The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  With almost superhuman endurance, David threw himself into a final effort. On October 26th he toured the town in the old light lorry which had borne him to his original success. He was in the open all day, snatching a mouthful of food between times. He spoke till his voice was almost gone. At eleven o’clock, after a last naphtha-flare meeting outside the Institute, he returned to Lamb Lane, and flung himself upon his bed, exhausted. He fell asleep instantly. The next day was polling day.

  Early reports indicated a heavy poll. David remained indoors all the forenoon. He had done his best, given of his utmost; for the present he could give no more. Consciously, he did not anticipate the result, nor preconsider the verdict to be delivered upon him by his own people. Yet beneath the surface, his mind struggled between hope and fear. Sleescale had always been a safe seat for Labour, a stronghold of the miners. The men knew he had worked and fought for them. If he had failed it was not his fault. Surely they would give him the chance to work and fight for them again. He did not underrate Gowlan, nor the strategic advantage of Gowlan’s position as owner of the Neptune. He was aware that Joe’s unscrupulous methods had undoubtedly split the solidarity of the men; cast doubts and suspicion on his own reputation. Remembering that hateful reference to Jenny, which had damaged him more than all Joe’s misrepresentation, David’s heart contracted. He had a quick vision of Jenny lying in the grave. And at that a surge of pity and aspiration came over him, the old familiar feeling, intensified and strengthened. He wanted with all his soul to win, to prove the good in humanity rather than the bad. They had accused him of preaching Revolution. But the only Revolution he demanded was in the heart of man, an escape from meanness, cruelty and self-interest towards that devotion and nobility of which the human heart was capable. Without that, all other change was futile.

  Towards six o’clock David went out to visit Harry Ogle and while he walked slowly up Cowpen Street he observed a figure advancing along Freehold Street. It was Arthur Barras. As they approached each other David kept his eyes straight ahead, thinking that Arthur might not wish to recognise him. But Arthur stopped.

  “I’ve been up to vote for you,” he said, quite abruptly. His voice was flat, almost harsh, his cheek sallow and inclined to twitch. The odour of spirits came from his breath.

  “I’m obliged to you, Arthur,” David answered.

  A silence.

  “I’d been underground this afternoon. But when I came outbye, I suddenly remembered.”

  David’s eyes were troubled and full of pity. He said awkwardly:

  “I hardly expected your support.”

  “Why not?” Arthur said. “I’m nothing now, neither red nor blue nor anything else.” Then with sudden bitterness:

  “What does it matter, anyhow?”

  Another silence, through which the words he had just spoken seemed to wrench at Arthur. He raised his heavy eyes to David’s helplessly.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” he said. “Ending up like this.” With an expressionless nod he turned and made his way down the street.

  David continued on his way to Ogle’s, touched and profoundly troubled by this encounter, where so little had been said and everything implied. It was like a warning: how terrible defeat could be. Arthur’s ideals were shattered, he had stepped away from life, shrinking, with every fibre crying: “I have suffered enough. I will suffer no more.” The battle was over, the flame had gone out. David sighed as he turned into Ogle’s house.

  He spent the evening with Harry, who was considerably better and in bright spirits. Though both their minds were concentrated on the coming result, they talked little of the election. Harry, however, in his gentle, thoughtful manner, predicted victory—anything else was unthinkable. After supper they played cribbage, to which game Harry was an addict, until nearly eleven o’clock. But David’s eyes kept straying towards the clock. Now that he must know so soon, an intolerable sense of strain possessed him. Twice he suggested it was time for him to go, that the counting at the Town Hall must be well upon the way. But Ogle, aware, perhaps, of David’s anxiety, insisted that he remain a little longer. The result could not be known before two o’clock. In the meantime here was a comfortable fire and a chair. So David acquiesced, curbing his restlessness, expectation and uneasiness. But finally, just after one o’clock, he rose. Before he left the room Harry shook him by the hand.

  “Since I can’t be there, I’m going to congratulate you now. But I’m sorry to miss the sight of Gowlan’s face when he hears you’ve licked him.”

