by A. J. Cronin
“Not good enough for you, eh? Not fancy enough for Cuthbert? Eat your breakfast, Cuthbert.”
Arthur repeated dully:
“I can’t.”
Warder Collins stroked his chin softly. It was beginning to get good.
“Do you know what’ll happen to you?” he said. “You’ll be fed forcible if you don’t look out. You’ll have a tube forced down your gullet and your soup run into your stomach, see. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said with his eyes on the ground. “If I eat it I know I’ll be sick.”
“Pick up the bowl,” Collins ordered.
Arthur stooped and picked up the bowl. Warder Collins watched him do it. From the start Collins had taken a violent dislike to Arthur as being well-bred, educated and a gentleman. There was the other reason too. Collins explained the other reason slowly:
“I been lookin’ at you, Cuthbert. I don’t like Cuthberts. I sort of picked on you the minnet you came in. I got a son in the trenches, see. That explains a lot, see. It explains why you be goin’ to eat that breakfast. Eat your breakfast, Cuthbert.”
Arthur began to eat the skilly. He swallowed half of the watery mess, then in a laboured voice he said:
“I can’t.” And as he said it his inside revolted. He vomited over Warder Collins’s boots.
Warder Collins went livid. He thought Arthur had tried to vomit back the skilly over his boots. He forgot the technique of his sadism. Without any hesitation he hit Arthur a violent blow in the face.
Arthur turned bone white. He stared at Warder Collins with tormented eyes.
“You can’t do that,” he said, breathing painfully. “I’ll report you for striking me.”
“You will?” Warder Collins drew back his sneering lip as far as it would go. “Report that at the same time then.” He swung his fist hard and knocked Arthur down.
Arthur struck the concrete floor of the cell and lay still. He moaned weakly and at that sound Warder Collins, thinking of his son in the trenches, smiled grimly. He wiped his soiled boots on Arthur’s tunic, then, with his thin lip still drawn back, he walked out of the cell. The key sounded.
THIRTEEN
On the day that Arthur lay senseless in the puddle of skilly on the cement floor of his cell, Joe sat very sensibly before some oysters in the Central Hotel, Tynecastle. Amongst other things, Joe had recently discovered oysters. They were amazing, oysters were, amazing in every way, especially amazing in the number a man could eat. Joe could manage a dozen and a half quite easily when he was in the mood, and he was usually in the mood. And, by God, they were good—with a dash of Tabasco and a squeeze of lemon. The big fat ones were the best.
Even though certain food-stuffs, meat for instance and chicken, were rather more restricted, the people who knew their way about could always get oysters in season at the Central. For that matter Joe could get pretty well anything at the Central. He dropped in so often he was a known man there now, they all ran after him, and the head waiter, old Sue—his name was really Suchard but Joe had the hail-fellow-well-met habit of abbreviation—ran faster than any. “Why don’t you buy yourself some Crocker and Dicksons?” Joe had blandly suggested to old Sue some months before. “Ah, don’t look so frightened, I know you don’t speculate—a family man and all that, eh, Sue?—but this is different, you ought to buy yourself a hundred just for fun.” A week later Sue had been waiting for Joe at the entrance to the Grill Room, fawning with gratitude, almost genuflecting, showing him to the best table in the room. “Ah, that’s all right, Sue, don’t bother to say it. H’much d’you knock out of it? Sixty pounds. Keep you in cigars for a bit, eh, Sue? Ha, ha! That’s right, just you look after me, y’understand, and I’ll look after you.”
Money!—thought Joe, pronging the last oyster and letting it slide skilfully down his gullet—it certainly delivered the goods. While the waiter removed the pearly litter and brought his steak he surveyed the Grill Room genially. The Grill Room of the Central was a perfect health resort these days; even on Sundays it was bung full, the place where all the successful men gathered, the business men who were up to the elbow in the pie. Joe knew most of them, Bingham and Howard, both on the Munitions Council, Snagg the lawyer, Ingram, of Ingram Toogood the brewers, Wainwright the big noise on the Tynecastle Exchange, and Pennington, whose specialty was synthetic jam. Joe had deliberately set out to make contacts; the people with money, anyone who might be useful to him. Personal liking meant nothing, he cultivated only those who could advance him; but he was so hearty in his manner, such an excellent mixer that he passed, everywhere, as the best of good fellows.
