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.
Clive couldn't have put the stone on the line, but he
could've asked somebody else to do it. He could have paid
them fair wages, just as he paid the cleaners to put a hexagon
shine on the buffer plates of the engines he fancied; just as the
socialist missionary, Paul, was paid fair wages by Alan
Cowan.
Chapter Ten
We were back on the Rishworth branch the Thursday and
Friday after the Scarborough run. I was able to get nothing
from Clive over his movements at Scarborough, and had
eventually given up.
On the Saturday afternoon, the wife went off to the Cooperative ladies to hear about 'Health in the House' and
'Thoughts on the Minimum Wage', and when she'd gone I
took down my
Railway Magazine
and lighted on an item about
'the largest signal gantry in New Zealand'. It wasn't very big,
as even the
Railway Magazine
admitted: 'From the photo it is
evident that New Zealand is far behind the mother country.'
It was meant to be a joke, I supposed.
The words of Dr N. Kenrick came back to me: 'It is only a
matter of common sense to keep the head low.'
I would take a stroll. And I would try to find some company. I walked upstairs ready to tap on George Ogden's
door, but I saw that it was ajar. I was full of curiosity about
this fellow, who I had seen nothing of all week. He had use
of the scullery, but he never
did
use it. He would go up by
the back stair late at night and very quietly, but it was a kind
of quietness - by which I mean not
very
- that told me he'd
taken a drink.
I pushed the door and George was inside, sitting on the
truckle bed, with the plants - half of them quite dead - on the
floor around him.
'George,' I said in an under-breath, and he came to life, like
a penny-in-the-slot mannequin.
'What ho!' he said.
'I'm off up to the Albert Cigar Factory. If you knock on the
back door they give out cigars that have got a bit bashed.
They've usually only had a little nick and they come very
cheap, less than half price.'
'They're quite all right, are they?' said George, standing up.
It was heartbreaking to see him so galvanised over such a little thing.
'They have 'A's and 'B's,' I said.
'Good,' said George, 'I'll have an 'A'
. This will be our first
step to better acquaintance. I'm to book on at two, but I'll
have plenty of time, won't I?'
He stood up, collected his hat, picked up a letter that was
lying on one of his boxes, and caught up one of the packets of
biscuits. 'Care for a cream biscuit?' he said. He sounded like
an advert, and his face looked like an advert too as he bit into
the biscuit: a big smile decorated with crumbs and bits of
white sugar cream.
'Don't they sell those down at the Joint?' I said.
'That's it,' he said, 'from the penny-in-the-slot machine.'
'I didn't think it worked,' I said. 'Well, the excursionists can
never make it work.'
'Excursionists?' said George. 'Daft lot! I expect they just put
their money in and hope for the best!'
I said I thought that was more or less the recommended
procedure.
'It is if you're a juggins. Now listen, there's an address on
the side of the machine’ said George. 'You write in to it if the
thing is not giving out biscuits, and they send you any number of them back, gratis. Duggan's Sweetmeats, 54 New
Clarence Road, Bradford.'
'You have it by heart,' I said.
'That's the best way’ said George. 'You ought to give it a go.'
'But I've never put money in the machine,' I said.
George said nothing to that. 'You get a very gentlemanly
letter of apology too,' he went on, 'signed in person by the
chairman himself.'
We were crossing Ward's End, dodging the darting wagons and traps and their hot, cross drivers. All the pavements
were chock full, as if the heat had turned the whole town inside
out.
'You're very lucky in your Mrs Stringer,' George said.
'Yes,' I said, 'I know.'
'She's rather pretty.'
I thought to myself: now that's going a bit strong, but I didn't really mind it coming from George Ogden. It would have
been different if a dog like Clive had said it.
'She stops at home as a rule, does she?'
'Used to,' I said. 'She works at a mill now.'
I could not bring myself to say the words 'Hind's Mill'.
'I wouldn't fancy that myself,' said George. 'You'll see a lot
of weavers in some pub of a Saturday night, crowding around
the "Try Your Fortune" machine, startled at whatever comes
up, and it's enough to make a fellow weep. I mean to say, the
tickets might just as well read: "You're a weaver in a mill, you
will stay a weaver in the mill, and when you are quite worn out
you will leave the mill, and then you will die.'"
After that little lot, I found that I didn't quite
know
George
Ogden. I would have to think on.
I said, 'The wife is in the
offices
at her mill, you know?'
'Of course she is, old man,' he said. 'Don't mind me at all.'
A tram was stopping outside Victoria Hall, and George
Ogden suddenly made a run for it. It was an unnatural sight,
George running. It was like a man having a fight with himself
while on the move, and it seemed that half the street came to
a halt in order to marvel at the spectacle. He jumped onto the
tram then jumped directly off with the conductor bawling at
him. There were post boxes on the trams, and George had just
posted his letter. You weren't supposed to do it like that
though. The boxes were for fare payers only.
