Death on a Branch Line(29)

‘I know a fellow was in that very show,’ I said, for the Chief had fought at Tamai.

‘You do?’ said Hardy, and he was different now – sharper. ‘Who’s that, then?’

I couldn’t answer directly without giving away that I was a copper, so I said, ‘… Sergeant major, he was.’

Hardy was now holding my gaze for once. He was almost smiling as he said, ‘Tough as bulldogs, the non-commissioned blokes.’

‘This particular fellow once marched for fifty miles in hundred-degree heat,’ I said, at which station master Hardy eyed me for a while, perhaps idling the thought of that long march.

‘I’d like to shake that man by the hand,’ he said presently, and he nodded rapidly to himself for a while, each nod signifying a further retreat from the conversation.

Just then there came through the open windows the roaring of a machine. It caused a slight stir in the room, but the drinkers stood the shock, as though the noise came as nothing out of the common to them. Walking over to one of the front windows I saw by the moonlight two men on a motor-bike that ought only to have carried one. The first man – the one on the seat – I did not recognise until I made out the identity of the one riding on the rear mudguard. He was the villainous-looking lad porter, and the one in the seat was the signalman. They both wore their North Eastern company uniforms, but with no shirt collars or caps. They climbed down from the motor-bike, and a moment later came clattering and dust-covered through the door that led into the bar. As the door swung to behind him, the lad porter called across to Hardy, who faced away from him. The pub fell silent as the porter said:

‘The auction poster in the booking office, Mr Hardy – out of date it was, you were quite right. I took it down as per your instructions. You won’t catch me shirking on the job, Mr Hardy.’

He had an older man’s grey, pitted face on a boy’s body, and without his cap, I saw that his head was shaved; he looked to me like an evil jockey.

He carried on with his stream of shouted sarcasm:

‘I’ve closed the warehouse – padlocked it good and proper as you asked, Mr Hardy. You’ll find no cause to complain of slackness there …’

But as he spoke, the man addressed turned and made for the door with head down. The porter, eyeballing him all the way, asked, ‘Where you off to, Mr Hardy? Early night is it?’

Hardy made no answer but pushed on grimly through the door, at which the lad porter said to the signalman, ‘Well, en’t that the frozen limit? It was a perfectly innocent enquiry!’

The signalman grinned and walked over to the bar, where Mrs Handley was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he called for two beers from Mr Handley, and with no ‘please’ or ‘thank-you’ about it. His companion remained standing in front of the door, from where he kept up his speech:

‘He’s a hard nut to crack, is Mr Hardy. There’s just no bloody pleasing him, is there, Eddie old mate? Treat him with consideration, and he throws a paddy.’ He shook his head, saying, ‘Well, we’d best reach an accommodation somehow, or the results won’t be pretty … Are you staring at me, mister,’ he ran on, addressing me, ‘or is it just my imagination?’

I kept silence.

‘No,’ said the lad porter, ‘you must have been staring at me because, now that I come to think of it, I don’t have any imagination, do I, Eddie?’

He was appealing to the signalman, who seemed nothing more to him than a sounding board, a mobile audience.

‘Not to speak of, Mick,’ said the signalman, ‘– not over-imaginative.’

I was weighing the kid up. He had a boy’s body in size, but was jockey-like in that he looked as though he could take a pounding or give one. It was very noticeable that he stood directly before the door, blocking the exit.

‘Bit keen-eyed you are, mate,’ he said.

It was quite beyond believing, but in the silence of the pub, the two of us had fallen to a staring contest.

‘I’ll give you some fucking rough music,’ the lad porter said, after an interval.

I said, ‘I’d think on if I were you. You don’t know who you’re talking to.’

‘I saw you at the fucking station,’ he said. ‘Come in with your missus. She’s a bit of all right, your missus.’

‘I’ll crown you in a minute,’ I said.

‘Try it if you like. But I don’t see you have any cause.’

‘At the station,’ I said, ‘you didn’t attend to us …’

‘And why d’you suppose I didn’t?’

‘Because you were sitting at the top of the fucking signal pole, that’s why.’