Riverslake

by T. A. G. Hungerford

  Rather have gums, he thought. It’ll be a long time before I swing any hammock from these babies!

  Bellairs had been watching him sideways, meanwhile directing the desultory labours of the men under him. In ordinary times the job on which they had already spent three or four days would have been cut out in two. They would still be on it in another two days’ time.

  “How’s your neck, Bellairs?” Carmichael inquired disarmingly. “Coming along nicely, now?”

  Bellairs ignored him, spitting disgustingly into one of the holes. The men, the Maltese and the Pole, looked guardedly from one to the other, scraping ineffectually with their picks at the hard red clay in the bottoms of the holes, softening it for the young roots of the oaks.

  “It would be different if you’d cliftied the damned money,” Carmichael went on conversationally. “Still, he wasn’t to know you were on your way to take it to the office, was he?”

  “He won’t be sticking no bloody knives into nobody else,” Bellairs said thickly. His bulging china-blue eyes were fixed on Carmichael’s inscrutable face in a brutish, puzzled anger. “He got what was comin’ to him, the bastard.”

  “Yes, he got it all right,” the manager said. “You’re lucky you had a good alibi, too, Red—a lot of people might’ve thought you had a finger in that.”

  “I was out,” Bellairs muttered sullenly. “I got a score of blokes to prove it, too. Any other hostel, it wouldn’t be left to someone else to let him know where he got off, either. He would’ve been tramped for having a knife, even. But not here—they run this dump, the bloody Balts do.”

  “Yes, saves me a job,” Carmichael agreed, seriously. “If you want any more men to get those trees in before next Armistice Day, let me know. I’ll ring Parks and Gardens for you.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  Bellairs did not realize, until Carmichael walked away, laughing quietly to himself, that he was being baited. The glances of the whole party were pinned on the manager’s broad back—Bellairs in anger and hate, the Maltese in puzzlement and apprehension, the Pole in appreciation and amusement. He understood more English than he cared to admit.

  Carmichael entered the kitchen by the side door, and walked straight to the section where Hughie Mancin was engaged in making the pastry for the night’s sweets. He stood for a moment watching the old cook; nobody noticed his entry. Suddenly he called out, loud and clear.

  “Chef!”

  Slim Charlesworth and Randolph were working at one end of the bench finishing off the potato pies for lunch. At the other end Warner, with Condamine and Paramor, was cutting up a huge side of beef that had just been dragged from the freezer. Charlesworth looked up sharply. He was facing the manager.

  “Oh, cripes!” he whispered, nudging Randolph to attract his attention. “Lamp old Uncle—he’s a goner this time. The Bastard’s right onto him.”

  Randolph turned casually and glanced over his shoulder. As he did, Verity peered round the corner of the meat-safe where he had been slicing mutton.

  “Someone call me?” he demanded of Randolph, who inclined his head in the direction of the manager.

  “Mr Carmichael did.”

  Verity stalked out lankily, wiping his greasy hands across his stomach.

  “What’s the meaning of this, chef?” Carmichael demanded.

  Verity took one look and swore softly under his breath. Mancin, plodding with his work all the morning, had punctuated it with frequent trips to his room, to the wardrobe and the bottle of wine he had hidden in his overcoat pocket. His little domain in the kitchen was a bay behind the meat-house, and unless someone wanted to speak to him, or tease him, he was left to himself. For that reason nobody had noticed the shambles round him.

  Flour and currants had spilled from the long marble slab and were trodden with milk and water into an indescribable mess on the floor; a heap of cored apples tarnished on a rusty tray amongst scraps and balls of dough that littered the bench. A half-gallon tin of raspberry jam lay on its side, its contents spread glutinously over the slab and covered by eager flies. From the pastry oven a thin wisp of smoke showed where something was burning.

  Work ceased unostentatiously throughout the kitchen as the cooks and kitchenmen, still keeping up a pretence of doing something, moved unobtrusively to where they might see what went on. Hughie Mancin, unconscious of the fact that everybody was watching him, rocked on his heels beside the mixing machine. He had affixed a small basin and was breaking eggs into it.

