“You didn’t, you couldn’t have, with your workmen almost starving: you’re mad. I’ll take you into the courts.”
“I haven’t any money. If you insist, I’ll have to sell my car, my home, and see my wife and child on the streets.”
“That’s a lie. Chaps like you are bankrupt and still live a hundred times better than men who pay their way. Gee, like a fellow I met on the Melbourne express once, in the dining-car, Baker of Baker & Teakes, the week they were filed in bankruptcy. I knew him at school. He was dressed in a £16 hairline-stripe grey suit, hand-made shoes, hair scented, first-class imported stetson. ‘I see you’re broke, Baker,’ says I. ‘Yes, I am.’ He looks serious and then, after taking a squint at me, he grins, ‘There are five and sixty ways of disguising the malaise, and every single one of them is right.’ He orders the best brandy and drives to the Grand Hotel. You couldn’t be broke as well as that, you’re not in his class, Greg, but you’d do pretty well, pretty well. Now, fork out!”
At this moment, Mrs Chamberlain, a fat, timid, florid woman of forty, and Effie came in. Mrs Chamberlain always wore a spotted veil to conceal a skin disease on her face. Effie, hearing voices, motioned her mother to a seat outside the door, and sat down beside her.
“For your £60, I’ll give you the car, you can sell it. It’ll be an excuse for me not to drive Montagu around. I’ve always got to pay the gas anyway.”
“Gam! You got it off Dave Jonas, don’t be funny, and you’ve never paid for it. He’d be seizing it on me in a week. And what would I do with a car? I can’t pay for beer, let alone gas.”
Chamberlain was silent. At last he said:
“Don’t make a row: I’m settling with the men this evening. I’ll send you to the bank and send Jo over to Montagu.”
He looked grey. After an effort he said:
“You don’t know what a fix I’m in. But I can’t have this discussion going on; it’s killing me.”
He thought again and continued:
“Withers, I’ve a good mind to let you take over the business end and put everything in your hands. I get such terrible headaches, I feel like putting an end to it all, sometimes.”
“If you want to look at it that way,” said Withers beginning to cheer up.
“It’s not that I’m indebted to you—if that were all my worries!—but I’m terribly fond of you, Tom, and I can’t stand you fighting with me like this. I don’t know how I’d get along without you, that’s the truth. Yes, you were right this morning. I suppose I could have scraped together the money I owe you, over a period of weeks, borrowing here and there, getting the wife and kid to save, but I was afraid to lose you. I thought you’d be off as soon as you got it, after our scraps you know. You’re bitter, Tom, in what you say, and I’m thin-skinned when it comes to friends. I take it to heart, although I should know, I suppose, it’s nothing but froth that you blow off a good glass of beer. I want you to stay near me, Tom.”
“Why should I leave you, if I’m treated with at least the same consideration as Montagu or Graham? But it makes my gall rise—you give Montagu money for Graham: why Graham? By Jesus, it’s maddening.”
“It sounds weak, but I’m fond of you like a relative, Tom. I even hoped, in the early days, you’d take a fancy to Effie, you know. But if you’re thinking of settling down, any time, really settling down, I’ll manage things so that you’ll start off right anyhow; you need it, Tom, it’s steadying.”
“You mean your little girl’s to offset your debt. I don’t want to be a relative of yours, and I don’t want Effie. I’m not the right sort for the Kid, and she’s not for me. No one is for me: I’m a natural deadbeat. Besides, you know as well as Danny that Dave Jonas only lets you off the car payments and runs round signing I.O.U.’s for you in consideration of being looked upon as your son-in-law; which he is already, in fact. And Effie loves Dave. You’re a moral specimen, aren’t you? Rather than try to curb one of your impulses—my God, you’ve got a wonderful business here, if you’d attend to it—you’d sink your own family and Effie’s respectability. You don’t give a damn what Dave Jonas does with Effie as long as you can peddle around in a nifty car.”
Mrs Chamberlain was shifting into the farthest corner, and Effie patted her hand.
“Papa is a fool: I’m going in. Let me go, Mother; I’ll settle their hash.” She went in.
“I heard every word. Sit down, Papa, you’re simply foolish, you’re a laughing-stock, everyone can wind you round their little finger.” She looked in a business-like fashion at Withers.
