The Enginemen, Chapter 17/3

But he didn’t take his solicitor’s advice. Instead he went home and brooded over the Form 1 charge sheet. They’d take the mainline away from him, he knew that. He’d be confined to shed in the Stores, or shunting the coal wagons up the bank to the hoppers or stuck in the old man’s link - with the sick and pensioned off whose eyesight had deteriorated or who had heart problems and were confined to driving diesel shunting engines round Acton Yard or South Lambeth Goods. It was a living death, he’d take early retirement rather than that, but if he retired what would he do? He could afford to, he still had money left from his inheritance, but not enough to spend on exotic tours overseas following the England cricket team.

That reminded him. He went upstairs and added Ted Dexter’s name to his list. He wanted to go to the depot and climb on 5008’s footplate, he wanted to check if it was still there, or whether it had already been dispatched to some scrap merchant. But he was suspended, they’d throw him off the premises if he turned up, that would be too humiliating.

Then he thought, you could see the row of condemned engines from the canal towpath. So he found his underground season ticket and travelled to Willesden Junction and made his way to the well-trodden path beloved of schoolboys intending to ‘bunk’ the shed. The canal looked muddy and oily amid the dead nettles and brambles straggling over the old towpath. The drizzle was too soft to disturb the stillness of the surface. He walked as far as the hole in the fence and peered through the strands towards the Factory. The row of condemned engines stood silent in the dusk. The only engine he could see clearly from there was the ‘King’, 6019, its bulk at the end of the row. But he could still see the cab roofs, safety valve covers and chimneys of the four ‘Castles’ and he could recognise 5008 in the middle, he’d know it anywhere however brief a glimpse he could get of it. He was relieved it was still there.

He wondered if he should follow the example of the schoolboys and sneak through the gap in the fence in front of him and go down to his engine, but while he hesitated, he saw some boys coming towards him. When they saw him, they hesitated, thinking perhaps that he had come to warn off trainspotters, so he retreated a short distance, pretending to be an evening stroller. He really needed a dog to successfully enact the part.

He turned when he thought he was far enough away not to frighten off the youngsters, but he was near enough to recognise the two boys he’d seen before. There was an older boy with them this time, perhaps about 14 years of age. He hadn’t seen him before. He watched them crawl through the gap, the smallest first while the new boy held the wire apart. He wondered if the same boys came down every day, perhaps on their way home from school. Did they see enough new numbers every day to make it worth their while? Did they get away with not being spotted every time? If they got caught once, wouldn’t the foreman recognise them a second or third time and call the police?

He watched them slip down the bank and disappear behind 6019. He looked at his watch and waited. They reappeared exactly twenty five minutes later, unhurried, undiscovered, stuffing their notebooks in their trouser pockets. He had moved a distance back as soon as he saw them approaching so that, as they emerged through the gap, he could reappear in the distance along the canalside as if he were finishing his evening walk.

He followed them, about a hundred yards away. They stopped from time to time to throw a stone into the canal and watch the ripples. Then they would feign a struggle with each other as boys do. The two older boys suddenly picked up the smallest lad and held him over the murky water, but he could hear their laughter, they were teasing the lad who was shrieking but it was make-believe. He could tell they were not serious and the youngster knew this. He followed them to the bridge over the canal where they climbed the bank through the sodden grass to regain the road.

James waited a moment until they were all out of sight and struggled to climb the bank himself, but he was not as agile as the boys. He slipped a couple of times, got wet and scraped his hand on vicious brambles. When eventually he made it to the road, he looked left and right, but the road was empty. They had already disappeared. He cursed and walked slowly back to the Junction station. He didn’t know why he’d intended to follow the boys home, perhaps it was just curiosity to see where they lived.

He went home unsatisfied. He got out at Waterloo to change underground trains, and changed his mind instead and went up the escalators to the bustling station above. It was the evening rush hour and he was caught amid the swirling crowds, all moving faster than himself, eager not to miss their evening trains home. He had no train to catch. He stood for a while, an island amid the flood of commuters, and watched people bustling through the barriers not bothering to show their tickets. He joined them and wandered unchecked onto platform 10 where a train for Exeter was indicated. He walked down past the green coaches to the end of the platform and stared at the crew busying themselves ready for departure on their locomotive, a pacific, he noted, called ‘Orient Line’.

He felt a longing to be there with them on the footplate and watched with a pang as the driver was given ‘right away’ and opened the regulator. The engine slipped immediately and the driver slammed the regulator shut, then opened it gently. The great engine began to move forward slowly, its exhaust beats soft unlike the sharp satisfying thunder of his own engine. Then as the train gathered speed he heard the more emphatic beat of the little engine at the rear pushing the express until it cleared the platform. He recognised this engine, a pannier tank just like the ones that hauled the empty stock for his own trains into Paddington. Then he turned his attention to the shorter train standing adjacent in platform 9, headed by a much smaller locomotive called ‘Hurstpierpoint’. He was surprised that 4-4-0s, as this was he noted with curiosity, still existed on such apparently important mainline work in 1962.

He waited until it too had departed some ten minutes later, lifting its load cleanly out of the platform with again soft syncopated exhaust from its wide diameter chimney and then wandered back towards the barrier wondering if he’d find the gates closed and what he’d do then. But before he had reached the end of the platform, another train drew hauled by a tender first 4-6-0, a Standard 5 such as he’d seen occasionally on his own Region. He realised that it was empty stock for another commuter train for already the barriers were open and a swarm of passengers were advancing towards him. He battled and pushed against the flow and regained the concourse.

