Andrew Martin - The Blackpool Highflyer

There was a little hotel. I hurried along to it and burst through the front door. It was full of very dry people in strange hats, and all smoking cigars. I was in the public bar and for a moment thought my hearing had gone west, for they were all speaking words I could not make out. They were all foreigners.

I came out of there double-quick and ducked into the next place. It was a little watery fishmonger's, with things floating in pails of cloudy water, but most of the fish already sold and the owner swabbing down the floor.

'You've not seen a fellow come by this way, have you?'

The fishmonger shook his head.

I gave it up. Back into the rain; back into Goole town.

George was in Goole at any rate, and he would only be leaving the town on a boat, and the boats could not set sail just yet.

So I walked about for an eternity in the blackness and the rain, keeping my eyes skinned. I must have stood for half an hour in front of a butcher's, with a line of dead rabbits over my head holding the rain off. Presently, I turned back to the docks, where the black water looked as though it was being beaten by hammers. There might have been getting on for half a dozen steamships loading. Horses were being walked up onto one of them, but it was mainly coal that was going in. As I looked on, a coal barge came by, snaking through the docks with smaller barges towed behind, all heaped with coal. I thought of the swan at Hebden Bridge, with the signets following behind in a line.

I found myself after a while back in the place near the church, bang outside the Lanky shipping office once again. I looked up at the flag, the little galleons carved over the door. Right over the road was the pub I'd spotted before. It also had two galleons on show – these on the pub sign. They were friendly-looking little ships, but the pub was just a white room, heaving with sea-going blokes. There was nothing on the wall but gas flares with no mantels, giving out a bright white light. Everybody was supping, and everybody was smoking, for what else do you do while waiting for your ship to leave? There were bags and portmanteaus all over the floor, and the fashion was to stand there swigging your ale with your foot placed on top of your bag, so as to stop it being carried away.

I pushed my way through to the bar, trying to avoid the hazards of the luggage pieces, and asked for a glass of ale from the barman, who was small and rough-looking, like his pub. Just as he passed the beer over, I saw something red in the far corner of the room: the redness of a glass of wine, the one glass of wine being drunk in that room.

Well, it was George Ogden drinking it.

As I moved over to him with my own glass in my hand, one of the big fellows waiting for transhipment knocked against Ogden, and half the wine was down his fancy waistcoat. When I got over to him, he was trying to rub it away, saying to himself, 'Just need a little something in a bottle to furbish it up.'

'It's all up, George,' I said.

He was not wearing his stiff collar. He was wearing the white shirt as usual, but he had on no collar at all and I saw his neck for the first time. There was a fair amount of it.

He closed his eyes for a second, as if he could magic me away by the power of his mind. But then he looked back. 'Hello, old man,' he said, putting his hand inside his coat and taking out a pocket book. He handed me a pawn-shop ticket and a banknote. 'Look, old sort,' he said, 'the fellow in that pawn shop's as tight as Kelsey's Nuts. He let me have a sovereign for the gold cross, and I'm now giving you the ticket and ten shillings. You'll have the balance directly I get myself straightened out.'

I put down my glass of ale on the nearest table, took hold of his shirt and pitched him against the wall. He bounced back off it. The blokes around us barely moved – it was a normal sort of event in this place.

'Careful, old sort' George said presently, 'I will not be slighted.'

'Let's have it' I said. 'Tell me about the tickets first.'

'Had a few away, that's all,' he said. 'Just a lark, really. I began by thinking it rather a pretty little scheme.'

'You needed help with it though.'

'Ha!' said George, 'and that's where things got a little tangled. I'll tell you what, old boy: you wouldn't believe – good chap like yourself – the vagabonds they've got on the ticket- collecting side over at Blackpool.'

'Don was one of them,' I said.

'Well I'm blowed!' said George, who was now getting back to something like himself. 'You've happened on that gentry, have you? Very nasty piece of goods indeed.'

'And his pal, Max, is a sight worse,' I said.

George blew out his cheeks. 'You're not wrong there either.'

'Where did he come into it? I asked. 'Max, I mean. He's not a ticket collector, is he?'

'Well now, Max…' said George. 'He was on hand just in case anyone should stumble over the scheme and then… well, how can I put it, old man? He is rather scarifying. I mean, Queensbury Rules don't enter into it with that particular chap, and that I can promise you.'

'You're waiting for a boat,' I said, ignoring this. 'Where are you off?'

'Holland, old man.'

In my mind's eye I saw George Ogden in Holland, wearing big trousers with patches sewn on, sticking his fat finger in the hole in the dyke.

'Thought I'd try my luck in Amsterdam,' he was saying. 'Now you wouldn't crack on, old man, would you? We've had some rare old larks, the two of us. I'll be honest, I liked your company. But could I ask you a question, old man? Why should you be up there, day in, day out, working for slave wages in all weathers, getting burnt, bashed about the head – I see you have stitches in – when many stupider fellows are sitting back in their offices and barely lifting a finger for twice what you're on? I only wonder because I saw you in the restaurant and you were like a cat on hot bricks, and it's not right that you should be. You must have a scheme, old man, otherwise your life will be quite wasted. Would you care for a refill?'

'No.'

Over the heads of the crowd in the bright, white room I saw the helmet of a copper. It was the one I'd seen over the way, in the shipping office. He was standing by the door, chatting to a bloke who looked as though he ought to be arrested by the copper, not passing the time of day with him.

'I had a sweetheart once,' George continued. 'Oh, she'd go for the salt with her knife as soon as wink. Well, I checked that in no time and schooled her in speech a little: "Six year", she would say, and I would say "No, sweet, six years". Now, she didn't like it one bit, but I kept at it. Started on the mill floor, that one did. I'm not ashamed to say it, old man: I was stepping out with a factory girl, but I put her up to going for the office, and it was the proudest moment of my life when she went typewriter in the same concern. And why do you think I bothered? Because she had brains, and I would not have them wasted, and I would not have her slighted. It was my duty to keep the wind off that girl, and I tried and I tried, and in the end, old man, you see, I failed.'

I was not really listening to George. I was thinking of Margaret Dyson and how, as I had picked her up, the life had spilled out of her.

'You're the same in some respects, you know,' George was saying, 'but you have your Mrs Stringer, and she will keep you up to the mark, old man, believe me.'

The doctor's words came back: 'I will go further, and say that if it is a delicate person you are dealing with…'

'Oh, whether you like it or not,' George Ogden was saying, 'believe me. And you will like it, for you're an intelligent fellow.'

'To put him or her suddenly upright may cost your patient his or her life.'

'And I knew, I just knew, old sort, that I could never keep anything back from you,' George Ogden was saying, 'and I'm really awfully sorry for trying.'