He remembered a fortnight ago, in the heat of a sudden impulse to appear impressive, having told her that, on leaving school, he was to seek work in a ‘proper’ office. Why had he said it? He never had the remotest idea of so doing. The memory of the incident returned to him vividly; he recalled his puffed-up self, proud as a pigeon, revelling in her admiration. Perhaps she would have forgotten it by this time. Oh, but what did it matter whether or no: he could change his mind if he so wished. Why should he be scared of her? This was the kind of thing that made friendship with a girl so undesirable; they were so troublesomely inquisitive.
He forced a smile: ‘Oh, hallo, Helen.’ he said, adding, unnecessarily, as they walked along: ‘Goin’ home for y’ dinner?’ She sensed a constraint in his demeanour instantly. She looked at him, questioningly, wondering, her smile fading, the light dying in her eyes. After a pause, she said: ‘I didn’t see y’ over week-end, Harry. Where were y’? Y’ weren’t in choir, either.’
He shrugged: ‘Aw, Ah stopped in house, readin’. Didn’ want t’go out.’ He could not confess that shame of his schoolboy clothes was the real cause. It occurred to him that it would be weeks, possibly, before his mother would be able to afford him a pair of long trousers for Sunday wear. That meant sitting at home over the week-ends. It would be humiliating, after wearing overalls during the week to appear in knickerbockers of a Sunday. Until now, this prospect had not occurred to him. Glum discontent stirred in his heart. Why had some such occurrence as this always to rise to spoil one’s new-found pleasure? Tomorrow’s prospect was robbed of half its savour.
‘You left school Friday, didn’t you, Harry?’
It was coming: he could sense her thoughts. He gripped the overalls tighter: ‘Aye,’ he said, moodily.
‘And the job …?’ a timid eagerness appeared in her expression.
She hadn’t forgotten! He forced a laugh: ‘Oh, Ah’ve got a job. Start at Dicky Marlowe’s in morning. Machine shop … 2510’s me number. Here’s me overalls.’
She raised her brows, incredulously: ‘Engineering? I thought you … ‘
‘Oh, Ah know. Ah know. Office,’ a grimace and a deprecatory gesture: ‘Naow. … Had enough o’ Price an’ Jones’s t’ last me a lifetime.’
They turned into North Street; halted by the open door of No. 7 where Helen lived together with the remaining dozen comprising the family. A number of very young and very dirty children played in the gutter. Women passed, occasionally, carrying basins of fried fish and chipped potatoes leaving a pungent odour of the mixed dish in their wakes; lines of washing decorated the street billowing in the fitful breeze.
She stared at the pavement. This occurrence was the handiwork of Bill Simmons and his clique. Jealousy of their influence on him pinched her. He was a cut above their kind. Besides, what a bathos, after all her fond expectations, to imagine Harry dressed in overalls instead of as she had always pictured him, clean, tidy, going to an office where gentlemen worked. Nor was it that such an aspiration was impossible; being a chorister at the parish church was guarantee that he could have had such a job; all the boys in the choir went to offices. In overalls, though, working with street-corner louts.
And she had been led to believe. … Her dream crumbled. Oh, why had he given her his confidences? Why had he permitted her to glory in that she, of all the street girls, nay, of all the girls of the neighbourhood, had been the one to whom he had unburdened himself. Didn’t he know that his friendship had drawn the teeth of that ogre, rendered it innocuous - that ogre, the squalor and discomfort of her home? The yearning sadness of a farewell stole plaintively across her heart as she recalled those sweet sessions when she stood with him in the shadowy upper reaches of the street listening to his murmured tale of woe. She felt that happiness being furtively withdrawn, stolen by sly hands which she could not resist. No longer would he feed the deep longing in her heart; no more could she escape, through him, those bleak lonelinesses which sometimes stole upon her; she murmured: ‘Vicar can get y’ job, if y’d ask.’
‘Yaah,’ he replied, impatiently: ‘Ah know… . Tart’s job. But not for me,’ staring up into the sky and adding, fervently: ‘I want proper man’s work,’ with a shrug: ‘Besides, I’ve left choir. Voice is broke.’
‘It isn’t,’ she cried, accusingly, suddenly animated; ‘You know it isn’t.’
‘Oh, yes it is. It’s broke. Ah tell y’. Ah know,’ obstinately, and with finality: ‘An’ Ah’m goin’ to Marlowe’s.’
