The Blackpool Highflyer (4 page)

'Is it the same bloke as before?'

'It had bloody better not be’ said Clive, notching up for the
first increase in speed.

'Reckon he's following us?' I asked Clive, but just then the
motorist passed us, and for a while he was fastest man in
Preston. Clive said, 'Bloody sauce,' and gave a jerk on the
regulator so that we re-passed the man, but no sooner had we
done it than the spire of the parish church shot in and wedged
itself between the road and line, like an axe splitting wood,
and we were rocking away left onto the Blackpool line with
an almighty clattering.

There was now a bit of a dip in the fire, which I set about
filling, but as we swung down the line to Lea Green, I had to
keep interrupting myself to hold on. I could never seem to get
right on this high-stepping engine.

Clive looked at me, and grinned. He was at the reverser
again, putting us into the highest gear. 'Not up to much, is she?'

'How do you mean?'

'Too shaky,' he said. 'Boiler's set too high.'

So that was Mr Aspinall put in his box.

'It's fun though,' he said, and he opened the regulator a lit­tle more before standing back, taking off his gloves, and
smartly straightening all the many flaps of his many
poacher's pockets.

We were coming up to the signal box at Lea Road, and I put
my hand to Harry Walker who was the usual fellow in there,
but this wave couldn't come off when attempted at speed.
The signal box just seemed to whirl once in a circle as we
went by, giving me a sight of blank, shining glass. After Lea
Road, we were onto the flat lands of the Fylde - the fields
before Blackpool. The first of the windmills was coming into
view. When the wind was up and they were really working,
they put me in mind of fast bowlers in cricket. I put my head
out and tried to hold it still in the hot wind as I thought back
to my first trip to Blackpool, nigh on two months before, and
how, the moment I'd opened the door of the dining rooms on
the Prom, the wind had come in with me, and all the table­cloths had moved towards the tables, putting me in mind of
ladies protecting their honour.

>

The waitress had given me a big grin, crashed the door shut
behind me, and shouted to another waitress: 'Eve, have you
got a "one" for this gentleman?'

The other waitress hadn't heard, so I'd been left sort of dan­gling.

My waitress might have been Yorkshire, and she might have
been Lancashire. Even though I suppose I was quite broad
myself I couldn't always tell the difference. I sometimes had
the notion that Lancashire folk had lower, darker voices that
bent like liquorice. They would say 'Lankeysheyore', or 'Black-
pewel', putting as many curves as possible into a word. What
the two had in common was loudness about the mouth.

'Eve!' the serving girl had yelled across again,
'have
we got
a one for this gent?' Then she'd whispered, 'He's come in by
his sen!', and I'd been minded to say that I was a married
man, and not just some funny bit of goods that couldn't be
fitted into an eating house. And not only that, but a fellow
freshly promoted too.

I'd wanted to see Blackpool because, after a short time on
goods, I'd been put up to the excursion link at Sowerby
Bridge Shed, and Blackpool was the excursion magnet. It was
the great demand for holiday trains that had left the Lanky
short of firemen, and, seeing my chance to return to my home
county I'd snatched at it, after all the complications I'd struck
while firing for the London and South Western.

'Eve!' the serving girl had bawled, 'for crying out loud!'

That had done the trick, and I'd been led to the table near
the window that I'd had my eye on all along.

I'd ordered six oysters, bread and butter, bottle of Bass.

Then I'd asked for salt and pepper, and the waitress had said,
'Condiments ha'penny extra.'

'Ha'penny extra?' I'd said. 'It never
is ...
is it?'

But that was Blackpool all over: the wildness of the wait­resses, salt and pepper a ha'penny extra - and Worcester
sauce and a slice of lemon another ha'penny on top of
that.

I hadn't minded, though. I was on velvet: going forward in
my work (firing at present but with the job of driver in my
sights), and happy at Sowerby Bridge Shed, which was just a
mile outside Halifax.

I was newly wed, settled in Back Hill Street, Halifax, with
three rooms for me and the wife, and a room upstairs to let,
all ready and waiting with bed turned down and a spirit
stove for making tea. Marriage suited me very well, in a
roundabout sort of way. I liked being with the wife, and I also
liked being away from her, for a little while at least.

