The Pritchett Century (74 page)

So every Monday and Saturday I travelled on the train with Benedict. He had become quieter and it seemed that he had settled into the school. It was “beastly” there, of course, but chiefly, he said, because the music master was angry when he told him the school piano was out of tune. He also hated Prayers, and the fat boy who got into the train at King’s Mill was the Devil. This came out one morning when a man across from us was reading a newspaper with a headline in big print: “CLIFF MURDER: HUNT FOR BRIGHTON YOUTH.” Benedict began jumping up and down in his seat and said the fat boy had done it. “It’s Fatty! It’s Fatty!” he said in a furious whisper. I told him not to be silly. At school I told Augusta this was now the only sign of Benedict’s being mad, but she had changed this term. She said it was Glanville who put these ideas into his son’s head. Foxey said so, too. But after this Benedict was calm. One day he brought his stamp collection and he showed it to me, and once I ruffled his black hair when he said I was as fat as Augusta. I knew what he meant: I was growing up. I told him Augusta would marry him if he was not careful, and I laughed because he looked scared. He was very polite after that.

I enjoyed those train rides and I missed him for two weeks when he had flu. I was glad to see him when he reappeared on the platform at Newford Station. I had got there late because I had gone into one of the shops in the town to buy a lipstick like Augusta’s. I had run all the way from the shop, frightened that I had missed the train. At first I didn’t
see Benedict. Some boys were crowded round the fat boy as usual, begging him to give them a bit of his chocolate. The fat boy was backing away from them and Benedict was watching. The fat boy was sly and stood back against the wall, looking around for some way of escape. One boy was pulling at his arm. Suddenly the fat boy broke from them and went up to Benedict, snatched his cap from his pocket, and cried, “Put your cap on, Squeaky, or I’ll report you.”

Benedict stood holding his violin case and did not put his cap on, and the fat boy suddenly stepped forward and pulled the cap down over Benedict’s eyes and face. I called out, “Leave him alone.”

And then I saw Benedict do a stupid thing. He pulled his cap off and sent it flying off the platform and onto the railway track, and then, white with fright, he dashed at the fat boy and struck him on the shoulder with his violin case, screeching out, “I’ll kill you!”

The fat boy moved away, frightened. Two women were watching us, and one of them said, “I will report you to your headmaster,” and she said to her friend, “It’s Major Short’s boy.” I got Benedict by the sleeve and we walked away from the crowd. I was giddy with temper and walked him far up the platform, and when I looked back I saw the boys gaping at the cap lying on the railway line. Two boys were beginning to follow us, but the others were still crowding round Fatty. And then the train came in. I got Benedict into a first-class carriage in front. Three of Fatty’s crowd raced up looking for us, but I pulled down the blind. I could hear the porters bawling, and the boys ran back. We sat still; the compartment had a notice saying “Ladies Only.” There was a long wait and a strange silence at our end of the train. I let down the window and saw some of the boys getting off the train, all laughing. I heard a porter shout, “Not this train!” A whistle blew. The train, I saw, was much longer than the train we usually took.

“We’re on the wrong train,” I said. “It’s the express. Quick. It doesn’t stop at Fordhampton,” and I tried to open the door. Then the train—one of the new diesels—moved out fast. I turned round. Benedict was lounging back on the seat.

“I knew!” he said, laughing at me.

“You beast,” I said.

I was scared. I saw the last of the pink houses of Newford and heard
the chime of the signal box, as final and frightening as if it were killing itself with laughter. My father and mother would be waiting for me at Fordhampton and the train would whiz through. And that woman from Lower Marsh who had heard me shout in the mixup with the boys—she would report it all to my father. I lost my head.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was the wrong train?” I said. “I hate you.”

“I’m running away,” he said, delighted by my terror. “I hate that school. I hate Glanville. I’m not going back.”

There is a long wooded stretch outside Newford and all the leaves on the trees seemed to be talking about us. Had he planned it?

“Where are you going?” I said.

He was sitting there gloating and grinning. “To London,” he said.

“But that’s in the opposite direction. This train goes to Bath.”

“I’ll get a London train there,” he said.

“You’re mad. It’s hundreds of miles away.”

What frightened me was that I had only two shillings on me.

“How much money have you got?” I said.

“My aunt lives in Bath. She’ll give me the money,” he said.

The train was speeding. Two little stations went by like a shout.

“The Devil is on this train,” he said with glee. “I saw him on the platform.”

I was standing up still, and the train swerved at King’s Mill when it crossed the river. A man was fishing there. I fell onto my seat. I was tired of Benedict and his Devil.

“I’ll rape you,” he said.

“You won’t,” I said. “Silly little Squeaky.” And I got up and rumpled his hair. “You’d better look at your violin. You smashed it when you hit that boy.”

This stopped him. He opened his case and took out his violin and looked at it very carefully and then he took up his bow and played one or two notes. They sounded very sad. All this time I had been trying not to cry, and it was the sound of those notes, like someone speaking, that stopped me. In that moment I recovered my wits. I looked about the compartment and noticed the communication cord. A notice said “Emergency. To Stop Train Pull the Cord. Penalty for Improper Use £5.” I was scared. When the train got near Fordhampton I knew I was
going to pull the cord and make it stop there. I sat down and got out one of my school books and pretended to read, but I was looking at the fields. When the train got to Flour Mill I would get ready to pull the cord. This calmed me. I got up and said, “I am going to the lavatory.” I was dying to go. “There’s one for you at the other end of the corridor,” he said.

There was the door marked “Toilet Vacant.” I went in. The window was of frosted glass so that I couldn’t see out, but I could tell by the sound of the train crossing the river where we were. We’d crossed one bridge. There were two more to come. I knew how long that took. I wasn’t long in the lavatory before someone tried the door. I waited. Then I pulled the catch. It had stuck. It wouldn’t open at first; when it did there was the ticket inspector on the other side. The inspector always tested the door in order to catch any one hiding from him. He was a big man with a red face and a black moustache like a wet paintbrush.

