my hand down, and there was a sticky dampness to it. I could not make out its colour but I knew it to be blood; when dampness comes out of nowhere it is generally safe to assume the worst – to assume that it is blood.
My headache was no worse, anyhow. If anything, I fancied that it was easing, and it had been a while since I'd had one of the electrical flashes. But I wanted badly to get warm. I sat up and put the oilskin more tightly around me. The rise and fall of the ship had become a gentle rocking, a soft swinging, nurserylike. I thought of the wife. Was it true, as I suspected, that she would no longer carry her basket down the main street of Thorpe-on-Ouse in case Robert Henderson should see her about her marketing, and think her low class for not having a servant to do it for her? I could picture Lydia very clearly both with and without basket in the middle of Thorpe, which was proof that my memory was returning. It also seemed to me that there was nothing to choose between the two mental pictures. I had been a fool to fret about Henderson – my anxiety had come from having no graver matter to worry about. I would go back to Thorpe and I would have it all out with Lydia, and if it came to it I would go up to his big house with the stone owl sitting over the door, and I would clout Henderson. Furthermore, I would not be a solicitor, because I did not want to be a solicitor. Even at thirty I was too old and the change of life was too great, and the lawyers were at the shameful end of railway work. It seemed to me, as I sat in that rolling black iron prison, that I had gone to Paradise looking for trouble and hardly wanting to come back because my future, although apparently promising, had been taken out of my own hands. But I would return to York and I would reclaim my future, and if I didn't then I would take a bullet, and there would be nothing between these two outcomes of my present fix.
… Yet while the image of Lydia in Thorpe was clear in my mind, I could still not recall the end of my time in Paradise; and how could my future be contemplated until I had done that? My memory of the final events was lost in a jumble of over-heated rooms propped high above a black sea – a sea that was never still, but that came on in a way somehow un-natural, like a crawling black field.
I lay still; began once more to shiver. I might have slept again in spite of the shivering, and presently, there came a disturbance in the iron room. I could not say what had caused it, but something had changed. All was still again, and I kicked out at the nearest chain link, and it was as though the thing had nerves and had taken umbrage at this, for the part that ran up through the hole shivered for a second, and then the great snake began racing upwards through that hole, making a breakaway with a tremendous, deafening roar that forced me to clap my hands to my ears and move to the furthest corner of my cell.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When I awoke the lighthouse beam was off, and all was grey along the front. Throwing the bed clothes aside and moving rapidly towards the window I thought some calamity had occurred, but it was just an early winter's morning in Scarborough. There came a knock at the door.
'Yes,' I said.
'Yer tea,' said Adam Rickerby.
'Morning,' I said, opening the door – and he passed me an enamel tray with tea things set out on it. My boots, highly polished, were strung by the laces about his neck. These he set down just inside the door, together with a big jug of hot water for shaving. He'd carried the tray in one hand, and the jug in the other. He was dressed as before, in the long apron, but his hair had grown a little wilder in the night.
'Do you know what time it is?' I enquired.
'I bring t'tea at seven o'clock.'
I had forgotten our arrangement.
'You bring the tea at seven, therefore it is seven o'clock,' I said, putting the tray down on the bed.
'Put it on t'table,' he said, and just for a quiet life I did so.
'Did you sleep well?' I enquired, because I was determined to discover more about this queer bloke.
'I've ter be off down now,' he said. 'I've t'breakfasts to do.'
I had a topping sleep,' I said,'… only the fire smoked a little.' 'I'll tek a broom 'andle ter t'chimney,' he said.
'Do you know why it smoked?'
'Gulls,' he said. 'They nest in chimneys.'
'But it's only March,' I said.
'… Don't follow yer,' he said.
'Gulls don't nest until April or so. I was born in a sea-side town so I know.'
He eyed me for a while.
'Could be last year's,' he said, very rapidly.
'But has no-one else complained of a smoking chimney in this room? Did the fellow Blackburn not complain?'
'Who?'
'Blackburn. You might remember him. He was the one that vanished into thin air while staying here.'
'E did not.'
'Didn't vanish?'
Adam Rickerby took a deep sigh, for all the world as though I was the simpleton and not him.
'E med no complaint!
I took a sip of the tea. It was perfectly good.
'I'm obliged to you,' I said.
'Are yer after a reduction in t'rent?' he enquired anxiously. '… Want yer money back, like?'
'No, why ever do you ask that?'
'I asked yer,' he said, more slowly, and once again giving that flash of unexpected intelligence, 'because I wanted ter know!
So saying he turned about and marched back down to the kitchen. I then moved the jug over to the wash stand, and I had all on to lift it with two hands let alone one. After a shave and sluice-down, I went down to breakfast, which was taken at the kitchen table – apparently this was how it was done in winter.
Amanda Rickerby was there, which surprised me at that early hour. Then again she was reading a novel and sipping tea rather than doing any of the breakfast chores. These had evidently all been left to Adam Rickerby, who was moving plenty of pots and pans about at the range. The landlady glanced up and gave a sly smile by way of saying good morning. She was more beautiful than was needful at breakfast. Over-opposite her – and with his back to me – was Fielding, wearing a fairly smart black suit and very carefully finishing a kipper.
'Morning!' he said, taking a bit of bread to the few remaining specks. 'Sleep well, Mr Stringer?'
'Yes thanks, 'I said. 'You?'
'Very well indeed.'
'I didn't notice the storm, if there was one.'
'Hardly anyone's out from the harbour,' he said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, 'so I think it's still in prospect.'
'Where's Mr Vaughan?' I asked, and the answer came from Adam Rickerby, who was eyeing me steadily from the range.
'E gets up late,' he said.
'His money came this morning,' Amanda Rickerby put in, 'so I don't think we'll be seeing much of him today.'
She indicated a letter propped up against the knife sharpener. It was addressed to Theodore Vaughan.
'You'll be for the Scarborough engine shed then,' Fielding said, 'and the run back to York.'
'Dare say. If the loco's fixed we'll run it back light engine. That means…'
'I know,' Fielding put in. 'Without carriages.'
I didn't like it that he knew.
'If I know those gentry, they won't want to keep an engine idle for more than a day,' he said.
'Those gentry?'
'The engineers of the North Eastern Railway.'
