Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

'Now I need fresh cheese,' said Mrs Dawson.

'Can you have fresh cheese?' asked Amanda Rickerby. 'Mr Fielding's special reserve,' she said to me, indicating the bottle.

'Help yourself to a glass of wine, Mr Stringer,' Fielding called out from the sink. 'It's a rare event to find the Burgundy whites in Scarborough.'

'And he should know,' put in Miss Rickerby.

She found a glass, and poured me some wine.

'It's been standing in cold water since breakfast time,' she said, regaining her seat, 'and what do you think? Mr Fielding sent Adam with a sovereign to buy some lovely fish from the harbour.'

Vaughan now entered in his cape, looking flushed and damp but in good spirits. I wondered where he'd been since the women's pub. Seeing the fish lying in white paper on the kitchen table, he said: 'Good-o, I like a bit of cod.'

'It's haddock,' Fielding called out. He had now acquired his own glass of the Chablis, and it appeared that a regular party was in the making.

'We're going to have it with cheese sauce,' said Amanda Rickerby,'… and creamed potatoes.'

But of course she was not lifting a finger to help her brother, who was doing all the work with some assistance from Mrs Dawson.

'Is this normal?' I said. 'For a Monday in Paradise?'

'It is not, Jim,' said Vaughan. 'Potted shrimps and stewed fruit would be near the mark for normal. What are we having for pudding, Mrs Dawson? I fancy treacle tart.'

'All right, Mr Vaughan,' she said, 'I'll just immediately make that for you.'

'Hang about,' he said, 'I'll give you a hand.'

And he walked into the larder and came out with a tin of Golden Syrup, which he passed to Mrs Dawson before sitting back down again and taking a copy of Sporting Life from the pocket of his cape. Mrs Dawson took the lid off the tin, saying, 'That's no earthly use,' and passed it to Amanda Rickerby, who peered in before handing it in turn back to Vaughan.

'It's more like olden syrup,' she said, but the crack was for my benefit. She seemed most anxious for my approval of all her remarks, and so I grinned back at her – but were the smiles of a woman who was half cut worth the same as those from a sober one? And whenever I see someone drinking heavily in the daytime I wonder why they're about it, whereas evening drinking is only to be expected and quite above board.

'Seems all right to me,' said Vaughan, inspecting the treacle and receiving a glass of wine from Fielding. He dipped his finger into the tin, and started licking the stuff.

'It's just because we're all always so blue on Monday,' said Amanda Rickerby, 'and today we're going to be different, and you and I are going to have a lovely long talk, Mr Stringer.'

I thought: At this rate, we're going to have a fuck, and that's all there is to it. All I had to do was let on I was married and that'd put an end to it, and I knew I should do it because if you fucked one woman who wasn't your wife, then where would it end? You might as well fuck hundreds, or at least try, and your whole life would be taken up with it.

I saw that Fielding was eyeing me from his post at the sink.

'Just at present, Miss Rickerby is composing an advertisement for the Yorkshire Evening Press! he said.

'You mean you're composing it,' Vaughan interrupted. 'Old Howard's a great hand at writing adverts,' he added, turning to me. 'He advertised in the Leeds paper for a promising young man interested in post cards, and I thought: That's me on both counts! You see, I'd worked for a while on one of the travelling post offices, Jim.'

'Which ones?' I enquired.

'The Night Mail "Down".'

I was impressed, for the Night Mail 'Down', with carriages supplied by the Great Northern and staff by the General Post Office, was the TPO.

'You must have lived in London at that time,' I said, 'since you'd have worked out of Euston?'

'Born in London, Jim,' said Vaughan, and I wondered whether that alone accounted for his appearing to be of a slightly superior class. I tried to picture him walking every morning through the great arch in front of Euston station.

'Did three years on that,' he said, 'clerking in the sorting carriages and… well, I saw the quantity of cards being sent.'

'As a misprint in The Times once had it, Mr Stringer,' Fielding put in, 'the down postal leaves London every evening with two unsorted letters and five thousand engines.'

I grinned at him.

'Did you quit?' I enquired, turning back to Vaughan.

'Chucked it up, yes. Didn't care for the motion of the train, Jim; gave me a sort of sea sickness.'

'Mai de mer,' said Fielding, and everything stopped, as though we were all listening for the sound of the sea coming from just yards beyond the wall of the kitchen. Everything stopped, that is, save for Adam Rickerby, who had been put to chopping parsley with a very small knife, and was evidently making a poor fist of it. Mrs Dawson was eyeing him. I knew she was going to step in, and I wondered whether he'd really fly into rage this time – and with knife in hand. But there was something very kindly about the way she took the knife from the lad, saying, 'Let's do the job properly. You're worse than me, love.'

With Mrs Dawson looking on, and the parsley chopped, Adam Rickerby then lowered the haddock into a big pot, poured in some milk, and set it on the range. At length, the room began to be filled with a sort of fishy fog. Theo Vaughan had finished his wine, and was now helping himself from the beer barrel on the table, saying 'You sticking with the wine, Jim?'

In-between doing bits of cooking in consultation with Mrs Dawson, Adam Rickerby was trying to make things orderly in the kitchen. He was forever shifting the knife polisher about on the table, and presently took it away to the sideboard. Amanda Rickerby, disregarding her pen and paper, was now sipping wine at a great rate and saying things such as, 'I do like it when we're all in, and it's raining outside.' She then turned to me, enquiring, 'Tell us all about trains, Mr Stringer. Have you ever eaten a meal on one?'

Adam Rickerby eyed me as I revolved the question. As a copper, I'd quite often taken dinner or luncheon in a restaurant car, usually with the Chief and at his expense. Would an ordinary fireman do it? Had I ever done it when I'd been an ordinary fireman, leaving aside sandwiches and bottled tea on the footplate? No.

'Do you count light refreshments in a tea car?' I said.

'Yes!' Amanda Rickerby said, very excited. 'Is there one running into Scarborough?'

'In summer there is,' I said.

'And might they do a little more than a tea? Not a joint but a chop or a steak?'

'I think so.'

'And a nice glass of wine? When does the first one run?'

'May sort of time,' I said, and she shut her eyes for a space, contemplating the idea.

'Cedar-wood box after luncheon, Mr Stringer?' Fielding called over to me.

I nodded back. 'Obliged to you,' I said.

Miss Rickerby was standing, leaning forward to pour me more wine, and she threatened to over-topple onto me, which I wished she would do.

'Care for another glass?' she enquired, sitting back down.

Vaughan gave a mighty sniff, and said, 'You ought to have asked that before you filled it, Miss R… strictly speaking.'

But she ignored him in favour of eyeing me.

'Well, it goes down a treat,' I said.

'Just so!' said Fielding, and Aijianda Rickerby turned sharply about and looked at him.

'Are you married, Mr Stringer?' she said, facing me again – and I knew I'd failed to keep the look of panic from my face.

'Well…' I said again.

'Three wells make a river and you in the river make it bigger,' said Mrs Dawson from the pantry, where she was making a list. It was an old Yorkshire saying, but what did it mean, and what did she mean by it?