The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  His turn at the window came. He went forward, received his pay envelope thrust through the opening by Pettit, the cashier. Then he lounged over to the yard gates to await his father. As he reached the gate post and leaned his back against it, Annie Macer passed down Cowpen Street. At the sight of him she smiled and stopped. She did not speak; Annie seldom spoke until she was spoken to; no, she stopped and smiled out of friendship; but she waited until he should speak to her.

  “All by yourself, Annie?” he said companionably. He liked Annie Macer; he really did like her; he could understand perfectly why Sam should be so gone on her. She was so simple, fresh, homely. She had no pride. She was herself. Transparently there was no nonsense about Annie. For some absurd reason he associated Annie with a little silvery fresh herring. Yet Annie was not little, nor had she the least resemblance to a herring. She was a big-boned strapping girl of his own age, with generous hips and a fine firm bosom; she wore a blue serge skirt and coarse hand-knitted stockings. Annie knitted these stockings herself; she had never read a book in her life; but she had knitted a great many pairs of stockings.

  “It’s my last day this, Annie,” he declared, making conversation to detain her. “I’m done with the Neptune for good… water, muck, ponies, tubs and all.”

  She smiled tolerantly.

  “I’m not sorry,” he added. “No, you may bet your life I’m not sorry.”

  She nodded her head understandingly. There fell a silence. She looked up and down the street. Then with her friendly smile she nodded again and went off.

  Pleased, he followed her with his eyes. It struck him that she had not spoken a single word. Yet he had enjoyed every minute of her company. Good for Annie Macer!

  Turning again he looked towards his father: he was still a long way from the window. What a time Pettit was taking to-day. He leaned back, kicking his heels against the post.

  Suddenly he became aware that he, in his turn, was being observed: Barras, escorted by Armstrong, had returned to the dogcart, they stood together, the owner and the viewer, staring directly at him. He stared back at them, dourly, determined not to be put down by them; after all, he was leaving the pit, wasn’t he?—he didn’t give tuppence now. For a minute they continued talking, then Armstrong laughed respectfully, raised his hand and beckoned him over. He had half a mind not to go, yet he did go, taking care, however, to go slowly.

  “Mr. Armstrong tells me that you have won a scholarship at the Baddeley.”

  David saw that Barras was in high good humour; yet felt the keen scrutiny of his small cold eyes.

  “I’m very pleased,” Barras went on, “to hear of your success. What are you after—at the Baddeley?”

  “I want to take my B.A.”

  “H’m—your B.A.? Why don’t you go in for mining engineering?”

  David answered defiantly, something in Barras provoked his defiance:

  “I’ve no interest in the work.”

  His defiance slid off Barras like water off cold stone.

  “Really… no interest?”

  “No! I don’t like it underground.”

  “You don’t like it,” Barras echoed aloofly. “You want to take up teaching.”

  David saw that Armstrong had told him.

  “No, no. I’ll not stop at teaching.” He regretted the remark instantly. That hot defiant pride had betrayed him into revealing himself. He felt the incongruity of it, standing there in his pit clothes with Arthur there in the dogcart looking and listening; he felt like some sickly hero of an autobiography—Log Cabin to White House; but he was stubborn enough not to withdraw. If Barras asked, he’d tell him outright what he meant to do.

  But Barras seemed to have no curiosity whatever, no consciousness of antagonism. He simply went on, as though he had not heard David, went on to moralise:

  “Education is a fine thing. I never stand in anyone’s way. When you finish at the Baddeley you might let me know. I’m on the Board! I might get you into one of the County schools. We always have a place for junior teachers.”

  He seemed to recede from David behind the strong lenses of his glasses. Remotely, thus, he slipped his hand into his trousers pocket, pulled out a large white palmful of silver. In his unhurried style he picked out a half-crown, weighed it mentally; then he put it back, selecting instead a two-shilling piece.

  “Here’s a florin,” he said calmly, rather majestically, making it a gift and a dismissal.

