The Lost Luggage Porter (25 page)

'Can you speak French?' I asked him, mindful of the notice I'd read above the sink: 'Eau non potable'.

He stared at me for a while, before giving a shrug.

'Sampson?' I asked.

'He's a demon at it’ Hopkins said. 'They loved to hear him. They just lie on their backs and wriggle their legs in the air.'

He gave me one of his smiles, and stepped in to pay his own call.

As I returned to the compartment Sampson was reading his racing paper, the kitbag beside him, and we were just on the edges of London. I sat down over opposite; he did not look up. At the end of it all there'd be a great reckoning: a trial, an inquiry, and I would be judged on whether I made my move or not. Therefore, I had to make it.

Hopkins re-entered the compartment, sat down and closed his eyes. I listened to the engine. It was a noisy bugger, and I tried to work out the speed: the number of rail joints in forty- one seconds gave the miles per hour. Get the answer right and you knew more than the driver himself, but you needed a watch for the business really. At the final reckoning I might be given a medal or I might be stood down; I might, at the outside, be imprisoned but I doubted that I would be hanged. The thought of imprisonment checked me: who knew that I was a police agent in all this apart from the Chief? And the Chief might very well be dead.

When I next thought to look out of the window we were dashing through Ashford, Kent, and Sampson was standing in the corridor, fiddling with... well, it had to be the gun. He stood with his broad back to me, but I craned about, and saw that he was once more inspecting the bullets - putting new ones in perhaps, or just admiring the ones already there; I couldn't see which from where I was. I closed my eyes for a space, and when I opened them again, Sampson was grin­ning at me through the compartment window, making the sleeping sign, with head rested on hands.

Not long after, we were threading in and out of tunnels at Folkestone. The difference between being in and out of the tunnels was not so very great, for, while the rain continued as before, the sky was now quite dark.

But Dover was different, the town all great blue gaslight, as if the whole place served as a beacon for ships: Dover Church, Dover Castle, Dover Prison glowed on one side as we rolled towards the station, all with Union flags flying above. And down below was Dover Harbour. Our train ran through the station, closing quickly on the harbour - a train wandering amongst ships and hard by the cold blackness of the sea, like a stray, until it found out the line that took us along the stone pier where the steam boat waited.

As the train moved slowly along the pier, Sampson was distributing the money from the kitbag about the pockets of his coat. The gun remained in the kitbag, and I thought he meant to leave it in the compartment. But as we climbed down from the train with not more than a couple of dozen others, he picked it up, saying to Hopkins:

'Take it easy, will you? I've done this trip a dozen times and never once been searched, nor
seen
anybody searched.'

Of course, he had to have the gun with him. I'd have been off in a moment otherwise.

The pier was a provocation to the sea, a thorn in its side. The water flew up to left and right of us, and sometimes both at once. Dover glowed above us but the pier had not enough lamps, and those mainly over notices of close type mounted on steel poles. What I took to be the customs shed was before us, and beyond it, the steamer, beating about underneath a signal that controlled its movements and looked like a rail­way signal.

To get to the boat, you had to cross the customs shed, and it was the thought of doing this that had silenced Sampson and Hopkins, for there was the money, and there was the gun. After a short platform conference with Sampson, Hopkins handed me my ticket. We had to go one by one, of course. Sampson, I was pretty sure, had transferred the revolver to the inside pocket of his coat, for he kept his hand there like Napoleon, and the kitbag looked empty in his hand. 'They ask me about the bulky article I'm carrying,' he said, as we stood in a circle of three before the customs shed,'. . . and I give them a little demonstration.'

'No,' said Hopkins, 'we turn about, and we fucking scarper.'

Sampson smiled at that, but I didn't think his smile was to be taken as agreement.

We broke, and filed into the shed, with Sampson at the head of us. It was a draughty wooden hall, like a village hall, and with that kind of smell, and three swaying gas rings. There was a man on a kind of pulpit, who watched as we fell in with the queue of people filing through between the open door on the train side, and the open door on the boat side. He wore an ordinary suit, no uniform, and did nothing but watch. On a bench at one side sat a man in a uniform: half sailor, half policeman, and this one didn't even watch. Another bloke at the far door, which was pointed towards by signs reading 'Exit' and 'Sortie', wore an ordinary suit, and he was looking at tickets as quickly and lightly as if it was a pleasure boat in the park that we were boarding. As the three of us moved towards him in the queue, I thought: I will speak out now. I looked at the copper, who was looking away. I looked at the man in the pulpit, but it was the wrong look I had back from him. No encouragement there . . . And yet it was possible to end the matter quickly. The crisis would come before you could say Jack Robinson. Maybe I ought to cry out those very words. Any would do Sampson was alongside the ticket inspector, giving him a warning look, as if to say: I dare you to inspect my pockets. The man did not, but simply glanced at the ticket and passed it back.

Yet Sampson did not move on. With the same steely look, he asked the man: 'What's the crossing time today, mate?'

Any words would do, if cried out loudly enough.

'Bank on one hour forty-five minutes,' said the ticket inspector, 'but could be half an hour more or less depend­ing.'

The inspector was on the dead level, but it seemed likely for a moment that Sampson would express dissatisfaction with the answer given, for he still did not move forwards toward the boat. There was no escaping the
fact ... he
enjoyed being on the edge of disaster. Hopkins was now nudging me towards the attentions of the inspector, and Sampson had at last moved a few paces towards the boat so that, as my ticket was inspected, I stood with Hopkins right behind me, and Sampson directly in front. Things might be free and easy once we made France, but twenty miles
short
of France they were still very far from that. This was not an elopement but more like a kidnapping, an abduction. My mind was full of words from the shilling novels.

And my chance was now.