As he strolled back to me, the conductor was giving us the
evil eye, but luckily his tram was carrying him further off by
the second.
'You want to watch he doesn't open the box and take your
letter out,' I said.
'How will he know which is mine?' George said, and then
he smiled and then he frowned.
'It's a letter to my best girl,' he said.
'Where does she live?'
'She's out in Oldham,' he said.
'Do you get over there very often?'
'Not so
very ...
It's a fair way, you know.'
'Matrimony on the cards, is it?'
George, who had wandered onto the road, now had to
scuttle out of the way of a delivery bike and was nearly flattened in the process. His legs were too short. He was all brain
and belly.
'That's . . . it's never quite settled,' said George. 'Your Mrs
Stringer,' he said.
'She's
got her own mind, hasn't she?'
'It's all the woman's role, and so on,' I said. 'She's ardent
for freedom.'
'Bit hard on you though, old sort?'
'Well, she wants better conditions for all.'
'What about lodgers?' he said, quite sharply.
'How do you mean?'
'It's just that I'm in rather low water in present, financially
speaking, and -'
'If you want a rent cut it won't wash, George,' I said.
'You've only been in a week.'
'But with all her beliefs about fairness -'
'No,' I said. 'As far as all that goes ... You see, a part of freedom for her is being able to charge you five shillings a week
rent.'
looking quite abashed. 'Anyway, it's quite all right,' he said,
starting to walk once again. 'I'm a socialist myself, you
know.'
'Yes,' I said, 'so am I, but I will not go to lectures on the
minimum wage on Saturday afternoon.'
And I will not put grindstones on railway lines on account
of being one either, I thought, and it came to me that I hadn't
seen Paul, the socialist missionary, hanging about Horton
Street since our conversation of eight days ago.
'There's just nothing to be done about it,' said George, who
was still thinking of his rent. 'I shall have to reduce my savings.'
'Well you could stop going out for knife-and-fork teas
every night,' I said. 'You do have use of the scullery, you
know.'
'I do not have knife-and-fork teas,' said George, 'I have
damn good
suppers.'
'And I suppose you'll have a bottle of wine too?'
'I will take a carafe,' said George, and he said that last word
with very great care. 'That would be nothing out of the way.'
'What is a carafe?' I asked him.
'It's a sort of small jug,' he said, and then he stopped and
smiled: 'But not
too
small.'
We walked on, skirting past People's Park, where all the
benches were full. I was trying to spy the rainbow in the fountain, while thinking violently about George and money. He
either had too little or he had too much.
'Where did you lodge before, George?' I said.
But he ignored this question completely.
We were by now at the Albert Cigar Factory, whose two
chimneys did look like cigars puffing away, but nothing had
been made of this for advertising purposes. I took George
round to the back of the factory, where there was a small blue
door with a broken metal sign on it. The only words remaining read: '
ALWAYS DELIGHTFUL TO INHALE'.
I knocked, saying to George, 'You sometimes have to wait
a while.'
But the door was opened straightway by a youn
g fellow in
a dust coat. He was standing in a kind of shop - a take-it-or-
leave-it kind of show, not out to please, where the goods were
just left in crates and kicked about as needed.
'What ho!' shouted George, and the cigar man sprang back.
For a minute I thought he was going to crown George.
"A's or 'B's?' the cigar man asked.
"A's for me', said George. 'Take a dozen.'
"B's for me,' I said. 'Half a dozen.'
Mine were two shillings, George's four, and they came to
us in boxes without lids.
'Do you have any tubes?' said George to the cigar man.
'What sort of tubes?' came the reply.
'Cigar tubes,' said George.
The man turned to one of the crates and George turned to
me, muttering, 'Extraordinary fellow!'
George got one tin tube, gratis - which he thought a great
thing to bring off - and as we walked away he took a little
clasp knife out of one of his dozens of pockets, chopped the
end off his 'A', and lit it. It was more than twice the size of one
of my 'B's.
'Sound smoke,' he said after a while, and he carried it off
pretty well. Folk looked at him as he walked by. Then he
stopped, and with the smoke racing into his eyes, unlaced his
watch from his waistcoat: 'Fancy a stroll down to the Joint?'
I said that I did, and we set off down Horton Street, carrying our cigar boxes.
'You really ought to get 'A's, you know,' said George.
'Why?' I said, even though I'd been thinking the same
thing myself.
'They're bigger,' he said, taking a puff, 'and better. You're
an Ai fellow, so have an Ai cigar.'
'Thank you,' I said, because there didn't seem much else to
say.
After a few paces he turned, with a flaring match in his