Arthur Crawshaw wanted him to listen to his lines as he prepared for his performances of Shakespeare or Mr Dickens, and so that Jack could follow his script he had taught him to read, and write too, when he was little. He could also add up and count and occasionally at the smaller theatres he would help to tally the takings in the box office by stacking the coins. I’m a very useful boy, he thought. Everybody says so. He was allowed to paint the scenery and show people to their seats, and because he was so very useful nobody seemed to notice that he should have been at school.
Mmm, he mused. I might change my name. But to what? What name should I choose? A theatrical name maybe, or …? Deny your father and refuse your name – I don’t know if it’s my father’s name, but I don’t like it when it’s made into a joke. He closed his eyes. The swaying of the train made him sleepy. He hadn’t slept much. Mrs Andrews’ third best bed was very lumpy and narrow and his mother had tossed about; he thought that he’d heard her crying during the night but then she’d turned to him and put her arms around him, just as she used to when he was very little, and murmured something like ‘I’m sorry, Jack’, and then he’d fallen asleep.
She was shaking him by the shoulder as they steamed into the Hull station. ‘Come on. Wake up. We’ll have to rush to catch our connection. It’s the last train.’
She left the trunk containing her stage costumes in the left luggage office and only carried one bag, which he thought meant that they wouldn’t be staying long in this place called Paull. He wondered why they had come, particularly as she’d said they might not be welcome.
They dashed to another platform where a much smaller train was hissing up a head of steam. ‘Come on, missus,’ a porter called to them as they ran. ‘Driver wants to get home for his supper.’
‘This is the Hedon train, isn’t it?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Aye, that it is. Hull and Holderness line. Last train tonight. Sit where you like; there’s plenty o’ seats.’
They moved off almost immediately and Delia eased off her shoes, exchanging them for a pair of well-worn boots from her bag. ‘We’ve got a two-mile walk when we get off,’ she told him, and peered out of the train window. ‘It’s dark and cold but at least it’s not raining.’
‘I’m tired,’ he whined. ‘Can’t we get a cab, or an omnibus?’ She smiled whimsically and shook her head. ‘No cabriolets where we’re going, Jack, except maybe private ones, and no bus either. If we’re lucky we might get a ride on a wagon or a carrier cart, but more than likely it’ll be shanks’s pony.’
‘Aw! We’ve been travelling for ever!’
‘No we haven’t. It just feels like it.’
‘You said they might not let us stay.’ He looked out of the window into the darkness and saw the dim street lamps briefly shed light on roads and houses as the train rushed out of town. ‘Southcoates … Marfleet …’ he murmured after a while. ‘Nobody getting on.’
‘We’re ’next stop,’ she said eventually. ‘Then the train goes on to Patrington and Withernsea, where it stops. It’ll come back in the morning.’ She fished about in her bag again and consulted a timetable, then pressed her lips together and replaced it in the bag.
‘What’ll we do if they won’t let us stay?’
She didn’t answer at first and just shook her head, and then she muttered, ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t ask again.
‘Can you remember the way?’ They had left a deserted Hedon station and were walking towards the town down a long cobbled road. It was bitterly cold and quite dark with only a few street lamps and windows to light their way, but he saw small cottages on one side of the road and much grander ones on the other. A man leading a horse from the opposite direction touched his cap to his mother. ‘It’s a long time since you were last here, isn’t it, Mother? Or did we come when I was a baby and I don’t remember?’
‘I know the way,’ she said, and turned to tuck his woollen scarf into the neck of his jacket and pull his cap over his ears. ‘Nothing much changes round here.’
A grocery shop was open in the main square and they went inside and bought two currant buns, two scones and a bag of broken chocolate. The woman behind the counter reduced the price of the buns and scones as she said they had been baked early that morning and might be dry. ‘They’ll fill a corner,’ she said, smiling at Jack.
They continued on down the main street through the town, passing inns, butchers, haberdashers and a police station, and then crossed another road, leaving buildings and gas lights behind and continuing on a much longer, darker road. ‘It’s pitch black!’ he said. ‘Are you sure this is the right way? We won’t fall in the river, will we?’
‘No.’ His mother gave a brief laugh. ‘We won’t. We’re a long way off the river, though we’ll cross over a bridge that goes over the haven in a few minutes. Big ships used to come up the haven in the old days, but it’s silted up now and isn’t much more than a stream. Look further up on the right; can you see those lights through the