My oysters had arrived and I set to. A woman at the next
table leant across to give me the news that she 'could sit by
this window, supping tea all day long'.

'Same here!' I said, turning to look out again at a paddle
steamer going between the piers. Of course, I thought, they're
not real sailors out there, the ones that meddle with wind and
wild sea and darkness, but they were coping with quite a
swell, for all the brightness of the day.

I then took from my pocket my
Railway Magazine,
to read of
high dividends on the Furness Railway, new wagons on the
North Staffs; and, after calling for the bill, I fell to marvelling
for the umpteenth time at my Lancashire and Yorkshire Rail­way footplate pass.

The Lanky was run from Manchester. Fifth by size of the
railway companies, its territory stretched from Liverpool in
the west to Goole in the east, but the millions in between
made it number one in population per mile. Every new engine
was painted black for weeks on end, and that was because it
was going to go to
work.
The Lanky was 'The Business Line' -
cotton, wool and coal - but a lot of northern towns now had
their own 'wakes' or holiday week, and the Lanky was all for
that, because then people wanted to pack up, and they
wanted to be
off.

It was the johnnies in Central Timing in Manchester who
planned most of the excursions. They would sit over graphs
that looked like sketches of long grass bending in the wind:
these were train movements, and the fellows would be
squinting along the lines looking to see where the holiday
specials could be slotted in alongside the ordinary trains, and
if they could be they would be. Many of the excursions were
put up by the Lanky itself but a good many more were
dreamed up by clubs and societies, who would ask for a train
to be laid on, and usually found the Lanky out to oblige, for it
was all money in the bank.

One queer thing about wakes was that it was mainly a
Lancashire tradition, but Halifax had its wakes. Halifax was
honorary Lancashire really - a mill town like so many in
Lancashire, and close to the county boundary. It was one of
the things that made it foreign-seeming even to those, like
myself, from other parts of Yorkshire.

Stepping out of the dining rooms I didn't bother to look at
the top of the Tower, knowing it would crick my neck. I con­tinued along a row of shooting galleries and oyster places,
coming to a yard with swinging boats. The swings were on
frames with scissor legs. There were four going, each with
two ladies in. They all swung at the same rate, and I stood
there thinking of them as governors, regulating the mighty
engine of Blackpool.

There were plenty about on that Sunday, the last in April,
but the Ferris wheel hadn't yet been set turning, and the
twenty-three excursion platforms of Blackpool Central - the
busiest station in Europe, come summertime - were sleeping
in the sun.

Further along, on the seaward side of the Prom, I struck a
weird-looking building: like a great brick pudding with fancy
white icing into which were carved in curly letters the words
'The Seashell'. It was a music hall of sorts. There were three
lots of revolving doors and beside each one a potted palm
dancing about in the breeze. How they kept them going in
that windy spot was anybody's guess.

As I watched, a little fellow walked up, carrying a carpet
bag and a long stepladder, heading for the middle door. I
thought: now what's his programme for getting those ladders
through those doors? But instead he set the ladder down
between two of the doors and climbed it, bag in hand. He
was the man who changed the bills, and there was a whole
alphabet in his bag. I was quite a one for music hall - I had
seen Little Titch at the Tivoli just before quitting London -
so I hung about to watch.

The fellow with the ladder had just taken down the letters
spelling out the bill-topping turn 'Three Jinks in a Jungle',
when I spotted a little bloke watching alongside me: dirty
boater and hardly any teeth.

'How do,' he said.

'How do,' I said back. Then: 'What's "Three Jinks in a Jun­gle"?'

'Concertina band,' he said.

A tram went past just then, making a noise of a piano, ket­tle drum and a baby screaming.

'Where does the jungle come in?' I asked, and the man
shook his head, as if to say: Blowed if I know. But it hardly
mattered, since the Jinks were coming off anyway.

Then I watched with the toothless fellow as the new ones
went up. First came an M, then O, N,
S ...

'Exciting this,' the fellow said.

Next came I, E, U and R, and the man on the ladder climbed
down, being able to reach no further across. As he moved his
ladder, Toothless tapped me on the shoulder.

'French,'
he said, and I nodded. 'Glorious day,' I said, and
the fellow nodded back.