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‘There were two other players of which you made mention,’ I said when finally we were settled again over steaming mugs. ‘A driver and a fireman?’

‘Ah yes,’ he mused, ‘these two. Camden men both, employed on goods turns and some of the semi-fast passenger work that runs from Euston to such places as Bletchley and Northampton. Another strange pair but in a different way. Life, to them, was one long playtime. If laughter was not to be wrung from the moment then that moment was just not worth living—that seemed to be the sum of their outlook on life.’

‘You speak of this as though it was some grave fault,’ I said, interrupting, for I had known such people in my own experience and their company was often to be considered more pleasure than burden.

‘And fault it would not be but for one small factor: this laughter was often bought at the expense of another. Fond of pranks, of practical jokes they were, these two. The trouble was, they seemed not to know when they had gone too far.’

‘And this made them, too, unpopular,’ I surmised.

‘In some small measure. But they seemed not to care. It seemed their friendship alone was all they needed, so much so that they had every appearance of caring little for the society of others. As well as working together, they played together, their leisure hours always spent in each other’s company. They were, it seemed, very close. As brothers, almost. Sharing what they had without pausing to consider the cost. It was even rumoured that each enjoyed the close company of the other’s wife as well as his own, if you take my meaning, with full knowledge and approval of that other. The wives, it was said, were not averse to the arrangement, either.

‘As might be expected, I encountered them many times in my forays to the shed. I could generally be assured of a shout and a cheery wave whenever they saw me, these sometimes even accompanied by a blast on the whistle. I would jump in my skin, glance round to see them, two blackened faces grinning down at me from the spotless cab of a Cauliflower engine, for this was their usual mount. Many a time, I would be invited into that cab, told to touch nothing, told to just sit there while they went about their tasks, for they knew of my interest in that noblest of creatures, the steam locomotive, and of my desire to join the ranks of those charged with their driving when I had come to age. I remember those times well. If I was lucky, they would be just finishing their shift, would take me along, seated in that cab and feeling like the king of all creation, to the coal-drop to replenish the tender, to the pit to rake out the ashpan. I learned from them much of the workings of a steam engine. Even now, if I were to be placed in the cab of one and told to drive it, I feel I could do so, such was the measure of knowledge they imparted to me. All else aside, I shall, for that, always be grateful to them.’

I sighed, remembering. ‘You were fortunate,’ I said. ‘I gained the cab of an engine only once. And even then, I had to hide from the roving eye of the stationmaster.’

He smiled at that. ‘The very bane of our lives, were they not? Yes, I was indeed fortunate. My ambition seemed to grow with every visit. I would start, as all who harboured such aims had started, as engine cleaner—and with an uncle as shedmaster, my place was already assured. I would rise to fireman, gain my route knowledge while I swung a shovel. And I would, eventually, become driver, fill the position in the world that I knew for certain destiny had made ready for me.’

‘Ah, the dreams of childhood,’ I said wistfully. ‘As substantial as the morning mist and just as quick to vanish.’

‘Indeed. But where was I?…Oh yes. These two. We speak of ambition: they had none. Although they had been with the company for some years, they had yet to reach top-link, that select band of enginemen reserved for the fastest and most prestigious expresses. But to all intent, they seemed untroubled by this, seemed perfectly happy with ambling along slow lines at the head of goods trains, or trying to keep time on the exacting semi-fasts, braking hard into the stations, caning away from them again after the stop. It seemed in keeping with their known character.’

‘Perhaps they reserved their ambition for their pranks,’ I ventured, ‘their employment a mere aside.’

‘You may be right at that. Certainly, they came near the mark on more than one occasion. I remember my uncle storming into the office one afternoon. I had been there awaiting his arrival, for it was my practice and delight to walk home with him after he ended his shift and I had finally seen all there was to see in the shed. He seemed in somewhat of lather, seemed almost to be seething inside. His assistant durst not ask him the matter but I could. And as he hustled me away, I did so, ventured into territory forbidden to colleagues but open to those able to claim a blood tie. He let go a sigh, sagged a little of his ire away.

‘“Never hand a man an inch, young George,” he said. “Like as not, he’ll take the yard and snatch your arm away into the bargain.”

‘And he proceeded to tell me what had transpired. It seemed that, a few days previously, these two mischief-makers had presented themselves at his office door as some kind of self-serving deputation. They were, he said, concerned about their rostered duty, one of the many semi-fasts to Northampton that departed Euston throughout the day. It appeared that the booked engine had failed and been replaced by a member of the Precedent class—’

‘Ah, one of the old Jumbos,’ I said, quick to show my knowledge of the type and its nickname.