He wondered what to do now. He bought an Evening News from a newsvendor, looked at the sports page first to see if there was any report from the England team in Australia – there wasn’t – or anything about the upcoming match of his team’s derby match with Spurs – there wasn’t, or whether there was anything that interested him on the front page – there wasn’t, so he binned it, a waste of money. Then he had second thoughts and retrieved it. Reading the inside pages at home would fill in a few minutes, there’d be nothing there, but then he’d nothing else to do. He descended to the underground once more, the newspaper tucked underneath his arm.

He cooked himself cheese on toast first – he was getting ambitious. It was the first time he’d turned the grill on for over a week. He took a bath too and shaved properly. But what for? He lit the gas fire in his study and sat there in his underclothes, still warm from his soak, and began to flick through the paper. He looked at the weather forecast and read that more rain was on the way, but the prospect of a few fine days might follow – huh, he’d believe that only when it happened. Then there was an account of a gangland murder, murders actually, a couple of suspected robbers had been gunned down in London’s East End, a revenge killing it was suspected, following an earlier gang quarrel over territorial rights.

He stared at the article, then at the list of the people he’d drawn up, people deserving punishment for what they’d done to him. He deserved revenge too. He thought how satisfying it would be to destroy his enemies, to watch them as they saw a gun pointed at them and realised they’d made a mistake in not respecting him, in laughing at him, in taking away all that he held most dear. He wondered how one got a gun. It was easy for the gangs – they knew how, probably they just pass the guns down from one generation to another. He’d love to get a gun. That would make those people on his list think. They wouldn’t dismiss him then as a nobody, as a joke, as a pervert. They wouldn’t dare.

The more he thought about it, the more the notion grew. When he went to bed, he lay there thinking about it, day-dreaming about the possibilities, the satisfaction, the stupid grins on their faces that would turn to terror as they realised his intentions. He didn’t get to sleep for a long time and when he woke he realised that he had dreamed of a shooting too, but he was the victim, it was he who was getting shot. All morning he stared at the list. What could he do? Was it possible to exact such revenge?

He looked at the list again. Some of them were impossible. He’d no idea of the identity of that lewd boy at Raglan. Trefusis and the merry widow in Monmouth, that was too far away, too difficult to get to. It was too much trouble to find out the shifts of the inspectors at Paddington and Oxford – anyway he didn’t know their names and he wasn’t going to ask the police. Should he gun down the prostitutes in the Soho basement? Why? He’d paid them to hurt him, it wasn’t their fault. So he’d let them off.

So that left the Baptist Minister and all the Old Oak men. He could get the Minister and all his congregation. He’d barge in on a Sunday morning in the middle of their service and tell them what he thought of their Minister and their God and then kill them where they sat, mouths open in confusion and awe of him. But that would be all and most of the congregation would not understand why he was killing them and he’d probably be stopped before he could get to the main target of his hatred, those who’d betrayed him at Old Oak Common.

Until this point it had been but a satisfying daydream. But he began to think about those men who’d destroyed his career, had taken his engine away from him. He’d start in the office, with Higginson and the Running Foremen, it was a pity they worked shifts, he could only get one of them. Then he’d get Doig. He’d have to shoot Nellie to stop her alerting everyone else, that was a pity, she’d always treated him properly, then he wondered. Perhaps she too laughed at him when he was out of earshot. She’d have to go, anyway. Then to the lobby and the mess room. He’d have to time it when Barnett and Campion were about and preferably when Munday was on nights.

How would he find out? That was difficult unless he could get into the depot without being escorted out until he’d copied the rosters. And even then sometimes they changed shifts by mutual consent. He couldn’t guarantee who’d be there. He’d have to chance it. But if he got a number of them, that would show them. They’d know right enough why he’d done it, their guilt, their fault. Then he’d go to 5008 and end it all on his beloved engine. They wouldn’t get him then.

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed practicable – except for one thing. Where was he to get a gun from? He’d never owned or fired a gun in his life. During the war he’d been in a restricted occupation as a railway fireman, he’d never been given a gun. He could try to join a gun club or get a licence, but they’d discover he was under investigation for killing a man already. He’d never succeed that way. So how did people get guns? What sort would he need? If he was going to shoot a lot of people before he was caught, he’d need an automatic and plenty of rounds of ammunition. Where could he get one? Could you just go down to Hackney or Bethnal Green and ask around in pubs? Would they call the police immediately or would they ask no questions provided he had enough cash? That was no problem. He could take out his savings, he wouldn’t be needing any money afterwards, he could blow the lot.

He began to plan. He started writing down the scenario he imagined. He tore the paper up and started again. He wrote and erased. He wrote and scribbled out. He finalised a plan, he poured himself a large brandy and felt he could do it. He’d show the lot of them. He tried to think of what else he could do before he put his plan into action. He realised that if the future didn’t matter he could do anything he liked, spend his money on anything, go anywhere, say what he liked to people. But he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do.

Perhaps he ought to go to the Headmistress for the last time. Be punished for what he was about to do? No, not this time. Perhaps he should be the punisher. Perhaps he could pay to punish them, wield a whip or cane or their backsides. Could it be done? Were there women who’d let him cane them? It would cost a lot, he knew, but he had enough money now. He’d get the Headmistress over her own desk and lay into her without mercy as she’d done to him. Then he was realistic. She wasn’t the sort to allow that. Perhaps she’d organise a mild caning of one of the younger girls. They’d not permit a full blooded whipping he’d want to impart. He dismissed that idea. He wanted to hurt the men who’d humiliated him, not young women who’d offered to give him pleasure even if they didn’t understand his needs. It was not their fault.

He nurtured his plan for two days without doing anything to action it.