Appealingly: ‘But look at fellows y’ll mix with, Harry…. Swearers like Ned Narkey, and … and …’ hotly and with impatience: ‘Oh, it’s Bill Simmons and his crowd as’ve put y’ up to this … ‘ her eyes sparkled.
He stared at her: ‘What’s it to you?’ he asked, incredulously: ‘Ah can please meself, can’t Ah? Ah knows what Ah’m doin’.’
The impudence; the manner of her assumption! Oh. aye. she’d have him go to office work! And the way she referred, disparagingly, to BUI Simmons and the rest His nostrils dilated; he glared at her: ‘Mind y’r own business,’ he said, indignantly.
She stared at him; her spirits froze. Could this really be the Harry Hardcastle around whom she had woven an ideal? ‘Oh, Harry,’ she murmured, appealingly: ‘Let’s not fall out.’
He brimmed with self-confidence: ‘What d’y’ mean, us fall out? Ha! Ah like that’
‘Oh, Harry, I never meant…’
A loud voice came from the open door at Helen’s back, her mother’s: ‘Hey, there. How much longer are y’ gonna stand there argefyin’? Dinner’s goin’ cold here.’
Harry muttered, impatiently: ‘Aw, Ah’m goin’ home for me dinner… . Girls mek me sick. S’long.’ He stamped away, moodily.
She watched him with sinking heart until he disappeared through the door of No. 17, then she turned, eyes shining, and went into the child-infested rowdiness of her home.
CHAPTER 6 - OVERALLS
HIS initiation was disappointing.
Visions of being conducted to a bolted and barred room where, in hushed whispers, he would receive careful instruction concluded by a solemn adjuration to keep the knowledge a sworn secret, proved to be entirely without foundation. There was no painstaking instruction, no enlightenment of the ‘mysteries’ of the trade as had been promised in the extravagant language of the indentures. That was pure bunkum, evidently. What a fool he would have made of himself had he apprised the boys of his silly expectations.
Instead of being set to work on a lathe he found his duties consisted in running errands for the elder apprentices and the men.
There was only one whom he knew would be sympathetic; instinctively he unburdened himself to Larry Meath; though Larry’s was cold comfort.
‘You’re part of a graft, Harry,’ he said: ‘All Marlowe’s want is cheap labour; and the apprentice racket is one of their ways of getting it. Nobody’ll teach you anything simply because there’s so little to be learnt. You’ll pick up all you require by asking questions and watching others work. You see, all this machinery’s being more simplified year after year until all it wants is experienced machine feeders and watchers. Some of the new plant doesn’t even need that. Look in the brass-finishing shop when you’re that way. Ask the foreman to show you that screw-making machine. That can work twenty-four hours a day without anybody going near it. Your apprenticeship’s a swindle, Harry. The men they turn out think they’re engineers same as they do at all the other places, but they’re only machine minders. Don’t you remember the women during the war?’
‘What women?’ Harry asked, troubled by what Larry had said.
‘The women who took the places of the engineers who’d all served their time. The women picked up straightaway what Marlowe’s and the others say it takes seven years’ apprenticeship to learn,’ a wry smile: ‘Still, if you want to be what everybody calls an “engineer”, you’ve no choice but to serve your seven years. Oh, and you were lucky to be taken on as an apprentice. I hear that they’re considering refu
sing to bind themselves in contracting to provide seven years’ employment. There is a rumour about that there aren’t to be any more apprentices. You see, Harry, if they don’t bind themselves, as they have to do in the indentures, they can clear the shop of all surplus labour when times are bad. And things are shaping that way, now,’ a grin: ‘You’ve no need to worry, though. You’ve seven years’ employment, certain.’
Hum!
It chilled Harry, momentarily.
Only momentarily. With all its disadvantages it was infinitely a more enjoyable occupation than Price and Jones’s.
Variety here! Any of the men requiring such and such a tool gave him a brass check with their number stamped on it; he took it to the stores and exchanged it for the desired tool. Towards noon, in company with other new apprentices, he brewed tea for those men it was his duty to attend. Afterwards he ran to Sam Grundy’s back entry with their threepenny and sixpenny bets. At week-end, he learned with pleasurable surprise, the men would give him coppers for the services, extra if the bets he had taken proved profitable. Yes, despite what Larry Meath had said, this method of earning a living was far more desirable than Price and Jones’s or any other office.
