The Last Train to Scarborough (22 page)

'Won't do, won't do,' said
Fielding, shaking his head. 'You are not "off to the toilet". You are
going to the
lavatory,
and we do
not wish to know.'

'Please yourself,' said Vaughan,
who gave us both good night before quitting the room.

Fielding said, 'I have tried my
best to bring that young man on, Mr Stringer, believe me.'

I wondered whether this was how
he saw Vaughan, as somebody to be brought on, much as the wife regarded me.

'I'm pleased that the fate of
poor Blackburn didn't put you off coming here,' he said.

'I have his same room as well,' I
said.

'As well as
what?
'
he said, smiling. 'Won't you have another sherry?'

'All right then,' I said. 'I'm
obliged to you.'

He twinkled his way over to the
piano and brought the tray to the occasional table, where he filled my glass,
passing it to me very daintily. I took it from him in the same way.

'In so far as I've known them,'
he said, 'I've found engine drivers and firemen rather a rough class, but you
conduct yourself in a very gentlemanly way, if I may say so.'

I nodded, thinking: Is he onto
me? I touched my pocket book, through the wool of my suit-coat. It was there
all right, the warrant card within it. Fielding couldn't possibly have had
sight of it. Anyhow, he was smiling at me in a sad sort of way that made me
think the compliment genuine.

'Did you find that Blackburn was
like that?' I asked him.

'He was rather tongue-tied,' said
Fielding, sitting back down in his accustomed seat. 'A big fellow but carried
his size well. A dignified
man ...
handsome
...' 'Do you know what he and Vaughan talked about on their walk after supper?'

'Well,' Fielding said, 'I can
make a hazard.'

'Rare one for the fair sex, isn't
he?' I said. 'Mr Vaughan, I mean.'

'He's a rare one for
pictures
of the fair sex,' said Fielding. 'He showed you some of his samples, I
suppose.'

'Yes,' I said. 'One.'

'Was it the naked lady on the
trapeze?'

I shook my head.

'It was the naked lady holding
the bicycle.'

'It is the
same ...
artiste
,' said
Fielding with a sigh.

He was evidently pretty well acquainted
with the cards himself, even if he didn't approve of them.

'Made out he knew her,' I said.

'He'd
like
to know her,' said Fielding, 'I don't doubt that. He's minded to set himself up
as a photographer in that line, you know.' He shook his head for a while. 'It's
my fault in a way. I mean, I brought him into the post card world.'

There came a noise from the
doorway, and Miss Rickerby was in the corridor with her brother.

'Tell me, Mr Stringer,' Fielding
was saying quite loudly, 'how do you manage to spot all the signals while
rushing along the line? I believe the North Eastern is the most densely
signalled railway in the country. Sixty-seven on one gantry at Newcastle
alone.'

He was trying to cover up the
subject of our conversation.

'Well,' I said, 'each man has his
own pet way of remembering where the signals are. Speaking for myself,
I...'

'They're like gladioli,' said
Amanda Rickerby, coming into the room looking rather pink about the face but
none the less fetching for that.

'How
are they?'
I said.

'That's what they look like,' she
said. 'When there's more than one, I mean. I find them quite pretty but it
frightens me when they change because nobody's near by and suddenly they
move!

Her brother came into the room
behind her, and I thought: You could say the same for him. He brought the paint
smell with him, and there were specks of white-wash on the backs of his hands.

'Boots,' he said.

'Come again?' I said, because he
was looking my way.

'Do yer boots,' he said, almost
panting.

'We have our boots
on
,'
said Fielding, not to the boy but to Miss Rickerby, who was of course eyeing
me. 'You can't very well clean them now.'

For the first time I looked back
boldly at Amanda Rickerby, and even though both of us were smiling it was
obvious in that moment of honesty that neither one of us was exactly what you
might call happy.

'It's just gone eleven,' her
brother said. 'I clean t'boots from eleven on.'

'But the hot supper has thrown us
all late,' said Fielding, and again he was appealing to our landlady rather
than addressing the boy.

'The gentlemen will take them
down to the kitchen in the next little while if they want them doing, Adam,'
said Miss Rickerby. 'And you have something for Mr Fielding, don't you?'

The lad took a note from the front
pocket of his apron, marched up to Fielding, and handed it to him.

'What's this?' said Fielding.

'If you read it,' said the lad,
'then yer'll
know!

'Put through the letter box, just
now,' said Miss Rickerby. 'I hope you don't mind, but I had to look at it to
see who it was for. It's from your recorded music people.'

'Yes,' said Fielding, now
glancing at the note. 'It's just a reminder about the meeting.'

'Mr Fielding is the chairman of
the Scarborough Recorded Music Circle,' Miss Rickerby said to me, 'which is
pretty good going considering he doesn't have a gramophone.'

'It is a little irregular,' said
Fielding, colouring up, 'but...'

'He won't tell you that they
pleaded with him,' said Miss Rickerby. 'Modesty forbids. He is also in the
Rotary, Townsmen's Guild etc., sidesman at St Mary's church, and I half expect
him to come in for tea and say he's been made Mayor - only he'd never let on.
I'd just find this funny hat and big golden chain while straightening his
room.'

