The Blackpool Highflyer (18 page)

They didn't have an engine men's mess at Scarborough
shed. They had an engine men's 'lobby', which sounded fine,
but in the washroom there was no soap: plenty of Jeyes smell
and acres of white tile, but not a smidgen of yellow soap. I'd
known country stations where they'd lay on a pail, but even
in those spots there'd always be soap.

When I met Reuben back at the station, he was looking at
himself in the window of the booking office, a steady look
with a tired sort of question in it.

'Do you have any idea where Clive's off to?' I asked him,
and it came out quite short, for I was still vexed over the soap.

Reuben gave me one of his looks which meant he was get­ting ready to say nothing.

'The fellow's been moving in narrow ways all day’ I said.

Reuben was still looking in the window, but now sly, like.
There was gold lacing on his coat and cap, but it meant
nothing to him. His beard was like what's left of a thistle after
the flower has gone.

'There was no soap over yonder’ I said, 'so all I could do
was take a piss.'

'Aye,' said Reuben, looking away from the glass and towards
me at last, 'well tha must do what tha can.'

Where was Clive? And why had he not seemed put out by
the smash or anything that had happened since? Why had he
come out laughing from his interview with Major Harrison of
the Board of Trade?

I looked down at my grimy hands. Clive could not have
put the grindstone on the line because he'd been with me
since first thing that Whit Sunday morning, and the stone had
been placed within the hour before we struck it.

And anyway:
why
would he do it?

You'd have guessed the weather was set fair even under the
glass of the excursion platforms, but when I stepped out of
the station with Reuben I was startled at what I'd been
missing: rows of glass charabancs waiting under the high,
burning sun; the widest of clean blue skies somehow letting
you know that the sea was at hand, though not for the present
to be seen; and, across the road, the Westfield Hotel, fairly
dazzling in its whiteness.

When we were clear away from the shadow of the station,
Reuben stood still for a while, nodding and saying over to
himself, 'Gradely . .. gradely,' even though it was hardly the
weather for old men in gold coats.

We were now on the Valley Road leading down to the
South Shore: Italian gardens, lily ponds, rock pools, bamboos
and all vegetation out of the common; white ladies with the
smaller sort of parasols in the miniature zigzagging roads,
laughing at all these corners they were made to turn in order
to get nowhere at all. But it didn't matter because whatever
way they faced gave postcard views: the Valley Bridge con­necting fun with more fun, the mighty Grand Hotel high on
its own cliff - a cliff all to itself! - with its stone starfish and
dolphins all around the roof. I'd been born just along the
coast at Baytown, and the one telegraphic address I knew as a
boy was that of the 'Grandotel Scarborough'. Many messages
under that head, it was said, were sent out in code for they
were starting wars, or finishing wars, and all that kind of
carry on.

The harbour, down below the hotel, was like a sort of cir­cular village in the sea, and the beach was a creamy brown -
sand,
I mean - whereas at Baytown it was rocks, and the sight
of anybody sitting on it was a sure sign a drink had been
taken.

We walked on, and the sound of a brass band floated up to
us and expanded to fill the sky. If you could imagine a whole
town saying, 'I am first class -1 am in the pink,' well, that was
Scarborough in the summer.

Reuben was next to me as we took it all in. At large in his
guard's uniform, he looked like an old campaigner from
some forgotten war, which to my mind he was, having had a
hand in the building of the Settle-Carlisle line. I had read that
the winds on the high viaducts there could stop a locomotive
in its tracks.

As we walked on, I fancied I could feel the heat of the sun
and an extra heat on top - the coal dust burning on my skin. I
took my coat off, but my shirt and my undershirt were like a
further two coats, and these I could not take off. How Reuben
was managing under his thick coat I could not imagine. The
further we walked, the more my boots and my woollen
trousers became my enemies, but we eventually struck the
Scarborough and Whitby, the pub Clive had spoken of. As we
walked towards the door, I noticed a torn scrap of a poster on
its wall: '
see monsieur maurice
', it read, '
the ventriloquial paragon at the floral hall, scarborough'.
The
bloody man cropped up everywhere.

Stepping into the Scarborough and Whitby, you saw the
truth of the day: everybody's face was red. The sun had fairly
exhausted them, or beaten them in a fight.

'What's yours?' I asked Reuben.

'Shilling of brandy,' he said, in a thoughtful sort of way.

I took a glass of pale ale, as recommended by Clive, while
wishing he'd been on hand to take one with me. It was very
hard to talk to Reuben, because everything he might have to
say was buried so deep.

'Clive's gone off,' I said again. 'Don't know where.'

There was a bit of a question put into that, but Reuben said
nothing.

'Odd that he shouldn't let on’ I said.

Reuben didn't seem to have heard this, but something
must have progressed in him, for he said, nodding: 'It's a rum

go-'

Nothing was said for another short while. Then I had an
idea: 'Reuben’ I said, 'why is a football round?'