Two men at the window caught his eye. He nodded and they waved to him in recognition. Joe smiled with a secret gratification. A clever pair, Bostock and Stokes—yes, they’d both cut their eye teeth all right. Bostock was boots, just in a small way of business before the war began, with a little hand-me-down factory in East Town. But in these last eighteen months Bostock had reached himself a handful of army contracts. It wasn’t the contracts, of course, though they were good enough. It was the boots. There wasn’t an inch of leather in Bostock’s boots. Not one bleeding inch. Bostock had let it out to Joe the other night at the County when Bostock was just the littlest bit screwed. It was some kind of bark Bostock put in his boots and the bark was guaranteed not to last. But what was the odds, Bostock had tearfully confided, the boots lasted out most of the poor devils that wore them. Pity! “O Gord, Sho, washn’t it a pity?” Bostock had blubbered suddenly into his cham in a passion of patriotic grief.
Stokes’s line was tailoring. In the last few months he had bought all the property over his shop and could now refer casually to “his factory.” He was the biggest patriot in the whole Crockerstown district; he was always talking of “the national necessity,” he made all his women work unpaid overtime, cribbed down their dinner hour, drove them often till 8 p.m. on Sundays. Even so, most of his work was “given out” to the surrounding tenements. He paid 7d. per pair of breeches, and 1s. 6d. the complete uniform. Khaki shirts he gave out at 2s. a dozen less 2¾d. a reel for the cotton. Soldiers’ trousers he farmed out to be finished at 1d. a pair, body belts at 8d. a dozen, needles and cotton provided by the women. And the profit?—Joe moistened his lips, hungrily. Take these body belts for instance: Joe knew for a fact that they were being bought from Stokes by somebody “higher up” at 18s. a dozen. And the total cost to Stokes was 2s. 10d.! God, it was marvellous. True enough, some socialist swine had worked it out that Stokes paid on an average 1d. an hour to his tenement out-workers and had raised the question of sweated labour in the Council. Bah! thought Joe. Sweated labour be damned! These women fought to get the work, didn’t they? There were plenty of them too—just take a look at the draggled mob that made up the margarine queues, for instance! And besides, wasn’t there a war on?
Joe’s experience was that there was nothing like a war for helping a man to throw his weight about. At least Joe put it down to the war. At Millington’s he had thrown his weight about to some tune, they were all scared of him now, Morgan, Irvine, even that old stickler Dobbie. Joe smiled. He lay back in his chair and carefully peeled the band off a light Havana cigar. Stokes and Bostock might smoke their cigars with the band on, the blinking profiteers, but he knew one better than that. Joe’s smile became dreamy. But suddenly he sat up, alert and welcoming, at the sight of Jim Mawson approaching. He had been expecting Mawson, who always took his Sunday dinner at home, to drop in about two.
Jim edged along quietly through the crowded room and sat down at Joe’s table. His heavy, hooded eyes lifted towards Joe who nodded silently in return: the greeting of two men who knew their way about. A pause while Mawson surveyed the restaurant with boredom.
“Whisky, Jim?” asked Joe at length.
Jim shook his head and yawned. Another pause. “How’s things upbye?”
“Not so dusty.” Joe pulled a slip from his waistcoat pocket in leisurely fashion. “Output la
st week was 200 tons shrapnel, 10,000 Mills grenades, 1,000 whizz bangs, you know, stick bombs, and 1,500 eighteen-pounders.”
“Christ,” said Jim, reaching without emotion for a toothpick out of the little glass dish, “you’ll finish the bloody war all by your bloody little self, Joe, if you’re not careful.”
Joe grinned cautiously. “Don’t you fret, Jim. Some of these shells wouldn’t finish a coco-nut. God, I never saw so many blow-hole castings as we got last week. It’s that last pig you delivered, Jim. Shocking. Half of them come out like Gruyère cheeses. Duds. We had to clay up the holes and slash on two coats of paint.”
“Ah,” Jim sighed. “Won’t carry true, eh?”
“Not on your bloody life, Jim, they’ll about go round corners if they clear the muzzle.”
“Pity,” agreed Jim, working overtime with the toothpick. Then, “How much can you take this week?” he asked.