  The chef made as if to walk over to him, but Carmichael placed a hand on his arm, restraining him.

  The old cook raised an egg, slowly and with the curiously deliberate movements of a puppet. He brought it down lightly against the edge of the basin, cracked it, let the contents slide to the floor, missing the basin by inches. He looked at it owlishly, then at the empty shell in his hand, then, lowering his head as though it were on a rusty hinge, at the mess at his feet. Seven eggs lay there, like a ring of ox-eye daisies round his tattered patent-leather pumps.

  He shook his head, as if in bewilderment. Against his thin chest, with his other hand, he clutched five more eggs; he dropped the empty shell, fumbled for another egg and raised it slowly, preparing to go through the same performance again.

  “Hughie!” the chef said sharply, shaking Carmichael’s restraining hand from his arm. “What in the name of hell are you doing?”

  Mancin, bent forward over the basin, with his hand raised to break the egg, slewed round slowly and unsteadily. The remaining four eggs in his other hand dropped to the floor, breaking across his insteps and fouling the cuffs of his trousers. Condamine laughed outright, and Verity’s lips twitched. Carmichael’s face was blank of expression and remote as Everest.

  “What’s the meaning of this performance, chef?” he demanded, turning to Verity. “Eggs are fourpence-halfpenny each. I can see nearly a dozen on the floor, so God only knows how many there are amongst that.” He pointed to the morass beneath the slab.

  Verity shrugged. “He might be crook,” he said, and addressed Mancin. “What’s the matter with you, Hughie—are you crook?”

  Mancin had not moved. One hand was still poised to break the egg clutched in his dirty fingers, the other carefully holding nothing against his chest. He passed his tongue slowly over his purple lips, and his watery eyes regarded Carmichael and the chef with a hypnotic stare. He tried to speak—his lips moved, and his Adam’s apple jerked spasmodically up and down, but he made no sound.

  “Yeah, he’s crook,” Verity announced, turning to Carmichael. “It’s warm today in here, and he’s been a bit off colour for a few days. I’ll get one of the boys to run him off to bed and clean up this mess. Condamine can do the sweets, what’s still left to be done.” He looked quickly round the kitchen, beckoning to one of the Balts. “Here, Johnny—take Hughie to his room.” He beckoned another. “You, Johnny, clean up this brothel as quick as you can.”

  “Wait a minute, chef.” Carmichael held up his hand. “He’s no more sick than I am. He’s drunk—rotten drunk.”

  “I don’t think so,” Verity said. “Not drunk.”

  Carmichael ignored him. In a couple of strides, he was beside Mancin, who stared back at him from uncomprehending eyes. He still held the egg, poised for breaking.

  “He’ll scone the Bastard with that goog,” Charlesworth whispered, nudging Randolph.

  Carmichael, standing in front of the transfixed Hughie, wrinkled his nose.

  “Not drunk?” he ejaculated curtly, turning to Verity. “He’s full as a fiddler’s bitch!”

  Verity shrugged, and Carmichael went on.

  “You know the rules about drinking on the job, Mr Verity. Send this man to his room—he’s suspended until we decide what’s to be done with him.”

  Randolph thought of what Carmichael had said previously. All cooks go in the feet and the guts and the hea
d. Poor old Hughie had certainly gone in the feet—he hobbled round on the hard concrete of the kitchen floor like a ruptured duck. He rarely had a meal, but picked at bits of food from the stove, and his poor old head was never clear of the fumes of the cheap wine he guzzled. Poor old beggar—the guest of no one at the end of his days.

  Mancin had heard only one word in all that the manager had said.

  “Suspended?” he muttered, goggling drunkenly at Carmichael. “Suspended? Wha’ for?”

  “We won’t discuss that now,” Carmichael retorted shortly. “You’re in no condition. You’d better get across to your room and sleep it off.”

  Behind his back, Verity, with a sour expression on his face, raised his shoulders and dropped his hands to his sides. “I give up,” his expression said, as plainly as if he had stood on the pastry-slab and shouted it to the whole kitchen. “Now we’re in for a nice old blue!” He turned and stalked through the side door of the kitchen.

