Andrew Martin: The Blackpool Highflyer

But the mill-owner continued to approach at a steady pace. He was a big, stale-looking fellow of about sixty: the younger of the two Hinds. The excursionists shuffled down the track bank as he came near. Hind did not wear a white rosette. As he walked, the dust from the track ballast somehow did not land on his boots. His boots kicked it away, and I wondered what he'd hoped to be up to in Blackpool when all his people were at the dancing platforms, the grotto railways and hot- pea saloons.

When he spoke, he sounded like the excursionists, but more used to being listened to.

'I see we've nearly come a very nasty cropper.'

'Nearly, sir,' said Clive. 'It was seen in good time though.'

Hind nodded. You couldn't tell if he was angry or not. 'My father, who is ninety-nine, was pitched from one side of the compartment to another,' he said.

'And is he quite all right?' asked Clive.

'He suffers with his heart, but has a very strong constitution… which the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway has today tested to the full.'

Even that might have been a good thing from the way he said it.

'You'll find it hard to credit,' Hind said, 'but this is Father's first time on a train. He cannot be doing with them, but he'd decided to try the experience once.'

I thought: Christ, we're for it now. But Hind didn't seem too put out.

'I'm sure there's been no irregularity,' he went on, 'but I'll have both your names if you don't mind.'

'Clive Carter,' said Clive.

'Jim Stringer,' I said.

'Might we get this stone shifted?' said Hind, 'And then get on? My work-people are to be served with early teas by the Tower Company. And I have most important business to conduct on the seafront at Blackpool in exactly two hours' time.'

As he turned and walked back towards the engine, Clive said, 'Who does he think he is? King bloody Canute?'

Reuben Booth, who was still at his book, began reading again: '"When a train is stopped by accident or obstruction, the guard, if there be only one, or the rear guard, if there be more than one… "'

Hind looked at Reuben for a while, then turned and walked back towards 1418. As he did so, I looked at the crocked engine. A derailment: it had happened to me. It would be in the papers. The Board of Trade would send down an inspector. I felt like the tightrope walker who has fallen off the tightrope.

'Reuben,' I said, 'we must get the detonators down.'

'That's it,' he said, but went straight away back to reading his manual: '"Detonators shall be placed as follows: one detonator a quarter of a mile from the train -"'

'Is it a job for guard or fireman, Reuben?' I asked. 'What do you reckon?'

'It says here,' said Reuben Booth: '"The detonators should be placed by the guard or any competent person.'"

Clive looked over at me: 'You'd better do it then Jim,' he said in an under-breath, and it was hard not to laugh.

'It's all in hand,' said Reuben, 'leave it up to me.'

We watched as Reuben plodded back to his guard's van, climbed up, stayed up there for quite a while, climbed down with the detonators over his shoulder. They looked like belts with boot-polish tins attached. Reuben dropped one, slowly bent down and picked it up, and set off along the track back in the direction of Salwick.

'What's that bit of kit he's got hold of?' asked a fellow from the crowd of excursionists that was by now standing about us.

'Detonators,' I said.

'Explosives, like?' said the first excursionist.

I nodded.

The excursionist thought about this for a while. 'He wants one of them up his arse,' he said.

Clive was puffing at his cheroots.

'He'll lay the detonators on the track,' I said, 'so that any train coming up behind us will set them off.'

'What? And get blown to bloody Kingdom Come?' said the excursionist. 'Can we not just somehow warn it instead?'

It was hard to believe how Hind's Mill turned out any cloth at all if this was the class of fellow they had working in it, and Clive was grinning so that his little cigar was at a crazy angle.

They only give out a bang,' I said. 'But there's no need of them really because the signalman back at Salwick won't let another train in this section until the fellow at Kirkham gives him the bell to say we're clear of it.'

'So your pal's wasting his time?' said another excursionist, and we all watched Reuben in the distance, walking like a clockwork soldier because he would stick to the track and the sleepers, instead of going along the field, which would have doubled his rate of progress.

'I do hope he is,' I said, and then I asked Clive: 'Do you reckon we can shift the stone?'

'We'll have a go,' he said.

Some of the excursionists offered to give a hand, but there was only room for two to grip it. We had to graft but we got it off the rails. It wouldn't have been so hard to get it on, though, for small embankments rose up from the track just at this point. The stone could have been rolled down onto the line.

We'd no sooner shifted the stone than the bloody motorist from before -1 was sure it was the same fellow – came skimming along through the field next to us, trailing a great cloud of dust and sand. It looked as if he was driving clean through the pasture alongside the track, but there was a road, although a pretty rough sort going by how much the motorist was chucking up behind him. I looked down at the stone.

'It was brought here along that road,' I said.

Clive said nothing. He was again booting the rail, looking gormless.

A train was coming towards us on the other line, the 'down'; it was shimmering in the heat, so that the train itself looked like steam. When it came close, the driver leant out and gave us a wave, then shouted something that was drowned by his engine and gave us a couple of screams on his whistle. It was one engine pulling seven empty tenders – a water special, coming back from filling the water columns at Central.

An excursionist called to me: 'What's he carrying?'

'His train's empty,' I said.

The excursionist thought about this for a while. 'What was he carrying?' he called back.

I didn't want to talk about this. All of a sudden, I had no appetite for railway subjects. 'Water,' I said.

'Where to?'

'Blackpool.'

'Don't they have enough?' said the excursionist.

'No.'

'You'd think they would,' he said. 'I mean, they've the sea for starters.'

'The engines need fresh,' I said, 'and country round here dries fast in this weather.'

Clive came up to me and we started walking back to the Highflyer, which was leaking steam and looking embarrassed at being half off the rails, and walked about by excursionists.

Clive was saying, 'I like these mill girls in their summer toilettes.'

About half of Hind's Mill were down on the pasture by now, and they'd taken their boxes, blankets and bottles down with them. The sun was high; it was about dinner time, and the excursionists were picnicking; either that or they were stretched out reading their penny papers, drinking ginger beer.

I liked mill girls in their summer toilettes, when you could see a bit more of their hair, spilling out from under their bonnets (in the mills it was kept up all the time). The weavers among them could earn the big penny, even the half-timers, and they always had a lot 'off'. They would dash about Halifax, looking always on the edge of opportunity, while the men would sort of mooch along behind.

We came up to Martin Lowther, who was still sitting by the track, sweltering in his gold coat. He would not take it off, for then he'd be somebody else. 'It goes down as "exceptional causes",' he said, in his morngy voice, looking out at the field and not in our direction. 'A train can only be stopped by engine, by signals, or by exceptional causes.'