“I’m not ashamed, but you should be. Dave Jonas is my boy, he does everything for me and for Papa. He doesn’t get out of it any more than you, and he’s the only benefactor this blighted family has seen since I remember. He got Papa out of a corner six months ago by signing a note, and he’s lent him his savings: he’s lovely. You pretend to be Papa’s friend, and you’re always hand in glove with that shark Montagu. How I hate him; I’d kill him if I could. And the bank is after poor Papa: wants to get back his overdraft. No wonder he’s worried. Why don’t you try to help him a bit instead of nagging and nagging? He offered you to run the business, didn’t he? Why don’t you take it? Run it your own way, if you don’t like his. Nail him down, take him at his word; we’ll all be better off. But you’ve got no more character than he has.”
Withers answered softly:
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Effie: you’ve got someone to keep you. You’ve never been down and out.”
“I’ll raise that money for you somehow and you can get out. Get out; we’ll be better round here.”
“You couldn’t raise it in a month of Sundays; Greg’s cleared you all out,” replied Withers, smiling slightly, “but you win, kiddo. My excuses. Don’t be too rough on me. Bad luck sours the temper. I’ve got an unpractical streak myself, and I’ll always be worse off than your Dave will ever be. Have you got the cheque, Chamberlain?”
“I’ll telephone Montagu.”
“I’ll go and see him at the same time,” said Withers.
Withers went out and presently returned. A flush of joy went over the workshop; they looked at the office where the money was being counted. Presently, Chamberlain came round and paid them all. Each one felt against his thigh the little wad of paper, the weight of the loose coins, and at the end of the afternoon they were whistling and chaffing. Joseph walked up Pitt Street with Baruch, to find some little place to eat. Baruch was talking politics, but Joseph noticed how splendidly the shop-windows were lighted, how richly dressed in crumpled silk and polished ashwood. There was an inlaid tortoiseshell cigarette-case that he stopped and stared at dully, for the pleasure of looking at expensive things while he had money in his pocket. Baruch came unquietly alongside and peered at the objects in the window without interest. There were things Joseph had never noticed before, or had not noticed for years, he thought, “gossamer” shirts for the heat, blue and buff silk underwear with pleated waists. There were suits with satin revers “For the Evening Wedding”, “For the Afternoon Wedding”, “For the Evening Reception”. He examined with surprise the styles of waistcoats, corded, white, black, satin, brocade, piqué.
“That’s absurd, isn’t it?” he said severely to Baruch, pointing to a waistcoat with revers of satin.
They both halted before the readymade tailor’s to compare the cut and patterns of the £2 2s. suits; there were others at £2.17s.6d. “made-to-order with two fittings”. Joseph looked out of the corner of his eye at the crowd passing him and studied the styles of suit worn by other small men; for instance, a sac suit rather neatly cut at the waist. A blonde girl in an organdi blouse and high heels tapped along beside the sac suit neatly cut at the waist. And shoes, with a small foot; he could look well in a rather classy pointed toe: as to the heels, perhaps they could raise them a little. There were hats, “merino-felt” and “pure hare felt”; but he knew a man in a hat factory who would get him one at cost price. That would come after. Oh, to spend
it all in one splurge and turn out the next morning, fresh, clean, neat, a three days’ wonder for the boat; a gag for the mouths of the little skipping girls. That was the rub, in fact; they would only laugh again to see him trying to conceal himself; Jo, for the boat, was that seedy dwarf that he now saw walking with him through the window mirrors.
Baruch kept on talking, glancing quickly to see what kept Jo’s attention straying: he once, even, with kind courtesy, dragged Jo to a shop-window and said:
“That’s what I could do with, a badger brush with a silver handle: they never wear out. And look at that razor with the tortoiseshell handle: wouldn’t we be the beaux of Lachlan Place?”