But I was like the trees declining into the river at Thorpe- on-Ouse; the blind, rolling bells of the Minster on a Sunday of fog and rain; the drowning man who sees the surface of the water but lacks the will to reach
it...

On the boat, two minutes later, we sat under an awning next to the wheel. Sampson lit a cigar. The kitbag was on his knee. Had he returned the gun to the bag?

Hopkins looked all-in with anxiety.

'Is it bloody worth it?' he said, over the sound of the engine engaging gear, and the wheel beginning to turn, which took the boat not only backwards away from the pier, but also
up.

'Want to know the likelihood of 'em sending detectives after us?' Sampson shouted back. 'Nil. Never known it to hap­pen. They can't run to it. We might as well be on the bloody moon.'

'But there's no custom house on the moon’ said Hopkins.

'Yes’ said Sampson, 'well . . . how do you fucking know, anyway?'

We sat and watched the wheel turn, blue smoke floating over our heads from the funnel. We had a bench and were under a little cover, so were better off than some, who sat about on coils of rope getting the hard word from the crew as and when they got in the way. Again, nobody spoke, and this, I guessed, was because the second customs house lay in wait on the pier side.

'Why do you not pitch the shooter over the side, and buy a new one in France?' I asked.

But Sampson made no reply, or I might have been drowned out by the wheel. I ventured another question, half hiding it, so to speak, behind the screen of the paddle wheel noise:

'Did you never think of doing the Lost Luggage Office at York?' I said - at which Sampson glanced at me but looked away; Hopkins looked at me for a longer time. Evidently, he had heard the question if Sampson had not.

'There's a lot of treasure in there,' I said, 'I've seen it with my own eyes.'

At this, Sampson did give me a proper look, and it was one of his dead-eyed ones. I had been ashamed of myself in the customs shed, and now wanted to make amends with a little boldness. But I looked away first.

It was freezing on the deck, and we began to be soaked, by the sea and the rain flying at us from the side.

Sampson stood up, saying: 'I could do with a nip.'

'Best not to be seen below, though,' said Hopkins.

Sampson was standing before me, hand half in his gun pocket as before, empty bag dangling by his side.

'Come on,' he said, jerking his head. He was still riled over my lost-luggage questions, and could have shot me without the sound being heard, such was the roar of the wheel. It would then have been an easy matter to pitch me over the side, for the deck was emptier than before, most people hav­ing paid the little extra to go below, into either the dining room or the bar, which we were now walking towards, look­ing like drunks already. The entrance to the bar gave directly on to a staircase. Above the doorway, I saw a sign: 'Dover Ales', and at that moment I knew I was seasick. Sampson ordered three pints, and I just looked at mine, for I was com­ing to hate the rise and fall of the boat, most particularly the way it would rise and then
not
fall for a little while, but boom along at a height as if flying, before crashing back down.

The bar was tiny and bright, and packed, and there was a mass of metal poles, so everybody had something to grip on to, just as all the bottles were fixed in place behind the bar. Sampson paid for our pints, then stood behind me, blocking the doorway. The bar moved like a pendulum, and I watched my glass until half the beer had flown away. Hopkins was pressed up next to me on the other side, along with a bloke in a waterproof who was doing his best to hold on to a spirit glass, and light a cigar. 'Crack boat, is this,' he said, to me.

Even Sampson had had his fill of that place after ten min­utes, and we walked back up on the deck, where I saw a low line of muffled whiteness against the dark blue of the night sky.

'Is that France?' I said, as we regained our former perch by the wheel.

'Well spotted, Allan,' said Hopkins, sarcastic-like.

A fourth passenger had come to the bench while we'd been in the bar. He turned and looked at us as we sat down, which seemed to cause Hopkins to rise immediately to his feet, and move towards the railing of the boat, just to the side of the wheel. I could not make out the reason for this sudden spring, although I did notice that the new fellow on the bench wore wire spectacles in exactly the same style as my own.

The boat made some of its biggest bounces as it moved up towards the dock at Calais. Here was the Gare Maritime: I could picture those words in my head, having read them in the
Railway Magazine.
It was not quite a mirror of Dover but a simpler place: customs house and station on the dock like a stage, large hotel behind; the town low, wide and dark in the background with one spire like the hub of a cartwheel. The French shouts came towards us as we moved across the illu­minated water.

Sampson, with his kitbag, his gun, and his pockets full of money, was foremost in the queue as the gangplank was dropped. I was behind him; Hopkins was behind me. At a nod from a rough customer in a black guernsey (I could tell he was French, but I couldn't tell
how
I knew), Sampson started walking forwards, and I followed.

I did not trust the steadiness of the ground as I gazed around the customs house. This time there was no pulpit, and the man waiting to look at the tickets sported a uniform, as did half a dozen others sitting about. Two of these were drinking coffee from metal cups, and these two also wore rifles over their shoulders. I looked at these strange, discon­nected fellows, who spent their lives killing time half in one country, half in another, and wondered which of them would cop it if Valentine Sampson were to be stopped and asked to turn out his pockets. Sampson would certainly shoot, because he had nowhere to flee to.

He handed his ticket to the French official, who looked it over slowly. Slowly, too, he handed it back, and once again Sampson asked a question or made some remark. It was in French but evidently not carried off quite right, for the official had to lean over and ask for it to be repeated. The official's answer was quite loud, and a lot of pointing went along with it. With Sampson looking back towards me from just before the 'Sortie', Hopkins nudged me forwards, and I thought: I could crown Hopkins, then double back on to the boat and what would Sampson do? Fire across the customs hall and risk all to stop me fleeing? But the thought came once more: if I got away from
them,
they got away from
me.
They were nearer to making their escape now, and I was the only one with power to stop them. I was the sleuth hound; the tables were turned somehow. Or was that the confusion of an exhausted mind?