It was coming up to six o'clock, too early in the day for Shillito and the other sportsmen to be in there. I saw instead a porter making towards us. I'd seen him about in the station, and he'd seen me, possibly wearing, and possibly not wearing, the glasses I was now lumbered with… But he gave no sign of knowing me. He stood before the three of us, saying 'What are you blokes after?'
We'd attracted his attention by sitting so far towards the end of Platform Four.
'Waiting for a fucking train, what d'you think?' said Hopkins.
'Any particular one?' asked the porter.
'Anything London way,' said Sampson, looking up at him, the sack once more in his hands.
The porter nodded, while I thought, I will not be carried away to London. I was no better than a leaf in the wind, blown in any direction.
The porter said: 'Six-eleven, this platform.'
He then turned and walked away, and Sampson said, 'I thought we might've had bother from him.'
'You don't know he en't run off to fetch a copper,' said Hopkins, but even as he spoke the bell rang, and the London train came around the curve at the station north end, driving through the rain with unstoppable force. I could not help but notice that it was one of the Class J singles, with one mighty driving wheel in either side. I waited on tenterhooks, thinking that something surely must come along to prevent me climbing aboard.
But nothing did.
Chapter Twenty-two
I boarded the train because of Sampson's gun. A second thought – a little more creditable – only came along later: that unless I stuck with this pair, they would very likely never be caught. A new sky was coming: dark blue and rain-lashed over the wire works at Doncaster, twenty miles south of York. It was a non-corridor train, so we were all together in a first-class compartment. There was no one else in it. Doncaster was a run-through, and as we rolled out of the station, Sampson was sitting by the window with his revolver, pointing it at people in the terraced streets. He caught my eye as I watched him, and he laughed, more embarrassed than ashamed, I reckoned. 'You could just go about on trains shooting people,' he said,'… if you were that way inclined.' 'Which you are,' said Hopkins, from his seat. I'd thought he was asleep up to that moment. Sampson winked at me. 'Don't mind him,' he said. 'He's better with a drink in.' As he returned the revolver to the sack, he was still eyeing me, so to distract him from any dangerous thoughts, I asked: 'What if a ticket inspector gets up?' 'Well, I've at least two thousand pounds and a gun in this sack, little Allan, so one way or another we should be all right.'
Hopkins gave a smile at that. He was a little more at ease now. As for me… I was half-dreaming of the great black cathedral at York, and the smallness of the carters and pedestrians who walked to and fro in its shadow. Many had gone before and many would come after. We were just the present-day lot. Anything we did or did not do… it came to naught.
I looked at the money sack on Sampson's knee, and I thought of the London line. A ticket inspection could only happen at Peterborough, for I reckoned that would be our only other stop…
At Peterborough the rain blew crazily around that city's own cathedral – which lay just beyond the station – as we all trooped over first to the gentlemen's and then to the bar on the platform. We drew a lot of glances as we stepped back up into our first-class compartment holding a bottle of beer apiece, and I had not the energy to look back at those who gawped. In addition to beer, Sampson carried a paper bag full of railway pies. He'd paid for this breakfast by pulling a tenner out of the sack, and I wondered about the denominations in there. There didn't seem to be a great bulk of money… but what engine man earned a tenner in a week? There would have to be a good many pound notes in the bundle. What was not in there was silver and copper, for the sack seemed easily carried and it did not jingle.
We made a slippery start away from Peterborough, the rhythm of the engine all wrong, but we were soon making seventy, eighty miles an hour through the rain, and I pictured those mighty driving wheels up ahead, racing on to London in spite of the mixed feelings or feelings of dread that anyone aboard might entertain.
We came into Platform One at King's Cross, and the moment we stepped down, Sampson put his arm about my shoulder. I wondered: is this a show of friendliness, or more of a manacle? We stepped out of the station, and the London day – crowds, rain, buildings three times the size of any in York – opened and closed quickly, for within a minute we were inside a hansom.
'Charing Cross,' Sampson called to the driver, and I thought: What are we about? A tour of the mainline stations?
This life was insane… but I had to know.
'What's the programme, lads?' I asked after a couple of minutes.
'We're off to Paris, little Allan,' said Sampson, and he leant forwards and grabbed my knee, adding: 'It's an elopement, mate!'
I pictured the wife in her best white dress, fading into the distance and into the past, becoming no larger or more significant than a portrait of a lady that might be found inside a locket. Hopkins did not seem the least surprised at the news of our destination, and I doubted whether it was news to him. I imagined that the pair of them might run up to Paris pretty often. I recalled what the Police Gazette had said of the man who'd shot the two detectives: 'Will likely be found in hotels.'
He'd shot two detectives in Victoria; would he add a third in Charing Cross to his collection? A new thought came, and not a happier one: wouldn't France be a better killing ground? As the cab rattled along, gaining speed along unknown streets, I hardly cared.Sampson reached into his sack again to pay the cab driver, and once again he kept me close as we walked into the station. We entered past a kind of little bank, and I turned to look again: 'Bureau de Change'. I wondered how you said those words. I thought of the bit of French I could fairly pronounce: 'Au revoir'. They said that every time they said goodbye, two words instead of one. Going round the bloody houses.
There were two coppers in the station: they were standing in the middle of the lobby, and rain made them shine. But seconds after we'd walked in they walked out, and I thought what a dull article the average copper is.
At the bookstall there were foreign newspapers, and I saw a small man in a cut of coat that was out of the common. A Frencher, I thought. The rain thundered down on the glass roof above, and half a dozen trains waited beyond the ticket gates, pressing in on the station, waiting to pluck us away. Like the rain on the roof, they seemed to be saying: why not leave this bloody country? Try your luck elsewhere, for God's sake.
Sampson was holding my arm, moving towards the booking office.
'Why must you be always mauling me,' I said. 'Do you think I'm going to do a shit?'
He took his hand off my arm, looked at me: 'Don't lose your hair, boy,' he said, in a tone that stopped a little way short of menace. 'We'll be free and easy in Paris, but just till then…'
Hopkins was walking behind, looking about: looking at pockets, perhaps. We were at the ticket window by now.
'Three singles to Paris,' said Sampson.
I did not hear the clerk's response, but Sampson said one further word: 'Deck.' He was an old hand at this boat train business.
We then marched through the station crowd across to the Bureau de Change, where more money was picked from the bag and handed over: tenners again, but some pound notes too, and it looked as though the colours had run on the money that came back. The French currency was the French franc. You read of its doings in the paper – it was always in bother but the notes were pretty enough, I had to admit. I looked on the whole exchange like a holidaymaker in a dream.
Our next call was at the newspaper stall, where Sampson bought a racing paper and Hopkins… some London paper. We then all walked to the centre of the concourse, and stood underneath the great clock. Sampson and Hopkins held a conference here, muttering low, so that all I could hear was Sampson saying: 'But the one after's the express', and Hopkins saying, 'You ought to send it by mail.'
At the end, a decision was evidently reached, and Sampson put his arm around me in a more friendly way: 'You wait until we're over the water, little Allan: hot coffee, cognac, roast fowls… And pay day. You been to