‘You are familiar with them, I see. Sound engines, were they not? Fast and eager with a light express but hardly suitable for a train booked to make several starts and stops throughout its journey, to accelerate hard away from stations in order to keep time: they just did not have the power or the weight on the driving wheels to apply it. Anyway, our two miscreants knew of this and pointed it out to my uncle. He listened to them attentively then enquired lightly quite what they expected him to do about it. This was, he told them, the only engine available, and that if they wanted something more suitable to the task, they were welcome to search the shed for it. This they had already done, finding in steam only an old Coal Tank more suited to ambling along at little more than walking pace than timing a train at near-express speeds. So they accepted their mount, if a little grudgingly. But as they turned to go, the driver stopped suddenly and asked:

‘“Tell you what, guv’nor. Since we’re going to be slow away from the stops, can we whip her up to speed on the open stretches to keep time?”

‘My uncle told them they could whip her to a standstill, for all he cared, just as long as they got the train to Northampton in one piece and reasonably to time. He should perhaps have been watching his words more carefully, he told me, for he could almost feel the grins on their faces as they left.

‘He got due report of the run that followed but not from the men. No, it came from an irate stationmaster at their destination, who, he claimed, had had to spend more than an hour soothing the vapours of a distressed lady passenger of genteel bearing, she having succumbed to the effects of the extreme speeds to which she had been subjected throughout the journey.

‘“A hundred miles an hour!” this worthy almost shouted in his memorandum. “This poor lady says your men were doing a hundred miles an hour!”

‘My uncle could safely ignore this part. Though one member of the class, the Hardwicke, had been claimed to have made a creditable but unconfirmed 96 in the great races of 1895, it was doubtful that any had been flogged quite so mercilessly since. But something had upset this passenger, and wild accusation aside, there could be little doubt that these two had been running very fast indeed on the journey in question. He called them into his office when they finished their shift.

‘He started the interview quite innocuously, enquiring after their day and if it had gone well. They replied that it had, that one of their engine’s injectors had been playing up but not so greatly as to put the boiler in danger. Then he enquired after their run of a few days previously, with the substitute engine that had given them such cause for concern. At this, they glanced at each other, these two, grinning broadly.

‘“The run went well, I am led to understand,” my uncle went on, and he proceeded to show them the memorandum he had received. They read it and passed it back without comment, as though they could see nothing amiss with its content. Then my uncle was asking:

‘“Exactly how fast were you going?”

‘But they couldn’t tell him, the engine not being fitted with a means of recording speed. All they could say was that they did their best to keep time under very difficult circumstances and that they seemed to have succeeded, given that they had brought their train in Right Time. There was little my uncle could do: they had simply done their job, had done what was expected of them and upheld the company’s honour in so doing. He had to let them go without further sanction against them. As for this poor lady and her vapours, well, she would not have been the first passenger to take fright at the speeds at which the company sometimes operated, a point he duly made in his reply to this stationmaster. So the matter was settled, so was it quietly forgotten.’

‘In essence, they got away with it,’ I murmured.

‘As they did so many times,’ he added. ‘And I have to wonder how they managed it. Take this instance: the wonder was that they didn’t have the whole train off the road at some point on the journey, such was the state of the track in places. The Devil himself watched over their antics, it seemed.’

‘Indeed,’ I agreed. ‘But to have such men running amok on the system, with no thought for the consequences of their japery—did no one think to rein in their excesses?’

‘I think they were simply tolerated,’ he said. ‘For all their wildness, they were good footplatemen, able to keep time on even the most exacting of schedules, whatever the load. This alone, I think, saved their hides on more than one occasion.’

‘Hmm. Did they ever go too far?’

He nodded reflectively. ‘Oh yes,’ he said softly. ‘On the occasion of which I have just made mention. I never found out from my uncle what had transpired on that day when I had been so unexpectedly turned away from the shed. Whenever he deemed I seemed about to ask, he would cast me a warning look and my often wayward tongue was suddenly stilled. But I had other means, other sources, and I knew how to use them. Two cigarettes from a pack my father had left lying around was all it took, that and an engine cleaner with need for a smoke and a few spare minutes to enjoy it.