As for Bill Simmons and the others, they were liars. From their talk at various times he had concluded they were in charge of machines. Nothing of the kind; errand boys, ‘shop boys’ they were, nothing more. Rather discouraging to learn that, generally, over a year elapsed before you were permitted to use even a drilling machine. Drilling machine, though. A child could be entrusted with it: all that was necessary was the depression of a lever; a device prevented the drill from boring too deep; it was foolproof. Nevertheless, he was not permitted practice on the machine. As yet he was errand boy, and a zealous one into the bargain.
But that period soon passed when, sent on errands to the stores, he hurried there and back resisting the temptation to have his attention engaged by the numberless absorbingly interesting engineering operations to be seen on all sides. From the other apprentices he learnt the circuitous routes to the stores, routes which led through the various departments.
The foundry! What a place.
Steel platforms from which you saw great muscular men dwarfed to insignificance by the vastness of everything: men the size of Ned Narkey who had charge of the gigantic crane. Fascinated he saw the cumbrous thing, driven by Ned, unseen, move slowly along its metals: leisurely, its great arm deposited an enormous ladle by the furnace. A pause; a hoarse shout; a startling glimpse of fire then a rushing, spitting river of flames that was molten metal running out of the furnace’s channel into the ladle until it brimmed. The river of fire was dammed, ceased as by magic. The crane’s limp cable tautened; slowly the ladle swung, revolved, white-hot, a vivid, staring glare that stabbed the eyes; slowly it swung, twenty tons of molten metal to the moulds.
Men, red in front, black behind and trailing long shadows after them; men with leathern aprons, bare, sinewy arms and coloured goggles shading their eyes, ran about in obedience to shouted instructions: chains creaked on strain, unseen mechanism ‘clank-clanked’, then, as with calculated deliberation, the glowing cauldron tipped forward as though held, jug-wise, by an invisible giant’s hand. Harry held his breath as the metal brimmed the lip to fall, splashing off a teeming fountain of heavy, quick-dying sparks like a Catherine wheel, before the metal ran to earth forcing off hissing plumes of burning rainbow-coloured gases through the mould vents.
A magnificent, inspiring sight; made you feel proud of being identified with the great Marlowe organization.
The forge, too, where, amongst others, old Pa Scodger worked. Mr Scodger was a blacksmith. A blacksmith, though! Ha! A diminutive, harassed fellow with a bald head and a huge moustache. He worked in the tiny smithy adjoining the forge, and, out of working hours, sometimes afforded amusement to the boys of North Street by the differences that occurred between him and his termagant wife. As though he hadn’t enough dinning in his ears where he worked.
The forge! Impossible to stand still here. Rows and rows of drop hammers, small and large; ten ton to over a hundred. Great blocks of steel lifted by eccentric pulleys shaped like an egg, motivated by electricity and compressed air; blocks of steel crashing upon the white-hot forgings with a shattering BUMP. Earth shook, trembled beneath your feet. If you stood within yards of the largest hammers you actually were lifted off your feet A most peculiar sensation; a tickling of the stomach, a giddiness. Outside the works’ walls even, three hundred yards away, the reverberations of the enormous things could still be felt
As for the riveting shop. Bedlam.
The din here was insufferable. On the walls were the furnaces, each a little smaller than a kitchen oven, one every four yards or so; a fire-clay-lined box without a front. They were fed by two pipes, one gas, the other compressed air: the air roared, centrifugally, driving the gas in fierce orange-coloured spirals, making white-hot the rivets lying within. The operatives were adept as jugglers. A pair of long-handled pincers shot into the furnace; out came a white-hot rivet, plump into the rivet hole; then a steel bar was rammed on to the rivet head to hold it secure whilst the riveter, with a revolver-like pneumatic riveter, jammed it home, pressed the trigger, and: ‘tat-tat-tat-tat-tat’. Such a row. As though a million boys were running stakes along iron railings, simultaneously. Every man stone deaf after a six months’ spell of work here. Phew! But they were men.