  David was so dumbfounded he took the coin. He stood with it in his hand while Barras mounted, took his seat in the dogcart. He was dimly conscious of Arthur’s friendly smile upon him. Then the dogcart moved off.

  A wild impulse to laugh came over David. He recollected the text in the tract Wept had given him. “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Inwardly he repeated: “Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Ye cannot serve God…” It was funny, oh, it was funny!

  He turned abruptly and went towards the yard gates where Robert now stood, in his turn, waiting for him. David saw that his father had been a spectator of the whole scene. He saw that his father was furious. Robert was pale with fury, he kept his eyes down, not looking at David.

  They went out of the yard together, side by side, walking up Cowpen Street. Not a word passed between them. A little way up they were joined by Swee Messer. Immediately Robert began to talk to Swee in an ordinary friendly way. Swee was a good-looking blond-haired lad, always light-hearted and gay, a filler, not in the Paradise but in Globe Coal, higher up. Swee’s real name was Oswey Messuer, his father was the barber in Lamb Street, a naturalised Austrian who had been settled twenty years in Sleescale. They were popular, father and son, each in his own sphere, the son gaily filling tubs in the pit, the father meekly lathering chins in the parlour of his shop.

  Robert went on talking to Swee as though nothing had happened to disturb him. As Swee branched off along Freehold Street he said:

  “Tell your dad I’ll be down four o’clock as usual.”

  But the moment Swee was gone Robert’s face relapsed into its former bitterness. His features seemed to contract, to tighten upon the bone. In silence he tramped along with David until they reached half-way up Cowpen Street. Then he paused. Opposite was Middlerig, the back yard of the old cow-stalls, a filthy place, an eyesore to the town, rank with rotting straw, ordure and an enormous dung-heap. He faced David.

  “What did he gie ye, son?” he asked quietly.

  “He gave me two shillings, dad.” And David exposed the florin which he still kept, from shame, gripped tightly, secretly in his palm.

  Robert took the coin, looked at it, silently, then flung it from him with a savage force.

  “There,” he said, as though the word hurt him. “There!”

  The florin pitched right into the centre of the dung-heap.

  ELEVEN

  The night, the great night of the Millington Social arrived. Millington’s, situated at the dead end of a lane off Platt Street, employed about two hundred men and, though small, was not without impressiveness, especially if viewed on a dull March afternoon. From the chimneys of the furnaces, in which the iron was melted, tongues of red flame and dense clouds of smoke belched upwards. The drab sky, illuminated by the white-hot stream of molten metal flowing from the cupolas to the ladles, seemed to burn with a brassy glare. Pungent fumes rising from the foundry floor as the liquid iron poured into the moulds assailed the nostrils. The ears were stung by the heavy thud of hammers, the ringing of the fettlers’ chisels as they dressed the iron castings, the whirring of driving belts and gear wheels, the piercing scream of the lathes and the milling machines, the burr of the saws as they gnawed into metal. And through the haze emerging from the open doors the eye picked up the dim figures of men, stripped to the waist because of the tremendous heat.

  The chief product of the foundry was colliery equipment—iron tubs, haulage gear, roofing bars and heavy forged shackle-bolts, but competition was keen in this market, and Millington’s kept going more through their conserva
tive connection with old-established firms than through enterprise. Millington’s was itself an old-established firm. Millington’s had tradition. And part of that tradition was the Social Club.

  Millington’s Social Club, founded in the ’seventies by the Grand Old Man—Wesley Millington, catered in the most benevolent manner for the Workman and the Workman’s Family. The Club had four sections: Literary, Rambling, Photography—Dark Room included—and Athletic. But the scintillating event in the Social Club’s calendar was the Dance, known from time immemorial as the Social, and held, invariably, in the Oddfellows’ Hall.

