for Sir John Rickerby… well, that old gent could be put out of the picture, for he was an old crock who had fallen over at Brookwood and there was an end to it. I moved across the back of the shed, away from the road down which the half-link was coming, and somehow I struck my lantern against something. The buffer of a locomotive? I couldn't see. I couldn't see anything, for my part of the shed was in darkness now, which was the way it was always meant to be. Among the fearful banging there came a cry: 'There he is!' And at that, there was not a particle of fear left in me, but just the need to run. I flung down the useless lantern and hared straight into a metal wall. I had struck the side of an engine, and done so head first. My mouth was all blood, and I spat and spat, and still it came.
The clattering was everywhere, now, and in among it were cries I couldn't make out. I wanted more light and less noise. I whirled about and darted forwards again, this time with my hands out before me, but they struck an engine soon enough. I turned again, turning about and about, trying to finish so that I was facing the black mouth of the shed where the rain and the night waited. But whenever I moved forwards I touched an engine. The whole shed seemed to have been picked up and turned about, so that the locomotives were set across my path to the entrance. But that couldn't be – I had simply faced the wrong direction twice.
The half-link were spreading out; I could see the flashes from their lamps, and the banging… It seemed they were all at it, and I knew this was how they did their murders: as though they were playing a game. I thought I would go distracted with funk, yet I wheeled about for the third time and began to make my run.
I ran hard with my hands out, and as I ran I realised that the banging had stopped, but that that was not good. At any moment the stick would be smashed into my face. No, some sixty tonner would fly forwards to check me, and what good would my brake handle be against either? The banging of the half-link men and their strange cries had stopped, and everybody, it seemed, was waiting for my smash. I ran and I ran, with my arms out to the side of me now, skimming two rows of engines, keeping them in their place, parallel with my running and not against me. I came out of the shed into the freedom of the rainy night, with the fires and the lamps of the yard. That wasn't a safe place for me either, though, so I kept on running.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Thursday 24 December
The day after the mutual improvement class that never was, I lay low in my room, reading the notes in my Lett's diary and waiting, revolving in my mind the Christmas plan I had made in the Governor's room after Smith's funeral. My engine brake handle was at all times on the mantelshelf. I didn't fancy even walking in Lower Marsh, mainly because it had suddenly come to me that there was nothing keeping the half-link in Nine Elms. I had no doubt that they had meant to put the kybosh on me and would do so again at the first chance they got. Down there, among the wild, big-booted fellows, they could twist me in broad daylight.
On Christmas Eve, my landlady unexpectedly appeared with a small cake, which I thought proved she was my girl, although it was a shame for her to have chosen such a milksop. We ate the cake in the kitchen before a straggly fire, with the washing – which she said she was anxious to get out of the way – boiling merrily behind her. There was some holly resting on the tins on the mantelpiece. She told me she had been distributing notices about her spare room all around Waterloo, and that the terms were now being advertised as 'extremely moderate', and it was down to half a minute from the station. We finished the cake and I opened a bottle of beer. She stood up and walked over to the chimney piece. There was an envelope alongside the tins and holly; she stared at it for a while, then caught it up and gave it to me. On the front it said: 'Mr Stringer'. 'Is it for me?' I said, and she rolled her eyes to heaven.
It was a Christmas card showing a signal man in his signal box. He was being brought a hot punch or some like drink by a little girl, and there was snow all around. Inside, the card said 'With fond wishes for a merry Christmas', underneath which my landlady had written, 'Merry Christmas, Mr Stringer', and signed it with her name, which was Lydia. I was quite struck dumb for a moment; I began to say that I would keep this for ever, and to apologise for not having got her a card, but she would not let me speak, and instead asked me what the biggest difference was between London and Bay.
I said no stars in the sky in London, and she liked that, I could tell. She asked – I fancied a little anxiously – whether I would like to go back to Yorkshire, and in doing so she hit on the very thing I'd been thinking of as the only thing to do if my last plan failed. 'I would go,' I said, 'if you would come with me.'
When the words were out I could not believe I had said them.
My landlady stood up and said, 'Oh', and I made to stand up too, and all was confusion for a second. Presently, though, we were both back sitting down, and she said, in a curious tone, 'So you're half on a half- link?'
I said that that was it exactly, and explained as best I could about links, of which there were many, and half links, of which there was only one. I added that I might soon be leaving it.
'Maybe your half-link can join up with another half link and become a whole link?' she said. She didn't know very much about railways, but she looked very good, and there ought to have been some way of doing something about it, especially since this was Christmas. But after only a moment or two of spooning, she went off to her father's place, from where she would be going on to church.
Afterwards, I could not return to my room; those moments with my landlady had galvanised me into acting in a more manly way. I had a pound in my pocket book and some coppers besides. I would brave the street, with a pint at the Citadel as my prize.
It was a cold but clear night and I actually spied two or three stars in the sky, which was a lot for London. I thought: I can see them because it's Christmas. And there were no low types in the street, and I thought that in this case the reverse was true: they had been removed from my sight because it was Christmas.
The Citadel was full of orange light, galloping piano music – 'Hold Your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy' – and advertisements for beef, plum pudding and special beers. Everybody was already having a jolly time of it, and I thought: if everybody is saturated now, what will they be like by the end of the evening? But it was amazing how some people in London could keep it up. There weren't any Christmas decorations as such that I could see, but with the fancy white electric lights, the big rippling fire and red-faced people, there might have been a thousand.
I walked with my beer towards the Comfortable Corner, but there was a man already there with a small glass. He was very large and sad, and was talking to himself in an under-breath. It was Stanley, the man who gave the address at the Necropolis in favour of extra manure, or whatever it was. As a barmaid came up to take the glass, he looked up, and his golden eyes flooded with sadness. The cause was lost, by the looks of him. Then he stood to hunt in his pockets for money and I went off to hunt for a seat in another part of the pub, but, not finding one, drunk two pints standing up.
I walked out of the Citadel at nine o'clock. Three little girls were hopping and twirling next to a barrel organ playing a Christmas tune. There was a goods train going over the viaduct, and the driver had slowed down to a sauntering pace as though he too was watching the dance.
I walked to the music hall on Westminster Bridge Road, and paid 3d to go into the stalls and see some Christmas joys, or something of the kind. Inside the theatre, all the gas lights were seething and shaking, and there was ivy on most of them. The roof was pink and blue – it seemed to sag like the roof of a tent – and there were posters everywhere announcing 'A Bioscope: The Latest Events from All Around the World'. I knew the bioscope would come on at the end; it was what I really wanted to see because it was up-to-date, and I would be able to tell my landlady all about it.
Meanwhile, an old man in a long coat was standing on the stage, with a painting of a Christmassy street behind him, looking at the audience. There were not a lot in, but the man clapped his hands anyway, as though delighted with the crowd he saw. A puff of white powder flew up from his gloves, and the old man watched it rise with big round eyes. Then the lights changed and the Christmassy street was instantly gone – which was the best bit of all – and a ventriloquist was sitting on stage with his doll and a kind of desert behind the two of them. They both looked exhausted. The ventriloquist started talking – shouting, really – about beating the Boers, and the doll would not take its eyes off me. After a little while this started to get me down, so I turned my head away, at which moment I spotted, no more than half a dozen seats along, Saturday Night Mack, watching the doll and the