And such as would take advantage of a greenhorn’s inexperience and credulity in playing him tricks. Such as when Billy Higgs, one of the senior apprentices whose behests it was Harry’s duty to obey, sent him to the stores for the ‘long stand’. Harry went, unsuspectingly, made his request, wondering on the shape and use of the instrument. The storekeeper answered, solemnly: ‘Long stand? Oh, aye, just stand there,’ and went on with his work. Minutes elapsed: Harry watched the traffic of boys coming with brass checks and going with tools. Jack Lindsay, a thickset boy with a ready grin and a fondness of striking pugilistic attitudes for no reason at all, came up whistling: ‘ ‘Allo, ‘Any.’ he said, ‘What y’ standin’ there for?’ Harry told him. Jack shook his head and said, sympathetically: ‘They mek y’ wait for that summat awful.’ He went off chuckling. Soon Harry began to blush and to wonder why all the apprentices who now came up looked at him as though he was some odd animal: they grinned or laughed, nudged each other and winked. Bill Simmons, blue-eyed, over-grown, with an unruly mop of hair and a chronic habit of prefixing almost every noun he used with the idiomatic term for copulation, laughed and said to his companion, Sam Hardie, an undersized, bow-legged, low browed boy with long, strong, ape-like arms: ‘Did y’ ever, Sam. They ain’t gev him the - stand yet!’
With a sickly grin Harry asked him the meaning of the joke. Sam, grinning, advised him to ask the storekeeper. Blushing, Harry turned to the busy man who bad forgotten all about him: ‘Hey,’ he protested, mildly indignant: ‘Hey, what about that there long stand?’
The man looked up: ‘What! Ain’t you gone yet?’ he asked, raising his brows,
‘I come here for long stand an’ you told me … ‘
‘Well, y’ bin standin’ there hafe an hour. … Ain’t that long enough?’
Truth dawned; red in the face Harry licked his lips, turned on his heel and slunk away. ‘You might ha’ told me,’ he said, reproachfully, to Bill Simmons and the others. Bill sniggered: ‘Wait till you see some gawp doin’ the same. See whether you tell him.’
A more humiliating experience awaited him. His desire had been, on walking home, to have oil and dirt smeared on his face as evidence of the nature of his work. Vanity demanded it: it was imperative. And for two nights now, on arrival home, the first thing he had done was to glance into the mirror there to see a most disappointing reflection. Instead of a really oily face such as most of the boys and nearly all the men managed to acquire his skin was pale. He resolved on artificial methods. Unfortunately, whilst daubing grease on his face during the noonday respite behind what he had tho
ught to be the privacy of a milling machine, Tom Hare, a steel-spectacled sly-eyed, foul-mouthed, untidy boy with stoop shoulders, bulging forehead and decayed teeth, surprised him.
Jeering he summoned the other apprentices.
Harry’s hate of Tom, lively at all times - he was a disgusting fellow who thought nothing of exposing himself in front of the boys, was obsessed with matters sexual, laid grasping hands on girls, and, sniggering, told tales of the filthy behaviour of his parents in whose bedroom he slept, there being a very large family and the usual inadequate accommodation - Harry’s hatred of him increased.
The boys congregated in front of him, chortling. Someone asked what should be done with him, asked in such a way that suggested there being only one answer.
Harry retreated, slowly, panting, eyes staring. He guessed what was to follow: leave me be …’ he cried, casting wild glances about for a weapon. There was nothing to hand. Tom Hare shouted: ‘Tek his trousis down,’ and giggled.
‘You leave me be. … ‘ His voice rose shrill: he pointed a quivering, threatening finger at Tom: ‘I’ll blind you, Tom Hare.’
They all laughed and closed in on him. Sam Hardie’s ape-like arms encompassed him. In a moment he was on his back, struggling impotently, and bawling hysterically. His cries were drowned in the roar of laughter that rose when rough hands tore at his trousers and exposed his nakedness. He screamed, struggled frantically. Somebody ran up with a pot of red paint, a brush and grease; anonymous hands daubed it on him whenever exposed.
Then, laughing, they released him. Harry, sobbing, covered his oily painted nakedness, drew on his overalls and retired to the lavatories to wipe away as much of the mess as he could. He felt that never again could he look any of the apprentices in the face. What would they think of his girlish screaming? of his patched undershirt and ragged shirt lap? Then there was the knickerbockers! They now would know that he wore the abominable things underneath his overall. He shrank, inwardly. What an altogether humiliating episode.
Love on the Dole Page 5