  To-night, Friday, March 23rd, was the actual night of gaiety and gladness; yet Joe went home from his work at the foundry in a crush of sombre meditation. Naturally Joe was going to the Social, he was already a prime favourite in the Club, a rising member in the boxing section, likely candidate for the novices’ billiards handicap. Joe had done pretty well in these last eight months, filled out substantially, put more muscle on his shoulders and, in his own phrase, made a deuce of a lot of pals. He was a grand mixer, Joe, a hearty slapper on the back, with a resonant: “How do, ole man!” a ready laugh—a fine manly laugh—a firm handshake and he was, oh, such a lovely teller of a smutty story. Everybody at the works, from Porterfield, the foreman, to Mr. Stanley Millington himself, everyone who really mattered, seemed to take to Joe; at least everyone but Jenny.

  Jenny! Joe thought of her as he tramped over the High Level Bridge, reviewing the situation with a moody eye. She was going to the Social with him, certainly she was. But what did that mean, when all was said and done? Nothing, plain nothing at all! How far had he got with Jenny in these eight months? Not so very far, by gum, no, not so very far. He had taken her out plenty—Jenny loved to go out—spent money on her, yes, spent his good money like water. But what had he received in return? A few kisses, a few short kisses, surrendered unwillingly, a few pushed-away embraces which only whetted his appetite for more.

  He let out a long, gloomy breath: if Jenny thought she’d make a mug out of him she was mistaken, he’d tell her a few plain truths, chuck the whole thing and be done with her. But no, he’d said that before. He’d said that a dozen times before. And he hadn’t chucked her. He wanted her, even more than on that first day… and even then he had wanted her badly enough. He cursed right out loud.

  She puzzled him: treating him sometimes with a haughty arrogance, sometimes with coquettish intimacy. She was always pleasantest to him when he was all dressed up in his new blue serge suit and the derby hat she had made him buy. But if by chance she met him in his dirty dungarees she sailed past him with a distant air, almost froze him with her look. It was the same when they went out: if he took her to a good seat at the Empire, she purred, smiled up into his face, let him hold her hand; yet, if he suggested a stroll after dark round the Town Moor, she would accompany him quite pettishly, her head well in the air, her answers short and snappy, keeping herself a full yard from his side. When he asked her to McGuigan’s coffee-stall for sausage and mash she would sniff and say: “That’s the sort of place my father goes to.” But an invitation to Leonard’s High Class Tea Rooms in the High Street found her beaming, snuggling to his side. She wanted to be above her family, better than they; she corrected her father, her mother and her sisters, Sally especially. She was always correcting him, too, pulling him up, disdainfully telling him how to raise his hat, carry his cane, walk on the outside of the pavement, and crook his little finger when he drank his tea. She was terribly genteel, crammed with etiquette culled from the columns of the women’s penny journals. From the same columns she got her fashion hints, “shapes” for the dresses she made herself, advice on how to keep her hands white, how “the white of an egg mixed with the rinsing water” would bring out the glossy lustre of her hair.

  Mind you, he did not mind this striving towards refined gentility, in fact he liked it, little things like her Jockey Club scent or her lace camisole—pink ribbon threaded, seen through her blouse—excited him, made him feel that she was different from the street tarts he had possessed occasionally, during these tantalising months of hope deferred.

  The very thought of what he had endured goaded his desire intolerably. As he went up the front steps of 117A Scottswood Road he told himself that he would bring matters to a head to-night or know the reason why.

  When he went into the back room he saw from the clock that he was late. Already Jenny had gone upstairs to dress. Mrs. Sunley was lying down in the parlour with a sick headache. Phyllis and Clarry had gone into the street to play. It was left to Sally to give him his tea.

  “Where’s your dad?” Joe asked suddenly when he had wolfed his two kippers and the best part of a new loaf, and swilled down three big cups of tea.

  “Gone to Birmingham. The secretary couldn’t go, so dad went instead. He’s taken all the club homers and ours too. For to-morrow.”

  Joe lifted his fork and picked his teeth reflectively. So Alf had a free trip to Birmingham for the Saturday Pigeon Flight. Lucky dog!

  Studying Joe critically, Sally now loosed upon him a shaft from her precocious wit.

  “Don’t swallow that fork,” she warned him gravely. “It’ll rattle when you do the polka.”

