Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

'Quite a panorama,' he said, indicating the window, 'as the post card people say.'

Has he brought me up to show me the view? I didn't want the sherry, but I drank the stuff anyway, as if doing so would bring the truth closer. But Fielding was only smiling politely. He seemed to have no topic for conversation in his mind.

'What ships do you see from here?' I asked, presently.

'Only this morning,' he said, 'one of Mr Churchill's destroyers.'

A noise came from the doorway, and Vaughan stood there in his Inverness cape, grinning with eyes half closed. He was thoroughly drunk by now and breathing noisily through his drooping moustache. He had not been invited, and I fancied that Fielding did not look too pleased to see him, although of course he kept up a show of politeness.

Vaughan closed on me with a post card held out. It might have been the woman earlier shown on the trapeze, only she now lounged under a tree, wearing no clothes as usual but holding a parasol, which would not have made her decent even if she'd chosen to use it for the purpose of keeping decent, which she had not done. Vaughan showed it only to me. There was evidently no question either of showing it to Fielding or of hiding it from him, but he could see it from where he stood, anyhow.

'Class A,' breathed Vaughan. 'Quite a naturalist, this one.'

'Naturist,' said Fielding, 'and be so good as to take her away'

Vaughan grinned, turned on his heel, and quit the room. Where was he going? Off to waste more of his allowance?

'I'm used to Vaughan's bohemian ways,' said Fielding, now pouring us out another glass each of the sherry. 'But it does you credit, Mr Stringer, the way that you take him in your stride.'

He sat down in his favourite chair, and I took the couch.

'I suppose they're only the Old Masters brought up to date,' I said, thinking of Vaughan's witness statement.

'It's not the highest sort of indecency,' said Fielding.

'The railway cards I liked though,' I said. 'It's not often you see a crossed signal or an out-of-gauge load on a card.'

'Something that might have appealed to a footplate man such as yourself, said Fielding, 'was our series of pictures of double headed trains.'

He was going round the houses; this surely was not meant to be the subject of our talk, but I said:

'You know there are triple-headed trains working in some places… Up the bank to Ravenscar.'

'I shouldn't wonder,' said Fielding. 'What is it there? Six hundred feet above sea level?'

'Getting on for,' I said. 'They're very short trains too.'

'So you've a train with almost as many engines as carriages?' said Fielding, blowing smoke, and tipping his head to one side. He was full of little cracks like that. He moved his little glass from one hand to another, as though practising receiving a glass daintily with both hands. I wondered whether he'd worn that ring of his in York gaol. He'd have been asking for trouble if he had done. I was bursting to ask him whether he really had been lagged, because I could scarcely believe it.

'Vaughan's money came today, of course,' I said, after an interval of silence.

'Yes,' said Fielding. 'It's just enough to keep him idle. Some people might say that a modest allowance has promoted lethargy in my case as well, but I think I'm a little more industrious than friend Vaughan.'

'You've carried on various businesses,' I said.

'Yes,' said Fielding, exhaling smoke, 'but who was it said that the key to success is consistency to purpose?'

And he tipped his head, as though really expecting me to supply the answer.

'I don't know,' I said.

'Disraeli?' he said, and he smiled, adding, 'I should have stuck at my original plan.'

'Oh. What was that?'

'In my youth, I trained as a lawyer.'

'A solicitor?

He nodded again.

'I have it in mind to take articles myself,' I said, and he tipped his head. He did not believe me for a minute, or did not credit that it was possible.

'It's a hard road,' he said, and he left too long a silence before adding,'… but the work ought to be well within the capacities of a man like yourself.'

Fielding set out to be mannerly at all times, but occasionally he did not come up to the mark. I glanced over to see Amanda Rickerby in the doorway. She stood swaying somewhat, and said, 'There's a person to see you downstairs, Mr Fielding.'

He rose, half bowed at her, and went off through the open door of the ship room.

'Who was it?' I enquired of the landlady. But she walked to one of the two windows without replying.

'What a day,' she said, after a space. And then, remembering my question, 'It was someone from the gramophone society.'

She continued to stare out at the German Sea. Here was another of her silent goes; there'd been one during breakfast, and one in the kitchen not half an hour since. Was it the same thought every time that kept her silent? A ship putting out black smoke was stationary on the horizon. It might as well have been a factory at sea. Miss Rickerby turned and saw the decanter of Spanish sherry.

'Do you want a glass?' she said, moving fast towards it. 'Not that it's mine to offer.'

'Better not,' I said. 'I've just had two.'

She returned to the window with her glass, looking out to sea again. I stood by the next window, so that we were about three feet apart. I did not know what would happen, or what I would do. I was in fact paralysed by indecision, and so it was strange to see, down on the Prom, a tall, thin man moving with great purpose. He wore a Macintosh and a bowler, and was running at the top of his speed through the rain. He skidded up to the beach steps, half stumbled down them in his haste, and continued running over the black beach, going full pelt, heading straight for the waves, where he came to a sudden halt. Amanda Rickerby turned to me and smiled sadly.

'Well, I thought he was going to do… something,' she said.

We faced each other now, and she took a step towards me, with face downturned. She was a head smaller than me, and I could see the top of her curls, and then, when she tilted her face upwards, the powder on her cheekbones, the blueness and greyness that made the overall greenness of her wide-set eyes.

'I am quite drunk, Mr Stringer,' she said.

She appeared to be looking at my North Eastern Railway badge again, really concentrating on it. She took my right hand in hers. Her hand was dry, and she moved it about over mine in a way that was somehow not restless but very calming – the right thing. I could hear footsteps on the stairs.

'You had better lock your room tonight,' she said, quickly.

'Why?'

'Probably no reason,' she said, withdrawing her hand, and giving me a smile that was natural, quick, charming, and just about the most mysterious thing I've ever seen.

Adam Rickerby stood in the doorway.

'Gas 'as run out,' he said. 'Meter wants feeding.'

Amanda Rickerby smiled brightly and much more straightforwardly at me. 'Do you have sixpence, Mr Stringer? I'll pay you back later.'

Amanda Rickerby went downstairs in the company of her brother.

Events were now rushing on faster than my thoughts and faster also than my morals. What had she meant by advising me to lock my room? Did she mean that otherwise she would come to visit me in the night, and that she needed to be saved from herself? What was Vaughan up to? Mysterious and glooming in the seafront pub… in better spirits during luncheon… but now making off again. And for what purpose had Fielding taken me up to the ship room? But as I stepped out of that room, one thing was certain: I was alone on the first floor of the house, and both Fielding's and Miss Rickerby's bedroom doors stood open.

I walked into Fielding's first; I hardly cared if I was discovered. In fact being discovered might save me from myself. It was a big room, papered in plain green with a red border, better kept than the rest of the house, and very calm and neat, and made more so by the sight of the lashing rain and wild dark sea beyond the two windows. There were red rugs on wide black boards of the kind seen in inns, bookshelves in alcoves. You had to look hard to see the blisters in the wallpaper and the fraying in the carpet, for the gas was not lit, nor was the fire. There were two closets, a tall chest of drawers, a folded table and a smaller table by the bed head with a little drawer set into it. Over the fancy ironwork of the fireplace was a painting of a ship foundering. I fixed my eye on the chest of drawers, and I marched over the carpet towards it, feeling sure they must have heard the drumming of my boot heels on the floor below.