Cocking his head Joe affected to consider: “You better send me 150 tons.”
Mawson nodded.
“And look here, Jim,” went on Joe, “invoice it as 350 this week. I’m sick of piking at an extra hundred.”
Jim’s enigmatic eye inquired, is it safe?
“We don’t want to go too quick,” he said at last, thoughtfully. “There’s Dobbie.”
“Ah, what about him? If the invoice comes in he doesn’t know what the hell we’re using in the foundry. So long as his bloody figures add up right he thinks he’s got the whole issue taped.” Perhaps Joe spoke a little violently: his early tentative efforts to corrupt Dobbie, the angular, pince-nezed, finicking cashier, had proved singularly unsuccessful. Fortunately Dobbie, if interfering, was easy to hoodwink. His whole being was bound up in the scrupulosity of his returns. But he knew nothing of the practical side. For months past Joe had been conducting these amusing little deals with Mawson. To-day, for instance, he had ordered 150 tons of scrap iron, but the invoice which he would initial as correct would be for 350 tons. Dobbie would pay for 350 tons and Mawson and Joe would split even on 200 tons at £7 a ton. A trifling matter of £1,400 profit. Only a side, issue perhaps, in the combined activities of Jim and Joe. But for all that enough to make them mildly grateful for the boon of war.
Business satisfactorily concluded, Mawson lay back in his chair holding his stomach tenderly. A silence.
“Here’s them two—comin’ over,” he declared at length.
Stokes and Bostock had risen and now came over and stood by their table. Both were flushed by food and drink, happy yet important. Stokes offered his cigar case to Joe and Mawson. As Joe put away his half-smoked Havana and bent selectively over the gold-bound crocodile case, Stokes said with quite an unnecessary wink:
“You don’t have to smell them, they cost me half-a-dollar apiece.”
“It’s no bloody joke, these prices,” Bostock said with great solemnity. He had only had four brandies. He swayed slightly but he was superbly grave. “Do you know that one bloody egg costs fivepence?”
“You can afford it,” Joe said.
“I don’t eat eggs myself,” Bostock said. “Bilious things eggs, and besides I’m too busy. I’m buying myself a bloody big house in Kenton, and the wife wants it and the daughter. Ah, wimen, wimen. But what I mean is, how in hell is the war going on if an egg costs fivepence?”
Cutting his cigar, Mawson said:
“You can insure that risk. I’ve done it myself. Fifteen per cent. against the war ending this year. It’s worth it.”
Bostock argued very soberly:
“I’m talking about eggs, Jim.”
Stokes winked at Joe. He said:
“Why does a hen cross the road?”
Bostock looked at Stokes. He said very solemnly:
“B—s.”
“B—s yourself,” Stokes answered, steadying himself lovingly against Bostock’s shoulder.
Instinctively Joe and Mawson exchanged a quick glance of contempt: Stokes and Bostock could not carry their money, they were braggers, they would not last the pace, one of these days they would go up in a puff of smoke. Joe’s self-esteem was immensely flattered by this silent interchange of understanding between Mawson and himself. He began almost to despise Stokes and Bostock, he was above them now, above them both. He caressed his cigar opulently between his lips and let out a cool derisive puff.
“Wha’ y’ doin’ this afternoon, Jim?” Stokes benignantly inquired of Mawson.
Mawson looked inquiringly at Joe.
“The County, I suppose.”
“Tha’ suits us,” said Bostock. “Le’s all go roun’ th’ Club.”
Joe and Mawson rose and they strolled in a bunch to the door of the Grill. A woman commissionaire revolved the door obsequiously to these four triumphant males, magnificently fed and clothed, masters of the universe. They made an impressive group on the steps of the Central Grill, Joe a little behind, adjusting his blue silk scarf.
Mawson turned, intimately:
“Come on, Joe, we may as well. We’ll have a four at pool.”
Joe inspected his neat platinum wrist watch with an air of regret.
“Sorry, Jim, I’ve got business.”
Bostock neighed with laughter, wagging a fat forefinger:
“It’s a skirt, it’s a lady called Brown.”
Joe shook his head.
“Business,” he said suavely.
“’S war work,” Stokes suggested with a ribald leer. “’S war work wish a wack.”