  The night had turned still now, and there was a bright half moon. As David neared the Town Hall he was amazed at the crowds in the streets. He had some difficulty in forcing himself towards the steps of the Hall. But he got in at last and joined Wilson in the lobby. Inside the Council Chamber the open count was taking place. Wilson turned enigmatically and made room for David beside him. He looked tired.

  “Another half-hour and we’ll know.”

  The lobby was filling up with people. Then, from outside, came the slow hooting of a car. A minute later Gowlan entered at the head of his party—Snagg, his agent, Ramage, Connolly, Bostock, several of his Tynecastle associates, and in honour of this final occasion, Jim Mawson in person. Joe wore a coat with an astrakhan fur collar which hung open, displaying his evening clothes beneath. His face was full and slightly flushed. He had been dining late with his friends; and after dinner there had been old brandy and cigars. He swaggered down the lobby, through the crowd which parted before him, then outside the council room door he drew up with his back towards David and was immediately surrounded by his partisans. Loud laughter and conversation immediately engaged the group.

  About ten minutes later old Rutter, Clerk to the Council and Recording Officer, came out of the room with a paper in his hand. Immediately there was a hush. Rutter looked immensely important; and he was smiling. When David saw that smile on Rutter’s face his heart gave a thud, then sank within him. Still smiling, peering over his gold-rimmed glasses, Rutter searched the crowded lobby, then, holding his importance, he called out the names of the two candidates.

  Immediately Joe’s group pressed through the double doors after Rutter. At the same time Wilson rose.

  “Come on,” he said to David; and his voice held a note of anxiety.

  David rose and crowded with the others through the council room. There was no order, no sense of precedence, merely a flood of tense and unrestrained excitement.

  “Please, gentlemen, please,” Rutter kept repeating, “allow the candidates to come through.”

  Up the familiar iron staircase, through the small committee room and at last out upon the balcony. The cool night air came gratefully after the heat and lights within. Below an enormous gathering of people filled the street in front of the Hall. The pale half moon sailed high above the headstocks of the Neptune and laid faint silver scales upon the sea. A mutter of anticipation kept rising from the waiting crowd.

  The balcony was very full. David was squeezed forward to the extreme corner. Beside him, carried away from Gowlan by the press, was Ramage. The fat butcher stared at David, his big hands twitching, his deep-set eyes lit, beneath their bushy grey brows, by excitement and spite. The frantic desire to see David beaten was written on his face.

  Rutter was in the middle of the balcony now, facing the hushed crowd, the paper in his hand. One moment of deadly stillness, electric, agonising. Never in all his life had David known a moment so painful, so agitating as this. His heart beat wildly within his breast. Then Rutter’s shrill high voice rang out:

  Mr. Joseph Gowlan… 8,852

  Mr. David Fenwick… 7,490

  A great shout went up and it was Ramage who led it. “Hurrah, hurrah!” Ramage bellowed like a bull, waving his arms, ecstatic with delight. Cheer after cheer split the air. Joe’s supporters were mobbing him on the balcony, overwhelming him with congratulations. David gripped the cold iron rail, striving for control, for strength. Beaten, beaten, beaten! He raised his eyes, saw Ramage
bending towards him, lips working with outrageous delight.

  “You’re beat, damn you,” gloated Ramage. “You’ve lost. You’ve lost everything.”

  “Not everything,” David answered in a low voice.

  More cheers, shouts, persistent calls for Joe. He was in the direct centre of the balcony now, against the railing, drinking in the adulation of the dense, excited crowd. He towered above them, a massive, dominant figure, black against the moonlight, unbelievably enlarged and menacing. Below, the pale faces of the people lay before him. They were his—all his, they belonged to him, for his use, to his purpose. The earth was his, and the heavens. A faint hum came distantly—a night flight of his Rusford planes. He was a king, he was divine, power illimitable was his. He was only beginning. He would go on, on. The fools beneath his feet would help him. He would mount to the heights, crack the world with his bare hands, split the sky with his lightning. Peace and War answered to his call. Money belonged to him. Money, money, money… and the slaves of money. Raising both his arms towards the sky in a gesture of supreme hypocrisy he began:

  “My dear friends…”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Five o’clock on this cold September morning. It was not yet light and the wind, pouring out of the sea darkness, rushed across the arches of the sky and polished the stars to a high glitter. Silence lay upon the Terraces.

