The Governor took a box of cigars from his pocket. 'A can of paraffin.' 'That's not in the paper.' 'They don't let on that they know that kind of thing. He was done in' he said, taking a cigar from the box. 'Will there be a police investigation?' 'There will if I can help it' he said.
We strolled over the barrow boards, further away from Twenty-Nine. We both looked about to see whether Vincent and Rose were watching us, but Rose had gone underneath and Vincent was at his fire. There were engines coming off-shed all about us, and I had the sensation of many other men turning around on their footplates to keep me in view for as long as possible.
'Smith told me he believed Henry Taylor was murdered,' said the Governor. He lit the cigar, and neither one of us spoke for quite a while. 'He had the idea that you were a bright spark' he said, blowing smoke.
'I was sent here to be his eyes and ears,' I said quite suddenly. The Governor nodded once. 'Why didn't he tell me that's what he was about?' I said. 'I expect… Because then you would have known.'
Crook the gatekeeper was prowling past us. The Governor smoked for a little while longer, looking across to Twenty-Nine, which was doing the same. 'As from this morning,' he said, 'Vincent is firing on the half-link. I couldn't keep him off any longer.'
'Why were you keeping him off to begin with, Mr Nightingale?'
'Because I didn't like him; I was obliged to give him a few firing turns, but I wanted him in the shed as much as possible where I could watch him.' 'He's Hunt's nephew, isn't he?'
The Governor nodded. 'But Taylor and Mike were brought on by myself – well, it was Mr Smith's doing, really. He wanted to change the way things went on here, with any engine man thinking he could get a start for his own grandmother if he wanted. We were worried over what happened to Taylor, and told the investigators so, although we could never prove anything. But we also told them we were set on not going back to how things were. Any new lad corning in would have to be from outside, otherwise… well, they'd have won the day, wouldn't they?' 'So that's how I got my start.' 'I expect that now you know, it all seems a bit heartless,' said the Governor after a while. 'I was to be a sort of spy.'
'I was under instructions to watch out for you on-shed,' he said, 'but also to let you see as much as possible of the half-link off-shed, where their tongues might be a bit looser, so that meant getting you on a few trips with them. I knew Mr Smith had it in mind to quiz you, and when Mike got bashed he said it was going to be done directly, but I don't suppose he had the time until he came to write you that note.'
'How could Mr Smith control so much here, Mr Nightingale, after he'd left the South Western?'
'It was his aim always to come back. Our lot were only lending him to the Necropolis, so to speak.' 'Why exactly is Mr Hunt on the half-link?' The Governor drew on his cigar.
'Because he's a fucking socialist, and you've always got to watch out for those fellows.' He was smoking and smiling at the same time, which made a strange sight. 'Hunt ran the strike here in 1901, so they cut him down to size.' 'Who's they?'
'Who's they? Rowland Smith, giving orders to the District Locomotive Superintendent, with a little help from myself, I don't mind admitting.'
He gave me time to let all this sensational stuff sink in, then he said, 'Now look, the shed's not safe for you and I want you out. There's going to be a bit of a paper war over it, but I can get you a start in any station on the territory.' 'You mean I'll be back portering?' I said. 'Nothing's fixed up' he said.
One of the Atlantics came out alongside us under steam, sending out a mass of blackness. 'I'll have that bastard' said the Governor, eyeing the chimney.
Why did I not take the chance to flee? I did not want to go back to portering, but there again I could see the moving shadow coming for me, and present in my mind always was the cemetery, with the railway on hand to take me there on a one-way ride. It was better to be a porter imprisoned in a too-tight, over-decorated waistcoat than to take that trip before my time. But I now somehow knew that all these horrors had always been waiting for me, because becoming an engine man was no mere matter of book learning. Engine men, I could not deny, looked different from me, and they looked different because they had been through just such a thing as this. This was the life of London and the life of men, where threats and fears came, and they had to be stood down. 'I'd rather stick at the job' I said.
'All right' said the Governor. 'For now you can, but watch out.' He smoked, watching me for a while with a shrewd look. 'Can I go up with Rose and Vincent today?'
I thought there would be long odds against this, but the Governor just shrugged: 'Don't see what harm you can come to on a jaunt like that – the entire board of the Necropolis is going along from what I've heard. You'll need a ribbon, though.' He meant a black one. 1 can tear up some rag,' I said.
'I nearly forgot to ask' he called to me with smoke tumbling from his mouth as I set off for the rag store, 'have you got any notions about all this business?'
'No,' I called back, because it seemed the best answer at the time. 'I can't think who did for Taylor, Mike and Smith, and,' I added, 'I don't know who murdered Sir John Rickerby of the Necropolis Company either.'
Now it was the Governor's turn for a shock, and I fancied there was greyness mingled in with the redness of his face. 'Oh Christ, let's leave him out of it,' he said.
I walked off to the rag store revolving two thoughts: that Rowland Smith had given me a shot at the footplate, and that I now knew for certain that he had also put me in a very dangerous spot and used me as a spy. I did not give much time to mourning that gentleman.
Chapter Nineteen
Thursday 17 December continued
I came back from the rag room with a blackish ribbon – or rag, if you were going to be particular – on my arm. The Governor took me up onto the footplate of Twenty-Nine, and there was no trouble as we picked up just two from the funeral set: a passenger carriage and a hearse. As we came into the Necropolis, Rose was half driving, half reading the paper, and every so often exclaiming, 'Oh, my eye,' at some new sporting sensation. Vincent was swanking at his regulator and fire, keeping the pressure at dead on 180 per square inch, which was the right mark for Twenty-Nine. I was staring at them both without minding if they knew it.
We backed into the Necropolis station, where a small crowd waited on the platform, all in fine black coats and toppers. They were all men and looked like a lot of ravens, but one of the ravens had the lined and worried head of Erskine Long, the Necropolis chairman. I watched the coffin come along after the last of the mourners had climbed up. Smith's coffin was as exquisite as his coats. It had panelling, fancy handles and a mass of hothouse flowers on top, and I could tell the Necropolis bearers – not Saturday Night Mack's gang, but a smarter-looking lot – were struggling with the weight of it, even though I guessed there would be little of the man himself left inside. The door marked 'first' was opened to receive the casket.
When I went back onto the footplate, Vincent was at his fire again, and Rose was putting something back in the box under his seat. I had seen him do that before.
Vincent put coal on as I hosed down the cab. After being given the off, Rose settled down to smoking his pipe and driving, both of which he did very badly, knocking ash everywhere and repeatedly relighting his pipe, and jabbing on the vacuum brake instead of brushing it on in the approved way. So we made jerky progress as we passed through the signals and speed limits of the Southern Division.
As we came to the edge of the city, I ran out of jobs to do on the footplate and looked at the passing scenery while a million questions raced through my head. It was a queer business, travelling south of London. The countryside, when it came, was of a very pretty sort, although more comfortable than I was used to, with bright green fields, churches covered in ivy and winding, dusty lanes with tempting inns dotted along the way. But there was no end of building taking place, and you'd get whole streets going up in the middle of fields. You could never quite say that London had finished, and it was vexing because you thought it ought to.
Towards Brookwood, I thought London had really given up the ghost, but then we suddenly rose out of a cutting and I looked down into a wood and saw men with axes and machines steaming away. London, according to the Necropolis idea, could not hold all of its dead, but it could not hold all of its living either, so it had to be ever restless, ever growing.
After a lot of fussing about from Rose, we were into the Necropolis running, bunker-end first, along the single