They inspected him with envy.
“Cheerio, then,” Bostock said. “Na poo, toodeloo, good-bye-ee.”
Mawson, Bostock and Stokes went off to the Club. Joe watched them go, then he stepped on to the pavement and crossed briskly to where his car stood parked. He started the engine and set out for Wirtley: he had promised to pick up Laura at the canteen. Driving thoughtfully through the quiet Sunday streets, his head filled with Mawson’s scheme, by money, business, shells, steel, and his belly with rich food and drink, he found himself comfortably aware of the afternoon before him. He smiled: a glossy self-satisfied smile. She was all right, Laura, he owed a bit to her. She’d shown him so many things, from how to tie his new dress tie to where to find the little self-contained flat which he had now occupied for six months. She’d improved him. Well, it pleased her, didn’t it, to do things for him, like getting him put up for the County and, by an equally discreet approach, invited to the Howards’, the Penningtons’, even to Mrs. John Rutley’s house. She was completely gone on him. His smile deepened. He understood Laura perfectly now. He had always flattered himself that he knew women: the frightened ones, the cold ones—these were the commonest—the “pretenders”; but never before had he met a type like Laura. No wonder she hadn’t been able to hold out against him, or rather against herself.
As he slid into the square below Wirtley Munition Works—for obvious reasons they always met here—Laura turned the corner, walking smartly. Her punctuality pleased him. He lifted his hat and, not getting out of the car, held the door open for her. She got in and, without a word, he drove off towards his flat.
For some minutes they did not speak, the silence of complete familiarity. He liked having her beside him; she was a damned well-turned-out woman; these navy costumes always suited her. His feeling for her now was that of a husband still quite fond of his wife. Naturally there was not so much excitement now, the very consciousness of her attachment to him took the edge off his appetite.
“Where did you lunch?” she asked at length.
“The Central.” He answered casually. “What about you?”
“I had a bacon sandwich at the canteen.”
He laughed graciously: he knew her interest did not lie in food.
“Aren’t you fed up with that place yet?” he said. “Standing serving swill to the canaries?”
“No.” She deliberated. “I like to think I still have some decent instincts in me.”
He laughed again, dropped the subject, and they began to talk of ordinary things un
til they reached the far end of Northern Road where, in a quiet crescent behind the main thoroughfare, Joe’s flat was situated. It was actually the lower half of a subdivided house, with high-ceilinged rooms, fireplaces and mouldings in the Adams style and a discreet sense of space accentuated by open gardens fore and aft. Laura had furnished it for him in decided taste—Laura had a flair for that sort of thing. It was easily run. A woman came in the forenoons to do for him, and as it lay a full five miles from Yarrow it was, from the point of their intimacy, absolutely safe. To those who saw Laura come and go she passed, in the nicest possible way, as Joe’s sister.
Joe opened the door with his latch-key and went in with Laura. He switched on the electric heater in the living-room and, sitting down, began to take off his shoes. Laura poured herself a glass of milk and stood drinking it with her eyes upon his back.
“Have a whisky and soda,” she suggested.
“No, I don’t feel like it.” He picked up the Sunday paper which lay on the table and opened it at the financial column.
She studied him for a moment in silence, finishing her milk. For a few minutes she pottered about the room, straightening things up, as if waiting for him to speak, then she went unobtrusively into the bedroom next door. He heard her moving about, taking off her things and, lowering his paper, he grinned faintly. They went to bed every Sunday afternoon, quietly and decently, as people go to church, but lately since his own desire was less acute it had amused him to “kid Laura on a bit.” Now he waited a full half-hour, pretending to read, before, with an obvious yawn, he went into the bedroom.
She lay upon her back in his bed in a plain white nightdress of beautiful material and cut, her hair charmingly arranged, her clothes neatly folded upon a chair, a faint perfume of her, like an evocation, in the room. He had to admit that she had class. A week ago he had taken a little flutter with a munitionette from the Wirtley Works—gone home with her to her room in fact—oh, a nice enough girl, no doubt, her ginger colouring had appealed to him after Laura’s bushy darkness, but somehow her flashy nightdress, the poor sheets upon the bed had disgusted him. Yes, there was no question but that Laura had educated him: clearly the best way to learn manners was to sleep with a well-bred woman.