  And then, breaking fitfully though the silence and the darkness, a gleam appeared in Hannah Brace’s window. The gleam lingered and ten minutes later the door opened and old Hannah came out of her house catching her breath as the icy wind took her. She wore a shawl, hobnailed boots and a huddle of petticoats lined with brown paper for warmth. A man’s cap was pulled upon her head hiding her thin straggle of grizzled hair, and bound longwise about her old jaws and ears was a swathe of red flannel. In her hand she carried a long pole. Since old Tom Calder had died of pleurisy, Hannah was now the caller of the Terraces, and glad enough these hard times for “the extra little bit” the work brought in. Waddling slightly because of her rupture, she made her way slowly along Inkerman, a poor old bundle, scarcely human, tapping the windows with her pole, calling the men due on the foreshift of the pit.

  But outside No. 23 she spared her knocking. Never any need to call up No. 23, then or now, never, never, thought Hannah with a flicker of approval. Past the illumined window Hannah went, shivering her way along, lifting her pole, knocking and calling, calling and knocking, disappearing into the raw dimness of Sebastopol beneath.

  Inside No. 23 Martha moved about the bright kitchen briskly. The fire was already ablaze, her bed in the alcove made, the kettle steaming, sausages sizzling in the pan. Deftly she spread a blue-checked cover on the table and laid a place for one. She wore her seventy years with lightness, even with alacrity. On her face there lay a look of indomitable satisfaction. Ever since she had come back to her own house in Inkerman, her old place, her own home, that deep-set satisfaction had burned in her eyes, easing the sombre furrow on her brow, making her expression strangely gay.

  A survey of her arrangements showed everything in order, and a glance towards the clock—that famous marbled pot-stour trophy—indicated half-past five. Moving lightly on her felt slippers she took three brisk steps upwards on the open ladder and called to the room above:

  “David! Half-past five, David.”

  And listening, one ear tilted, she waited until she heard him stirring overhead—firm footsteps, the sound of water splashing from the ewer, his cough several times repeated.

  Ten minutes later David came down, stood for a moment holding his cold hands to the fire, then sat in at the table. He wore pit clothes.

  Martha served him his breakfast without delay, the sausages, her home-made bread and a pot of scalding tea. Real tenderness was in her face as she watched him eat.

  “I’ve put some cinnamon in the tea,” she remarked. “It’ll cut that cough of yours in no time.”

  “Thanks, mother.”

  “I mind it used to help your father. He swore by my cinnamon tea.”

  “Yes, mother.” He did not immediately glance up, but in a moment, lifting his head suddenly, he caught her unawares. Her expression, quite unguarded, was startling in its devotion. Quickly, almost with embarrassment, he averted his eyes: for the first time in all his recollection he had seen open love for him in her face. To cover his feelings he went on eating, bending over the table, sipping the steaming tea. He knew, of course, the reason of this new demonstrativeness—it was because he was back in the pit at last. Through all those years of study, of schoolmastering, of the Federation, yes, even of Parliament, she had sealed her heart against him. But now that he had been driven to return to the Neptune she saw him truly her son, following the tradition of his father, a reality, a man at last.

