The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

the storekeeper stood before me like a pillar of stone.
    'I'd like a shovel, please ’ I said, and he gave me the evil eye for a while. Then he moved off to get it and when he returned, I said: 'Don't you want my number?'
    ‘I know your fucking number,' he said.
    I couldn't ask him why he spoke in that way, for I didn't trust my voice not to shake.
     

    There was a row of coal pens near the coaling stage where all day long the biggest blokes in Nine Elms stood on coal waggons on an embankment and flung the stuff down into the engines that drew up on the lines below. On the first day of this duty - which was really just a way of making a fellow eat dog - I put myself wholeheartedly into the job, but it soon came to me that there was no difference between the bits of coal I'd tidied up and the bits of coal that I hadn't, and I began to spend half my time crowning rats with my shovel.
     
    I would also kill time by trying to name the engines I saw coming off-shed. There were several 0 -4-4 tanks of the M7 Class, many O2s of the same wheel arrangements, and all kinds of 4-4 -0 tender engines, including K10 s and the T9s , or Greyhounds, which seemed to be the maids of all work about the place. Being so close to these wonderful motors and having prospects of riding out on them should have put me in great snuff, but all I could think was that each had two men on the footplate, and here was I without a mate.
    As to the blokes who came by my coal heaps on foot, I soon gave up nodding at them. They were passing me all the time: riding bikes, pushing barrows or just mooching along close enough for me to smell the smoke from their pipes, but the only one who stopped, apart from Flannagan - who'd stagger up to scold me on the untidiness of the coal from time to time - was a tiny man with a suitcase who said that if I was to have any hope of becoming a passed cleaner, I'd better have some books. It was heartening that he had in mind my ultimate goal, but the books in his suitcase were expensive. I bought Continuous Engine Brakes, though, which he said was very galvanising and was willing to let go at one and six.
    This I would glance at while taking my suppers of fried tatters and bacon alone at a dining room near my lodge.
    I kept myself to my lodge or the dining rooms, for I'd had a bit of a fright on only my second day in Lower Marsh. In the evening, thinking to have a bit of a look about, I had come across three men of the world under the viaduct. Their clothes were rags, but their boots were big and shiny, and the one nearest to me, who had the face of a doll and very glittering eyes, looked down at his boots and up to my face with a grin, as if he meant to bring the two together. I had them down as a kicking gang, and was sure they would have set about me had not a constable come by at that moment - he never said a word, but the three walked backwards away from me as he passed, letting me keep their bootcaps in view for as long as possible.
    I hadn't funked it; it had never come to that, and maybe it had been a put-on from the start. But I was shaken up, for I had never seen the like before. In Bay, the men who built the Eskdale viaduct would have their battles on the beach, but the people in the town were never touched, and though there'd be blood spilt it was more like sport. If it had all happened before my Nine Elms nightmares had begun I would not have believed that any such thing could happen in the shadow of a great railway station.
    Afterwards, I started to get the district of Waterloo right. Yes, there was cleanliness and newness all about: the public baths and the laundry that looked like a great ship were two streets away, and there was high-class this, royal that, advertisements for Beecham's Pills and all those soaps. But these were frauds. The real Waterloo was in the semi-drunks colliding with donkey carts, the shop sign speaking of 'knives, steel saws and choppers', the roaring from the pubs, the shouts I heard