He then rapidly took Joseph from the window and plunged into his political discourse again. And Joseph, from long habit, said:
“Yes, yes, of course I do, you bet, too right,” and made affirmative noises when the cadence of the voice required it. He quizzed the crowd. What harem-scarems they were, the skinamalink office-boys, making their fingers squeak on the glass, hurrying home to mother’s Irish stew. A father with two little children all looked in at a fine drawing-board stretched with white paper; above were snapshot kodaks, decorated with cherry ribbons. As Jo’s step unconsciously lagged, Baruch hurried him on. There were old men by themselves carefully comparing the prices of shoes in half-closed shoe-shops; there was a huge “bootemporium” for the populace, decorated with hideous cartoons in green and red, of tramps with red noses and their toes out of their shoes, and women in laced boots with bursting breasts and big behinds.
“I’ll get a pair of socks,” said Joseph, seeing a man with an open case at the corner of a side-street, “and to-morrow I’ll get a pair of shoes.”
“Let’s get them here.” Baruch stopped in the middle of a period and pushed him hastily forward.
“Are they good value, do you think, for a shilling?” asked Joseph.
“Yes, yes, at that price, they’re all the same. You know what you’re getting, don’t you? They can’t rob you at that price, it’s an advertisement of quality, that price. There you are, take that pair.” He hurried him on, and Joseph for a minute paid attention to Baruch’s remarks, while the paper bag swished in his pocket.
Splendid were the silver shops, with their iron grilles half-up already. Grotesque but beautiful baskets in silver, receptacles of all sorts whose use he could not imagine, all decorated with scrolls, flourishes, chrysanthemums, cherubs, all punched out and pressed in, chased, embossed and pierced; fruit-stands, with lace d’oyleys and wax fruits, etched drinking glasses and champagne glasses, goblets, carafes, great silver dishes, heaps of fruit-knives with mother-of-pearl handles; signet-rings, mourning-rings, wedding-rings, diamond rings, studs, necklaces, magnificent opals like fire and milk lying on white satin pads, Arabian bangles for the girls. Inside the lights shone brilliantly on the cases, the polished wood counter, the purple velvet necks decorated with pearl necklaces, and the numerous mirrors. A small old whiteheaded man was there, noting the people who stopped outside, and a dandy in glazed collar and lacquered hair kept passing out and in of a swinging glass door with trays.
“What do you think he gets for that job?” asked Joseph.
“Oh, he’s probably the son: you have to be introduced, and you learn the trade,” responded Baruch in a breath.
“And pearl-handled revolvers,” said Joseph in surprise.
“Yes, they exist outside the novelettes,” smiled Baruch. Joseph was embarrassed to see a young couple hesitating before a bedding shop, brilliantly lighted, where an automatic demonstrator was showing the advantages of a pillow containing a fine spring. How can they look and not blush? he said to himself, in his modesty. In fact, the young man brusquely took the arm of the lingering girl and moved on. Joseph breathed more freely. There in a chemist’s shop was boricated vaseline, the sort he preferred, and a lotion for the hands, guaranteed to whiten them. His own had been very white, but now they were always dirty. There was a double tooth-paste guaranteed to whiten even difficult teeth, but he had no need of that, for his own teeth were beautiful. Weighing what he needed and did not need, he felt how round and complex was his personality. He almost felt the ebb and flow in the markets, the jostling in the streets, the polishing of counters by elbows. Supply and demand. Or what was Baruch saying about supply and demand. Something, but never mind, he’ll tell it again some other day. There were pearl-pills for virility, with a diagram of the male organism showing a red line from the brain to the small of the back, and there were very odd rubber things, perhaps for women, perhaps for childbirth. Those things were the drawback with getting a wife, of course. He did not like these things, and they went on. At last Baruch gave up.
“You’re window-shopping, Joseph; it’s the most satisfying and least expensive’. You’ve never done it before. Strange is the influence of Marx on character.”
“How do you mean?”
“Come along in and have an ice-cream soda,” replied Baruch, and they went into one of the numerous Italian fruit-shops, attractive with their glass windows full of glass shelves and fruit, cool drinks, ice-creams, sundaes, frosteds and what not. They each had a peach-melba: Baruch was a sweet-tooth, Joseph had not remembered that peach-melbas were so good. Afterwards, Baruch walked more slowly and attentively discussed every window Jo looked at. “Look at the nightie in pink silk: that whole outfit costs more than we could save in a year. Don’t you wonder how the girls do it? Or the boys.” In the other window were babies’ clothes. Two hardy girls passed and tittered.