  It was not an instinct of bravado which had forced him to the pit again but the plain and bitter fact of sheer necessity. He had been obliged to find work, and to find it quickly, and it was amazing how difficult the task had been. There was no room now in the Federation office; the antagonism of Transport House had shut him out there; in his half-qualified state teaching was absolutely closed to him; he had been compelled to turn inbye—standing in the line before Arthur in the underviewer’s office, begging to go underground again. Misfortune had not come to him alone—his shift in this predicament was far from being unique. Labour’s annihilation at the Election had placed many unseated candidates in a desperate position. Ralston was clerking in a Liverpool ship-broker’s office, Bond assisting a photographer in Leeds, and Davis, good old Jack Davis, was playing the piano in a Rhondda cinema. How different from the position of the apostates! He smiled grimly, thinking of Dudgeon, Chalmers, Bebbington and the rest, basking in national popularity, tranquilly subscribing to a policy which cut at the very heart of Labour conviction. Bebbington in particular, featured and photographed in every paper, broadcasting on all stations the week before—a noble speech, resounding with platitudes and pietic jingoism—was hailed as the saviour of the nation.

  Abruptly, David scraped back his chair and reached for his muffler which lay on the rails above the range. With his back to the fire he swathed it about his neck, then laced on his heavy boots, stamping them comfortable on the stone floor. Martha had his bait-poke ready, all neatly stowed in greased paper, his can filled with tea and safely corked. She stood polishing a big red apple on her skirt, polishing until it shone. As she put it in his poke with the rest she smiled.

  “You were always set on an apple, Davey. I minded when I was in the co-operative yesterday.”

  “Ay, mother.” He smiled back at her, both touched and amused by her obvious solicitude. “Only I didn’t get so many in those days.”

  A slight reproving shake of her head. Then:

  “You’ll not forget to bring Sammy up to-night, like. I’m bakin’ currant cake this mornin’.”

  “But, mother,” he protested, “you’ll have Annie after you, if you keep stealing Sammy every meal-time.”

  Her gaze wandered from his; there was no rancour in her face, only a vague embarrassment.

  “Oh well,” she mumbled, at length, “if she feels that way she better come up herself like, too. I cannot have my Sammy work his first shift in the pit without I gie him currant cake.” She paused, masking her softness with a pretence of severity. “D’ye hear me, man. Ask the woman to come up too.”

  “Right, mother,” he answered, moving towards the door.

  But she had to see him off, and with her own hands to open the door for him. She always did that for him now, it was the highest sign of her regard. Facing the keen darkness she answered his final nod with a slow movement of her head, then stood with one hand on her hip, watching his figure step out along Inkerman. Only when it had vanished did she close the door to return to the warmth of the kitchen. And immediately, although it was so early, she began with a kind of secretive joy to lay out her baking things—flour and currants and peel—laying them out eagerly, tenderly, to
make the cake for Sammy. She tried to hide it, but she could not, the look of happiness that dwelt triumphantly upon her proud dark face.

  Along the Terraces David went, his footfalls ringing and echoing amongst the other footfalls of the early frigid twilight. Dim shapes moved with him in comradeship, the shapes of the twilight men. A muffled word of greeting: “How, Ned”; “How, Tom”; “How, Davey.” But for the most part silence. Heavy-footed, bent of head, breath coming whitely from the frost, a faint pipe glow here and there, massing forward in shadowy formation, the march of the twilight men.

  Ever since his return to the Neptune, David felt this moment deeply. He had failed, perhaps, to lead the van in battle, but at least he was marching with the men. He had not betrayed himself or them. Their lot remained bound to his lot, their future to his future. Courage came to him from the thought. Perhaps one day he would rise again from the pit, one day, perhaps, help this plodding army towards a new freedom. Instinctively he lifted his head.

  Opposite Quay Street he crossed the road and knocked at the door of one of the houses. Without waiting for an answer he turned the handle, ducked his head and entered. This kitchen, too, was full of firelight. And Sammy, ready to the last bootlace, stood waiting impatiently in the middle of the floor while Annie, his mother, considered him silently from the shadow of the hearth.

  “You’re in good time, Sammy lad,” David cried cheerily. “I was afraid I’d have to pull you out of bed.”

  Sammy grinned, his blue eyes disappearing from sheer excitement. He was not very tall for fourteen years, but he made up for it in spirit, thrilling to the great adventure of his first day underground.