boxes on wheels. When they moved there came a buzzing noise that just went on and on. I wanted them to breathe. As we buzzed towards our destination of Notting Hill, I said, 'They often have steam locomotives along here, you know.' She asked why, and I said, 'To rescue the electrics!'
'No!' she gasped. She would not hear of it. She said that, even though it was very good, it was very rattly, and I said that was because the track lengths were too short. She said that she'd read of draughtsmen in a spot called Cheapside who'd been drawing wonky lines ever since it was built, and then she asked: 'Why can they not have tyres like the motor cars?' and I couldn't think of a good answer.
We came to Notting Hill, from where we walked to another station which also turned out to be called Notting Hill, and there took a Metropolitan train to Brompton, where we changed for West Kensington. This was all by steam, and the lines mainly went through brick valleys between the houses, although some of the valleys had roofs. All parts were very smoky, and I couldn't see why they bothered with windows in the carriages since, if you opened one, you'd be choked to death.
'How can this work?' I asked my landlady, 'Steam engines underground?' She said, 'It can't. It will all be electric soon.'
That was one up for her, but I didn't care for these little locomotives in any case. 'You wouldn't get me driving one of these,' I said. 'It would be like being a dog always on the leash.' My landlady told me not to be swanky. I asked where we were going, and she said, 'Timbuctoo.'
It was a mystery tour, but as we rolled in to West Kensington my landlady told me to take a look out of the window, whereupon I saw a huge wheel, three hundred foot high, turning in the sky, with cabins for people to sit in.
'Whatever next?' I said, sitting back down, closer to her than I had been before.
We couldn't ride on the wheel because it was a guinea even for second class. It was like the Necropolis Railway in that there was little difference between second and first except the number on the door. We noticed that both classes were packed with johnnies, and I ventured to say, 'But I've got the prettiest girl of all.' But when I looked at my landlady she seemed not to have heard, which I was glad about.
Underneath the wheel was an Empire exhibition of some sort, with elephants that you could see for free. We had a look at those while drinking ginger beer, then we walked through a pretty Japanese garden decorated with lanterns that was alongside the exhibition, and so returned to the District Railway. As we stepped into our carriage it was dark, and the wheel was still turning above the station with lights burning in every cabin, and the sky around seemed not black but very dark blue.
We were back at Hercules Court for five-thirty. I asked whether she would like to come along to the Citadel. I told her about the mirrors with the electric lights like bunches of grapes, but could not persuade her. I said, could I go and get some bottled beer, and we could continue talking in the kitchen, so she made tea while I did that. The fire was going when I came back, and her hair was somehow different and even more fetching. When I finished my beer she just came over and sat on my knee, and I kissed her until she had to return to her father. As she rose to her feet I think I made a pretty good show of looking as if I had done that sort of thing a hundred times before.
But when she'd gone it was as if I'd always been alone in the lodge, and had never had anything in my thoughts but the half-link and the mutual improvement class they had arranged for me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Monday 21 December
At five to eight in the evening, I clocked off, not at all liking the way Crook took the token from me, looked at his clock, and followed his note of the time with a full stop stabbed into his ledger with a force fit to break his nib. Then, instead of leaving the yard, I walked back into it, heading for the blind house that guarded the Old Shed, stepping over half of the twenty-three roads with my boots going into shaking puddles between the tracks and the rain blasting across my face. As I approached the mutual improvement class, I thought of that left-behind house as nothing more than an enormous, infernal well-head, where, once through the door, you would roll over in air and plummet instantly to the bottom of a mile-deep black hole.
The Old Shed itself was more fearful still, but if you are destined to shine there are some things that you must do, and you always know what they are. I had thought of splitting to the Governor, but in that case all the half thought of me would be true, so the matter could not be handled like that. I had to find out their programme.
It was eight o'clock when I entered the Old Shed. I walked into that locomotive graveyard holding a bull's-eye lantern. The rain didn't stop hitting me when I stepped under the roof of the shed, but just whirled about the broken engines in a strange way. Who was the man who came over and wrote the numbers in chalk on the boilers and buffer beams, and why did he do it? How could there be improvement of any sort in this place? But there was one thing that gleamed, and I glimpsed it on a pile of ash straightaway. Picking the thing up, I saw that it was the weighty brass handle of an engine brake, brought to a beautiful finish, but for no reason. Well, it would come in handy if I had to crown somebody. I slid it into my coat pocket, where it fitted snugly from wrist to elbow, and walked on. At the top of the shed I struck some wooden lean-tos that were mainly smashed, but there was one brick building a little more solid than the others; it even had a door. I lifted the latch and walked in. There was a table, and I put my lantern down upon this, from where it shone onto a wooden model showing the workings of the motion of a locomotive. I turned the lamp and saw a chimney breast of crumbling black bricks, then some dusty bookshelves. I walked closer to these with my lamp in my hand. They had Continuous Engine Brakes by Reynolds, of course – about a dozen editions of it. I saw also Power in Motion, Fuel: Its Combustion and Economy and The Correct Use of Steam, along with books that seemed to have no connection with railways – Well Digging, Boring and Pump Work, Practical Organ Building – and others even further off the mark, such as Fabian Essays by George Bernard Shaw, King Lear by Shakespeare, and the works of Dickens.
Turning back to the table, I spotted two candle ends. I lit these from my lantern, causing enormous posters on the walls to leap out at me: 'Every Member Shall Obey the Chairman', I read; 'No Member Shall Ridicule Another On Account of Lack of Knowledge'; 'Smoke Is Waste'. On the table I also saw papers headed 'A. S. L. E. amp; F.' – this was the name of the union. They had it in some sheds and not in others -1 didn't think it had got into Nine Elms. I picked up one of the papers and shone my light on to it: 'Fellow Members,' it began, 'It is my most painful duty to inform you that our worthy and respected General Secretary passed away from this mortal flesh at about 2 p.m., 20th September 1901…'
Just as I was putting the paper down, I heard a mighty clang, and all the breath stopped on my lips. I walked towards the door, and there came another clang, then a third and a fourth, like a bell ringing in an abandoned church. I came out of the brick hut and shone my lamp down one of the middle roads. Nothing but a line of broken locos on either side of the beam, but the clanging carried on. I walked a little further across the top of the shed, and tried my lamp down another line. Nothing again but the noise. It was getting louder, and the clangs were becoming more frequent.
I tried yet a third road, and there they were: the men of the half-link, with a couple of others besides, were approaching. They were little more than shadows behind their lamps, but I was able to make out that the smallest of them, Vincent, was carrying a metal bar of his own, with which he was striking the broken engines as he advanced in a line with his fellows. As I watched, a gust coming through a hole in the wall pulled all their coats to the right.
I turned back towards the little room, and stood at the door, listening to the banging of Vincent's metal, which made different sounds, like slow, monstrous music, according to whether it was striking an old boiler or something solid such as a pair of buffers, but which was becoming more deafening by the second, all the same. It was as though a slow train crash was happening all around me.
Arthur Hunt and his little gang were all out to get me, and it made no difference that Rowland Smith had died. They knew of the note he had written to me, and of the one I had written back. They knew I knew they had done for Henry Taylor and Mike: Taylor was killed because he was Rowland Smith's man, and had done something to rile one or all of them, and Mike knew what had happened to Henry Taylor so he had to go too. Then they had got round to the source of all their troubles, which was Smith himself, and they were certain I knew what they had done: they had taken paraffin from Nine Elms and they had burned him in his own flat. This explained all, and as