  Hughie Mancin lowered his hand, still clutching the one remaining egg.

  “Drunk?” he said unsteadily, with an assumption of pathetic indignation and hauteur. His loose mouth worked and his wet eyes struggled to bring Carmichael’s figure into focus. It danced tantalizingly just outside his orbit. “Wha’ y’ mean, drunk?”

  He took one unsteady step towards Carmichael, slid on one of the broken eggs at his feet and subsided to the floor in a welter of flailing arms and legs. The egg he had been holding rocketed from his grasp and splattered against the manager’s chest; Carmichael started back and glared down at the mess on his shirt-front, and an undisguised ripple of laughter ran round the kitchen. Zigfeld lumbered forward ponderously and leaned over Mancin.

  “Come on, Hughie,” he said, with unaccustomed gentleness. He helped the old man to his feet. “Up you get.”

  Mancin began to cry, with soft maudlin sobs and streaming tears that marked a track through the fine dust of flour on his mottled cheeks.

  “Drunk, he says,” he gulped brokenly. “You ever seen me drunk on the job, Ziggy?”

  “No—no, never,” Zigfeld soothed him.

  “No, never.” Mancin suffered Zigfeld to lead him past Carmichael, who stood aside, his face blandly expressionless. “Is cookin’ when his bum wasn’ as big as a shirt-button. These young blokes don’ know—you tell’m, Ziggy—you tell’m I was head sweets cook at the Menzies. You tell’m I cooked for Melba once, didn’t I, Ziggie?”

  He looked appealingly at Zigfeld and, as he stumbled past the cutting bench, at Charlesworth and Randolph and Condamine. His thin flap of hair had become displaced and hung wispily over one ear, exposing his mottled scalp. His face was streaked with dough and dirt and tears, his hands reeking with egg-yolk from the floor, his back, from collar to his skinny bottom was a mess of currants and flour and egg.

  “Poor old Uncle,” Charlesworth muttered. “Carmichael shouldn’t pick on him like that.”

  Carmichael had been busy wiping the egg off his shirt-front with a tea-towel one of the Balts handed to him. He threw it on the bench amongst the mess left by Mancin and walked past the watching cooks on his way to the door.

  “All right, you blokes,” he said crisply, “get on with your work—the show’s over.” His glance roved over them for a moment, as if expecting them to say something. Slim Charlesworth took him up.

  “How could you tell old Hughie was drunk?” he demanded almost belligerently.

  “How did I know?” Carmichael eyed him with amused tolerance. He liked Charlesworth, and saw the man behind the boy’s idiocy. “I smelled him. That was enough!”

  “I don’t know about that,” Charlesworth said carelessly. “We could all come on smelling of grog and acting crook. You couldn’t sack us all.”

  He walked away towards the steamers. Randolph could tell by the insolent swing of his shoulders that he was well aware of the manager’s glance and was making the most of his star role.

  “Try it some time,” Carmichael invited with grim humour. He swung round and stalked out of the door into the bright sunshine outside. The little groups round the kitchen, prodded by Zigfeld’s raucous profanity, broke up and returned in strained silence to their various jobs.

  “The bastard!” Condamine said viciously, when he was sure that the manager was safely away.

  “You’re sticking your neck out, Slim,” Randolph said, ignoring him. “After all, Carmichael is the manager.”

  “He gives me a stiff neck,” Charlesworth commented, coming back to the bench. “The great hooer—he never pokes his head into the kitchen but he has a go at someone. Poor old Hughie. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  It was the same curious trait that Randolph had noticed everywhere, as far back as his army days. The right and wrong of a situation were not considered. Let a man only be pitiable, and he warranted pity, no matter what he had done to deserve blame. Good or bad? It was hard to tell.

  “But he was rotten,” Warner said.

  “Well, so what?” Slim demanded. “You’ve been drunk before.”

  “We’re not discussing me,” Warner answered reasonably. He grinned suddenly. “Besides, I never got nabbed!”