It was a quarter to one by the clock over the bar as I said
this. At getting on for five to, Reuben said: 'Well
...
it would
have
to be.'

'But why?' I said, and I saw the daftness of the whole thing.
The riddles in Pearson's didn't work without speed.

Reuben had finished his brandy. 'Thinking on
. . .'
he said,
'..
.
I had two of these, last time I came here.'

'Will you take another, Reuben?' I said.

He shook his head. 'Just thinking, like.'

'When were you last over here then?'

'Nineteen hundred,' he said.

I nodded, hoping he might continue, and he did after a lit­tle while.

'Generally speaking,' he said, 'I'll only take one drink.'

'But the last time you were in Scarborough, you had two?'

He nodded. 'Aye.'

We were back to square one. I bought another glass of pale
ale and Reuben watched me drink it. There were so many
questions I could have asked him that in the end I asked none
at all.

Reuben made his way back to the station when I'd finished
my beer, and I walked out a minute later. It had been a mis­take to have a second drink, as I learnt the minute I struck
sunlight. I walked past the Spa, which had four domes and
was like something out of
Arabian Nights.
It was all French
windows at the front and a black and white floor inside that I
knew was supposed to be a marvel of the age. They didn't
charge you for standing on it, but walk in there and order a
cup of tea and you'd get a nasty shock when the bill came.
That was all on account of the fancy floor. It had cost fortunes
to put in, and they had to be got back. There was a band
playing, which put me in mind of the Hemingway's Special
Piano that might one day be sitting in my parlour. The wife
would enjoy a trip to the Spa. She would hate it but she
would enjoy it too. And that went for the Grand Hotel in
spades. The Spa was nothing compared to the Grand.

I carried on, going uphill now towards the Esplanade: all
the South Shore was the superior end of town, and the
Esplanade was the pinnacle - home of the seaside gentry. I
looked across the South Bay towards the castle, where a lot of
dressing up in olden-day costumes went on, maypole goes,
and things of that kind. There were benches along the
Esplanade, and not one without its spooning couple. But one
bench was longer than the others, meaning that the lovebirds
were a decent distance away.

I sat down, feeling like the filthiest thing out, and the lad
was saying to the lass: 'Oh
do
let on, Rose.'

It was strange to think, from their closeness on the bench,
that they could have any secrets from each other, but there it
was. They were not factory folk. He would be a clerk, a
George Ogden sort, except without the appeal of that funny
fat fellow. The pair of them had fallen to staring at me now,
and I wondered what they made of me: a collier let loose from
his mine, they were probably thinking; the wrong sort for the
South Shore, any road.

Rolling away below the bench was a hillside park with
rockeries and tinkling little streams looked after by a gang
of men in uniforms. Below the park was the South Bay pool,
which was really just a walled-off section of sea. On the
landward side of it were smartly painted blue chalets for
changing - and every time a swimmer came out it was a dif­ferent story: sometimes they would be straight in with no
shilly-shallying, sometimes one foot would be dangled
down followed by a lot of walking about the edge and
thinking. There was no skylarking in the pool because this
was the South Shore, and everybody swam very daintily,
their heads tipped sideways. I looked out for the prettiest
doxy, of course, but it was hard to spot the faces under their
water bonnets. And then my eye fell on a head I knew. It
was Clive's.

I stood up and called down to him, but all that happened
was that one of the park keepers half looked up and the clerk
alongside me on the bench said to his girl: 'Would you like to
see what's going off at the aquarium?' which really meant,
Let's get away from this vulgar fellow.

As I watched, Clive pulled himself out of the water and,
with not a glance at the lady swimmers (which was not a bit
like him), walked into one of the blue chalets. By now, I
could feel the skin of my face tightening. I was being burned
by the sun, but I would not move from my post. After ten
minutes, Clive came out of the chalet, and I lost him in the
throng standing about the turnstile of the baths. But I got
him in my sights again as he began walking up the paths of
the park.

He still carried the carpet bag, and his swimming costume
(an article I would not have expected any fellow of the right
sort to possess) must have been in there, but the bag looked
emptier than before. He kept putting his hands through his
hair. He wanted the sun to dry it, but he wanted the sun to get
it
right.

As he climbed towards the Esplanade, I made up my mind:
if he saw me I would be friendly, otherwise I would keep
back and watch.

He did not spot me, and I began walking back in the direc­tion of the Spa and the Grand. I fretted that I ought not to be
spying on a pal, but I knew that my reason for doing so was
in some way connected to the stone on the line.

I followed Clive back up the Valley Road towards the sta­tion. He stopped for a while under the Valley Bridge. He
started walking again, and I thought he might be making for
the station, but he turned off before he got there, or dissolved
into air before he did, for the next time I looked he was gone.