  He scowled at her. He was only too well aware that Sally loathed him, however much he tried he could not win her round. He had the uncomfortable feeling, under her dark eyes, that Sally saw through him; sometimes her shrill derisive laugh cutting into his manly conversation would take him completely aback, rend his composure from him, make him blush horribly.

  His scowl gratified her; her eyes sparkled. Though she was only eleven, her sense of drollery was acute. Gaily she went on with the game of taking him off.

  “You ought to be a good dancer, too, you’ve such big feet. Can you reverse, Miss Sunley? Yes indeed, Joe, I mean Mr. Gowlan, excuse the liberty. Shall we try? Please do, Mr. Gowlan, dear. Isn’t the music too lovelee? Ouch! ye beggor, ye tramped on me corn.”

  She was really very funny, screwing up her comic little face, rolling her big black eyes, mimicking Jenny’s fastidious accent to perfection.

  “Shall I stand you an ice, my deah? Or would you prefer tripe? Beautiful tripe. Straight from the cow. You can have all the curly bits.” She jerked her head upwards. “She’s curling her hair upstairs. Miss Sunley. Jenny, the lady toff what sleeps with the clothes-peg on her nose. Been at it for an hour. Come straight from in the millineree, not serving mind you, that’s what the slaveys do, that’s comming! Made me heat the irons, she did, caught me a cuff on the ear for the good of the house. There’s temper for you, Joseph, take a stitch in time before you leap!”

  “Ah, be quiet will you… you cheeky little brat.” He rose from the table, made for the door.

  She pretended to blush, remarking mincingly:

  “Don’t be so formal, Mr. Gowlan, dear. Just call me plain Maggie. With such lovelee eyes ain’t it a shame you smoke. Oh, don’t think of leaving me so soon,” deliberately she got in his way, “just let me sing you a song before you go, Mr. Gowlan. One tiny little song.” Folding her hands in coy imitation of Jenny standing at the piano she began, very falsetto:

  “See the little pansy faces,

  Growing in the garden there…”

  She stopped when the door banged behind him, burst into a peal of delighted laughter, then took a flying header on to the sofa. She lay curled up on the edge whanging the springs with her own delight.

  Upstairs Joe shaved, scrubbed himself, robed carefully in the best blue serge, knotted a new green tie, neatly laced his shiny brown boots. Even so he was ready before Jenny; he waited impatiently in the hall. Yet when she did come down she took his breath away, knocked the puff right out of him: dressed in a pink frock, white satin shoes, a white crochet shawl—known in the vogue of the moment as a fascinator—over her hair. Her grey eyes had a cool lustre in her clear, petalled face. She was delicately sucking a scented cachou.

  “By gum, Jenny, you look a treat!”
>
  She accepted his homage as a matter of course, slipped her everyday cloth coat over her finery, took the front door key with a womanly air and put it in her coat pocket. Then she caught sight of his brown boots. Her lip dropped.

  “I wish, Joe,” she said peevishly, “that you had got yourself a pair of pumps. I told you to a week ago.”

  “Ah, all the fellows wear these at the Social, I asked them.”

  “Don’t be a fool! As if I didn’t know! You’ll make me look ridiculous with these brown boots. Have you got the cab?”

  “Cab!” His jaw fell; did she think he was Carnegie? he said sulkily: “We’re going by tram.”

  Her eyes frosted with temper.

  “I see! So that’s what you think of me! I’m not good enough to have a cab.”

  From the landing above Ada called out:

  “Don’t be late, you two. I’ve taken a Daisy powder and I’m going to bed.”

  “Don’t you worry, ma,” Jenny answered in a mortal huff. “We certainly shan’t be late.”

  They caught a red tram which was, unfortunately, very full. The tram’s fullness made Jenny more sulky, she stared the conductor out of countenance when he asked Joe for something smaller. During the whole journey she did not speak. But at last they reached Yarrow, got out of the crowded red tram. They approached the Oddfellows’ Hall in the chill silence of her offended dignity. When they entered the hall the Social had already begun.