  “No, you’re too damned cunning!”

  Warner looked at Charlesworth for a moment in silence.

  “If you’re picking me,” he said at length, “don’t go off half-cocked.”

  “All right, all right, break it up!” Zigfeld’s harsh voice cut in. “We’ve had enough of that for one morning, if the animals’re going to be fed. Get on with whatever you were doing, Slim, and don’t burn it.”

  “Har, har,” Charlesworth laughed sarcastically. As he swaggered away from them, the others looked after him with mixed expressions.

  “He’s riding for a fall, the little bastard,” Zigfeld observed. “He wants to watch his step.”

  “He’s worried about his wife, I think,” Warner remarked. “The old woman’s got him rattled.”

  “I’ve got a mother-in-law myself,” Zigfeld grumbled, “a fair bottler. I can’t be worried about Slim’s. Come on, let’s get stuck into this blasted horse.”

  They had scarcely begun when Condamine threw his knife down.

  “Do it without me,” he said.

  “What d’you mean?” Zigfeld demanded.

  “The Bastard can’t get away with that!” Condamine said savagely. “He’s suspended Hughie for practically nothing, and then dares us to have a drink, as though we were bloody coolies. Let him get away with it, and he’ll ride us into the ground.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “Ring Torchy to come down.”

  “Jack up?”

  “Why not? We haven’t had one for a long while, and this’s a good excuse.”

  The other men working round the kitchen had caught the gist of the conversation and converged on the group at the cutting bench. Randolph glanced at their faces—excitement, interest, puzzlement. Two of the Balts stood apart in a corner, throwing worried glances and talking in an undertone. Paramor walked over.

  “Yeah, we’ll jack up,” he said decidedly. “It’s like Con says, Carmichael tramps Hughie for a bit of a thing like that and if he gets away with it it’ll be curtains for conditions in this place for a while.”

  “Hughie’d only be the first,” Condamine said ominously.

  “The Bastard’s been laying for the poor old cow for a long time,” Paramor went on. “Pick, pick, pick—remember that day a while ago, Slim, when he copped him outside the kitchen with a bit of bread and butter and a bit of an onion?”

  “Uh-huh,” Charlesworth grunted from the stove where he was mixing some gravy under Zigfeld’s wary eye. “Frightened the stuffing out of poor old Uncle.”

  “A couple of bobs’ worth of stuff, if it was that,” Paramor said scathingly, “and the Bastard made him put it back. And threatened to tramp him if he
come on shot that night. He’s after Hughie, all right, and Gawd only knows who else. He wants all Balts here, the ape—he reckons they work better.”

  “We’ll stop him with a bit of a jack-up,” Condamine announced. “We’ll take a bit of the starch out of the bludger.”

  “My oath!” Paramor gave a short laugh. “I want a day off anyway, and this joint’s been too damned quiet for too damned long—those silver-tails in the office get ideas if we don’t give ’em a kick in the slats occasionally!”

  Randolph felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach. Since he had come to Riverslake kitchen there had been no trouble, apart from the eternal wrangling of the cooks. He found, however, that one of the most popular subjects of conversation while they were gathered around the table at breakfast—the only meal they had together—was the different strikes they had taken part in in the past. They spoke of them reminiscently, in much the same way as Randolph remembered speaking with old army friends of what they had done together in those crowded years.

  Even old Hughie Mancin, when he was sober enough to follow the trend of the discussion, recalled strikes—lightning, one-day affairs, over nothing in particular, that had served to give them a day for unrestricted drinking at the nearest hotel, and kept the bosses on their toes. That they disrupted the running of the hostel and inconvenienced hundreds of men who had no part of their grievance, whatever it might be, mattered nothing. It was their legal weapon, and theirs was the duty to ensure that it did not get rusty.

  At their meal-time discussions, Randolph had listened but never joined in. His deep-seated sense of responsibility to others and to his own conception of what was right and what was wrong roused resentment in him for their irresponsible outlook. He never argued because he felt that there would come a time when he would have to declare himself one way or another; there was no point in anticipating it over meal-time talk.