rule book, but I was checked by a further discovery: a thin item, small, brown and reduced almost to the condition of scrap paper, but still recognisably a cigar stub. According to Tommy Nugent, the limit of Blackburn's vices was the smoking of the odd cigar.
I sat still and heard only the eternal sighing of the gas from the landing beyond; I looked at the wallpaper: the ship in danger over and over again. I thought of Blackburn. Surely he was at the bottom of the sea.
I sat breathing deeply on the bed, telling myself that I could breathe whereas Blackburn could not. That was the main difference between the two of us. I thought of the Chief, who had sent me to this old, faded house and its queer inhabitants. Who, I wondered again, was the man the Chief had been talking to in the station when I'd come down from the tram?
I quickly changed my shirt and fixed the smarter of my two neckers in place without aid of a mirror. I stepped out of my room and was confronted by the cupboard door over-opposite. The man Vaughan would be waiting in the hallway but…
I pulled at the little door. At first, it wouldn't come. I tried again, and it flew open. The gas was saying 'Shuuuuush' as I looked down to see a crumpled paper sack: 'Soda 6d' read the label. There was a bottle of ammonia, a beetle trap. Propped against the wall a shrimp net with a long, uncommonly stout handle, two faded sunshades, two folded wooden chairs. I closed the door feeling daft for having opened it. What had I expected to find? The bleached bones of fireman Blackburn?
In the hallway, Miss Rickerby waited instead of Vaughan. She looked very grave, standing sideways before the front door, under the old glass of the fanlight, with arms folded. She turned and saw me, and slowly and surely she began to smile. She seemed to find great amusement and delight in the way we kept coinciding about the place, like two holiday makers repeatedly clashing in a maze. Vaughan now appeared from the side of the stairs, with coat over his arm, and hat in hand.
'Old Jim and I are just off for a quick pint, Miss R,' he said.
'We keep a barrel of beer in the scullery so that the gentlemen don't have to bother,' Miss Rickerby said, addressing me directly as before.
'But it's the Two X,' said Vaughan, putting on a brown bowler, 'and I generally go for the Four. Besides, I like a smoke with my glass of beer.'
'I don't mind smoking in the least,' said Miss Rickerby, again addressing me even though it was Vaughan who'd spoken. 'I like to watch it.'
It wasn't a coat that Vaughan was putting on, but an Inverness cape, and he'd acquired from somewhere a paper package.
'Shall I hold that for you?' said Miss Rickerby, indicating the package. 'That way you'll be able to use your arms.'
Vaughan clean ignored her, but just carried on wrestling with the cape.
'What about the lifeboat?' Miss Rickerby asked him.
'They've got it into the water,' he said, the cape now positioned about his shoulders.
'Well,' said Miss Rickerby, 'I suppose that's a start.'
She was responding to Vaughan, but she addressed the remark, and the accompanying smile, at me. With the cape on, Vaughan looked like a cross between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Theatrical, anyhow. He was trying his best to stuff the package into the pocket of the cape, but it wouldn't go. Meanwhile Miss Rickerby had taken a step towards me. I thought: There's nothing for it but to reach out and touch her. Begin with the hair. It was a little way in her eyes. Move it aside. That would be only polite…
'Goodbye, you two,' she said, reaching out and opening the door for us. 'Don't be late back.'
And in spite of that word 'two', she'd again looked only at me.
Chapter Eighteen
We turned right at the top of Bright's Cliff, and were soon walking along the narrow cobbled lanes of the Scarborough Old Town. The gas lamps showed lobster pots, upturned boats and other bits of fishing paraphernalia