“Oh, you naughty boys,” said one; and the other, “No, silly, they’re two young fathers out shopping.”The girls disappeared into the crowd. The boys blushed a little, laughed and went on.
They reached the less-frequented regions, they turned out of the shopping districts down by Paddy’s Market and the Technical High School. Most of the shops were closed. Three young men with hats in their hands played leap-frog outside a closed bar. A pool of blood on the pavement, with several clots, made them look around: opposite were two streets in which were houses of ill-fame—a fight between bucks, a girl having a baby, a bleeding nose? They walked on, the light gradually becoming less, crossing and recrossing the road, dodging the little traffic. They were fatigued now. Baruch had walked for some minutes without talking, looking very pale, limping slightly. They stopped to breathe outside a lolly-shop brightly lighted, in which were purple, mauve and red boxes of chocolates with gilt filigree paper. Going with one of those under your arm to a red plush parlour, a daguerreotyped aunt in a red plush frame, to a girl: looking at the boxes Joseph had an affection for all girls. A doorman smoking his pipe, with a thick lined face, looked through the boys as they passed heavily. His red-braided coat was open down to the stomach, he slumped on his seat, and his polished big boots were unlaced; his wife played solitaire, through the machine-laced curtains, on a red fringed table-cloth. A well dressed girl came up with them and passed them; she hesitated, looked at Joseph and walked on a few steps ahead, the high heels tapping impatiently, marking time. She turned down a side street; who knows? They have to earn their living. How did she know Joseph had just been paid? A broken ostrich-feather, pale blue and grey, lay on the pavement under an open window on the second floor; in the window was a pink blind drawn, on which a woman’s head-dress darkly moved. They passed a lighted entrance, with polished handle, varnished door, and two whitened steps. Baruch was silent. Who knows? thought Joseph. This is my city, here I was born and bred, I cannot be lost here, nothing can happen to me. I am Joseph Baguenault of Fisherman’s Bay. I know the stones, the turnings; I know where the Markets are, there to the right and behind.
The lights were on dimly to light a little the interior dusk and still to admit what remained of the daylight; the street was not yet that covered way which is endless and mysterious at night, but the city had become warm, hospitable, a city of hearths and yellow-silk lighted interiors; spoons clapped on soup-plates, spoons clanked in cups, sugar-basins revolved
. An old man out walking with a cane looked friendlily at the two boys, with the friendliness of a Biblical comment, “Look, what you are experiencing the prophets experienced in their adolescence two thousand years ago.” He went stooping on. I am young, thinks Jo. This is what the old man intended him to think. The street-lights were switched on and glowed warmly in a slight thick dusk, as if to prove conclusively that the day had knocked off work and gone home. Near an old garden, he noticed how the trees had taken on an inhuman air with something wild in them, as lions have, sitting unreconciled in the back of their cages licking their paws, in the zoo. He heard again the tapping behind him of the nocturnal prostitute just beginning her beat: fresh, odorous, with shining curls and a big bow on her neck and frilled elbows, pretty, dainty. She smiled unconsciously as she tapped with vanity past him. More soft steps and, rubbersoled, came the lamp-lighter who had just got through the district of gas-lamps. Tea was preparing everywhere; night had begun.
“I am hungry,” said Joseph.
Two old dowdy women huddling to each other, both thin, beaked, satin-hatted, and hatpin-eyed, passed him and looked approvingly at him because he was shabby, dull and modest. Joseph, too, felt comforted; his life had been passed amongst old shabby women. They would do him no harm; they would make tea for him.
“I’m dog-tired,” said Baruch.
“We’ll eat,” answered Joseph.
They looked in at the Greek restaurant and tea-shop at the corner of the street. The walls were dark green, the tables marble-topped: the electric bulbs surrounded with scalloped paper shades, cut out of grease-proof paper, were covered with fly-specks. Bred in the heat, small cockroaches scuttled about the window glass in front of the fruit, pastry and sandwiches.
“Here, if you like,” said Joseph, looking at the prices.
“We’ll go home and buy something on the way; I’ll make tea,” answered Baruch, wiping his forehead with a brown, twisted, nasty-smelling handkerchief.
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 15