Fielding was making a sort of waving
away gesture with his right hand, as if to say, 'All this is nonsense', but
he'd been fairly dancing about with pleasure at the landlady's compliments.
She now leant in the doorway with folded arms, smiling and giving Fielding a
sad but very affectionate look which made me a little jealous that for once her
eyes were not on me.

'Miss Rickerby,' said Fielding,
'my dear Miss Rickerby, won't you...' For a moment I thought he was stuck for
words, but he finished:'... give us something on the piano.'

'No, Mr Fielding,' she said,
smiling, but privately now and looking down at her shoes. 'No, I most certainly
will not.'

Fielding said good night, walked
along to his bedroom, and closed the door. Standing just outside the sitting
room I watched him do it, which was easy enough as his bedroom was on the same
floor (and faced the right way to have the sea view). There were two other
doors on that floor. One stood open, giving onto a fair-sized bathroom, all
white with gas light burning. The other was closed. I walked over to it and
knocked, and there was no answer. I was alone on the silent landing. I turned
the handle and opened the door a fraction, gaining a view of a large, pale blue
room that smelt of talcum powder. I saw a dressing table with triple mirror,
and a nightdress was thrown over the bed like a dead body. A low fire burned
in the grate, and there was a paraffin heater hard by that was turned up to the
maximum judging by the stifling heat. This was Miss Rickerby's room.

She's like a cat, I thought -
luxuriates in the heat. I closed the door as gently as possible, and I heard a
rattle from behind me. It was Fielding's door opening. He wore a night-shirt,
dressing gown, and his hair was all neatly combed; but he was only tripping
his way across to the bathroom.

I turned and walked up the stairs
towards the floor being decorated. My own bathroom was on this landing
somewhere. Most of the wallpaper had been stripped from the landing walls but
some remained in patches, showing the green stripes that still survived
upstairs. The gas jets roared, giving a shaking white light, and I wondered
whether they kept going all night. I stopped next to a dangling strand of the
green wallpaper and felt minded to pull it away. I was reaching out towards it
when the roaring of the gas gave way to the roaring of water - a whole
waterfall seemed to have been set in motion somewhere out of sight beyond the
walls. A door flew open along the corridor, and Vaughan appeared in shirt
sleeves, with braces dangling and the seething din of the flushing lavatory
behind him.

'Is that the bathroom?' I said.

'It is, Jim,' he said, 'but I
haven't had a bath. When you've had a heavy supper, I always think it's best to
...'

'I know,' I said, cutting him
off.

'I've been twice in the past ten
minutes,' he said, which made me worried again about the food we'd eaten, even
though I felt all right.

'This is me,' Vaughan said,
indicating a closed door. 'Care for a peek?'

He proudly occupied the worst
room I'd seen so far in the house. It had the green and less-green wallpaper on
three walls, and the dried-blood roses on the fourth. The effect was of two
rooms that had crashed into each other. The roses were singed and discoloured
behind two copper gas pipes that rose up either side of the fireplace. These
ran up to little pale green shades that made the whole room look sickly. On the
mantelshelf a pipe stand had spaces for a dozen pipes but held just one. The
small fireplace was dead, but Vaughan too had a paraffin heater going. It was
directed at the wall, like a child being punished for naughtiness in a school
form room.

'A few damp spots there,' he said
as I looked at it.

Vaughan had evidently been lying
on his bed, and right next to the pillow end was a portmanteau stuffed with
clothes, and a pile of copies of
Sporting Life.
The only
furniture besides the bed and washstand was a wicker chair and a cabinet with
the door open. A black trunk marked, for some reason, 'WELLINBROUGH' in white
painted letters stood alongside the cabinet. There were no pictures at all on
the walls. The flimsy curtains were drawn, but Vaughan too would have overlooked
the sea. He was sitting on the wicker chair and removing his boots. I thought:
I've got to get out of here before he takes off his trousers.

'You an early riser, Jim?' he
said.

'Do you call seven o'clock
early?' I said.

'I call it bloody ridiculous,' he
said. 'Have a care tomorrow, will you, old man? I can hear most of what goes on
up there.'

I looked up.

'But you heard nothing the night
that Blackburn disappeared.'

'I was half cut then,
Jim...
And you know, there might have
been something . . . something about two, something again about four. A sort of
rumbling.'

'Did you mention it to the
coppers?'

He shook his head.

'Not certain of it,
Jim .. .
not certain. You don't go in for
physical jerks, I hope?' he added as I looked at the gas pipes, noting that
they continued rising beyond the two shades, disappearing into the ceiling...
and yet there was no gas plumbed into my room.

Vaughan, having thrown one boot
towards the cabinet, now threw the second in a roughly similar direction.

'I should take these downstairs
for the lad to clean,' he said.

'And will you?'

'Doubt it,' he said. 'I give that
youth a wide berth.'

'Does he ever fly off about
anything?' I enquired. 'He always seems liable to.'

Vaughan frowned.