Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

'I believe we all are,' he said.

I called down, 'A lot of drinking goes on in this house,' and he tipped his head to see if I was joking, looking for a clue as to how to take this.

He gave a half smile, and said, 'What else can you do on a day like today in Scarborough?' and he put on a wide- brimmed hat.

'Where are you going?' I enquired, and he might easily have told me to mind my own business, but he said: 'Take the air. A saunter… Can one saunter in a storm?'

'Where's Miss Rickerby?' I called down.

This was forward of me again, but he said, 'She left a moment ago to do the same, I think. The boy went with her… There's some of the wine left chilling in the larder, Mr

Stringer,' he added with great weariness as he opened the door and contemplated the wind and the rain. Then he stepped through it and was gone.

I cannot say for certain why, but in the next moment I dashed down the stairs and entered the dining room, kitchen and scullery in turn. Only in the scullery, where the walls were of white-glazed brick, did a gas light burn. The rough wooden door beside the mangle must be the entry to Adam Rickerby's room. I knocked – no answer. I lifted the latch, pushed the door, and the light from the scullery fell on another scullery, or so it appeared, but this with a truckle bed in it. A good-sized barrel stood in the room, an old washing dolly, a quantity of carefully folded sacks, and a bicycle with the front wheel smaller than the back so as to make way for a great basket. There was no carpet on the stone floor, and no fireplace but many thick blankets on the bed, which was neatly made up with hardly a crease in the pillow. A trunk stood by the side of the bed. I lifted the lid, and saw rough clothes, neatly folded. Many objects hung from nails on the wall: a bike tyre, an oilcloth, a sou'wester, an apron, and a cork lifejacket. Well, Adam Rickerby lived by the sea, so it was not surprising that he owned a boat. Most who owned boats owned lifejackets. None of this was out of the common, except that I couldn't quite imagine him in charge of a boat, at large on the seas without his sister to encourage him and set him right when he went wrong.

I stepped out of the room, closed the door behind me, and returned to the gloomy kitchen, where something drew me over towards the knife polisher. It looked like a round wooden wheel, the rim of which had been repeatedly stabbed by knives, although in fact they rested in slots. One of the holes accommodated several long, thin items: three skewers of some sort, and a nine inch needle with an eye, which was perhaps for trussing up meat prior to roasting. In the centre of the polisher was a handle connected to a circular brush: you wound it and the blades inside were cleaned.

I climbed the steps, which were all in darkness; had a piss in the gloomy bathroom on the half decorated floor and wandered along towards the door of the apartment-in-the-making. I turned the handle, and stepped through to see amid the shadows the rags of half stripped paper hanging from the walls, the bare boards and the parade of paint tins. The window stood open as before, and I watched for a while the waves hitting the harbour wall a quarter of a mile off. I knew what I was doing: I was putting off looking through the hole in the wall. I watched the sea make three attempts to send spray to the top of the lighthouse, and then I approached the hole, which was about man-sized.

The shreds of faded green-stripe wallpaper made a kind of curtain over it. I pushed them aside, stepped through, and my boots came down silently -1 was on carpet, which was a turnup. I could feel the carpet but not see it, for this second room was darker than the first. But this room too had a window over-looking the front, and objects began to appear by the phosphorous light of the sea beyond: a small sofa, an armchair, a clock on the wall, a high bed with mattress and covers still on and neatly made. There had been some attempt to clear the room: the dwarf bookcase held only one volume, and there were no ornaments to be seen, save for a clock that rested on a tasselled cloth spread over the mantel-shelf. A sheet of paper rested on the counterpane of the bed. I meant to read it, but as I took a step forwards, the flute note came from the fireplace, and I nearly bolted from the room as the paper jumped off the bed, and floated, swinging gently, to the ground. It was the wind coming through the chimney. I walked over, and was relieved to read only the words 'Trips by Steamer' and a list of timings. My hand was shaking as I held it though; I'd had a bad turn, and did not care to stay in the room. I stepped back through the hole, and in a moment I was climbing the topmost staircase under the eyes of old man Rickerby who gave me the evil eye from each of the three photographs in turn.

In the half landing outside my own quarters I fumbled for some matches, pushed open the door, and lit the oil lamp in my little room. It glowed red and the redness made the little room seem the most welcoming of all, and it made me immediately sleepy into the bargain. But I would not sleep. I sat at the end of the bed and removed the piece of paste-board that kept the small window from rattling. I lifted the sash and leant forward, looking down at the Prom below, letting the sea wind move my hair about and breathing deep, cold breaths. I then filled my water glass from the jug by the wash stand and took a drink. I lay down on the bed, and pulled aside the tab rug that lay half underneath the bedstead. The little copper stubs marking the tops of the gas pipes remained tightly sealed. I put the rug back, and listened to the little window shaking. Every small gust caused a fearful din, and the bigger ones seemed set fair to break the glass. I leant forward and lowered the window. It rattled less when closed. I ought really to put back the pasteboard, but I could hardly be bothered. I lay still, listened to the waves, and revolved a hundred bad thoughts: Amanda Rickerby had lied about her brother's accident because it might be seen to have given him a grievance against railway men; Fielding was not queer – or he was a strange sort of queer if he went to bed with pictures of naked ladies. I called to mind the pictures. Lucky horse! But I hadn't the energy to make use of the memory – I was tired out, having hardly slept for three nights. I thought of the wife, and how she'd say, 'You're overstrung, Stringer', and brush my hair right back, for she thought it should go that way rather than the parting at the side, and I was sure that it therefore would do in time.

… But how I liked it when she brushed it back. You'd have thought she'd have better things to do, just because she generally had so much on, what with the Co-operative ladies and the women's cause and the new house and all the rest of it.

I closed my eyes, and I don't believe that I slept, but when I opened them again I saw that there was an intruder in the room, in the shape of a twist of black smoke rising up from the red lamp. As I looked on the redness flared, causing everything in the room to lean away from the window, and then it died away to nothing. The oil had run out. I had the manual for the lamp but no more oil, and I must have light, so I dragged myself to my feet, found my matches in my pocket, and walked out onto the little landing. Reaching up to the gas bracket I turned the tap, breathed the hot coal breath, and lit it, whereupon I was instantly joined on the landing by my own shadow. I had not had sixpence about me, but Miss Rickerby, or her brother, must have fed the meter before going out.

I moved back into the little room, kicked the door shut, and fell onto the bed, where I turned on my side and contemplated the line of white light under the door. The bad thoughts came back: Robert Henderson's hair was brushed directly back. In order to have a fraction of his money I must work all the hours God gave at a job I didn't want to do. Five years of articled clerkship, and for what? So that I might offer a kid a hundred and twenty pounds in exchange for half his brain. My thoughts flew to Tommy Nugent, and I hoped he was back in York, courting his girl from the Overcoat Depot on Parliament Street. I pictured the wife again, wearing my third best suit- coat as she showed her friend Lillian Backhouse about the new garden. That was all right: Lillian Backhouse was another feminist, and the suit-coat looked better on Lydia than on me, in spite of it being twice her size.