him, and the thing was: I didn't know the half of it.
PART TWO
Chapter
Nine
The
North End shed, a quarter mile beyond the station mouth, was where the
Scarborough engines were stabled. I felt a proper fool, approaching the Shed
Superintendent's office with my kit bag, just as I had in the days when I'd been
working with a company rule book in my inside pocket, and not as some species
of actor.
It
had turned into a nothing sort of a day -1 would have had it hotter or colder,
darker or sunnier. The church bells of the city would not leave off, and their
racket drifted over the complicated railway lands that lay at the very heart
of York. I was tired out. I'd hardly slept on Friday or Saturday night. There
were many new noises in our new house: Sylvia reckoned that the branch of the
big sycamore tree tapped on her window - 'but only at nights'.
'It
taps when there's a wind,' Harry had corrected her.
The
thought of taking articles and becoming a railway solicitor made me hot and
cold. It was like a fever. One minute, I could imagine the whole enterprise
going smoothly on and myself going to the Dean Court Hotel alongside the
Minster - which was the refuge of the top clerks in the North Eastern offices -
wearing a grey, well-brushed fedora hat. But it would keep coming back to me
that the profession I was entering was unmanly. It came down to this: the
lawyers only talked about the railway, instead of doing anything to make the
trains go.
I
wore my great-coat on top of my second best suit. I had on a white shirt and
white necker, and I carried in my kit bag a change of shirt and a tie in case
the boarding house should turn out to be a more than averagely respectable one.
I carried no rule book, but on my suit-coat lapel I'd pinned the company
badge, this being the North Eastern Railway crest about one inch across. All
company employees were given one on joining, and the keener sorts would wear it
every day. You'd be more likely to see a driver or a fireman wearing his badge
than a booking office clerk because the footplate lads took more pride in their
work.
I
had taken off my wedding ring, partly because it didn't do to fire while
wearing a ring - there were plenty of things to snag it on - and partly because
Ray Blackburn had been a single man, and I wanted to place myself as far as
possible in his shoes. (He'd been engaged, evidently, but surely no engine man
would ever wear an engagement ring.) My railway police warrant card I carried in my
pocket book, which was in the inside pocket of my suit-coat. I'd need it if it
came to an arrest, but I did not envisage having to produce it, and it must be
kept out of sight for as long as I was passing myself off as an engine man.
The
Super guarded the shed from his little office, which was stuck onto the front
of it like a bunion, spoiling what would otherwise have been a perfectly
circular brick wall, for the North Shed was a roundhouse. He was expecting me,
and seemed to have been thoroughly briefed by the Chief. He had me sign the
ledger which was kept underneath a clock in a little booth of its own, the
whole arrangement putting me in mind of a side altar in a church. The ledger
was really a big diary. The left hand page for Sunday, 15 March 1914 was the
booking-on side, and that was clean. But the booking-off side was dirty because
those blokes had spent the past ten hours at close quarters with coal, oil ash
and soot. It came to me that this was just how it had been at Sowerby Bridge
shed when I'd been firing for the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway eight years
since.
As
the Super looked on, smoking a little cigar, I signed my name.
'What
shall I put under "Duty"?' I asked
'Well,'
said the Super, inspecting the end of his cigar, 'you're working the last York
train of the day to Scarborough, then running back light engine ... Only you're
not, are you?'
And
he practically winked at me.
'I've
no notion what I'm doing,' I said. 'All I know is I'm stopping in
PART TWO
Chapter
Nine
The
North End shed, a quarter mile beyond the station mouth, was where the
Scarborough engines were stabled. I felt a proper fool, approaching the Shed
Superintendent's office with my kit bag, just as I had in the days when I'd been
working with a company rule book in my inside pocket, and not as some species
of actor.
It
had turned into a nothing sort of a day -1 would have had it hotter or colder,
darker or sunnier. The church bells of the city would not leave off, and their
racket drifted over the complicated railway lands that lay at the very heart
of York. I was tired out. I'd hardly slept on Friday or Saturday night. There
were many new noises in our new house: Sylvia reckoned that the branch of the
big sycamore tree tapped on her window - 'but only at nights'.
'It
taps when there's a wind,' Harry had corrected her.
The
thought of taking articles and becoming a railway solicitor made me hot and
cold. It was like a fever. One minute, I could imagine the whole enterprise
going smoothly on and myself going to the Dean Court Hotel alongside the
Minster - which was the refuge of the top clerks in the North Eastern offices -
wearing a grey, well-brushed fedora hat. But it would keep coming back to me
that the profession I was entering was unmanly. It came down to this: the
lawyers only talked about the railway, instead of doing anything to make the
trains go.
I
wore my great-coat on top of my second best suit. I had on a white shirt and
white necker, and I carried in my kit bag a change of shirt and a tie in case
the boarding house should turn out to be a more than averagely respectable one.
I carried no rule book, but on my suit-coat lapel I'd pinned the company
badge, this being the North Eastern Railway crest about one inch across. All
company employees were given one on joining, and the keener sorts would wear it
every day. You'd be more likely to see a driver or a fireman wearing his badge
than a booking office clerk because the footplate lads took more pride in their
work.
I
had taken off my wedding ring, partly because it didn't do to fire while
wearing a ring - there were plenty of things to snag it on - and partly because
Ray Blackburn had been a single man, and I wanted to place myself as far as
possible in his shoes. (He'd been engaged, evidently, but surely no engine man
would ever wear an engagement ring.) My railway police warrant card I carried in my
pocket book, which was in the inside pocket of my suit-coat. I'd need it if it
came to an arrest, but I did not envisage having to produce it, and it must be
kept out of sight for as long as I was passing myself off as an engine man.
The
Super guarded the shed from his little office, which was stuck onto the front
of it like a bunion, spoiling what would otherwise have been a perfectly
circular brick wall, for the North Shed was a roundhouse. He was expecting me,
and seemed to have been thoroughly briefed by the Chief. He had me sign the
ledger which was kept underneath a clock in a little booth of its own, the
whole arrangement putting me in mind of a side altar in a church. The ledger
was really a big diary. The left hand page for Sunday, 15 March 1914 was the
booking-on side, and that was clean. But the booking-off side was dirty because
those blokes had spent the past ten hours at close quarters with coal, oil ash
and soot. It came to me that this was just how it had been at Sowerby Bridge
shed when I'd been firing for the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway eight years
since.
As
the Super looked on, smoking a little cigar, I signed my name.
'What
shall I put under "Duty"?' I asked
'Well,'
said the Super, inspecting the end of his cigar, 'you're working the last York
train of the day to Scarborough, then running back light engine ... Only you're
not, are you?'
And
he practically winked at me.
'I've
no notion what I'm doing,' I said. 'All I know is I'm stopping in
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