Andrew Martin: Death on a Branch line

As we’d come out of the station, I’d not seen the wife in the yard (or Mervyn or Hardy), but I assumed that Lydia had taken the boy back to The Angel, and that Hardy had made off. He would be run in eventually, though, even if his woodcut had to appear in the Police Gazette every week for the next year. Woodcock was a little way ahead of me. Every time he pushed a branch aside, it sprang back and gave me a fresh soaking.

‘Why wouldn’t you send a wire for Sir George?’ I asked him.

‘Couldn’t be arsed,’ he called back. ‘My work stops when I book off — if not before.’

We were sweeping fast through knee-high gorse and bracken, keeping our heads low to avoid the black branches.

‘Who are you going to send to?’ called Woodcock.

‘Well, it won’t reach long distance, will it?’

‘Signal’s piss weak,’ called Woodcock. ‘Only goes along the branch.’

‘I’ll send the message to Pilmoor,’ I said. ‘That’s on the main line, and they’ll have a good connection for London. The chap there can send it on.’

I pictured Pilmoor station — two skimpy wooden platforms shaken to buggery every time an express flew by. In theory my message could be sent there within five minutes of a connection being established, and it would only take that long again for Pilmoor to transmit to London. The question was whether they could send it direct to the Home Office

… or would they have to go through some London exchange? We came to a wide clearing, which turned out to be a wide pond — all stagnant and clogged with weeds; not the one I’d struck before. It looked grey in the dawn-light, and was surrounded by tall everlastings, like a gathering of giants.

‘Where’s this?’ I said.

‘It’s left from here,’ said Woodcock, and we skirted the water by a path littered with fallen trees, from which other trees were sprouting like signals on gantries. Sometimes we went over, sometimes under.

‘I know the bloke at Pilmoor,’ said Woodcock, ‘- telegraph clerk, I mean.’

‘They do run to one, do they? What’s he like?’

‘He’s a cunt.’

Presently, we came to the edge of the woods, and there we stood before a scene of disaster: the empty stretch of railway line, the fallen cable and the hissing rain. We moved beyond the breakage, heading westerly, as I supposed. Two poles beyond the collapse, Woodcock pointed to the ABC and said, ‘Plant it here.’

I set the machine down by the track ballast.

‘You off up?’ he said, indicating the pole. ‘Or am I?’

As he spoke, he was attaching the long wires to the back of the ABC. I hadn’t quite thought it through, but of course our wires would have to be tied onto the overhead cable.

‘You do it,’ I said, and he was up the pole like a bloody monkey on a stick with the wires in his teeth.

I leant over the storm lantern to protect the wick from the rain, and took out a box of matches. I struck the first, and it was blown out — not by the falling rain but by the warm wind the rain made. The same thing happened to the second, but I got the lamp lit at the third go. I then moved it close to the ABC, and looked at the two dials. One was the communicator, and the other was the indicator — sometimes called the receiver. The two dials were like overcrowded clock faces. On each were set out the numbers from 0 to 9, the letters of the alphabet and all the punctuation marks and other symbols. It was only the English language, but it looked brain-wracking enough just then. I drew out my pocket watch and lowered it towards the glimmering lantern: ten to six.

‘All set?’ I called up to Woodcock.

His shout came through the rain.

‘Hold your fucking horses!’

He was fifteen foot above me, leaning out from the top of the pole, and scraping at one of the telegraph wires with a pocket knife. I looked again at the ABC. It was like a portable grave, with the one dial (the communicator) lying flat and the other (the indicator or receiver) raised vertical like a little tombstone. Around the outside of the communicator dial were golden keys, one for each letter, number or punctuation mark. You pressed the key you wanted, the handle flew to it and that was it sent. I found myself mentally picking out the letters for J-O-H-N-L-A-M-B-E-R-T. Where the hell was he? I had no notion, but in the darkness of the storm, it was very easy to believe that he’d come to grief. I looked at my silver watch again: six, dead on.

‘What’s up?’ I called to Woodcock.

‘All this… green shit on the wires,’ he said.

Verdigris. That’s what it was called, and the connection wouldn’t be made until it was removed. Woodcock was certainly putting his guts into the job, leaning out far from the top of the pole like the high-flying man in the circus as he reaches out for the swinging trapeze.

‘Worked out your bloody message?’ he called down.

‘Lambert innocent,’ I called up. ‘Do not hang… forward directly to Home Office, London.’

(There would be no difficulty in reaching the Home Office, I decided. Any telegraph clerk would have it in his directory.)

Woodcock, still at his wire-scraping, called out something I couldn’t catch.

‘Come again?’ I called up.

‘ Please do not hang!’ he shouted down. ‘Remember to ask nicely!’

He was a cold-hearted little bastard, and that was fact. It was five after six.

Woodcock was now tying our two wires to one of the six carried out from the pole. Christ knew how he could tell which was the right one. Then he was down from the pole, and pulling at the trailing ends of the wires he’d tied onto the ones above. Crouching low, and working by the light of the storm lamp, he connected them somehow to the back of the ABC, and then took the battery out of his top-coat pocket, which he tied on by two smaller wires. As soon as the connection was made there came a blue flash, which I took at first for our little bit of electricity. But then came the boom of the thunder, and the rain doubled its speed. Woodcock was crouching on the bank of slimy track ballast, eyeing me and trying to light a fag.

I glanced at my watch: 6.25.

‘Never mind that,’ said Woodcock. ‘Hand over your pocketbook.’

‘Eh? Why?’

‘Because I need bread, you silly sod. How much do you have in it?’

‘Nothing doing, pal,’ I said, at which he stood up.

‘I’m taking a big risk by sending this message,’ he said. ‘It puts me right in the bloody line of fire.’

‘I’ve given you a fair spin,’ I said. ‘You’re off the hook; we have an agreement.’

‘I’m clearing out in any case,’ he said. ‘Meantime, I might or might not work this doings for you. It all depends on you handing over your gold.’

‘Forget it, mate,’ I said.

‘All right then, I’m off, and I don’t much fancy your chances with that thing.’

He climbed the track ballast and stepped over the rails and into the field beyond. The lightning came again, and Woodcock was suddenly a hundred yards further on, walking with his hands in his pockets through cut corn under the roaring rain. There came another bang of thunder, and out of this seemed to grow another, more regular noise — the beating of an engine.

The first Monday train. I hadn’t bargained on that. Would it stop at the station? The week-end was over now, after all. If it did stop, then Hardy might board it and ride away to freedom. It would look queer, the station master getting on the train; it would be like the station getting on it, but who’d lift a finger to stop him? Everything was going to pot. I ought to have brought the Chief in again, even if that meant involving that pill Usher. The engine drew out of the woods, and came on. The rain made a haze above the carriage roofs; and it made a waterfall as it rolled down the carriage sides. Will Woodcock still be in sight by the time this has passed? I wondered.