‘There had, he told me, indeed been a fatal accident on that day. And it did indeed involve these three. The enginemen had just eased their mount onto the stabling lines just outside the shed, coasting it to a stop just short of a Watford Tank already parked there. They were at the end of their shift, one that had gone well, and they were in their usual high spirits. Now it so happened that on this particular day, Old Grouse and Grouse had also finished his shift and was just nearing the end of his usual long walk down the main line towards home. And as he trudged down the stabling lines to the shed, they espied him there and were suddenly minded to have some sport with him. The malice for which he was justly famed troubled them not one jot, for in the event of any unpleasantness, there were two of them to his one, and if he chose instead to make complaint to higher authority, they were superior in rank, which lent weight to their word against his.

‘As he passed their cab, they leaned over the side and hailed him.

‘“Eh up, Ol’ Grouse an’ Grouse! You seen our new coupling, then?”

‘He glanced up at them, threw black contempt in reply and trudged on.

‘“Soon be out of a job, you will!” they threw back.

‘At that, he stopped. But still he didn’t speak. He just stood there staring up at them as though demanding that they explain themselves. And they duly obliged.

‘“Oh, aye!” said the driver. “All automatic it is. Won’t need shunters no more. Jus’ buffer up, the couplings click into place an’ away we go.”

‘“An’ when we wants to uncouple,” the fireman added, “jus’ pull a lever in the cab an’ we drops the wagon right where we wants it.”

‘“You’s out of a job for sure, mun,” the driver finished, and they began to laugh.

Old Grouse and Grouse didn’t move, his gaze fixed firmly on them. He had fallen victim to the antics of these two many times before and there was no reason to suggest that this occasion would prove any different.

‘“Go on, mun,” said the driver, goading him on. “Go see for yersel’.”

‘For one brief moment, he wavered, no doubt considering whether there might be something in what they were saying. This was the only job he had ever known, the only job, probably, he was even capable of doing. To lose it, then, would mean the end of all he had known, such little as it was. The seed they had planted in him blossomed suddenly and he was then trudging along to the front of the engine to check for himself this new coupling that represented such a danger to his fortunes. They watched, their delight growing with every step he took, for their plan was unfolding just as they had hoped. And they watched him disappear round the front, to examine the coupling that lies between the buffers of all railway vehicles.’

He paused for a moment, fell silent.

‘Foolish,’ he went on softly. ‘A simple plan but foolish. While he was squinting at the coupling, they opened the cylinder drain cocks then the regulator, the idea being to flood the whole front of the engine, and him, with steam. It would have done him no harm, would just have given him a fright. But what they had neglected to do was check that the brakes on their engine were on. And what they did not know was that Old Grouse and Grouse had taken one look at the coupling, seen he’d been had again and was making to regain the cinder path, doubtless to give them a piece of his inarticulate mind.

‘You can probably guess what happened next. The steam flooded into the cylinders and out through the drain cocks as had been planned, but there was still enough pressure left to move the pistons and, with them, the wheels. The engine moved. Almost immediately, they realised what was happening and tried to stop it. They yanked the regulator shut and frantically wound the brakes on but it was too late. They caught him just as he was passing between the buffers of their engine and those of the Watford Tank lying less than a yard ahead.

‘The cry he gave out, I was told, was terrible to the ear, as my engine cleaner well knew for he himself heard it. He rushed out of the shed, along with many others, to find out what was amiss. What they found there, he told me, none of them would ever forget. The shunter, Old Grouse and Grouse, stood crushed between two engines, the greater part of his chest flattened to a soggy and bloody pulp, his head gently inclined to one side as though in question of what had happened. But what took their attention more than these things was the expression on his face. Where in life it had been permanently twisted by the presence of a scowl, it seemed now to be set in features of the most grotesque malevolence. His eyes, always wide with some suppressed anger, were now almost bulging in their sockets. And worse than this, they seemed fixed on one point ahead of them. They were glaring—quite intently, it seemed—at our driver and fireman, both of whom had scrambled out of their cab on hearing his cry. No one moved, no one spoke. All just stood there gazing on this ghastly spectacle, on baleful accusation in these eyes that seemed to be warning of terrible vengeance to be exacted. Even in death, it seemed, this man had contrived to build another grudge against those foolish enough to cross him.

‘How many minutes they stood there thus is not known. Then the driver turned to my cleaner, his face ashen, his voice shaking. “Would you oblige me by going and fetching the shedmaster?” he said quietly and unusually soberly. “Tell him I fear I have done for Mr. Grice.”.’

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