“Sorry, Miss. Ticket, please.”

“It’s in my bag in the compartment,” I said. He looked at my hat—we wore straw hats with a red band at my school—and slowly followed me to the compartment. Benedict was not there, and as I opened my bag I heard a deep rumbling noise, louder than the noise of river bridges. We were rushing over the High Street at Fordhampton. The station platform screeched at us, people flew away in a stream of dots, the green top of the town hall danced away, and the brick orphanage on the outskirts of the town looked down on us from fifty narrow windows. I had forgotten this was an express train. With a final clap Fordhampton vanished, the points clattered, and the oak woods closed in on us. Benedict came into the compartment.

“Ticket,” the ticket inspector said to Benedict, who got out his train pass.

“We’re going to Bath,” Benedict said coolly.

“You’re in first class!” said the inspector. “Fordhampton, it says here. That your violin? We’ve passed Fordhampton.”

He took my train pass and looked at it and said the same thing. Then he sat down with us and got out a printed pad. “Both going to Bath? Plenty of room in third class in the next coach.”

He slowly turned the pages of his pad. “You’ll be owing me some money,” he said. “Ten pounds each. You got in at Newford, I see. It comes expensive.” He looked very sly when he said this and then sighed and said sharply, “First class—let me see. Fifteen pounds each, I make it. Holidays begun early, eh? Playing in a concert?” He was looking around in the compartment, and I knew he was trying to see if we had smashed the lightbulbs or slashed the seat.

“We got into the wrong train and some boys locked us in. We thought it was the Fordhampton train,” I said. “My father is waiting for us. He’s a brigadier. It’s terrible. No one told us at Newford. I’m not going to Bath, and we missed our lunch.”

“Well, it will be a long wait,” said the inspector. “But your friend’s going to Bath. With his violin?”

“No, I’m going to London. I’m in the school orchestra,” Benedict said calmly.

I was so amazed I could only say, “Benedict!”

“I am,” said Benedict.

“It’s a funny way to go to London. Down to Bath, up to London, wrong way round. Cost you more. Twenty-five pounds, I make it.”

“Where is the buffet car?” said Benedict, putting on an important voice.

The inspector said it was two coaches back. “Stay where you are,” he said. He got up slowly. He put his pad in his pocket and said he’d be back later on. We waited and waited.

“Why did you tell such lies? We’ll be arrested.”

“Let’s go to the buffet car,” Benedict said. “I’m hungry.”

If only I hadn’t bought that lipstick. With only my two shillings, we couldn’t pay for lunch.

The train broke out of the Downs, where there was a white horse carved on the hill, and into unknown country, herds of cows in the fields, farms, chickens, horses galloping away. This flat country went on, mile after mile. Farther and farther. I worried where we would go in Bath, where we would sleep the night. Terrible tales came into my mind of girls attacked on trains. I was thinking about what my father had said about the Shorts.

“You’re not giving a concert,” I said. “You can’t even play.”

“I can,” he said. He opened his case and got his violin out, but I asked if he had got any money. He pulled out a few coppers from his pocket. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to the buffet car. I’ll tell them to send the bill.”

But before we could move the inspector came back with a young man who stood in the doorway studying us and murmured something I couldn’t catch.

“Stand up, Ben,” this man said.

“My name is Benedict,” said Benedict. He could be as cool and ironical as Glanville.

The young man said, annoyed, “Where’s your school cap?”

I burst out, “A boy threw it on the line at Newford when the train was coming in.”

“What was his name?” asked the man.

“Fatty,” said Benedict.

“Better check at Castle Wadney,” said the young man to the inspector. They went off down the corridor.

The train was gliding past wide fields of mustard, a few big clouds were hanging still in the sky. Presently the train slowed down almost to a standstill, and when I looked out I saw a gang of men standing back: they were working on the line. I can still remember every one of their faces looking up at me. Then we crawled past watercress beds to Castle Wadney, a town on a hill but with no castle that I could see. The train had stopped.

“Police,” whispered Benedict excitedly.

The inspector came back and said, “Soon get you back, Miss. You’re getting out here.”

At that busy station porters were rolling milk cans down the platform. We were taken to the stationmaster’s office, a dark room smelling of ink and tea. The stationmaster was drinking a cup in between talking on the telephone, and there was a machine somewhere that clicked dot, dot, dash. A man at another table called “Brighton on the line for you” to a very clean young man with hair short at the neck, who went to the telephone.

One of these new men looked at our train passes and asked our names again. I showed him mine on my exercise book. Someone was
having a row with the stationmaster, who held the phone away from his ear.

“Sure it’s not Knowles?” the smooth young man asked Benedict.

“Short. Short. Short,” Benedict jeered.

“Short,” I joined in. “I mean he’s Short, I’m—”

“I’m asking him,” said the smooth young man. “How do I know your name’s Short, son?” he asked.

And then Benedict did a thing I’ll never forget. He turned his back to the man and pulled the neck of his jacket clear of his neck until the name tape was showing.

The detective held the jacket and called to the two new men. “Take a dekko at this.”

“ ‘Short,’ ” they both said. “OK, Sonny.”

“Hold on, they’re on the line,” said the stationmaster into the telephone. Then he beckoned to us.

Glanville was on the line. Emma, too. And my father. When we had stopped talking to them the two inspectors had gone and so had our train. We were going to be sent back on the 3.44.

One of the detectives said, “Sorry, Miss.” And the other said, “On the lookout for a lad from Brighton. You won’t miss your concert,” he said to Benedict and went off.